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Things are quiet out there (except, maybe, for the dull roar of hostility and confusion emanating from a nebulous netherworld somewhere between the 2010 GFE and 2010 HUD-1…).  We’re ready for the “down market” to go up again.  But it appears the market isn’t quite ready to oblige.

 

Nonetheless, there is business being done.  We just have to fight a little harder for our share of it.

 

Now, I’ve blogged about this many times before.  (Try here and here for context.)  But it’s probably a good time for a refresher.  You don’t need a five or six digit budget and an in with your friendly neighborhood trade publisher to have a real marketing or branding strategy.

 

This is not a call to boycott your trade organization or trade publishers.  Advertising can be a very real and effective way to build brand and win business.  But it’s also expensive. 

 

Just because your market budget has gone the way of the 3-martini lunch and bundled services as a silver bullet, you don’t need to stop getting the word out.  In fact, I’d advise just the opposite in this market.

 

Consider the following, reasonably well-accepted industry premises:

 

1. The mortgage industry is relationship-based.  Although The NumberS are never ignored, the business-to-business side of this, er, business, just as often comes back to whom one knows, and whom one trusts.
2. Almost all relationships are built upon mutual benefit.
3. Almost all relationships are maintained and renewed via two-way communication, which we’ll just call “conversation,” rather than one-way communication, which we’ll refer to as “broadcasting.”

 

If you agree with me, let’s move on.  If not, please feel free to entertain yourself with one of my previous blogs!  J

 

I’d posit that many of the smaller businesses in the title and mortgage industry have been engaged in some form of content marketing or conversational advertising (yes, I just made that up) for decades.  Many of these folks have businesses too small for marketing managers or ad budgets.  And yet, they’ve grown their businesses somehow.  When I inquire, I usually learn that it’s some combination of the owner and a few top people beating the bushes, working relationships, having conversations and helping out customers and partners wherever possible and legal.  They’re delivering value, above and beyond the products or services they sell.

 

Folks, those principles are the foundations of successful content marketing.  You don’t need to advertise to keep your brand alive in the minds of existing customers.  You don’t need to rent lists to grow new business.  Can these things help?  Sure!  Are they important to a comprehensive campaign?  They can be.  Are they pre-requisites for development in a down-market?  Not really.

 

It’s time to keep and build your relationships, which will translate into business, by delivering value in your conversations.  But you knew that already.  How does that translate into marketing or branding?

 

Here are just a few ways to keep the fire alive while we read about rising foreclosure rates (of course, if one runs a foreclosure, REO or default-based business, things are pretty good right now…) and declining originations:

 

Keep the news section of your Web site fresh:  What, you don’t have a news section?  Read on!  What, you don’t have a Web site?!  Um…start here.

 

Too often, I see sites with a “news” or “update” section.  Click there, and one more often than not finds 3 or 4 standard corporate news releases, carefully tailored by the legal team, the most recent of which predates RESPA itself.  In the Wide, Wonderful World of the World Wide Web, nothing drives away a visitor to one’s Web site as quickly as stale news.  At a minimum, get it updated.  If you don’t have any carefully polished news releases, craft a few one paragraph releases.  You might be surprised to know that most people—even businesspeople and prospects—aren’t coming to your site to see what your “boilerplate” looks like.  Keep it fresh, and you’ll give prospects a reason to return to your site more than once.

 

Blog:  Ok.  Maybe this isn’t for everyone.  But this ties in with the above.  It’s ok to have a Web site designed to serve as collateral or a menu of your basic services.  But offer the visiting prospects additional value, and you’ll get the chance to pitch them (via your site) again and again.  How many of your direct sales pitches work on the first go-round? 

 

Make a call to the trade publication or Web site your customers tend to read:  You have observations and ideas about what’s happening out there.  You read stories about what’s happening.  You do this for a living.  Why not be one of the people quoted in these pubs.  It’s easier than you think—start here.

 

Go where your customers are in social media and get active: Run a title agency that gets most of its business from Realtors and brokers/agents?  Run, don’t walk, to Facebook and Twitter, find out where the prospects are, and get into the conversation.  Looking for new lending clients?  Get into a good LinkedIn discussion forum—The Real Estate and Mortgage Executive Forum comes to mind—and get into the conversation.  Oh, and please don’t just paste ad copy—it doesn’t work, and it may even damage your brand.

 

Go to the conferences where your customers are…and deliver value: Yes, conferences can be expensive.  But if you are speaking there, the registration is often free.  And there is no better place to find the healthy businesses looking for new vendors or partners.  For a few tips on how to get in, try here.

 

All of these methods are, more or less, free.  All take time and thought, however.  And all can be part of a comprehensive and effective branding strategy.  For success, however, each tactic must be executed with these four things in mind:

 

1)      Each speech, news item, LinkedIn posting, et al must contribute or deliver value to the prospect, customer or user.

2)      They must be relevant.

3)      They must be authentic.

4)      They must, somehow, tie back into your brand without pitching.

 

Needless to say, Number Four is the kicker. And it’s not always easy.  In fact, I’d link back to a blog post for that one, but I’d need to link to about 50 of my posts.  Stay tuned—if you’re a long-time reader (Thanks Mom!) you know what I’m talking about.