Expert offers his point of view on today’s brand challenges and gives tips for brokers
It’s an understatement to say that branding and marketing are important in a modern mortgage business. A strong brand identity is essential to attracting clients and standing out in a cutthroat market. But Brian McCauley, a loan officer at Fairway Independent Mortgage, believes that many originators and brokers are suffering from outdated branding.
“We all know online presence in the digital space is going nowhere but up,” McCauley said. “Everybody’s on their phones. The attention is the assets, and the eyeballs are really the currency, and you can’t really capture that and compound your brand through old-school marketing like mailers or flyers. Some of that stuff still works, it’s OK, but it doesn’t have the impact. It doesn’t give you the ROI that the ‘new school’ tactics do.”
McCauley asserts that the housing and mortgage industries are big components of society and economic growth. Failure to convey that clearly to your customer can be detrimental to your brand’s reputation.
“There’s just got to be a better way to message it to the outside world and get to a position that people pay attention to it and adopt the new school feeling,” he said in the latest MPA Talk interview. “So, that’s why I took the approach to saying, ‘Hey, the people that have been in business for a long time, they’re great in a bunch of areas, but where they lack, the scope and the understanding, is the digital space’.
“Understanding how you can get that message out there better and faster, to more of an audience and also where the younger generation lives [is vital]. If you are trying to attract and grow, it’s important to the new-school people that you’ve got to hit them with new school marketing that they pay attention to.”
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