3 Ways to Build a Strong Mortgage Lead Funnel in Today’s Changing Market
The FCC rule change, which changes what constitutes prior express written consent, will go into effect in January 2025. Meanwhile, the recent NAR rule change continues to alter the way home buyers interact with real estate agents and lending professionals.
Both of these rule changes will alter the way Americans experience the home buying and lending process. For you, the lender, these changes pose challenges—and opportunities, so long as you’re willing to carefully adapt your business to the new reality.
1. Invest in your brand in a strategic, sustainable way.
With the rise of large, big name lenders, building a strong brand has become more and more crucial to staying competitive. The outcome of the new NAR and FCC rules will further accelerate the need for name recognition. As the way home buyers navigate the mortgage experience shifts, brand will matter more than ever—and those who strategically invest in top-of-funnel tactics will rise above the competition.
Wondering how to achieve brand recognition when your resources don’t stack up to the massive marketing budgets of your largest competitors? Here, it’s vital to craft a plan that plays on your existing strengths and takes a deep understanding of your target audience into account. Marketing and lead generation can be complex topics that take years to perfect—but if you’re working on a limited budget, don’t overcomplicate the process by throwing too many strategies at the wall. Instead, focus on the methods that work for your business and iterate on the actions that get you results. Remember: You don’t need to become a household name to achieve strong results; you just need to be memorable to prospective home buyers in the communities you serve.
Today, there are a wealth of digital strategies lending leaders and their teams of LOs can pursue, even with a limited budget. Examples include:
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- An optimized website designed towards conversion
- Local SEO
- Pay-per-click advertising
Want to learn the ins and outs of these digital marketing techniques? Click here to read our blog post 5 Powerful Ways to Generate Mortgage Leads in 2024.
You’ll also want to ensure any online presence you present—including testimonials and reviews—reflect the brand you want to build. After all, putting effort into recognition for your lending business won’t matter if a quick Google search of your company unearths mediocre ratings. To boost satisfaction, ensure your entire lending process meets modern consumer expectations with a point of sale experience that removes burdensome paperwork and speeds the borrower through the process. Maxwell Point of Sale, for instance, drives an over 90% borrower satisfaction rate, while boosting loan pull-through rates by 41% due to features such as an intuitive loan application with auto-filling fields.
2. Empower LOs to take on a bigger role.
The FCC ruling means that those who buy leads today may need to develop their own direct lead-generation techniques. Similarly, the outcome of NAR changes may open the door for lenders to connect with home buyers, who might lack guidance from a real estate agent, earlier in the process. Both of these scenarios create major opportunities for loan officers willing to take on an instrumental role.
“Loan officers should start coaching borrowers earlier in the transaction,” advises Anthony Ianni, Maxwell VP and co-host of the Clear to Close Podcast. “And they should be more consultative, with strong knowledge about loan products. For example, many first-time home buyers don’t take advantage of helpful programs. Moving forward, loan officers will have a great opportunity to step up and leverage their expertise to help these folks.”
To succeed here, lenders will need to identify and invest in their high-performing LOs. As borrowers—especially those without home-buying experience—acclimate to the new NAR rules, they’ll need additional support and partnership to feel confident in the process. Who better than the loan officer to offer that assistance? And to empower LOs for success, lending leadership will need to ensure they have the knowledge, training, and technology they need to step up.
Tools that allow LOs to work more efficiently, connect with borrowers more easily, and ultimately attract more leads, include:
- Smart workflow automation: With basic tasks like tracking loan file progress, collecting documents, running credit checks, sharing pricing scenarios, and verifying income or employment automated, LOs have more time to offer borrowers vital support and connection.
- A white-labeled mobile experience: Sleek mobile functionality allows lending teams to convert leads, view their pipeline and dashboard, respond to borrower requests, set up tasks or reminders, and more at any time.
- Real estate agent collaboration: A feature like Maxwell’s FlexLetters™ allows real estate agent partners the ability to edit pre-approval and pre-qualification letters on the fly, giving the borrower a more seamless experience.
Features like these and more will not only help to empower top performers, but they will also allow your lending business to attract and retain more talent, snowballing your market presence and ability to attract and nurture leads. As personal touchpoints and brand become more important in light of the NAR and FCC rulings, you’ll need this army of highly motivated LOs: More and more, they’ll become the front line of your business, driving the differentiation you’ll no longer get on rateboards.
3. Ensure you have top technology and actionable data.
Underlying all of the changes coming to the home-buying and mortgage industry is technology. Of course, you’ll need a leading tech stack to impress your borrowers, retain your loan officer talent, and showcase your brand. However, it’s vital to not simply choose any out-of-the-box solution that checks the basic functionality boxes. By attempting to fit your unique business needs into rigid technology that doesn’t customize to your situation of today’s changing market, you’ll sink money, time, and resources into a solution you’ll quickly outgrow.
A major reason today’s biggest industry players are able to earn market share and quickly adjust to changes such as those created by the NAR and FCC rulings is their ability to seamlessly tweak their technology to thrive in an evolving lending climate. But what if you don’t have the resources or skill sets that in-house technology development demands? Today, new technology created within Maxwell Point of Sale allows for first-of-its-kind configurability, allowing lenders to fully customize point-of-sale workflows, business rules, and user experiences. Now, lending organizations can stand out from the competition and drive efficiency gains with a differentiated mortgage experience while seamlessly connecting with more than 60 third-party integrations, from credit to verifications to pricing to disclosures.
“This kind of technology will only become more vital for lenders looking to maintain profitability in a fast-changing market,” comments Anthony. “Your point of sale must be configurable and have integrations to make it unique to you. In today’s lending environment, an out-of-the-box solution doesn’t work. Your technology infrastructure has to allow you to move just as quickly as today’s market is.”
Alongside a leading point of sale, access to reliable data will become an increasingly vital tool for lenders to build a strong lead funnel. As loan production expenses continue to rise and the competition for borrower business grows, you’ll be challenged to reduce your cost per lead by strategically targeting home buyers best suited to your lending services. The best way to ensure top ROI for your efforts is to leverage actionable data insights. Solutions like Maxwell Business Intelligence offer reports on not only loan application performance, pull-through, and turn time—helping you better forecast your pipeline metrics—but also borrower demographics, comparing your performance to the market and unearthing areas of opportunity.
Want to set your lead funnel up for success given coming changes? Strong technology and access to real-time data will allow you to identify, capture, and nurture leads with speed and efficiency. As loan volume sees its first major influx in years, you’ll be perfectly positioned to capture market share and become a go-to lending resource in the communities you serve.
Want to learn more about how the FCC and NAR rule changes will affect the way you capture leads?
In our new ebook, New Rules, New Strategy: How to Drive Mortgage Leads in the Aftermath of NAR & FCC Rule Changes, you’ll learn:
- How NAR and FCC rule changes will impact the home buying and mortgage lending process in coming months
- New challenges and opportunities lenders can expect to see due to the rule changes
- Tips for building a strong mortgage lead funnel in today’s market
- Why lenders should expect to see the role of the loan officer change—and ways to empower LOs to step up and capture more business
- Areas to invest in your lending business for the best return in 2025 and beyond
Get your free copy of New Rules, New Strategy: How to Drive Mortgage Leads in the Aftermath of NAR & FCC Rule Changes
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