You’ve got a business in the mortgage and real estate fields, but you’re just starting out. What now?

The first step is to learn how to generate mortgage leads.

The problem?

There are probably fifty thousand ideas swimming through your head right now.

Or you might be exposed to plenty of marketing tips—many of which aren’t very relevant to the world of mortgage leads.

Anyone who’s been in mortgage leads for a while knows that there’s an art to it.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn it, either.

Let’s look at some of the initial, broad-strokes steps you need to take if you want to start generating mortgage leads online:

1. Learn how to provide value first.

Let’s ask a question most people in marketing don’t ask: how can you serve the people who you want to attract?

It might sound like a rhetorical question, but it’s at the core of generating new leads.

In short, you need to give your potential leads a reason to seek you out.

There are a few ways to do this.

For starters, you can create online content for free and then share that with people.

For example,  if you create worthwhile and valuable blogs with helpful tips, you’re going to attract an audience.

Or if you create a free eBook to download, you’ll entice someone to click to your newsletter and sign up.

But it all starts with reversing the situation.

In Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence,” he noted that one of the most powerful ways to persuade people is to give them a gift first.

This initiates a psychological phenomenon known as reciprocity. 

Simply put, people will feel the need to reach out to you, as well.

The Internet is a wonderful place and there are plenty of tools to help you distribute valuable content to your potential leads without having to work harder, too.

One of the best ways to draw potential leads?

Create a mortgage calculator.

A mortgage calculator is a great example of an enticement that you can create that will get people to come to your website.

As they use the mortgage calculator, they might also notice that you have other offers.

Guides.

eBooks.

Newsletters.

Whatever resources you create for your audience, the more, the better.

Here are some other enticements you can create that will help drive more traffic to your core website:

• Videos. People get a lot of their favorite instructional content from videos, which is why it’s so important that you put yourself out here in the same way. These days, the technology to produce and edit your own videos is so easy to access that it’s not difficult to create your own and distribute them on popular channels like YouTube.
• Bonuses. One of the most popular ways to attract people to sign up to a newsletter is to offer them a tit-for-tat deal: if they sign up, you then provide them with a resource like a book about mortgages. You can implement these bonuses into platforms that already exist to help you market your mortgage business.
• Presentations. Anything from a seminar to a PowerPoint presentation can create value to people, especially for people who need to know more about mortgages. That puts you in the position of educator—and even if you’re just starting out generating your own leads, there’s a good chance that you have plenty to say on this topic.

2. Go to where the leads are.

It’s great if you have something that will entice people to click on your site and eventually become a mortgage lead.

But what if no one’s ever heard of you?

You need to change that.

Once you have some valuable content on your website—content that anyone thinking about a mortgage would find worth visiting—you then have to consider how you’ll reach out to people.

That starts with identifying your audience.

Here are a few ideas:

• Social media. Social media is a free way to promote your mortgage business. But it doesn’t come easily if you’re starting from scratch. Just as in the section above, you’ll have to learn how to share valuable content that entices people to follow you. You should also keep up on social media trends, share your latest content, and follow hashtags to participate in the discussion.
• Sponsored advertising. If you already have a Facebook presence, you’ll find that Facebook ads are a great way to whittle down your target demographic to the people most likely to buy from you. This helps ensure that when you do spend money on your marketing, that you’re communicating with people who are more likely to want to click to your site.
• Networking groups. Whether you’re experiencing networking groups on your social media avenues or doing it in person, it’s always great to get your website in front of as many people as possible. One potential problem here is that you’re marketing to other mortgage marketers and not the people you need to be talking to if you want to generate leads, so be careful with this one.

3. Implement the platforms to help you manage leads.

If you attract enough leads, you’ll quickly learn that there’s another art to it that you have to learn: managing them.

Generating mortgage leads isn’t solely about generating web traffic, after all.

A website visitor is not a lead.

Half of the battle occurs when you have visitors to your website. Now the question becomes—how do you turn them into leads?

Here are some of the elements you’ll need to start focusing on:

• Website copy. Are your headlines enticing enough? Are you getting enough information across above the fold? Your website copy should be engaging, enticing, but not so verbose that a visitor sees it and immediately wants to click away.
• Calls to Action. CTAs are some of the most important variables you’ll ever test. Your CTA is the button someone clicks to become a lead, after all. Before that, they’re just a visitor. Make sure that your CTA is high contrast, easy to spot, and includes copy written from the visitors’ perspective. In other words, don’t write “Click Here Please.” Write “Show Me My Mortgage Estimate.”
• Email capture. Are you capturing emails to a list so that you can market to your potential leads in another way? Email captures are great because they allow you to establish a newsletter that you can then use to demonstrate your trustworthiness and expertise later on. And speaking of trustworthiness…
• Trustworthiness. Does your site look professional? Does it look like the website of someone that your potential leads might want to work with? If not, incorporate some visual trust elements, including the personal and professional touches you need. Make sure that you demonstrate that there are human beings behind the business, and you’ll do well.

Sound like a lot? You’d be surprised at the available platforms these days that make it easy to incorporate all of the elements listed above. Check out our leadPops for mortgage leads free trial to see what it’s like when you have your mortgage marketing nailed down to a science.