AI, traditional and social media all have role to play
Marketing broker businesses, generating leads, attracting new clients and retention are all mammoth tasks that require careful planning, effort and execution.
Experienced brokers, a marketing expert and the commercial officer for a mortgage fintech platform shared the strategies and channels they use to promote their businesses and their personal brands, retain their customers and keep them engaged.
Jean-Pierre Gortan, co-founder and managing director of Simplicity Loans & Advisory, Simplicity sales director Isabella Constantinou, Bret Mullavey, principal of fintcap, and media strategist, Ruth Callaghan, chief innovation officer at PR firm Purple, and Sherlok chief commercial officer Stephen Moore took part in a panel discussion at the MFAA Hello Future National Conference held in Melbourne on Thursday.
Hosted by scientific futurist Dr Catherine Ball, the discussion was titled “Hello Growth: Effectively delivering a tech-led, people-focused attraction and retention strategy”.
Mullavey (pictured above right), is a finance broker who also runs a motorsport marketing and content creation business, said it was important to inject your own personality into your marketing strategy, using artificial intelligence to enhance, not create, content.
“I use AI to enhance the content I create, not create it from scratch,” said Mullavey. “Looking around the room today we’ve got 300 brokers sitting in front of us. If everyone’s going to ChatGPT saying ‘hey, can you create a marketing strategy for me’, you’re going to get 300 pretty similar results.”
Mullavey said AI was drawing from content already created, with few original ideas.
“If you really want to stand out and want to create content that’s engaging, you have to do a lot of the groundwork yourself and use AI to enhance that.”
Mullavey said when he created content it was in three different formats – blog posts to enhance SEO, Instagram reels and other content that can be “chopped up later”, such as for Linkedin. He also has a strong focus on video content.
“Video is the future; static posts are dying. I’m trying to push the boundaries by putting myself into all my content, video content, creating it from scratch.”
He used tools such as Answer the Public, where you could enter keywords and it would provide information on what people are searching for on Google, for example “buying my first home”
Using the search results, Mullavey would write the content and then use ChatGPT to help format a blog post.
Gortan (pictured above, second from right) said there were a number of things brokers could do to engage effectively with clients.
“We started off a few years ago writing blog articles on our website,” Gortan said. “Any topic we thought was relevant, we would write about it, push it through social media, Linkedin, Instagram.”
Simplicity Loans & Advisory also did a lot of charity work, which helped the community but also gave the brokerage a story to tell about what the business was doing.
Gortan, the winner of Australian Broker of the Year at the 2023 Australian Mortgage Awards, said the team also entered awards and this was about credibility and building the brand.
He and Marketplace Finance head of third-party relationships Dino Pacella had also started a podcast, “No Hair, Just Finance.”
Gortan said another important facet was that the brokerage had great relationships with the trade media outlets, which called on them to provide comments for news stories.
Constantinou (pictured above, second from left) said she specialised in construction and development finance, a male dominated sector of commercial finance.
“My goal has been to build a brand for myself, given my age and demographic in the industry,” Constantinou said.
Successful strategies she had used included providing her commentary for publications such as Australian Broker and MPA.
“This provides a really good platform for me to get my name out there and provide input on what’s happening in the industry. It means I can build a network with really senior people in the industry that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to do.”
Constantinou said a lot of the brokerage’s lead generation was through a referral network.
“I found working really closely and collaboratively with my residential referrers for the commercial transactions really helps build my brand as well.”
Linkedin was also an excellent way to connect with people and build your profile, said Constantinou.
Callaghan (pictured above right) said it was positive to see so many people engaged with figuring out their personal and corporate brands.
“Storytelling is really what gets people over the line. It’s not seeing something on a bus stop any more. It’s about ‘do I feel comfortable with this person, do they really understand my context and my needs’ and “do I know how to work with them’,” said Callaghan.
Moore (pictured below) said the value brokers created was their client base and the trail income on the back of that.
“For many brokers the bias of activity is on attracting new clients and frankly that’s the right outcome,” said Moore. “Every new client is worth four-fold the existing clients and it adds to your client base.”
However, Moore said a focus on new clients meant an insufficient focus on the current loan book.
“That’s a real problem – the average broker loses 17% of their customers a year.”
The solutions included staying in contact with existing customers, but not just generic newsletters or RBA rate announcements.
“Ultimately, what you want to do is have a structure review process with your clients, which is expensive.”
Moore said a better method was the smart use of data insights. Sherlok identified clients that had the highest propensity to be lost to the broker and incumbent lender.
“We then automate the repricing process on your behalf – that includes then queuing up with the lender, production of documentation, how much the client saved and where relevant, reflagging the refinance opportunity.”
Using Sherlok, the average broker had a 32% improvement in client churn.
What formats and tools do you use for marketing, lead generation and client retention? Comment below
