Stephen commented. "OK, I understand that. I know I can make money by providing good service to my clients. I just need to get a web site going."

"Well," I said, "to compete on the net, your corporate web site must convey a professional appearance and you should have your own unique appearance. The "cookie cutter" approach to web site design maybe worked a year ago, but not now. Mortgage customers are a very sophisticated crowd (current statistics show average income $60,000++, and university level education)."

"These customers are going to review various top-ranked web sites before they make a decision. Your have 20 seconds to make your impression: about 10 seconds for the download and another 10 seconds for what shows on your page. You have one chance to do this. If you don’t catch their eye immediately, they will just ‘click off’ and go to one of your competitor sites. You have now just lost a potential commission of thousands of dollars."

"If your site design looks like your brother-in-law (who has some computer experience and does web design part-time) put it together, you have one strike already against you. 

"It goes back to old school of marketing. You first need a prospective Internet customer (web site promotion). Then you need a professional looking web site that will build trust and confidence (web site design). Of course you need competitive interest rates and a wide selection of loan programs. And to follow up, your company needs loan officers and customer service people that will oversee the loan process until closing. As you can see, having a web site is just one facet to help increase your mortgage business. If you don’t market your company effectively, you won’t attract any new customers."

"Look, son," Stephen said, "I know a lot about marketing, I built this company from scratch. You don’t need to give me pointers on how to sell my service."

I didn’t want to annoy Stephen, but I did want to show him how marketing on the net is different without offending him. "As you know, with any marketing or promotion plan, it involves many specific and technical aspects. 
It is somewhat like telemarketing, you just don’t start calling people and saying when they answer the phone,

"Let’s talk about web design. You spend $500 on a cheap looking design for your web site and you get no business. On the other hand, if your company spends say, $10,000 for a professional looking web site design and you get even one additional client (like our construction loan client for over $40,000). Your return on investment is over 400%. Now that is ROI."

"And the power of the Internet is that this web site is working for you 24 hours/day, 7 days a week to a massive audience—over 150 million Internet users and growing. The internet can be your best salesperson. What if you had one $40K customer like this per month? Per week? Per day?"

Now Stephen may not be proficient yet on the net, but he knows his money… "Well," Stephen said, "I think I have got it. Fifty-one million web pages with my keyword. And of course I want my web site to rank in the top 10…"

Robert Farris is co-founder of MortgagePromote.com a leading Internet search engine management provider to the mortgage industry. Web site: www.mortgagepromote.com. MortgagePromote.com offers web site promotion services, proven Internet marketing techniques and comprehensive search engine ranking strategies to mortgage brokers, bankers, and lending institutions.

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