The No B.S. Guide To Mortgage Lead Generation

A Marketer is only as good as their tools in the year 2020.

Marketing tools cost money.

So if you don’t plan to spend money to grow your business, feel free to leave this page because clearly this is just a hobby for you.

If you are willing to invest in your business, then this may be one of the most valuable articles you’ll ever read about Lead Generation for the Mortgage Industry.

To begin, everyone and their Grandmother is selling leads.

“I can get you 50 leads per month!”

“I bet we can get you 10 super high-quality leads.”

“We have the best leads”

It’s time for a mindset shift.

It’s time to accept that leads are absolutely useless, unless you can speak to that person. It’s time to stop buying leads lists and start buying actual opportunities.

What I’m trying to say is that the only metric you should be tracking is the number of appointments you’re getting from those leads.

The question you should be asking your current ‘Facebook Ads guy’ or ‘Lead Generation Service’ is: “What percentage of these leads will turn into actual conversations?”

Why should you ask this question? Because it’s a metric that they should know. It’s also a metric that gives a strong indication of the quality of leads that you’re going to be getting.

Because let me guess, the question YOU consider to be the most important to ask is: “How many deals will I close with these leads?”

Which we all know that any competent objection handler’s response would be: “I can’t know that because it depends on YOUR ability to close deals.”

It’s true! That is a reasonable response to that question. How can a marketer predict how good you are as a salesman? Trust me, every Mortgage Broker and LO we’ve ever spoken to is “the best salesman ever!”

You need to start asking different questions. Questions that actually hold the people you’re paying accountable and also increases the odds of you closing more deals.

WARNING: If you ask how many appointments you expect to receive and they hesitate or can’t even answer that question, run far away.

When it comes to booking appointments, that obviously means you’re going to need more than just a Facebook Lead Form as your only means of outreach. (Don’t even get me started on Facebook Lead Forms 🤢)

You’re going to need an online sales funnel.

An online sales funnel consists of 3 primary functions: 1) a landing page 2) a booking page and 3) a lead nurturing sequence to get them from peeking through the window, to knocking on your door.

Today, I’m going to explain how you can build your very own sales funnel.

As said previously, a Marketer is only as good as his/her tools. That means you’re going to have to invest in some software to build your funnel.

We have our recommendations, but that’s not the point of this article.

You can go with ClickFunnels.

Or you can go with HighLevel.

Our agency, auto-Nurture goes with HighLevel.

So, for the sake of this funnel build, we’re going to use images from HighLevel as an example.

DISCLAIMER: This article is NOT a ‘how-to-build-funnel-step-by-step’ piece of content.

We’re not going to instruct you on how to navigate every technical step that comes with building a landing page, booking page, trigger events, lead nurturing and follow-up.

But we are going to tell you what you’ll need, what it should look like and what type of messaging you should be sending.

ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER: No, we’re not going to show you the exact landing pages or lead nurturing campaigns that we use, because thats how we make money! We’ll give you examples of more basic designs.

1. Landing Page Design

Your landing page is nothing more than a glorified survey page. It doesn’t have to have your name or face on it. All it has to do is build credibility, look official and maintain consistency with whatever message your ads are sending.

This is the page that people will land to once they click on your Ad. As you can see, there’s nothing special about it at all. Less is more in most cases. You can change the color and wording in the cover image to suit your preference, but the most important thing is to stay consistent, both in your messaging as well as in the actual survey. Make sure there are no distractions.

2. Survey

This is where the quality of your leads is being determined and where you have full power over not only what information you’d like to collect, but also how many questions you’d like to ask. The more questions you ask, the more expensive your leads will be, because that means they’ll be higher quality. That’s simply because Facebook will require more of your money to be spent in order to find people that make it through your disqualification parameters and fully qualify for your programs.

3. Self-Booking Page

Now, everything before this page is all and good, but this is the page that actually matters. What good are those names and numbers without actually getting that person on the phone?

Once again, consistency is key. If the lead makes it through your survey page, then they will be immediately sent to a self-booking page, where they will choose a date and time to speak with you. This will be the biggest difference maker for you and your business if you aren’t doing this already. If you’re open to it, it also doesn’t hurt to add a ‘Live Transfer’ button so that they can call you immediately instead of booking an appointment.

Here is what that would look like:

“But what happens if they self-book and don’t show up?”

“Or worse, what happens if they don’t self-book in the first place!?”

4. Lead Nurturing Campaigns

You might know it as a ‘Drip Campaign’ but we don’t like to call it that. We feel a drip campaign lacks emotion and suggests a hard sell type of outreach. For this type of funnel, we’re not going into a hard sale. We’re trying to build a relationship out of empathy and trust.

That’s why we call it ‘Lead Nurturing.’ Because our goal is to nurture those leads to fruition.

If they don’t self-book immediately, we want to let them know that this is a safe place to communicate.

If they do self-book, we want them to know that there’s an actual person who cares about their best interests, that they’re going to be speaking with. So they’d better respect that person’s time and show up.

This is your opportunity to humanize yourself.

And this is where most Mortgage Brokers and LO’s get is wrong.

It’s nothing against you. It’s probably not even your fault. You just might not have the tools, triggers or even capabilities in your current system to ensure your leads are being contacted at the right time and being told the right things.

It is essential that you have a system in place that automatically reacts to any and all scenarios.

If 30-minutes before a call, a lead replies to your appointment reminder text with: “who is this?” It’s imperative that you immediately respond with that information.

You’d be surprised how many leads do this and actually end up closing.

BONUS: Manual Booking

This is something that I’m sure about 99% of you who are reading this article do not do. But again, this isn’t something you can be blamed for because you’ve been tracking the wrong metric up until now.

When it comes to show up rates, if the funnel is built correctly, you should have a fairly high show rates, but we live in a world where no-shows do happen. People are unreliable and often times inconsiderate.

The whole point of putting an automated system in place is to save you time, increase your efficiency and productivity. If they don’t show up to the appointment, then what’s the point?

The only way to turn your ironclad system into a steel-clad system is to add a live person to the nurturing equation.

This person will be dialing on your leads list trying to book appointments for you every single day.

This person will be calling every single lead who fills out your survey but doesn’t self-book and try get them booked manually.

This person will be calling every single lead who no-shows, find out why, and book a new time for them to speak with you.

This person will be calling every single lead who did self-book to confirm the appointment and express how excited you are to speak to them as they usher in this potentially life-changing loan approval process.

This system, along with manual booking is the reason why you haven’t been able to take your business to the next level.

5. Facebook Ads

Last but not least, your ads. Let’s be real, we’re all pretty much using the same or similar ad creatives. What truly makes all the difference is the ad copy, because that also must be consistent with who you’re targeting.

Our ad copy will not be revealed to you today.

When it comes to creatives, what seems to work best are the insides and outsides of homes in split photos. Of course, we want your audience to feel as though the homes shown in your creatives are actually attainable, so make sure you’re choosing a house that is realistic for your audience.

Sure, everyone wants a mansion, but setting unrealistic expectations will definitely come back to bite you in the end.

How should you build your ads?

Do yourself a favor and use Canva. It’s fast, easy and very simple to use. When it’s all said and done, your ads should look something like this:

And there you have it…

This system, along with manual booking is the reason why you haven’t yet been able to take your business to the next level.

Everyone complains about bad leads- but how do you create a good lead?

By eliminating every single avenue that could potentially make it a bad lead.

That’s why tracking the correct metrics and putting the right systems in place is vital.

In order for you to build a funnel like this yourself, you need to understand that there is a learning curve. It does take time. But the rewards can be life changing for someone who takes their business seriously and invests in it.

Putting a system like this in place will put you in a prime position to scale your business, grow your personal network, grow your realtor referral network and create long lasting results.