Three Viral Marketing Ideas for Mortgage Brokers
The adjective "viral" is pretty dreary, isn't it? Normally, describing things as "viral" — like, say, meningitis, or pharyngitis — doesn't make the concept described any happier or useful. This is not true of viral marketing. Viral marketing, like other marketing, is meant to prompt the recipient to act. But in viral marketing the most important thing you want your recipient to do is to spread your message for you.
The basic concept behind viral marketing is the old “you tell 10 people, who each tell 10 people, who each tell 10 people…” The key is getting those 10 people you tell to tell 10 people each. Do you suppose they do that with a rate teaser e-mail? Unlikely. But your normal marketing e-mails serve one purpose – trying to convince your prospect to do business with you. With viral marketing, your goal is to get that e-mail forwarded to 10 more people. You’re casting a wider net and hoping for different results.
Chances are you’ve used offline viral marketing techniques before, maybe without even realizing it. Ever given a Realtor some pens with your business name and phone number on them and asked her to give them out to her clients? Viral marketing.
The Internet has made viral marketing much easier and in most cases cheaper, which is why viral marketing is such a hot topic these days. And you’re after “cheaper.” The tips below assume you’re not going to hire a coder to create an addictive online game, or produce an elaborate, funny YouTube video. You can take advantage of your XSite and the Internet to spread the word about your mortgage business “virally” without investing a lot of time or money.
First some words of caution: To enlist the help of your prospects in spreading your message, you need to recalibrate, if not relearn, what you’ve always known about marketing. For instance:
- For viral marketing to work, it must be completely painless and easy for your prospect or intermediary to pass it on. That means: Don’t require registration, a form to be filled out… don’t even make the prospect identify himself or herself before the message can be passed on.
- In the short history of viral marketing on the Internet, no hard-sell ad has ever been passed around to a large number of people. Resist the urge to sell. Be satisfied if some very basic information about your business gets widely circulated. Even just your XSite address.
- Everything you know about response rates and ROI has to be set aside. You know if you get a one percent response rate to a large direct mailing you’ve done great. But your “virus” may have to propagate and incubate for some time before “symptoms” – increased Web visits, more phone calls – occur. Because your investment in spreading the message is minimal – remember, we’re after “cheaper” and are counting on a lot of other people to do the work – you can be satisfied with delayed results.
So: As a mortgage originator, what are some viral marketing ideas you can use? Here are three. We’ll have three more for you in the next edition.
- Blogging. Your XSite comes with a free, intuitive, powerful blogging tool. Do you use it? Blogs do a lot of things for your XSite. They help with search engines because there’s more frequently updated relevant content on your site, and they keep visitors on your site longer by giving them more interesting things to read. But blogging is also an important viral marketing tool.
If you write a particularly good post and a reader is impressed and sends the link to a friend… viral marketing. If a colleague links to it on his blog… viral marketing. Getting links or passalongs is hit-and-miss in blogging, but if you commit to updating your blog regularly with quality, relevant posts you’re taking advantage of a great viral marketing technique.
- Link exchanges. When you arrange with a colleague or partner to link to their site on yours if they’ll link to your site on theirs – a link exchange – you’re engaging in viral marketing. And, incidentally, giving yourself a leg up with search engines.
The is the perfect place to find other Mortgage XSite users in your area, as well as real estate agents, appraisers and inspectors you can potentially exchange links with. Just like you, they’re all interested in boosting their search engine results and spreading their XSite address around as widely as possible.
- Start an e-newsletter. If you e-mail people good, relevant content and ask them to pass it along, they’ll read it and they will. Where do you get good, relevant content? Your XSite content pages. Your blog posts. Something original. Free e-zine syndication sites like , and have articles written by others that you’re welcome to use in your e-newsletter, provided you keep them intact and use the author’s bio and Web link to credit him or her. Quality varies from very good to quite a bit less than very good, but browsing and searching until you find a professional, appropriate article for your e-newsletter is a snap.
Combine three articles from these various sources into a simple e-mail newsletter. Ask your list to forward it to friends. If there’s something interesting in it, they will, and your name and business information is passed around. Agents with XSellerate have ready-made e-newsletter templates — professionally designed, attractive and eye-catching — that make sending out your news even easier and more effective.
In the next edition, we’ll tell you about three more viral marketing ideas for mortgage brokers.
