Futureproofing your mortgage business through marketing optimisation

In a competitive industry such as financial services, one of the main business priorities is generating new leads. However, the biggest opportunity isn’t the customers you capture, but the vast majority you don't. For every customer you successfully onboard, there's the potential for 90% more prospects that engage with your business to remain unconverted.

When it comes to maximising lead generation opportunities, a holistic, all-encompassing approach is required. Namely, one which spans across four critical pillars: generating more opportunities, improving conversions, increasing customer value/cross-sell, and enhancing retention. By incorporating each of these elements into your lead generation strategy, you can leverage your business’ growth, build stronger customer relationships, and ensure ongoing compliance with Consumer Duty regulations.

Leveraging missed opportunities

While every customer you capture is a success story, they’re only one part of a much larger opportunity pot. While many effective lead channels can drive up to a 10% conversion rate, this figure highlights a profound challenge that 90% didn’t convert. This creates a huge reservoir of potential leads that are often overlooked. Our traditional focus on ‘hot’, proceedable leads means a significant fraction of your lead generation efforts are, in essence, being wasted.

True business growth and lead efficiency comes from engaging this majority. But how can you capture more of the people you're currently missing? The answer lies in offering value and building relationships before a prospect is ready to convert. Think about a potential customer in the early stages of their homebuying journey. They're likely researching, understanding their options, and perhaps feeling overwhelmed about where to start. If your only offering is a ‘contact us’ form, you're missing a critical window to connect with them.

These prospects have shown interest and are present. However, as the 90% that aren't converting on your current offering, they’re clearly looking for something else. Instead, consider providing a suite of accessible tools, solutions, and communications designed for those prospects who aren’t quite ready. Give them another reason to engage with you and share their contact details - not only to proceed with a broker, but to seek guidance and support with understanding their next steps. This could include, but is not limited to:

● Educational content: Articles, videos, and newsletters explaining complex jargon, guiding customers through the home-buying process, and offering tips on overcoming common pain points such as credit scores, low deposits, and budgeting.
● Interactive tools: User-friendly calculators that provide instant results and estimates on affordability, stamp duty, and monthly repayments, or quizzes to help them understand their current financial readiness and what they need to do to improve it.
● Downloadable collateral: Guides, checklists, or e-books on topics like ‘a first-time buyer's survival guide’ or ‘understanding your mortgage options’, which offer instant value in exchange for an email address.
● Webinars: Free online sessions on topics such as navigating the mortgage market, understanding mortgage types, or preparing for a property purchase.

This way, you're not just casting the net wider by looking for an additional 10% from another lead source - you're actively engaging and educating the 90% that's already in your gift. These efforts will often produce an even better lead, as you become the customer’s trusted adviser having started the process earlier with them. You’re empowering them with the knowledge and confidence to proceed, as opposed to simply acting as a service provider. 

Nurturing them until they’re ready to become a qualified lead is a cost-effective way of capturing more of those 90% you previously missed, as well as the 10% you already convert. Once you have a strategy to achieve better efficiency from your lead sources, you can begin to diversify them for greater opportunity while mitigating risk. You can explore digital marketing, partnerships, social media, and community engagement to ensure a steady stream of new prospects entering your nurturing funnel.

Improving conversions

Even once a lead is generated, the journey to conversion isn't always straightforward. Many prospects won't be immediately ready to proceed. For example, they might need a larger deposit, their credit score might need improving, or their income might not yet meet a lender’s eligibility criteria. The common pitfall is to essentially give up on these individuals, allowing them to navigate their challenges alone and potentially engage with another broker once they overcome them.

This is where a proactive conversion strategy really comes into its own. Instead of letting these leads down by casting them aside (do we really call back in six months?), you should actively support them with the challenges they face and provide them with a range of solutions and options. By offering ongoing support and communication, you're not just acting as a broker. You're becoming a comprehensive financial aid, helping them through their research phase and to overcome initial roadblocks, and therefore earning their loyalty and trust. 

This approach brings two significant benefits. Firstly, transforming a "not-ready" prospect into a more qualified and educated customer who, when ready to proceed, is far more likely to do business with you thanks to the trust and rapport you've built. Secondly, this proactive support is a massive tick for complying with Consumer Duty regulations and doing what’s right for that customer. 

As a mortgage broker, you have a responsibility to act in the best interests of all customers, not just those who are immediately ready to proceed. By supporting those who can't proceed right away, you demonstrate a genuine commitment to positive customer outcomes, fulfilling your ethical and regulatory obligations. You're also demonstrating that your service goes beyond the transaction, fostering a deeper, more resilient relationship.

Maximising customer value

While getting a mortgage is often the primary goal for customers, it's also a gateway to a broader suite of financial services. Many brokers, however, fall short in adequately conveying the value of protection products (such as life insurance, income protection, and critical illness cover) and home insurance. These aren't mere add-ons - they’re crucial elements of a customer’s financial security, ensuring that the biggest asset they’ve just acquired – their home – and their ability to pay for it are adequately protected against unforeseen circumstances.

It's common for customers to view protection as an optional extra (in other words, an additional cost rather than a vital safeguard). Your role is to educate them on its importance, helping them understand how income protection could give them peace of mind if they became ill, or how life insurance protects their loved ones in the event of their death. This isn't about hard selling - it's about making sure your clients are adequately prepared and have a holistic financial safety net having completed their mortgage.

To effectively maximise customer value through cross-selling, you can:

● Integrate early discussions: Begin conversations about protection and insurance early on in the mortgage application process, framing them as integral parts of homeownership and financial planning, not an afterthought.
● Illustrate value with real-life scenarios: Use clear, relatable examples to explain what happens if a customer loses their income, becomes critically ill, or passes away without adequate protection.
● Annual reviews: Offer annual reviews that encompass not just the customer’s mortgage situation, but also their protection needs following changes in circumstances and their overall financial goals.

Not only can this increase the overall value of each customer to your business but, more importantly, you ensure they are truly secure. This proactive approach reinforces your commitment to their long-term financial wellbeing, enhancing trust and solidifying your role as a trusted adviser.

Retention: the golden opportunity

After all the effort, time, and potential acquisition costs invested in generating a prospect into a lead, and then taking them all the way through to conversion, letting a customer simply ‘walk out the door’ once their mortgage completes is a ditched opportunity. Retention isn't just a good idea - it's a significant, often untapped, avenue for sustainable business growth.

Consider this: you've built a relationship, demonstrated expertise, and guided your customer through a significant life event. With this level of service, these customers should theoretically be the most engaged prospect when their product is up for renewal or their circumstances change, and therefore the easiest group to generate opportunities from. However, that hard-won relationship will dwindle if you leave the customer ‘in the wild’ with no interaction for two to four years. Instead, commit to continuous engagement throughout the entire term of their mortgage through such activity as:

● Ongoing communication: Stay in touch beyond transactional updates by sharing relevant market insights, homeownership tips, financial news, or checking in to see if they’ve had a change in circumstance.
● Value-added content: Continue to offer tools, solutions, and educational content that are relevant to homeowners, even if they're not immediately looking for a new mortgage.
● Proactive mortgage monitoring: Utilise mortgage monitoring tools or systems to track product expiration dates, ensuring you reach out well in advance of their PED, not just six months before and after five years of no contact.
● Annual reviews: As a fantastic way to continue your support, reviews provide a structured opportunity to discuss any changes in customers’ circumstances, assess their current financial products, and ensure they remain adequately protected and on the most suitable mortgage deal.

By maintaining this consistent channel of communication and continuing to offer value throughout the mortgage term, customers will naturally gravitate back to you when they’re ready to remortgage or explore new financial products. Retention isn't just about recapturing business - it's about building customers for life and a perpetual engine for referrals and sustained profitability.

The power of marketing optimisation 

In essence, while lead generation should and will form the foundation of your marketing strategy, genuine business improvement comes from optimising every stage of your customer funnel. By operating across a diverse range of channels and lead sources, nurturing prospects, maximising customer value, and prioritising retention, you’ll create a powerful, continuous cycle. 

Each of the four pillars of marketing optimisation contribute directly to an overall increase in leads and, more importantly, sustainable business growth. It all comes back to adopting a holistic approach: the more effectively you engage, support, and retain every prospect and lead, the more your business will thrive.