15 minute read
MAKING A CONNECTION
DOING IT BY THE BOOK online...
Savvy advisers are finding success in reaching out to potential clients through social media platforms, as Susan Edmunds discovers.
EBOOKS: CAMPBELL HASTIE
Writing a book might seem an extreme way to go about getting more mortgage broking business but Campbell Hastie, of Go2Guys, said he had a bit of downtime to spare during the global financial crisis.
He decided to turn his attention to writing a “how-to” guide for first-home buyers, to be offered free as an ebook from his website. “If I wasn’t snapper fishing I was writing a few chapters,” Hastie said.
The Bank Said Yes is 28 pages long and guides buyers through the process of applying for a mortgage and buying a house.
“I had a brainwave one morning – that I should write a wee book so people can better understand the way banks think and in turn improve the chances of their loan applications being approved. So that when you hear ‘standard lending criteria, terms and conditions apply’ you’ll have a reasonable idea of how to meet that criteria. So that the process of buying a house isn’t so stressful,” Hastie wrote in the preface.
DETERMINING OFFER
It covers such matters as using KiwiSaver to fund a deposit, having a guarantor on the loan, what people’s bank account statements say about them, the process of using a mortgage broker and how to determine what to offer on a house.
Written in a conversational style, it breaks concepts down so that they are easy for the average buyer to understand.
It also provides a way for Hastie and his team to keep in touch with potential clients. Once someone downloads the book, they receive follow-up emails from Go2Guys in the days following and a week later offering assistance and asking for feedback on the book.
Hastie said writing did not come naturally and the book was hard work at times. “The hard part was the content, making it flow and readable.”
A copy writer went through the finished product once Hastie had written his draft and a graphic designer provided the finishing touches.
But Hastie said it had paid off. He said it was a “fabulous marketing tool” and had been downloaded about 1200 times since it was first published in 2012. A revised version was finished last year. “I have no idea how many times it has been shared. People could be downloading it and sharing it, emailing it, and I wouldn’t know.”
People will often approach Hastie saying they have read the book.
“I definitely think I will write another,” he said.
Hastie said would recommend writing an ebook as a marketing tool for other mortgage brokers who were looking for new ways to promote themselves and their brands. “It’s a tried and true method. It gives you a level of credibility when you are a published author.”
Hastie said self-employed people would be a good target for the next ebook.
LINKEDIN: SARAH BLOXHAM
Sarah Bloxham, of Yes Home Loans, has only returned to the mortgage broking world recently but LinkedIn is proving a key part of developing her networks and honing her knowledge.
Since updating her LinkedIn profile, she said she had started to notice more people engaging with her and wanting to forge connections.
" I get people asking to connect so I look through them and think ‘why’ and then see they have some connection to the industry" – Sarah Bloxham
She has more than 500 connections and works to keep her profile updated regularly.
But Bloxham said LinkedIn so far was more about communicating with other industry participants than it was about connecting with clients.
“People are finding me, connecting with me,” Bloxham says. “Sometimes they are lenders and they connect with me to promote their business and refer both ways. “
She said it was likely LinkedIn would not be a way to find people who were looking for a mortgage but could end up helping her serve her clients better. “I get people asking to connect so I look through them and think ‘why’ and then see they have some connection to the industry.”
Bloxham said it was a helpful way to keep track of what was on offer in the market, particularly for clients who needed a solution that was something out of the ordinary.
FACEBOOK: JOHN BOLTON
Squirrel Mortgages might have more than 4000 likes on Facebook but its founder John Bolton says he is not very good as social media. “It’s really hard to maintain that stuff, certainly for me,” Bolton says. “I’m Generation X and social media, for me, is pretty hard. Women are far more social than men.”
Squirrel Mortgages posts a Facebook update to its followers every day. But Bolton said the key was to keep it conversational and not start advertising to followers.
" If you’ve got thousands of people reasonably engaged with the brand ultimately if someone asks them ‘I need a mortgage who should I go to’ you pick up that referral." – John Bolton
“It’s pretty soft, we don’t approach it with really strong demand creation because the reality is we’re talking to our own clients, the last thing they want is to be bombarded with stuff they don’t want in their Facebook feed. You’ve got to keep social social and don’t turn people off.”
He said the business tried to focus on quirky, fun posts, identifying funny articles or posted about interesting houses. “People like stuff to brighten their day.”
Each week Squirrel runs a competition.
“It’s quite time-consuming. It’s not cheap, especially if you are running little competitions all the time. But it keeps clients engaged and keeps the brand visible.”
Bolton said social media was a big challenge for business owners.
“I don’t know there is a strong tangible link between social media and writing mortgages. You can invest a huge amount of time without getting any business at all. We don’t do it to generate business but we do it and do a fair amount of it to support the brand and achieve engagement levels with the clients.
“If you’ve got thousands of people reasonably engaged with the brand ultimately if someone asks them ‘I need a mortgage who should I go to’ you pick up that referral. Most marking is not direct demand creation and social media is exactly the same.”
Bolton suggested brokers who did not have as recognisable a business brand could use their own Facebook profiles to talk about home loans and promote their names. “Businesses have a voice and it’s just expressing that across different platforms and channels.”
He suggested many mortgage brokers could do well to outsource their social media management to experts.
TWITTER: JENNY CAMPBELL
Getting the message out fast is what attracts Mortgage Supply Co. to the short message service, Twitter, chief executive Jenny Campbell says.
“Twitter is great for breaking news, like the OCR reduction, that sort of thing because I do think it’s really good for people to go to get quick updates.”
" Twitter is great for breaking news, like the OCR reduction, that sort of thing, because I do think it’s really good for people to go to get quick updates." – Jenny Campbell
On an average week they would tweet daily, linking to stories ranging from a multimillion dollar mansion donated to the fire service to burn, to the latest financial advice on their online blog.
“We don’t interact a lot with clients on Twitter but a lot of that stuff opens up a window to our website or Facebook page,” Campbell says.
“Facebook is like the new Google for financial services. Because as we all know personal recommendations are absolutely gold in our business and the place people like to share their experience with advisers is on Facebook.”
“It’s the old story, if your brand or your name keeps coming up on Facebook feeds, they’ll keep remembering you.”
The company hires a contractor to manage their social media platforms and encourages their advisers to have their own pages to connect with potential clients.
That’s the difficulty with any sort of regular marketing, it gets quite time consuming so we have a professional to do it.
“We create a lot content for them, so we might tweet an article on the Reserve Bank OCR cut or the new investor rules. They can break that down into social media [size].
“It’s hard to quantify how much business comes from that but it is the easiest and the most cost-effective way to have your brand out there in the public.”
Nailing the tone of their posts were also important, Campbell says.
“It depends on the target market. In our company, we have two really strong areas of clients. The first is the professional investor.... the other area we are getting quite a lot of traction in are the people new to using a mortgage broker.
“So they see the Mortgage Supply brand as being little bit more cooler than some of the others in the market, a little bit more casual, a little bit more friendly - less intimidating.
“So we very much try and keep the tone of those sorts of posts, really casual, easy to read, relevant. Interesting bits of information.”
Campbell said they were exploring other platforms to eventually incorporate into their marketing such as the live video broadcasting app, Periscope.
TRADE ME: JEFF ROYLE
If you’re lurking around the Trade Me real estate messageboards and ask a question relating to a mortgage, you’re likely to get a quick response: “Talk to Jeff.”
The messageboards are part of the Trade Me “community” and allow members to discuss issues and ask questions of each other.
Jeff Royle, of iLender, has developed such a following that members are quick to refer business to him and ask for help when they need his specialist advice.
But Royle says achieving that status has taken time.
Members are not allowed to directly promote themselves on the messageboards so getting his name known has been a slow, subtle process.
“What I’ve done is every time I’ve seen a threat about a mortgage-related issue, I’ve made a generic comment, which has been over seven years now. I’ve developed a bit of a following so if anyone says ‘help I need a mortgage’ or whatever it might be quite often now people I’ve never met put posts up saying ‘speak to this guy’. And then the phone goes or I’ll get an email.”
He remembers one incident where a member posted at about 6 o’clock one night saying that they had come home to find a
" What I’ve done is every time I’ve seen a threat about a mortgage-related issue, I’ve made a generic comment" – Jeff Royle
Barfoot & Thompson mortgagee sale sign in their front garden.
“I saw it by chance 10 minutes after it had gone up. Already one person had said you need to speak this guy.
“I saw it and thought ‘this is really urgent, this person needs to do something about it’ so I broke the rules and I said ‘you need to call me now, this my phone number’.
“The next about four or five posts were other people jumping on me saying ‘you’re breaking the rules you’re not meant to self-promote, you’re a bad boy’.
“Then what was interesting was about 20 people jumped on those people and said ‘bugger off, this guy knows what he’s doing, this person needs help, wind your necks in and let him do his job.”
The original poster phoned Royle and he went to see her that night. It turned out her husband had lost his job without telling anyone and had diverted all mail and phone calls. Royle was able to refinance the loan.
He said they key to engaging with the others on the message board was not to ram a message down their throats but to maintain a constant presence.
“If it’s a bit quiet I’ll start a post. It won’t be saying ‘come and use me’ but I might comment on the OCR or say 'Westpac has this good two-year rate’ or ‘these are the Reserve Bank’s changes and here’s how you can get around them’. It’s general comments people pick up on, click on your name and it takes them through to the Trade Me page where they can call or email.
“It’s time expensive but it’s not dollar expensive.”
INSTAGRAM: ADAM THOMPSON
Capturing a younger audience is what has led My Mortgage to try their hand at Instagram.
Their account on the photosharing platform shows a mixture of pictures at their Waikato office and motivational quotes making full use of hashtags to capture digital traffic.
“One of our younger employees used Instagram a lot and recommended we use it to connect to a younger audience,” owner Adam Thompson says.
“It’s great for awareness and we do have people like and share our posts
“We measure where all new business comes from and none has come directly from Instagram but we feel it fits well with our overall marketing to a younger audience,” he says.
YOUTUBE: BRIAN MACLEAN
Why read, when you can watch is the option the Wellington Mortgage Broker is offering its potential clients. Owner Brian MacLean says their YouTube videos are about breaking down common mortgage topics into fast, digestible information. His company aims to upload one a month and has covered issues such for first home buyers, refinancing and HomeStart grants.
“We use YouTube because it’s easy to upload. There’s no hosting cost and it’s nice and easy to embed into your website,” MacLean says.
“The reason we use videos is just to get information across as quickly as possible. Expecting people to trawl through pages and pages of information is probably unlikely. So we’ve put together some quick videos that you can watch on your computer or on your phone.
An overseas contractor is used to produce the animated videos, needing very little input or direction from MacLean.
“It’s fairly short, it only takes a short explanation of what we’re looking to achieve. We had good work from the guy so he has a good feel for it,” he says.
“It’s a nice, easy process. We just fire off a few lines, the words that we want in there, the script and that’s job done.
“Ultimately what we’re trying to do is have a video on most pages [on the website]. Again, it’s giving the person the option on either reading through a lot of stuff or if they don’t have time to do that what watch a quick 20 or 30 second video or they can do both.”
The videos are posted to their Facebook page but the YouTube channel and its website were the main platforms they were using, MacLean says.
“We don’t specifically ask people how they found our site so no one has specifically offered any feedback on the videos yet. The business is relatively new so trying to work out how
effective they are at this stage is quite difficult,” he says.
“Over time, we’ll put that in place and just work out how people are using the website and how they’re ultimately getting to us.”
MacLean says he’ll be looking at doing some video blogs instead of the traditional format in the future.
The Wellington Mortgage Broker also found some success through online chat on its website.
“It’s not used massively but it does suit some people. We might get a couple of contacts via that per week. I have it connected it up to my phone, so wherever I am I can respond to it there and then,” MacLean says.
“Some people may not want to use email and if they have a question they can just fire it across and get an instant answer.” ✚
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