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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people across North America have either lost their jobs or have been asked by their employers to take a salary cut or reduce their hours to compensate for the current state of the market. As a result, people are turning to their financial institutions and mortgage bankers for solutions and support during these uncertain times. In turn, mortgage lenders and banks need the best tools and technology on the market to provide their clients with the support they need to accomplish their real estate goals.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people across North America have either lost their jobs or have been asked by their employers to take a salary cut or reduce their hours to compensate for the current state of the market. As a result, people are turning to their financial institutions and mortgage bankers for solutions and support during these uncertain times. In turn, mortgage lenders and banks need the best tools and technology on the market to provide their clients with the support they need to accomplish their real estate goals.

With people across America abiding by stay-at-home orders amid COVID-19, more and more individuals are shifting their attention online. Consumers are using the internet to obtain services to fulfill their needs (including mortgage). As a result, mortgage lenders have seen an influx in online searches and fewer in-person visits. The switch in user behavior has affected lenders across the country very differently. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people across North America have lost their jobs bringing the unemployment rate to a record high. On the other hand, many employees who are still working have been asked to either take a salary cut or reduce their hours to compensate for the current market and business losses. Now, more than ever, people are turning to their financial institutions and mortgage brokers for support. In turn, mortgage lenders and banks need the best tools on the market to help their clients during this time. 

As of the beginning of 2020, NestReady started offering digital marketing services. With some of our customers asking - “are you a digital marketing agency now?”. We wrote this post to explain it. The quick answer is yes and no. There are some similarities in terms of what we are doing now that could make NestReady look like a digital marketing agency, that being said, we are more of a “growth partner” specialized in fintech and marketing for mortgage lenders.

According to various research studies, over 80% of Americans depend on recommendations and referrals from their friends, family, and trusted service providers when considering purchasing a product or service. The same goes for when homebuyers are looking for a real estate agent to help them find their dream home. 

Within our most recent white paper (link to white paper), NestReady (link to NestReady) analyzed the top 1550 lenders across the US to see what impact COVID had and continues to have on their website traffic. To conduct this study, we gathered website traffic data from March and April 2019 and 2020. 

Uncertain times call for innovative tools.

Resource Financial Services (RFS) used NestReady's Digital Services to help them improve their overall domain authority, to obtain a more robust keyword ranking on all major search engines, to generate more leads for their new product VA Loans, and to increase brand awareness. 

Read on to discover what the NestReady team did to achieve RFS' goals and the results of NestReady's work. 

Now that you know how well your landing page is supposed to perform, you can evaluate your options to optimize your landing page to ensure that your landing page produces as many conversions as your competitors' pages within the industry. 

Have you ever wondered what types of homes are the most popular, according to the American public? Our team here at NestReady were curious about this, so we decided to use Google trends data to analyze the changes in popularity for different property types over time across the United States.

So many marketers understand the importance of a high-converting landing page. However, they struggle to find the necessary information to determine whether or not their landing page is performing in line with industry standards.

That's why the NestReady team, created a white paper which evaluated conversion benchmark data by industry! In this article, I will be summarizing the benchmark data provided. 

Uncertain times, calls for record-breaking home search volume? With the current pandemic, interest rates have lowered, and thousands of Americans are stuck at home, many of them confined to their computers. Amid Google searches around the epidemic, several Americans are also searching for homes online. 

If you're looking to gather leads for your business, you need to build a strong landing page. Similar to other marketing tactics, this can be done very well or very poorly, as creating high-performing landing pages has its challenges. It is often challenging to write the perfect copy to engage your visitors, and it's a challenge to find the right image or visuals to convey your message accurately. 

We're already three months into the new year, have you reviewed your marketing strategies yet? There's no better time than now to analyze the top trends and marketing tools for mortgage loan officers to identify the best ways to gain traction for your business.

Here are five marketing strategies for you to implement this year to boost brand exposure, overall efficiency, and to capture more leads.

Every mortgage lender wants to find the most effective ways to drive more traffic to their website. The more traffic a lender gets to their website, the more opportunities they have to capture leads. The most effective method to boost web traffic is to create quality content. Why? Because, the more content you have on your website, the more pages Google will index for you, the higher your domain authority, and the more keywords that you will rank for, and therefore, the more organic searches you will appear on when people are searching for their mortgage needs.

However, it's not enough to create content. You have to create the right content to attract the right audience. To ensure that you are drawing your targeted clientele and producing quality content, we've created a small guide any mortgage lender can follow!

Within our recent white paper about the SEO ranking of lenders sites, the results showed that most lenders in the US are struggling to get enough organic traffic and keyword ranking to compete with home listing and lender platforms like Zillow. 

Read on to learn more about the importance of organic traffic and keyword ranking, and to see how lenders are doing in terms of traffic volume and keyword search. 

A robust search engine optimization strategy involves so much more than merely producing content that is keyword optimized. Other factors have a significant impact on a site's search engine ranking, such as backlinks. But, not all backlinks are the same in the eyes of Google. Backlinks from .edu and .gov domains are far more authoritative in terms of SEO as they are trusted sites.

Within our recent white paper about the SEO ranking of lenders sites, the results showed that most lenders in the US (of the 5750 analyzed) are aware of the impact of .edu and .gov backlinks. However, they are missing out on the opportunity to obtain such links. In this article, I will discuss what .edu and .gov backlinks are, their importance, how many links lenders have, and essential takeaways.

In today’s digital world, having a strong website is a crucial element to the success of lenders. From developing strong marketing campaigns to investing in search engine optimization strategy to obtaining backlinks, there are a variety of methods and tools that can help lenders build successful sites with authoritative search engine rankings that will reach the right audience.

The findings of our most recent white paper about lenders’ search engine ranking revealed that several of them are having a hard time getting backlinks to their website. This difficulty is due to the low domain rating (DR) of banks’ sites.

Several lenders invest in a search engine optimization strategy to increase their website’s overall ranking and the amount of traffic the website receives. Although they are investing in search engine strategies, several of them are not seeing adequate results. These results are due to ineffective methods and a lack of backlink acquisition. 

Within our new White Paper, the NestReady team analyzed the Ahrefs Rank (AR) of 5750 lenders in the US. Within this article, I will discuss the meaning of Ahrefs Rank and its importance, how lenders rank, and why they are failing in attaining a good Ahrefs ranking. 

With the vast majority of consumers gathering information for loans on the internet, more and more lenders are investing in search engine optimization strategies to attract, convert, and retain clients online.

Overview

Our team has looked into: the power of domain ranking, Ahrefs score, referring domains, backlinks, keywords, and traffic value, .gov and .edu backlinks, and more.

A recent study, conducted by the National Association of REALTORS Research Group that analyzed the generational trends of homebuyers and sellers, revealed that among all generations of homebuyers, the first step taken in the homebuying journey was to look online for available houses. The results show that the internet plays a significant role in the homebuying process for all generations, even buyers who are 73 years and older. Therefore, realtors, lenders, loan officers, and property developers must develop a robust online presence to cater to the demands of homebuyers.

Within this article, I will discuss the prominent role that the internet plays in the homebuying journey. As well as discuss how the NestReady platform, NestFinder, can help your company up their online game to fulfill the needs of homebuyers. 

As a passionate loan officer, you are continually trying to improve your skills and gain new knowledge about the industry, which is an essential element to success within the competitive field of mortgage lending. There are several ways to improve your mortgage lending business and reach your professional goals. Here’s a list of four daily practices that can help you become a better performing loan officer and separate yourself from the pack. 

There’s a common misconception amongst lenders and loan officers that positive feelings towards loan originators will translate into customer referrals. When in actuality, borrowers give references when they have a pleasant experience from beginning to end.It’s easy for a borrower's overall experience to be tainted by one unpleasant incident during the borrowing process. Therefore, loan originators must do everything to ensure that a borrower’s experience is pleasant from start to finish. 

Recent studies suggest that Millennials and Generation Z will account for 80 % of real estate transactions over the next decade. Both generations expect an easy, digital-first, and personalized customer experience. As a result, loan originators and mortgage lenders must invest time and resources into understanding customer experience technology to change how they do business to meet the needs and expectations of Millennials and Generation Z. Essentially, loan originators and mortgage lenders must transform their online presence into a dynamic and personalized digital experience to attract and inquiry Millennials and Generation Z as loyal customers. 

Within this article, I will discuss how some loan originators’ and lenders’ websites are currently failing to obtain Millennials and Generation Z as customers while providing suggestions to attract the desired demographic by creating a personalized and dynamic experience for the consumer. 

It’s no secret that social media is a significant channel for driving business growth due to its high usage rate by the American public. According to a recent study conducted by PEW Research Center, 72% of adults within the U.S utilize some form of social media several times a day. Another study found that the majority of Americans spend about one hour and 57 minutes per day on social media.

 The American public relies on social media to educate themselves about products, brands, and services, making it a handy tool for lenders to find, connect with, and impress possible clients. However, relatively few banks, credit unions and independent mortgage bankers utilize social media platforms to their advantage by targeting potential clients, cultivating leads, and engaging with existing clients. In the same manner, several mortgage lenders may be unaware as to how to leverage social media.

Below are the five best practices to successful social media marketing that can enable your organization to attract and obtain new clients, nurture existing relationships with clients and organizations, and deliver the right message at the right time. 

The lending landscape in the United States is rapidly changing. Companies like Zillow are announcing their entry into the mortgage lending space, creating a dangerous scenario for banks and credit unions across the U.S. 

As the home buying process moves online, many mortgage lenders are struggling to serve modern borrowers and attract new business. From shifting expectations, to subpar technology, to the rise of nonbank lenders and real estate portals, lenders have many challenges to overcome in order to remain competitive.

It’s no secret that real estate portals like Zillow dominate real estate-related traffic on the web. Indeed, Zillow has 195 million monthly unique visitors, and 80% of all US homes have been viewed on the site at least once. What many lenders may not realize, however, is the direct threat that this traffic poses to their businesses: According to NestReady’s own study, 58% of top US-based mortgage lenders face medium- to high-risk levels of website audience loss to platforms like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and Redfin. 

Digital mortgage closings are on the rise across the country, making the home-buying process a lot simpler and a lot less frustrating for both consumers and lenders. If you haven’t adopted digital closing tactics at your agency yet, here are three big reasons why you should.

With constant pressure to find more efficient ways to acquire and process loans, it is important for mortgage lenders and marketers to optimize their marketing initiatives. One of the most powerful marketing strategies for increasing leads and ranking on Google search is content marketing.

As a mortgage lender or loan originator, streamlining the home buying process for your customers not only benefits your potential homebuyers, but also increases your business productivity. By automating your commercial loan origination process, you can make a profit, create shareholder value, and reduce the risk of errors when handling customers. With the right loan originator software for your businesses, mortgage lenders can provide high-quality services and customized experiences that homebuyers will recommend to their peers and family members.

Keeping track of key performance indicators or KPIs is one of the best ways to refine your lending practices and focus on what works — that is, what practices and programs are attracting leads and driving conversions. The problem is, there are dozens of KPIs that can be measured, and keeping track of all of them is a task that’s beyond the scope of most loan officers. The good news? A recent study from Mortgage Cadence found you can significantly boost your revenue by looking at just a small handful of KPIs — most notably, the four listed below.

Times have changed for mortgage lenders when it comes to digital display advertising. While sophisticated ad targeting solutions have helped advertisers refine their audiences, those consumers are nevertheless tired of the same old display formats and placements, causing them to ignore ads entirely. This has given rise to native advertising, a type of display advertising in which ads closely resemble the look, feel, and content of the media around them.

With the growing trend of homebuyers exploring the digital home-buying journey, lenders need to look beyond the mortgage application process. Furthermore, mortgage lenders should consider how they can add more value to their clients throughout the home buying process. Since 85% of home buyers start their journey on a mortgage lender’s website it is essential for credit union members to know they can get the best rate and service from their primary financial institution. At NestReady, our goal is to provide a platform that will allow for ease and trust in the home buying process with all those involved. 

Today’s display advertising tools are a far cry from the spammy pop-ups and animated banners of years past. Modern display ads can help lenders not only increase brand awareness among their target audiences, but also generate mortgage leads. In fact, Google estimates that its Display Network drives nearly 20 percent of total conversions for the median advertiser.

Google’s AdWords paid search product is one of the most valuable tools in a loan officer’s arsenal. Executed properly, search ads can generate mortgage leads more effectively than organic search alone. In fact, it’s estimated that businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords.

As a company with over six years of experience in building innovative tools to empower home buyers, loan officers, and real estate professionals, NestReady is excited to showcase its growing team! Learn about all the vital members from each of our teams, including engineering, marketing, design, and more.

As today’s real estate consumers navigate the home buying process, they’re looking for the best outcome and experience, which non-banks like Zillow, Quicken Loans, and loanDepot are providing through online services. In fact, over 40% of customers believe non-banks are a better lending option than traditional banks. While many consumers are still requesting mortgages through traditional avenues, major banks, and credit unions must be prepared to navigate the drastic changes in consumers' approach to the home buying process. 

Digital advertising is a crucial component for any lender who wants to generate mortgage leads. But whether you’re on your first campaign, or your 100th, it can be difficult to gauge the success and efficiency of your loan officer advertising. Are you paying too much to generate mortgage leads? How do your marketing efforts stack up against your competitors?

Although credit unions tend to have high levels of satisfaction among the consumers who use them, they also tend to do a lot less marketing than traditional banks — and that means they’re “stuck” with a smaller piece of the banking pie. In order for credit unions to stay successful in the face of increasing competition with traditional banks, they need to embrace a “smarter” marketing strategy as they move forward. Here are four key trends to adopt now.

With US and China trade talks, next year’s election, the stock market’s wild ride. So far, the second half of 2019 has had its share of turbulence. But the good news is, the lending industry is poised for continued growth, in part due to both a strong job market and the Fed’s interest rate cuts. With 2020 just around the corner, banks and credit unions can tap into the upswing by heeding these four critical mortgage lending trends.

The fact that there are now more affordable homes than ever before make it a fantastic time for mortgage lenders to use technology as a means of capturing refinance opportunities and to garner new clients. Now is the time when artificial intelligence mortgage lending has a bigger potential to positively affect the process than ever before. Credit unions, banks and mortgage lenders are now poised to bring in new customers and to help those that have been with them for years refinance their loans.

Technology has transformed the way consumers do business in the U.S. and throughout the world, supporting more customer-centric, streamlined processes that most consumers have readily embraced. With technology, today’s consumers have faster access to more products, enabling them to tailor their customer journeys not only to their needs, but to their own scheduled as well. Not surprisingly, businesses that have responded to these shifts have seen their market shares soar, while companies that lag behind find themselves in the unenviable position of playing “catch-up” with their competitors.

Most businesses — mortgage lenders included — could benefit from an extra set of hands to handle some of the more mundane or repetitive tasks involved in daily operations. The problem is, hiring an assistant isn’t always cost-effective. Plus, there’s still a need to manage an assistant to ensure they do those tasks the way you need them to be done, even when the underlying variables change. In mortgage marketing and lending, being responsive to the differences in lenders and the volatility of the mortgage market itself is critical. But finding an assistant — virtual or otherwise — who can rapidly adapt to those changes is problematic. And it typically accrues a relatively high cost that can also vary with the demands of the job.

Buying a home involves a lot of steps: finding an agent, poring over listings, finding a lender, identifying the best loan, and then ultimately getting that loan. Until recently, buyers had to take all those steps one by one — which was kind of silly, considering they’re all aimed at achieving one common goal: getting the buyer into the home of their dreams.

The age of the internet and technology has been upon us for some time now and as the Digital Mortgage Conference in Las Vegas is fast approaching, it is now more important than ever to determine what you can check out at the convention. The 2019 mortgage technology conference from September 23 to 24 is a fantastic opportunity for mortgage lenders to learn what is changing in the landscape, what needs some work, and what has been a success thus far.

This past spring, the Federal Reserve made headlines when it announced it was ready to move forward with the creation of a real-time payments service, dubbed FedNow, aimed at supporting “near-instantaneous” transfer of funds, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s good news for credit unions, according to Andrew Morris, senior counsel for research and policy at the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU). During the service's design phase, NAFCU worked closely with the Fed, identifying key capabilities and priorities to make the new service “credit union-friendly.”

As a mortgage lender, it is important to know when and how to approach potential homebuyer clients with various loan offerings. Since 8 out of 10 homebuyers will search for a mortgage lender before looking for a home, loan officers must tailor the customer experience and be prepared with mortgage lending incentives. By engaging with leads early in the homebuying journey, can instill trust in potential clients and drive referrals for future homebuyer clients.

Housing prices remain strong in Canada, especially in major metropolitan areas like Vancouver and Toronto. Comparatively speaking, Montreal remains a good value among major Canadian cities, with an average home price of about $366K. But just because Montreal homes are affordable relative to other urban locales, that doesn’t mean they’re affordable for a first-time home buyer in Quebec. For many would-be city-dwellers, high real estate costs have meant these buyers have put their dreams of homeownership on an indefinite hold.

Over the last two decades, technology has dramatically reshaped the process of finding and purchasing a home. Despite these advancements, however, the homebuying journey remains frustratingly disjointed. This is true not just for consumers, but also for the professionals who serve them—especially loan officers and real estate agents.

Things are looking up for mortgage lenders. As of August 2019, mortgage rates are approaching their lowest level in nearly three years, while in June, applications rose by 27 percent in just one week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

While most housing markets have recovered from the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, consumers are still feeling the lingering effects. North American homebuyers have experienced a decrease not just in overall wealth, but also in confidence. This is certainly true among the millennial generation, who came of age during these tumultuous times and now make up the majority of homebuyers.

The home-buying process has changed a lot during the past decade or so, and with those changes have come a lot of new challenges. For lenders who want to remain competitive, simply meeting those challenges isn’t enough. Today’s lenders need to know how to overcome those obstacles — and maybe even turn them into advantages. Here are the top five challenges lenders can expect to encounter during the rest of 2019 and throughout 2020, along with a few tips on how to conquer them.

In today’s tech-forward lending environment, it’s easy for loan officers to lose sight of their most important responsibility: guiding consumers through the loan origination process. For Michelle Bruto da Costa, branch manager at Homebridge Financial Services in Everett, WA, the key to fulfilling that responsibility is communication, and plenty of it.

The World Wide Web has grown in leaps and bounds since it first came on the scene in 1990. Indeed, between 2008 and 2018, the total number of websites on the Internet grew a staggering 846 percent, with estimates exceeding 1.7 billion today.

With over 5,000 marketing solutions and platforms available today, credit unions are finding ways to optimize their lead generation processes with web analytics, audience data management, and many more.  

In today’s digital lending environment, maintaining a consistent supply of homebuyer leads is a constant challenge. With consumers increasingly shifting their homebuying journeys online, and nonbank lenders competing for those consumers, banks and credit unions are hard-pressed to modernize their lead generation efforts.

Fortunately, NestReady is here to help traditional lenders generate up to 90 percent more leads on their platforms. Here are five ways NestReady’s solutions make it happen.

In recent years, you may have heard of “machine learning” being used for everything from diagnosing diseases to writing screenplays. But what is machine learning, and how does it work? Read on to understand the value of this emerging technology and how NestReady is using it to help financial institutions provide a seamless, end-to-end homebuying experience.

Whether you’re a small community lender, or a mid-sized institution with a regional footprint, chances are you don’t have a lot of extra money in the budget to spend on marketing and advertising. That’s why it’s so important to capture and analyze data about the consumers who visit through your website and other online properties.

See what other loan officers and mortgage originators got to say about activating a personalized real-estate marketplace that puts them at the center of a customer home-buying journey, and helps them generate leads.

With the vast majority of consumers searching for homes on the internet, more and more mortgage lenders are beginning to leverage digital marketing tools to attract, convert, and retain clients online.

These days, virtually all companies understand that they should be measuring and analyzing their app and website activity. With that in mind, the majority of businesses who find or do business online are using web analytics software to track visitors and users. In fact, 68 percent of the top 1 million websites and 88.5 percent of the top 10,000 websites use Google Analytics to measure the customer experience on their online properties.

Online display ads are often portrayed a panacea for today’s businesses, particularly in comparison to traditional advertising methods. But getting a solid return on digital ads is by no means easy. Consider that the average person is served over 1,700 banner ads per month but only half of them are ever viewed. Meanwhile over 70 percent of marketers fail to target these consumers with behavioral data, leading to lower click rates and conversions.

In the age of “Big Data,” mortgage lenders are realizing that their own data on customers and leads is their most valuable source of marketing insight. Yet knowing is only half the battle—and as it turns out, many lenders are failing to activate their so-called “first-party” data to drive new business.

In today’s digital-first world, technology is crucial to the success of any mortgage lender. From managing online advertising efforts, to cultivating relationships with leads, to testing and analyzing performance, the right mix of tools and solutions can help financial institutions and brokers achieve a variety of goals while maximizing ROI.

Savvy consumers in today’s digital world are constantly pushing the banking industry to better meet their needs. With companies like Amazon raising the bar through a variety of services and products, consumers now demand seamless user experiences and 24/7 access in other industries. What if Amazon started offering mortgages? It’s not as farfetched as it sounds — and if credit unions and banks can’t meet the needs of tomorrow’s homebuyers, they may face stiff competition before long.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that over 86% of banks responded in a HousingWire survey that they now offer a digital mortgage application on their website. However, digitalizing the application represents only a partial improvement to the entire experience of purchasing a home. Consumers still feel inconvenienced and stressed by the complicated process of searching for homes, finding the best rates, and working with a real estate agent and loan officer they can trust.

Five years ago one of my dreams came true: I bought my first home!

As exciting as it may sound, I have to say that I did NOT enjoy the process…

Like most first-time home buyers, I had little guidance on where to start when I made up my mind to move forward with this significant project.

Mauro Repacci, Founder and CEO of NestReady, was no stranger to relocating. Having moved and lived in several different countries over the years, he found himself frustrated with trying to find a home that would fit his budget and provide him a reasonable commute to work. He settled on a neighbourhood in Montreal with no amenities, limited public transportation, and a high price for rent.

I just love how straightforward this article published yesterday by Jason Frazier on Housingwire, is. I really recommend reading it.

This is not plagiarism, simply a list of my favourite pieces of the article I wish every mortgage lender would read.“As has been said by many industry titans, the only constant in business you can count on is change. Yet, too many of you are still holding on to the past, to the “good ol’ days” of this business.”

A few days ago Quicken Loans’ sister company, In-House Realty, announced the acquisition of ForSaleByOwner.com, a calculated move of Rock Holdings, their parent company, towards building their one-stop-shop homebuying solution.