Mortage marketing in the digital age

What place should mortgage blogs have in lenders’ and brokers’ marketing strategies?

We all know that word of mouth and networking still generate very strong mortgage leads for both lenders and brokers.

That’s because, on a matter as personal and life-changing as a mortgage, you have a big advantage over your competitors if a prospective customer knows you already or they have heard about how well you’ve performed for someone they know.

As you’ll have noticed, more and more initial mortgage customer contact is being made online in the last five years.

That’s either direct through your website or via any online mortgage lead generation firms you work with.

And that’s not only true for mortgages though – it’s true for all other types of financial products.

Pay per click advertising on Google costs the Earth for mortgage brokers

You could choose to pay for your mortgage broker website to get to the top of Google by using Google Ads, their pay per click advertising system.

But with each click through costing up to £12.50, it’s expensive and, as soon as you stop your campaign, the clickthroughs stop.

Given this fact, mortgage brokers are now investing in the creation of high-quality libraries of content for their website.

Tha’ts because, unlike with PPC advertising, the benefits of having a library on your site last for months and years.

Investing in your own online mortgage guidebook of articles and blogs means that:

• you only pay for the articles once,
• every time you upload another high-quality, informative, and SEO-friendly article, your entire website and every page on it rises up search engine rankings incrementally,
• the return on investment on each individual article actually increases over time, and
• clients are more likely to choose your firm when you’ve answered one or more questions they had about a product on your website.

But where do you start in creating your own library of engaging, informative, and response-provoking content?

Our mortgage blogs writing service

When you speak with one of our account managers, they’ll ask you about your company, the mortgages you offer, your target audiences, and your commercial goals for the coming year or two.

We then research the questions, keywords, topics, and search terms used by your target audience to search for the types of mortgage product you tell us that you want to sell more of.

We create a content marketing plan showing you the topics we suggest should be on your site.

We turn each of these topics into customer-focused, engaging, factual, and SEO-optimised blog for your site.

Our aim is to create an online collection of the highest quality, most trustworthy, easy-to-find content for your website based solely on the information the clients you’re targeting are seeking.

When your potential customers use Google to find the answer to a specific question about your mortgages, we want your website to provide them with the answer.

When we send you our content plan, we’ll ask you for feedback, comments, criticisms, and suggestions.

Once we’re both agreed on the content we’re going to create for you, then our copywriters will get to work for you.

When they’re creating your articles, our copywriters have four main goals:

1. to achieve much higher levels of sustained traffic to your website from your target markets,
2. to write your articles with a view to building up your company’s credibility, reputation, and authority in visitors’ mind because of the quality, accuracy, and relevance of the information you’re sharing with them,
3. to ask visitors, if they’re not ready to enquire just yet, to sign up to your email newsletter service or follow you on social media so you can stay in touch with them, and
4. to encourage visitors ready to enquire about a mortgage to get in touch straight away.

Investing in content benefits mortgage lenders and brokers over the long term.

Every time we upload a brand new high-quality article to your website, this adds to the authority and credibility Google ascribes to your site.

This means that every new mortgage blog we create and upload for you adds to the already rising value of your website and every other page on it in Google’s eyes.

Building a substantial mortgage blog on your site will mean that it will continue to rank highly for months and years to come even if you stop spending on new blogs and articles for a while.

This is unlike pay per click where the extra traffic and the extra leads you benefit from stop altogether as soon as soon as you stop the campaign.

Find out more

For more information, please speak with one of our account managers on 0330 010 3495 or you can email our personal finance writing team by clicking here.

Which mortgage blogs are performing well for lenders and brokers at the moment?

Despite falling house sale volumes, the market for mortgages, re-mortgages, and investment/buy-to-let mortgages in the UK is intense.

Interest rates offered on mortgages are at record lows – after all, the base rate has been at its lowest level since the foundation of the Bank of England in the last 17^th century.

The COVID-19 pandemic has narrowed the choice for borrowers even further.

Despite their being 100s of lenders and 1,000s of brokers, only a handful of companies have so far invested over a long period in producing high-quality, SEO-friendly articles for their websites.

The best-in-class examples of mortgage blogs currently available are:

• Private Finance mortgage blog
• CoreCo mortgage blog
• Online Mortgage Advisor mortgage blog
• Ray Boulger’s Mortgage blog at John Charcol
• My Local Mortgage blog
• Barr Financial mortgage blog
• Mortgage Broker mortgage blog
• Carrington mortgage blog

The quality and quantity of blogs and articles uploaded by these firms have had and still have a profound effect on how well these companies’ websites perform on Google.

These companies’ websites finish very high up in the search rankings both on generic terms like “mortgage broker” and on more specific terms.

And very importantly, they continue to invest in content – their websites are updated once, twice, and sometimes more a week with new information, insights, views, and opinions.

As a result, they’re winning far more business than other brokers and the gap between them and the rest of the market is getting wider.

How a growing number of mortgage blogs on your website creates a virtuous circle

Each new article on these sites is very well-written, informative, helpful and they build confidence in the mind of a borrower.

They also conform to recognised, “white-hat” SEO techniques – the techniques which Google approves of.

Some of these mortgage brokers have hundreds or thousands of articles on their sites.

And each of these articles has been written to provide searchers with answers on the specific questions they want to know.

As each of these brokers’ online article libraries grows, the worth Google places on each site’s authority and credibility grows too.

That additional authority and credibility rubs off on all of the other pages on their website.

Mortgage marketing through blogging

More Than Words’ article planning and writing service delivers additional traffic and extra valuable leads to your brokerage every month.

Each article is beautifully written, engaging, and commercially focused so that readers are motivated strongly to get in touch with you.

Better still, the content we produce for you can be re-used and re-purposed time and time again so that you can extract additional value.

How? A large proportion of people who read great articles on your website will sign up to receive email newsletters from you.

Stay in front of them as they move towards the point of making a decision by emailing them links to the new content on your website every month.

You can also use your articles on social media to remind people of what you can do for them when they want a mortgage and how your expertise and experience will be invaluable to them.

More Than Words works with hundreds of different third party sites across the UK.

If you wish, we can speak with relevant partners whose audiences may be interested in the mortgages you offer to take your message much further and wider afield.

We’ll create a search engine optimisation plan for all your articles and your website as a whole so that you’re found by the people asking questions about the mortgage products you arrange and who are ready or near ready to being in a position to contact you.

Marketing by mortgage blogs and articles – online FAQ

What questions are borrowers asking?

The mortgage brokers whose blogs we listed above feature at or close to the top of search results for terms like “mortgage broker”.

The reason for their very high listings is because of each website’s library of high value content and the authority that content lends the entire website in Google’s eyes.

But is that the term you want to be competing for anyway?

Someone searching for “mortgage broker” is likely to be at the beginning of their journey.

Someone searching for a much more niche term is more likely to much more serious in their intent to apply right now for a mortgage.

This is because the way the internet is used now is that people look for answers first and then lenders or brokers second.

If an article on your website provides…

• the answer that a first time buyer, homemover, or someone looking for a re-mortgage is searching for and
• you show them on the same page that you can help them find the mortgage they want

….that article will generate a lot of enquiries.

Tens of thousands of potential clients search the internet every month asking frequently asked questions like…

• “can personal loan affect mortgage”
• “mortgage where you can overpay”
• “personal mortgage for rental property”
• “what mortgage can I afford on 30k”
• “personal mortgage with consent to let”
• “mortgage without credit score”
• “personal reference letter for mortgage”
• “personal loan or second mortgage”
• “can mortgage be paid with credit card”
• “mortgage with 5% deposit”
• “mortgage for umbrella contractors”

If someone works as an umbrella contractor and they search for “mortgage for umbrella contractors” and find your page, they’re far more likely to contact your company than they are another company with a less focused “mortgage for contactor” article.

Likewise, what about someone with a 5% deposit whether or not they use the Help to Buy scheme?

They will be more likely to make an enquiry if you publish a detailed, plain English article on “5% mortgages” telling them how they get the best deal than they would make an enquiry to another broker’s generic “mortgage broker” page.

The more precise you make your content, the better.

Write articles to cover the different types of mortgage you offer

Many borrowers want to find out more about specific types of mortgages.

This means there is always significant marketing mileage in uploading quality content on each of the following that you offer:

• buy to let mortgages
• capped rate mortgages
• cashback mortgages
• discounted rate mortgages
• first time buyer mortgages
• fixed rate mortgages
• flexible mortgages
• interest-only mortgages
• offset mortgages
• repayment mortgages
• tracker mortgages
• variable rate mortgages

To give yourself the best chance of winning business, we create and upload as many high-quality, search-engine friendly articles with a strong call to action on individual mortgage products as possible.

Did you know that there are 420 questions that searchers use Google for to find the answer on about variable mortgages every month?

The most popular terms are:

• “can i lock my variable mortgage”
• “what is fixed variable mortgage”
• “what is open variable mortgage”
• “how are variable mortgage rates calculated”
• “variable rate mortgage for rental property”
• “variable mortgage vs fixed”

Invest in articles relating to issues faced by the mortgages your clients apply for

Potential mortgage clients furthest along the decision-making journey search for even more specific mortgage related information including:

• homeowner bridging loans
• let-to-buy mortgages and how it works
• mortgage deposits
• mortgage interest rates
• particular types of mortgages for special situations
• taking out mortgages over different periods of time
• the different ways to repay a mortgage
• various charges to pay on a mortgage

The following articles may only be searched for a handful of times a month however they only need to generate a handful of enquiries every year to be profitable for your company.

When potential clients are searching for information on “mortgage deposits”, what are searching for?

• “can i borrow mortgage deposit”
• “can i pay mortgage deposit with overdraft”
• “who do you pay mortgage deposit to”
• “mortgage deposit for second home”
• “mortgage deposit for first time buyer”
• “mortgage deposit for self-employed”
• “mortgage deposit and repayment calculator”
• “mortgage deposit and stamp duty calculator”

Mortgage marketing with high quality article for lenders and brokers participating in the Help to Buy scheme

More than 420,000 people have now used the Help to Buy scheme to purchase brand new property and it’s an area we’re asked to write a lot about for our clients.

Typical titles and topics of articles include:

• “will help to buy increase house prices”
• “is help to buy a good idea”
• “is help to buy only on new builds”
• “where to find help to buy properties”
• “what help to buy schemes are there”
• “what is help to buy mortgage guarantee scheme”
• “can help to buy be used for shared ownership”
• “are help to buy properties freehold”

More mortgage broker copywriting services

In addition to providing mortgage brokers with articles, we also work on:

Product pages

Product pages are the actual selling pages on your site where you invite the customer to fill in their details as part of an initial application.

We also work on credibility-building pages including your “about us” page, your “history” page, and biographies of the leaders and staff within your brokerage.

Website build

If you want a brand new website, talk to us about designing, writing, and hosting your site.

With a new website build, we have the chance to get everything right from scratch.

Once your site is live, we then recommend that you invest for 6-12 months on building your library of high-quality, SEO-optimised articles and blogs.

Mortgage blogs – ask us for samples

We’re open during office hours between Monday and Friday. Please call us, email us, or fill out the contact form and let us know what you want to achieve with your website over the next 12 months.

We’re available on 0330 010 3495 or you can email us by clicking here.

We’re based in North Shields town centre if you want to come and visit us. There’s lots of free parking outside and we’re only three minutes’ walk away from North Shields Metro station.