Web marketing 101 is all about getting links from other sites that point to your site. As a mortgage broker or loan officer, you can boost traffic to your website by submitting your information to the many hundreds of web directories available across the internet. Each link you earn represents potential clicks to your site as well as potential bonuses in search engine rankings.

With that in mind, here is a list of 335 free web directories where you can submit your site:

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Marketing to a niche is my favorite way to get results. Why? Because you know better what your target customers need and want, compared to simply marketing to the general public. The more you know, the better you can tweak your marketing message and boost your return on investment (ROI). Niche marketing applies to many businesses but following is a list of eleven niches specific to originating mortgages:

1. Purchase Loans. We start with one of the basics. You can
   find subsets of niches within the purchase niche like FSBOs, Investment Properties, Land/Farms/Ranches, and referrals from Realtors. The various sub-niches represent a different group to whom you can market, all of which have different needs and interests, therefore they will likely respond differently to your marketing materials.
    
2. Construction Loans. Much like purchases, construction loans have sub-niches like Custom Home Builders, Subdividers, Condo/PUD Builders, Owner-Builders, Second Home/Vacation Home Builders.
    
3. Loans for Home Repairs. I considered including this in the construction niche, but decided it deserves a classification of it’s own. There are a wide variety of needs home owners might have when it comes to home repairs, including: updating roofs, windows, doors, heating, air conditioning, or other worn or outdated basics of the home. Home Repair customers might also be interested in finishing a basement, remodeling an area of their home, or adding a pool in the backyard. All these repairs and updates require money. Imagine the opportunity of networking with roofers, HVAC companies, window and door companies, etc. They have customers that need the money you can provide them.
    
4. Converting ARMs. This particular niche is hot right now, with rates on the rise and many ARMs set to make their first rate adjustment in the near future. You can get a list of borrowers with ARMs from your local county records and set up a simple mail merge in Microsoft Word to send a customized letter reminding the borrowers that their rate may soon increase. The more targeted you get, the better.
    
5. Mobile / Manufactured Home Loans. I decided to make this it’s own niche because there is a good amount of demand for loans on these properties, yet they seem to be fairly hard to place. If you can find a good lender or two with some good programs for manufactured homes, you can make a nice living focusing on these types of loans.
    
6. Foreclosure Bailout Loans. Yet another niche that requires knowing what wholesale programs are available to fund these loans. Find some good ones and you can make a good living working this niche.
    
7. Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Loans. FHA is your best friend when it comes to Chapter 13 BKs. Study up on the requirements under FHA and find other wholesale programs that allow recent BKs and you’re well on your way to working a solid niche. Here’s a direct quote from HUD’s website:
   

   A Chapter 13 bankruptcy does not disqualify a borrower from obtaining an FHA-insured mortgage provided the lender documents that one year of the payout period under the bankruptcy has elapsed and the borrower’s payment performance has been satisfactory (i.e., all required payments made on time). In addition, the borrower must receive permission from the court to enter into the mortgage transaction.

    

8. Debt Consolidation Loans. This niche is almost too big to be called a niche, but it can’t be forgotten. The only problem I have with this one is that it’s one of the most competitive.
    
9. Cash-Out Loans. Same deal for this niche - not very specific and could probably be combined with debt consolidation.
    
10. Rate and Term Refis. Perhaps "refis" should be the niche with debt consolidation, cash-out, and rate & term as the sub-niches. However, it is probably easier to find data that will allow you to target borrowers eligible for rate & terms than it would be to find those interested in debt consolidation or plain old cash-out refis.
     
11. FHA Streamline Refis. This is it’s own niche because of the nature of the FHA Streamline. Easy, fast, and somewhat neglected. Loan Officers can do well focusing on this niche.

Do you work any other niches not listed here?

All loan officers and mortgage brokers are marketers.  If you don’t think like a marketer then you’re in the wrong profession.  As a marketer, you smartly take advantage of great opportunities when they come around.  What you are about to read is a great opportunity so naturally you’ll take advantage.

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When you meet someone new, do they remember your name? Do you remember theirs? Sometimes you do, but more often you don’t.

Networking means you remember, you recognize, and you refer others to their businesses. This process of promoting your Business Network incorporates professionalism into your ‘friend making process’ and negates counting on memory to help you retrieve information. Learn to network properly and become a promoter within your Business Networking Circle.

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You’re familiar with the expression “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, which suggests the theme of turning a negative into a positive. Well, while you don’t need to have a negative in your mortgage marketing efforts before you can gain a positive, so to speak, you can certainly turn lemonade into mortgage leads. Following is a simple, inexpensive idea for generating leads that any loan officer can do.

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I keep hearing out there that online marketing for mortgage professionals is a waste of time because you’ll never be able to rank high enough in the search engines to get significant traffic. Of course, being the internet type that I am, I have never bought into this logic. But I couldn’t prove that it was possible for a regular, non-tech-saavy loan officer to crack the search engine rankings and achieve significant “organic” (unpaid) search engine traffic until now.

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The most powerful headline I ever read and acted upon was a negative headline. It changed my life.Yet most books on direct mail copywriting will tell you to cast your headlines, overlines and Johnson Boxes always in the positive. But sometimes being negative is positively good for business. Or, to say it another way, negative headlines in your direct mail advertising are not always bad.

The headline that changed my life appeared in a small display ad in the Daily Mirror, a British daily newspaper. Here’s what it said:

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Providers of professional services come in many roles and titles, but the truth is, professional service customers exercise a brutal taxonomy — to them, any given provider fits one of two categories: expert or salesman. Now, we’ve all met so-called “experts” who were little more than very clever salesmen, and we’ve all worked with salesmen who’ve surprised us with genuinely helpful expertise. But again, it’s our customers’ perspective that counts, and in their minds, the distinction is simple: Salesmen are people who chase after us, hungry for work; experts are people we actively seek out, money in hand.

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Do you think sales is a numbers game? Many very smart loan officers think that the way to increase their loan pipelines and to increase their loan closings is to simply increase the amount of mail they send to prospects… they couldn’t be further from the truth.

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Real estate agents get pitched by loan officers almost non-stop, especially when interest rates are on the rise.  What makes one LO stand out over the rest?  What makes an agent decide to send business to one LO instead of another?
Having a crystal ball to see into the decision-making process of real estate agents would be wonderful, but since Harry Potter lives in England (and doesn’t much like Divination anyway), perhaps the best thing to do is turn the tables on your approach with agents.

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