Search marketing optimization, whether it’s for pay per click, sponsored or search optimization is not always a sprint.
In fact it’s more often than not a lengthy race. Searchers very rarely convert at the 1st click. As a rule of thumb the more complex the purchase and the higher the value the more clicks a searcher will do moving down the sale funnel. There are now very well known search patterns for discovery, navigational and transactional queries.
Plus with more and more companies understanding the incredible ROI of search optimization the harder it to get traffic and clients if you’re a mortgage broker or smaller lender. But it is still possible to have decent amount of traffic if you understand the basic of the online mortgage sales funnel.
Let’s take a step back and look at the sales funnel a broker needs to be in to get the most effective traffic (and leads) for its mortgage business.
In our example the mortgage broker would miss out on many opportunities if he would not optimize the funnel for discovery, investigation, branded search (navigational) and conversion by only targeting “John Smith mortgage broker Portland“. A savvy mortgage marketer approach this problem the same way some completes their intended search task online: by delivery and adding value at every point of the search funnel.
The sales/funnel search process online goes generally along something like this:
- Generic search: a small broker will not be able to rank well for the keyword “home refinance” for example because it will probably never have the resources to beat big national brands on such keywords. On the other hand it may be able to be present on important local/regional resources sites, being reviews and mentioned in blog posts, covered by the press in an article or be listed or named on some of the top results. Worst case, he may want to consider buying ad space ranking on the top results. With the abysmal price of banner ads these days buying targeted CPM ads may prove better than ppc.
- Niche search (aka discovery): This is often the first opportunity someone like John has to rank, but only if you don’t omit indirectly relevant search (and less obvious) keywords in the discovery process. Put yourself in a customer shoes and better yet pay someone do to searches and look how they do it. Find the used keyword you can rank in the top 3-10 positions, write some great content to get a stop on the top positions.
- Brand discovery: Typical SEO process. Research and find the relevant converting phrases, analyze the competition and build the content that will get you the necessary links to rank.
- Brand investigation:Your battle won’t be won until the visitor convert. Make sure that when very obvious queries about your product, brand and company arise. You can easily find this results and can be proactive to influence the content. Most of the time offering a good product and service is good enough to maintain your reputation but you may have to do some reputation management to help push up the good and push down the bad.
- Brand navigation: This should be the easiest query to win but it still represent for further optimization. Choosing your Sitelinks under your results and reviewing their results can bring a good ROI. Investing in paid search for your branded terms will improve your CTR and conversions for both.organic and paid results.
- Evaluation: Almost ready to close his mortgage deal, Brad wants to find last minute info about “John Smiths broker fees” and maybe compare them to other brokers/lenders. It may be to have all your important service details surface for your site results. Offering comparisons is also a good element to use if you don’t want your visitors to go look elsewhere than on your site.
- Closing: Once your deal are closed you may want to revisit the experience your client had with you. For satisfied ones you may want to offer them 2-3 sites where they could write a review about your service. Most of the people happy with their experience usually gladly do so. As there are always some clients who will never be happy it’s important that your happy ones also contribute to your online reputation. Plus it’s also a good time to ask them for any referral they may think of.
The holy grail: whole mortgage sales funnel on your site
