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Mortgage Marketing via Twitter?

Trace Richardson — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:11:25 +0000

Below are some loose thoughts I posted at BrokerOutpost in a discussion about the role of twitter in mortgage marketing where I shared my findings about Twitter conversion.

Is anyone actually gaining clients from twitter? You bet, check out www.twitter.com/mortgagereports. Dan posts rate and market updates and people listen.

Why would somebody follow me? The same reason they would follow your blog, website or newsletter…. you are providing something of value. You mean I can’t just sign up and get deals? Nope, but the folks you are competing against appreciate your lack of effort / lack of understanding the medium… that’s for sure. This conversation is very similar to the one that occurred when websites were first used for mortgage marketing. Some folks were adamant that consumers wouldn’t trust a website, naysayers were sure that consumers needed to shake a hand before refinancing.

Bottom line: Marketers in virtually any vertical you can imagine are successfully marketing on twitter. The jury is no longer out on whether or not twitter is a viable marketing channel, the question is HOW it can be used in your overall marketing strategy.

Effort: As with any marketing tool, you get out what you put in. Signed up for twitter and didn’t get deals? You can’t be surprised at that, let’s be real. Twitter or ANY marketing channel takes work!

Strategy: Twitter can play a valuable role in any mortgage marketing strategy. It’s a great intro to eyeballs that you can then convert into becoming followers of your updates and industry news on your website / blog….where you can introduce them to your brand and value proposition or “why should I use you to refinance?”.

People that follow you on Twitter are real people, consumers. Twitter is simply a tool to get your message / value proposition / news & updates in front of those eyeballs. This is an opportunity to reach many folks you would never get an audience with.

How: There are so many “How to Market on Twitter” guides it isn’t even funny, everything you need to know has been written ten times over. Also, twitter doesn’t have to be about marketing, I am still able to network via my personal account ( twitter.com/tracerichardson ) where I share whatever I feel like, even if it isn’t business related.. Or I might post on business accounts I have such as @leadpress, @brokerscience @ipagio, etc….

I’ve learned a lot by taking part in the conversation and watching others. I’ve actually learned more by listening… The lessons learned are very similar to other mediums…. don’t spam, provide value, learn the rules of the game / etiquette, etc….

What is the point? The point is that the game is wide open. While a lot of peeps are using twitter in their overall mortgage marketing strategy, most are not. That equals opportunity.

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Double Your Twitter Follower Conversion Rate: Cute Converts

Trace Richardson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:55:19 +0000

Until the Launch of LeadPress, I had twitter accounts set up for Ipagio (LeadPress’s forerunner), BrokerScience (a mortgage blog) and LeadPress. These accounts were largely dormant as I mainly used @tracerichardson for my tweets.

With the launch of LeadPress, I converted Ipagio to a mortgage marketing blog, revived it’s twitter account and revived the BrokerScience twitter account as well. In doing so I followed around 275 mortgage related peeps but with a little twist. When you follow people on twitter, some of those people will follow you back, so I was curious about how the account picture on each account would affect the likelihood of people following me back after I followed them.

BrokerScience used a picture of my dog Hoss and the Ipagio account used the LeadPress logo (RSS / House image) as shown below.

Twitter Conversion Results

While highly unscientific, of the 275 people I followed, 65 followed Ipagio back and 145 followed BrokerScience, a 223% improvement in conversion. BrokerScience even had a notation in its description that I was no longer using the account and to find me at @tracerichardson. There are many other factors that may have impacted the results such as BrokerScience being more well known and the like (I’m not sure this is even true, actually), but my conclusion is that the biggest factor that came into play is that cute converts, a picture of a doggie will get more follows then a non-animated object that’s not cute.

Conversion Conclusion

Puppies, kitties and small furry cute creatures are the call of the day. Just like sex sells, cute converts.

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New LeadPress / Trace Richardson Facebook Page – Hit Me Up!

Trace Richardson — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:50:58 +0000

I have a new Facebook page. I was torn about the best way to integrate business / work related friends and non work related friends in Facebook. I decided that the solution was to definitely NOT add work related friends and contacts to my personal page.

This would create a lot of pointless messages that my non work friends could care less about like mortgage lead generation, web development, social media, etc. and vice versa.

Friend Me Up on Facebook Here!

While your at it, are you following me on Twitter?

Let’s do this!

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LeadPress Does Carpool Confessions with LeadCritic

Trace Richardson — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:01:27 +0000

I had a blast chatting last week with Mike Ferree of LeadCritic on his Carpool Confessions segment. I had a blast aside from my headset being a little hot and crackly and a mild overdose on redbull. We talked about twitter rumors, mortgage lead generation, mortgage broker education, mortgage leads and more.

CHECK IT OUT!

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