The Loan Officer's Guide for Creating the Most Concise Strategy for Marketing to Realtors

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For many loan officers marketing is a real puzzle, especially marketing to real estate agents. You get a high rate of rejection or struggle to get their cooperation. And for the fortunate few who secure a relationship with an agent, usually it's with someone who's demanding, filled with unrealistic expectations, and a long track record of frequently changing loan officers like their undergarments.

But wait a minute, let's not put all the blame on agents. Remember it's your choice to decide which agents to pursue. What separates loan officers who are successful from the ones who are not? What do they do differently to earn trust, and the ultimate prize - loyalty?

There's clearly one thing they do that is above average loan officers. They invest time planning a successful marketing strategy. A strategy that provides clarity and direction.

P Stands for Planning

Hopefully you have never been the recipient of the Christopher Columbus Award. This award is given to people who don't know where they are going and don't know how they got to where they are now.

How important is it to know what you want and where you are going? A study of graduates from the Yale class of '53 showed that upon graduation only 3 percent had written a plan to achieve success. Thirty years later at their class reunion the study was completed and demonstrated that the 3 percent of the graduates who had written a plan controlled 90 percent of the total net worth of the entire class.

Why is having a written marketing strategy important? Because without one you don't go anywhere. Whenever you see a successful loan officer, you see someone with passion, strong beliefs and a well-thought strategy. When it comes to your business planning makes the difference between mediocrity and excellence.

Planning an effective marketing strategy is a formal process of describing your future and how you will achieve it. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on to do it. You also know what is merely a distraction.

Marketing Gives Life

Marketing is what creates the lifeblood of your business -- clients. Without them you have no business. Marketing to real estate agents let's them know about your service and persuades them to use it. And for marketing to be effective you have to let them know about your service repeatedly.

A good marketing strategy is shaped by your overall goals. You use it to judge your effectiveness. An effective strategy includes 5 components:

A Vision Statement - It's an idealistic view of your business.

A Position Statement - It describes why Realtors should do business with you.

Marketing Objectives - It clarifies what you're trying to achieve.

Strategies - It sets the direction of your marketing.

Plans - Specific actions implemented to achieve your strategies & objectives.

Think of your marketing strategy as "the big picture" and how it appears from 30,000 feet. It tells you where you want to go and sets direction. The marketing plan is the specific roadmap that's going to get you there. Marketing strategy explains "why" you execute and marketing plans explain "how" you execute. One helps with vision and the other with details.

The One Page Marketing Strategy

Putting your thoughts and ideas into the written word is magical. You really don't know what you know until you put what's in your head into writing. It helps transform ideas into reality.

This section is designed to help organize your thoughts, clarify ideas and assess certain data related to planning a marketing strategy. When you've completed the process the outcome will be a one page marketing strategy that's easy and simple to follow.

Crafting a marketing strategy doesn't have to be difficult or laborious. In fact, you'll find the One Page Marketing Strategy a perfect balance between concentrating on your business and determining a course of action that can be implemented and executed. It's short, concise and delivers your strategy quickly and effectively. Each section helps you complete a major piece of your marketing strategy:

Describing Your Vision. Strategy begins with vision and this chapter helps you realize what it is. Beginning with the end in mind makes it easier to determine the important details and actions to make your vision become real.

Defining Your Position. Successful loan officers know what real estate agents want. They know what they must do to get noticed. When you complete this section, you'll know with your words what is your position.

Determing Your Marketing Objectives. After completing this section, you'll understand how to compute and analyze data to determine your objectives. Objectives that help you undergo the results you're trying to achieve.

Deciding Your Marketing Strategies. Sometimes do you feel lost? Not after completing this section. Never again will you feel hopeless or lose confidence in where you're aiming your marketing.

Devising Your Marketing Plans. In this section, you'll translate your objectives into action plans. You'll learn to manage and stay on top of the most important things to be done to execute your marketing strategy.

Dividing Your Marketing Budget. With your strategy mostly complete, you'll compute what it will cost to execute and plan a budget as part of your marketing objectives.

From each section you'll transfer your answers to their respective boxes on the One Page Marketing Strategy worksheet found below. Once you're done, this powerful document becomes your inspiration, point of reflection and model for consistency.