Even small firms are now embracing the need to not only have a professional and prominent online presence, but also to develop an understanding of how to use Pay Per Click advertising to drive traffic to that site, and ultimately create new business opportunities.
Despite the slow market conditions, competition in PPC in the mortgage space remains fierce – 84% of consumers research their next mortgage online, and for most, a search engine is their first port of call. In January 2013, there were 536,000 searches for mortgage related keywords, with the top 5 PPC positions dominated by Lenders (YBS, Barclays and HSBC), and Comparison sites (Moneysupermarket, SO Switch). There was just one mortgage broker in the top 20.
But stray from the more generic search terms in the mortgage space, and suddenly brokers become a lot more prominent, dominating geographically linked search terms such as London Mortgage Broker, and the more obvious ones such as Mortgage Advice, Mortgage Broker, and Mortgage Help. Even small brokers with a limited budget are finding that they can drive a reasonable level of web traffic with carefully planned PPC campaigns based around their location, specialism, and brand.
Yet volume of traffic itself is not enough to justify PPC expenditure, and many brokers have fallen fowl of paying to drive large levels of traffic to their site, but without giving enough consideration to how to convert that visitor into a business opportunity when they actually arrive.
In today’s hectic world, web users expect and demand concise information discovery relevant to their own personal circumstance - how much can I borrow, what will it cost me (Can I save money?), and can you find me a product that will help my achieve my goals – they want to interact with the information they are presented with, and if given the opportunity to do so, they are statistically far more likely to divulge personal details, or indeed, pick up the phone themselves and request help.
Brokers whose websites provide tools that answer those questions keep web visitors on their site longer creating brand familiarity and helping drive organic traffic. Through engaging the end user with relevant product information, and providing clear calls to action, these brokers drive not just more enquiries but better qualified ones too. In fact, some of the most successful mortgage brokers in the country convert PPC web traffic into enquiries as much as 3x as well as their comparison site counterparts.
The message to mortgage brokers engaging in PPC activity, or indeed any form of web marketing, it seems is clear – if you’re going to invest in PPC as a means to create new business opportunities, it’s how effectively your site converts traffic that will determine your success, not how many people you can send their in the first place.
