Mortgage Promote: Online Internet Marketing & Mortgage Leads

How To Write The Perfect Reply Email - Part II

Mortgage Promote — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:50:00 +0000

How To Write The Perfect Reply Email - Part II

Last month we talked about the importance of a good email "subject" title and how to make sure to keep updating the email subject line; as the content changes. We also discussed that every email from a company should use the company URL, and NOT the employees Hotmail or Yahoo or Gmail accounts.

We also mentioned that due to the thousands of dollars of potential for each customer, it is worth the time and effort to create a perfect reply email.

This month we will continue with the components to creating a perfect reply email. We also discussed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden sitting down with his players on the first day of practice and saying, "Today we are going to learn how to put our socks on correctly." In this way, no one misses practice due to blisters.

The Reply - HTML or Plain Text

The topic of whether to reply in HTML with graphics, special fonts, columns and other features available in HTML; versus using plain text, is a bit tougher decision. HTML email has many advantages over plain text email, especially in professional appearance. However, HTML emails can carry worms and viruses so some people prefer plain text email. Additionally, if you send an HTML email, and if your recipient's system is set up for plain text, then usually the recipient will see the email as an attachment or it will show all the HTML coding surrounding the words in the email, making it nearly impossible to read.

According to operators of newsletters, about 85% of subscribers select HTML over plain text. (I use HTML for my email, but I usually subscribe as text because I like to see the actual URL in a newsletter rather than "click here"). Other online sources indicate that over 90% of email readers use HTML. If your reply is more effective by using HTML, I would suggest that route.

The Reply - Trimming

Sometimes you may receive a long email or an email that has been forwarded to you from another employee at your mortgage company. Be sure to delete the unnecessary parts of the email when you reply so you don't clog up your response. So it doesn't show a graveyard of email addresses and irrelevant headers like a joke that has been forwarded 40 times to large groups of people. Be sure to retain enough of the original email so that the context can be easily understood if that email is reviewed a month from now.

The Reply - The Greeting & Tone

It is usually safer to address someone as Ms. Johnson or Mr. Brown; rather than assume a Robert probably wants a Bob; and a Katherine prefers Kathy. You can often get an indication of how people sign their emails as to what they prefer (Robert "Sparky" Brown), but if you have err, do so on the side of caution.

Try to make the letter as personal as possible, using words like "I", "You," and "Us" when possible. "Dear valued customer" is essentially like saying "Dear valued ex-customer."

Be careful about what you write about. Not everyone wants to know about your take on Desperate Housewives, the Soprano's ending or that political debate last night. Nor is everyone a fan of the Yankees, Bears or your daughter's soccer team.

The Reply - Content

Brevity, but completeness, should be the rule. "Brevity is the soul of wit" but also remember the adage, "A job worth doing is worth doing right." A reply should be thorough and must not only answer the customer's questions, it should answer them first. Most people prefer short emails, but some want all the details. By putting the answer first, then supplying more information, you can satisfy both parties.

Keep the first sentence and first paragraphs brief. No one wants to have to digest a massive passage of text, until they are ready.

If you are replying to a mortgage lead and the recipient doesn't know who you are, be sure to let them know you received their name from a mortgage leads company.

The first paragraph should focus on the benefits to your viewer. The way to get their attention is finding out what's in it for them. Point out how the features of your programs that will specifically benefit the reader. Don't expect the reader to figure out the benefits for themselves.

If you're replying to a number of questions, be sure to answer all of them. The questions may seem simple or easy to you, but if someone asks, you need to answer rather than leaving it unaddressed for people to figure out on their own.

If there is something to act on, be sure to put that item near the top of your email, so that the reader won't have an excuse to misread you. Use bullets if you have a list of items so that your requests are clear. If you have a main point; it is better to show it at the top of your email.

The Reply - Layout

Your job, especially when communicating via email, is to make it easy for your client to comprehend and understand. Here are a few ways to make your email easier to comprehend:

* Fonts: Don't use multi-varied fonts or sentences with multiple colors or a colored background. All of this makes the email hard to read. On rare occasion, you may need to ALL CAPS something or put a phrase in red for added emphasis, which is appropriate.
* Headings: With long emails, it's useful to include headings to break up sections.
* Bullets: Use bullets and numbering to help the reader to identify specific points. With plain text email, to ensure that the reader sees what you sent, insert bullets (use the asterisk character) and numbers manually, rather than relying on the formatting options in the email editor.
* Spacing: Double space between paragraphs.

The Reply - Structure

Many people consider email to be informal. But if it originates from your mortgage office, it needs to be professional. Poor writing makes a bad impression. Here are some items to watch for:

* Grammar: Watch for common mistakes like its versus it's.
* Spelling: Frequent errors include principle versus principal, their versus there, and be sure to spell their name correctly.
* Technical Terms: Just because you know what a Form CA-106 is, doesn't mean the recipient does, be sure to spell out and explain any terms as needed.
* Vocabulary. Even if you can complete the NY Times crossword puzzle in minutes, don't use obscure words for the sake of it. Short and common words help to make the email easy to understand.
* Internet Slang: IMHO (in my humble opinion) don't use Internet slang or abbreviations such as OMG (oh, my God) I have great news. Don't end your emails in TTYL (talk to you later) or BFN (bye for now) I know that for some it is a VBG (very big grin) but if you are not careful that customer could end up like the BSOD (blue screen of death).

Also, as a side note, if you use Microsoft Outlook, don't use Word as your email editor. If your recipient doesn't also use Word, then all the formatting will be lost or the email will be riddled with Microsoft Word HTML-like tags and the email will look terrible.

The Reply - Template

The best way to handle this is to have templates created for most situations, i.e., "I have bad credit, can you help me?" Your response should start out with the answer to the bad credit question. The same logic applies to questions like, "I am consigning for my daughter," or "I want to do a land lot split then get a loan."

By refining your templates, you can create responses that are friendly, helpful, thorough and appear to be custom crafted just for the viewer. A great way to test your template is send it to yourself, then send it to your parent, spouse or friend and see how they respond. Your mail must look worth the time and effort for the recipient to read it.

The Signature

You should always include a signature in your business emails. The components to ALWAYS include are:
* your full name
* your phone number
* your URL
* your address

Consider provide other links, if necessary, that make it easy for your recipient to visit specific portions of your site.

Additionally, as a service to your recipient, include contact details for other third parties (escrow, etc.), unless you know for sure that the recipient has this information.

Now you are not only ready to put on your internet socks, but also your the socks of your customer. A great business email reply will help you to provide the information your customer wants, which will lead to more closed loans, and thousands of dollars of extra business.

How To Write The Perfect Reply Email - Part I

Mortgage Promote — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:47:00 +0000

How To Write The Perfect Reply Email - Part I

A NAMB reader wrote us and said, "I am responding to all my online inquiries but not receiving many sales via email. What can I do?" Assuming it is not the interest rate you are offering; let's focus on how to reply to a business email inquiry.

An Email Is Worth A Thousand Dollars

A picture may be worth a thousand words; but an email can be worth a thousand dollars because any given email to a customer can result in a loan closing for your mortgage company. Due to the high value potential, it is worth the time and effort to create a perfect reply email.

Email is Easy - If Done Right

You do it maybe hundreds of times a day - to friends, to co-workers, to customers. You respond to email requests. You think it is simple, and it is, if it is performed correctly.

There is a famous example of legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden sitting down with his players on the first day of practice and saying, "Today we are going to learn how to put our socks on correctly." The players all laugh and find it hard to believe, but he explains, by doing this simple task properly, they won't get blisters from their socks, and thus won't miss practice.

An Ounce of Prevention...

In this article we are going to discuss how to reply to a customer request by email. We will discuss what to say and what not to say or do. Of course there are a few famous examples of "what not to say" in emails:

Michael Brown (FEMA): right after Hurricane Katrina, when he should have been doing everything he could for the Gulf states, he emailed his staff asking if anyone knew a "good dog-sitter" for his dog.

Enron: Former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Andrew Fastow claimed not to know about the company's illegal accounting practices. During the trial it was shown that not only was Enron aware of the practices, but that Enron used its email system to send Social Security numbers, wage packages, performance evaluations and also sent revealing messages about office romances, affairs and other personal content.

Martha Stewart: In 2004, the Martha Stewart trial reveals how even a single email message can influence a verdict. In an email from Stewart's investment broker, he informed Stewart that he had sold some of Stewart's stocks to offset capital gains taxes. Three days later, Bacanvoic sold Stewart's disputed ImClone stock, refuting his own testimony that the ImClone stocks, which were actually sold at a gain, had also been sold for tax purposes. This single email message resulted in a six month prison sentence for Stewart.

It Starts With a Subject

In five seconds or less, you have to have your informative and powerful subject line persuade your prospect to open your email and to keep reading. Your subject should be informative, personal and brief. I will discuss a few do's and do not's.

Here are a few examples of bad email subjects:

* The information you requested. (A common ploy by Spammers to get you to open their email)
* URGENT!!! THE INFORMATION YOU REQUESTED!!! (Using urgent or ALL CAPS usually means a Spammer)
* Your new home loan. (Not personalized at all, could be a Spammer)
* Re: Online submission form. (Often a potential customer uses a form submission and the mortgage company representative just hits reply - even if it is a bad subject line)
* "Hi!" or "Wazzup?" or worse, a blank subject line will kill your email. People love mysteries, just not in their in-box.

Remember, you only have a few words to grab your prospects attention, so choose them wisely. Here are a few examples of good email subjects:

* Robert Smith: your home loan inquiry from Texas Loan Company.
* Robert Smith: your 125 Apple Lane home loan inquiry.
* San Diego Mortgage proposal for Robert Smith of 125 Apple Lane.

Subject - Updating & Deadlines

As you progress through a series of emails with a client, the focus often changes and the subject that originally was "Robert Smith: your 125 Apple Lane home loan inquiry," may now need to be updated to read, "Robert, you sign your loan documents Monday at 4 pm." By staying current on the subject it makes it easier to search emails.

Also, when having multiple emails back and forth with you and a customer, be sure to trim the "Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:" out.

Email Address Poor "From" Email Settings

Often replies from mortgage companies to their clients have the "From" address constructed in a manner that appears Spammish. That is, the return address might read "Sales" or "Info" at your company name. Because many Spammers use "Sales" or "Info", you should avoid this. My sister recently sent me an email and my filters put it in the Spam folder. She had recently "updated" her email to read from, "Info" Info@HerCompany.com. The use of the word "Info" triggered a possible Spam alert.

Here is what we suggest as your return address: Full name, URL and case corrected email address, i.e., "Rob Smith - HisMortgageCompany.com" Rob@HisMortgageCompany.com

By showing his full name, and adding his web site address (URL), coupled with the easy to read case of his email address (i.e. not the hard to read, all lower case rob@hismortgagecompany.com), this makes it more probable that his email will not get pick off by a filter and will be easy to decipher by the recipient.

Unmatched Return Email Address

Some mortgage companies allow their staff to use whatever email address the representative wants. In example someone at our company should be using Kenzie@YourMortgageCompany.com, but she might use her personal email such as FishingIsMuchBetterThanWork@hotmail.com.

Any business correspondence from your company to a customer should always match the URL of your company. Two major problems occur when you fail to monitor return email addresses. The first problem is that your email may get filtered out as Spam, or it may not get read by the recipient as they were expecting an email from YourMortgageCompany.com, but not from FishingIsMuchBetterThanWork@hotmail.com.

The second problem is that you lose control of your customers. If Kenzie ever leaves the company, her leads will follow her as they have the email FishingIsMuchBetterThanWork@hotmail.com, not Kenzie@YourMortgageCompany.com. You can easily redirect her old company email address to her replacement. If you don't, the result is you lose business.

Email Address - To

If other recipients (escrow, loan officer, administrative assistant) need to be included in an email response, use the CC (carbon copy) feature in an email. This allows the customer to know everyone that is involved in their loan.

The Reply - Timeliness

The more prompt your reply, the more likely you are to get business. This is especially true when you are buying mortgage leads. Conversely, if you take more than 48 hours to reply, you can probably anticipate losing that person as a customer.

Attachments

Try not to include attachments. Many people won't open them fearing they are a virus. Others can't open them if you send a PDF file and they don't have Adobe reader installed. One work-around for this is to have the document they need online so they can click to the document and if it is a PDF file, there can be a link to download the Adobe program.

Other considerations include that your recipient may use a dial-up connection which makes large attachments painfully slow or they have email accounts that either 1) limit the amount of storage space or 2) refuse attachments over a certain size.

Next month we will discuss in Part II what to include in your content, whether to use HTML or plain text, which layout to use and how to structure your content for business reply emails.

Is Your Mortgage Competitor Receiving More Business Than You?

Mortgage Promote — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:44:00 +0000

Is Your Mortgage Competitor Receiving More Business Than You?

Ever wonder how that mortgage competitor of yours is doing? Curious about how you can find out how much traffic or how many sales they receive? Wondering if you can somehow find the web sites that link to them and also get these sites to link to you?

You can use the Internet to perform competitive intelligence on your competitors, and then take that information and use it to improve your site. By using these existing online Internet tools and social engineering queries, you can find out how much business your competitors are earning. You can run these tests on your own site.

Or if you are thinking about starting a new mortgage web site, you can "Test" the business by estimating how well it might do.

As a side note, the best way to test this is to try these techniques on your web site; to see if your competitors can determine how much business you are doing.

Let's start with the easiest methods and work upwards:

1. VISIBLE COUNTER
See if they have a visible stat counter - visit every day for a week and see how the counter changes. Then visit it weekly to watch for changes such as spikes around mortgage rate reductions, or if there is a news story related to a specific type of loan, or if it is time for college and people are examining a refi for their home; if any of that results in more traffic. If you look at sites like http://www.mortgages4u.com/ and http://www.mortgage-ams.com/ you can see their traffic counters. Of course, many people start their counters at 10,000 instead of at 0.

2. DO AN INQUIRY
For most online retail stores, one way to perform competitive intelligence on a competitor is to order something small and see what the invoice number is, then go back and order a week later and see how that invoice number changed. Repeat as often as your curiosity and bank balance allows you to. In the mortgage business, it is hard to keep taking out loans, but sometimes companies have reference numbers if you submit an inquiry. You can watch how that reference number changes.

3. ALEXA.COM
Alexa is a service that estimates traffic based on visitors to various sites using the Alexa toolbar. From the Alexa site, it says;

"How are Alexa's traffic rankings determined? Alexa's traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site's ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and page views. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Page views are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single page view. The site with the highest combination of users and page views is ranked #1.

Alexa's traffic rankings are for top level domains only (e.g. domain.com). We do not provide separate rankings for subpages within a domain (e.g. www.domain.com/subpage.html) or subdomains (e.g. subdomain.domain.com) unless we are able to automatically identify them as personal home pages or blogs, like those hosted on Geocities and Tripod. If a site is identified as a personal home page or blog, its traffic ranking will have an asterisk (*) next to it: Personal Page Avg. Traffic Rank: 3,456*. Personal pages are ranked on the same scale as a regular domain, so a personal page ranked 3,456* is the 3,456th most popular page among Alexa users.

4. STATBRAIN.COM
Statbrain is another service to estimate the amount of traffic to a site. They say,"How accurate is Statbrain? Statbrain estimates the number of visits that a website has based on offsite factors like backlinks, Alexa Rank etc. Statbrain does not have access to log files or any counter information. The number of visits that Statbrain estimates gives you an idea of the number of visits that a website has, but not the exact visitor number."

I have tested it against some of our sites and I would say it is in the ballpark.

5. URLTRENDS.COM
UrlTrends was developed to allow Webmasters, search engine optimizers, and domain buyers to determine a websites (or a specific pages) rankings in the various search engines and directories. Based on this information you can make competitive analysis of any website with another website -- and from this you could possibly determine their traffic by the number of links to them.

UrlTrends offers a report which allows webmasters to view their linking trends for eight different search engines (including Google, Alexa, Yahoo!, MSN), as well as the PageRank and Alexa Rank. A recent addition also allows our users to view the number of end-users of a website that bookmarked the website using Furl or Del.icio.us.

6. YAHOO.COM & GOOGLE.COM
Use Yahoo & Google Search to determine who links to a particular site.

In the search box enter EACH of the following permutations, as even though they appear the same, they may produce different results

http://www.DomainName.com
http://DomainName.com
DomainName.com
link:http://DomainName.com
link:http://www.DomainName.com
link:DomainName.com
"http://www.DomainName.com" with the quote marks
"www.DomainName.com" with the quote marks
"DomainName.com" with the quote marks

Please note, that some of the above searches will return zero results, while others may return thousands of results.

7. WHOLINKS2ME.com
Use online link analysis resources to analyze competitors links, such as WhoLinks2Me.com.

8. SOCIAL ENGINEERING LOOK-UPS
Try asking by using "social engineering look-ups" and try and guess the admin page for the competitors stat program.

domainname.com/logs.htm
domainname.com/logs.html
domainname.com/stats.html
domainname.com/stats/
domainname.com/admin/
domainname.com/logs/

... not all these work, but you get the idea.

9. SOCIAL ENGINEERING SEARCHES
Try "social engineering searches" ie

"domainname.com" +logs
"domainname.com" +stats
"domainname.com" +"number of visitors"
"domainname.com "+visitors
"domainname.com "+"mortgage leads"

... not all these work, but you get the idea.

10. Try peeking at the HTML

Do a right click on your mouse and "View Source" and see if you can see a reference to a stat counter. Usually you can find the code for a stat program right before the closing body HTML code, ie /body

Sometimes domains use free stats counters I just randomly searched and found http://extremetracking.com/open;unique?login=tgrmn you can see their stats - about four visitors a day.

Also, if you look at the referring sites, such as I did at
http://extremetracking.com/open;ref1?login=loan2b
you can see which sites are linking to them, then you can approach that site and ask for a link as well.

First try these techniques on your site, then compare the results to your competitors sites. From their results, you may be able to find more ways to drive traffic to your site. And more targeted traffic…means more closed sales.

How a Blog can Increase Traffic to your Web Site

Mortgage Promote — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:42:00 +0000

How a Blog can Increase Traffic to your Web Site

"Why YOU Should Blog - You Can Receive More Traffic"

Normally, I save the punch line for the end of an article, but this time, the conclusion could impact your site is such a dramatic manner, I am including it up front -- you need to blog your site.

I wrote this article on blogging because many mortgage site owners can add valuable content to their site; but don't because they don't know HTML or because they think they don't have the time to do it. By using a blog you can add your views and comments to your site by simply going to your blog, typing in the entry box and then hit "submit." Yep, (once set up) it is that easy.

That's it - no FTP program, no HTML editor program and no special knowledge (hey, my mom is doing it and she calls me on the phone asking me how to spell a word). You type what you want to say and it is posted to the net. It is that fast and that easy. And a blog can be set up with a free host in minutes or routed to your own domain with just minutes more worth of work.

Of course, I am not talking about your site when I say that many corporate mortgage sites reek of content as if written by emotionless mannequins in a faraway place. The site content has a predictable, high school textbook like quality; somehow attempting to be knowledgeable yet officious, with the only result often achieved is a dull glazing of the eyes and a quick click of despair with the mouse. A blog gives you the opportunity to escape the veil of corporate protocol and drudgery and add a "human voice" to your site, to let your visitors know that there is actually something with a pulse behind the written words.

Now here is where it could get interesting for you. A well-written blog can bring additional traffic to your site, which in turn converts visitors to customers. You need to be blogging.

Just What is a Blog?

A blog is an online journal that is kept on the web. The term "blog" is derived from a blend of the words web and log (Web log) (sorta' like that old FedEx commercial when the actor spoke at 500 words a minute to illustrate how fast their service was). The activity of updating a blog by writing a "post" is called "blogging" and if you have a blog you are a "blogger." One of the reasons blogs are so popular is that you can post to your blog with little or no technical background as the software does all the work for you. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of most early blogs.

We even set up a blog to show the past seven years of articles we have written for NAMB magazine at MortgagePromote.com/articleslist.htm on everything from internet marketing to mortgage leads.

Some of the reasons people blog include:
* to be creative (some people are good writers and they blog because they can)
* to release stress or serve as a personal diary (I have a friend who recently became single and is blogging about dating in your 40's)
* to share news with friends (here is what is happening with the proposed park)
* to talk about a favorite item (wine or Chargers Football) or hobby (organic gardening or stained glass), and
* to attract business (that's you)

Can A Blog Increase Traffic To Your Site?

Well, yes, it can... but only for "good blogs." The same way that there are many mortgage sites; but generally web sites with quality and many links get ranked high, works the same way for blogs. You can receive traffic, but it is often related to the quality or appeal of your blog.

What To Blog on your Mortgage Site

You can take a few lessons from real estate agents who operate their own personal sites. Add links to local schools, reference news articles on how testing scores were for each grade, comment on how the new widening of the freeway, while a drag for the next two years, will actually make some communities benefit in the long run (which may subtlety help convince a potential buyer to purchase a home there, leading to a loan for you).

You can also discuss sites that make your life as a member of the community a bit easier. You might include a link to the online traffic report saying you always check that site before you leave for work and before you return home. If your company recycles, be sure to include that type of info in your blog, saying how you arranged with the local girl scout troop (add a picture if you can) to come in once a month and collect all your cans and bottles so they can raise monies for their projects.

You can pepper in a SMALL does of corporate advertising, but try and masquerade it somewhat either by using a testimonial format (John and Tami Smith recently closed a home loan with us and they said they really appreciated us sending our notary to their office) or "news-like" bulletins (Interests rates dropped today, and according to CNN, this appears to be the bottom of the market - possibly, a good time to reexamine your home refinancing needs).

Use a Human Voice

There is a scene from the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the voice of the HAL 9000 computer, says, "It can only be attributable to human error." HAL says it with such remarkable efficiency and conviction, that it initially is hard to doubt the computer, except... that it is a computer.

Trust, charisma and credibility are precious traits, and they are difficult to convey via a blog. Your readers will appreciate empathy, compassion, authority, honesty and even humor. A little humility (umm, my wife suggested this after reading my first draft) in your blogging is also helpful.

In the same vein, don't write about your favorite Star Trek episode, what kind of car you just bought or how that vacation at the six star hotel on the remote South Pacific island is soooooo overrated. But, if you did happen to catch the largest trout in the last four years at Long Lake, you could probably mention that and get away with it.

And don't forget the little things to mention, such as if you sponsor a soccer team, you can add to your blog, "The mighty SoCal Loan Warriors won two of their last three games in convincing fashion in the tough 10-12 age category. Their next game is Saturday at noon, at Johnson's park. Be sure to arrive early as the game will probably sell out."

Next month we will talk about how to choose the right blog software for you (and more importantly which software not to use), the biggest mistakes companies make when they blog and, most importantly, the hidden secret to use in order to make your blog found, almost instantly, on the net.

Internet Marketing Techniques: The Highway to Disaster - "Get In, Hold On, Shut Up"

Mortgage Promote — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:33:00 +0000

"Get In, Hold On, Shut Up"

Internet Marketing Techniques: The Highway to Disaster

There is a bumper sticker that goes something like, "Get in, hold on, shut up." We frequently see mortgage sites try and apply this "Click In, Fill The Form & Shut Up" strategy to their valuable visitors. Visitors don't like it.

One of the most frequently asked question by our clients is quite simply, "How do I make my pay per click (PPC) program more effective?" Everyone is fighting to attract qualified visitors via the internet; but it is what you do with the visitor when they arrive that separates successful PPC efforts from those campaigns that merely cost money.

Keywords Are Not Magical. Content Is.

Internet users are becoming more sophisticated. You can no longer expect someone to show up to your site, blindly do whatever you want, then close a loan. Pay per click marketing is not some wu-wu magic that somehow takes a lost soul and converts them into a $500,000 mortgage loan customer. Undeniably, or is it unbelievably, PPC advertisers think that once you have paid for keywords, people will flow to your site and close loans. I have some very bad news for you... that is not going to happen if you have bad content.

Pay to Play

The fastest way to attract traffic to your site is quite simply to pay for it. By using both Google
http://adwords.google.com/ and Yahoo! (formerly Overture) http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/ you can reach approximately 90% of the domestic US search market. Remember this is pay per click (PPC), so each time someone visits your site, it will cost you, whether they use your mortgage services or not.

Aren't All PPC Words Alike?

Let's assume you are based in Dallas and offer home loans and refinancing to Dallas area customers. If a potential customer searches for "Dallas home loan" at Yahoo < p="Dallas+home+loan"> you get two columns of results. A wide column of search results on your left, and a narrow column of results on your right. The results on the left and displayed according to what the Yahoo algorithm has perceived to be the most relevant findings. The results on your right are determined by what the advertiser will spend. Google is set up the same way with paid results on the right hand side of the screen.

How Much Are Your Competitors Spending For Your Keywords?

Yahoo has a feature where you can see all the bids for any keyword. Here are some comparative top three bids for the Yahoo! PPC.

Keyword Searched Bid #1 \ Bid #2 \ Bid #3

Dallas home loan $14.50 \ $6.50 \ $4.02
Dallas home mortgage $2.79 \ $2.78 \ $2.77
Dallas refi $0.63 \ $0.62 \ $0.35
Dallas refinance $14.50 \ $5.28 \ $5.27
Dallas home refinance $3.21 \ $3.21\ $2.10

As you can see from these recent results, that the top bidder for the term "Dallas home loan" is willing pay up $14.50 per click for visitors to their site. The second bidder pays up to $6.50 and the third will pay $4.02. That is quite a spread, with the top bidder willing to pay three times what the third bidder pays.

Mortgage company owners will bid to land in the top three rankings because these are the most likely links to be clicked.

Don't Waste Your Clicks!

At these prices, you must make sure your site is perfect and delivers exactly what the visitor is expecting (ie Dallas home loan information) because if your visitor clicks on your PPC keyword and you deliver information on anything else (i.e. history of your company, picture of your office, a page listing all the mortgage programs you provided), that visitor will leave. You will lose the money you spent to attract that visitor because you failed to precisely provide information on the keyword they selected, "Dallas home loans".

If you look at the second term "Dallas home mortgage" you see the top three bids are separated by pennies, and the bidders are paying about $2.75 per click. If you get 1000 visitors it will cost $2,750 to attract these highly targeted, potential customers.

You can also research how many monthly searches occur at Yahoo! for any search term. Looking at the keywords we searched for above, we find two words have about 1,000 searches a month; Dallas refinance and Dallas home loan.

Keyword Searched Bid #1 \ Bid #2 \ Bid #3 Monthly Searches at Yahoo!

Dallas home loan $14.50 \ $6.50 \ $4.02 1122
Dallas home mortgage $2.79 \ $2.78 \ $2.77 32
Dallas refi $0.63 \ $0.62 \ $0.35 0
Dallas refinance $14.50 \ $5.28 \ $5.27 1141
Dallas home refinance $3.21 \ $3.21\ $2.10 25

Some may wonder why a term like "Dallas refi," devoid of searches, has bids associated with it. The reason is because if anyone ever does type "Dallas refi" your click will cost just $0.63 which is a substantial savings over the similar keyword "Dallas refinance" with a $14.50 top click value.

Great PPC Keywords + Poor Content = No Sales

When creating a PPC campaign, most mortgage site owners focus upon keywords: keyword creation, keyword selection, keyword bidding, etc. There are many components to the PPC game, including: title creation, description content, keyword creation, keyword selection and keyword bidding.

The single most overlooked aspect of a PPC program is also the damaging and expensive aspect of the PPC process... your written content. Very simple things like: having a copyright at the bottom of your page which shows last year, making the visitor scroll down a page to find what they are searching for, making the visitor click on a link to find what they are seeking to not showing the current loan rates you offer on your site…all can lead to a lost visitor.

You Had Me at Hello

It is not like where Rene Zellwegger says to Tom Cruise (in the movie Jerry Maquire), "You had me at hello." Your visitors need to be wooed, courted, pampered, spoiled, cared for, and treated with respect in order to become a customer. There is a huge (financial) difference between getting customers to your site and keeping them there.

When the visitor arrives at your site, you must have the complementary sales wording in place to convert a marketing lead into a sales customer.

Driving Miss Daisy

If you want your PPC program to be successful, whether to attract home loans or mortgage leads, you must most do more than pick a few words and bid. You must step back and look at the entire process from key word formulation, to bidding strategies, to the customer expectation and experience once they arrive at your site. Make the visitors unknowingly enjoy the perfection that your content can deliver by providing exactly what they want, when they want it, and where they want it.

You must cater to your visitors; so you efficiently and nicely chauffeur them around your web site.

Internet Marketing is Like Marketing Sex

Mortgage Promote — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:15:00 +0000

There is often a bit of confusion about the blurry line of distinction between sales and marketing.

For example, we recently received an email from a new client. We were sending him about 50+ mortgage leads a day. After a few days he wrote us saying, "I have received 250+ leads... but where are the sales?" To which we replied, "As we discussed, we do the Internet marketing and deliver the leads to your company. That is our job. We control the traffic flow to your web business. Once they arrive at your company, you do the sales. You control the sales with your staff."

Little Sizzle, a Dash Of Appeal, a Bit Of Allure

Internet marketing is a lot like marketing sex. You need a little sizzle, a dash of appeal, a bit of allure and something that meets and satisfies the user's desire.

There is a great illustration of the distinctions between marketing, branding, public relations, sales etc., it goes like this.

You see an attractive person at a party. You march across the room, go up to the person and say, in a matter of fact tone, "I'm fantastic in bed. How 'bout it?"" -- That's "Direct Marketing."

You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see an attractive person.
You give your friend ten dollars to approach the attractive person and they say, "Hi, my friend over there (pointing to you) is great in bed, how 'bout it?". -- That's "Advertising."

You see an attractive person at a party. You go up to them and get their telephone number. The next day you call and say, "Hi, I'm fantastic in bed." -- That's "Telemarketing."

You're at a party and see an attractive person. You give two of your friends ten bucks each to stand within earshot of the attractive person and point over to you and say, "I hear that person is fantastic in bed." Then they talk about what a great person you are. -- That's "Public Relations."

You're at a party and see an attractive person. That person immediately walks over to you and says, "Hi, I hear you're great in bed, how 'bout it?". -- That's "Brand Recognition."

You're at a party and see an attractive person. You talk them into
going home with your friend. -- That's a "Sales Rep."

Your friend can't satisfy them so the attractive person calls you. -- That's "Tech Support."

You're at a party when you realize that there are many attractive people in attendance. So you start at one corner of the room and go to each person you find attractive and shout at the top of your lungs, "I'm fantastic in bed!" Soon you are asked to leave the party.
That's "Spam” marketing.

Your Online Marketing Efforts

Now, how does all relate to your online marketing efforts? Are your visitors looking for something sexy, or are they seeking something more substantial?

Direct Marketing: Contact real estate offices and escrow companies and ask for a link from their web site to yours.

Advertising: Use pay-per-click efforts, buy keywords at various search portals, advertise in newsletters and opt-in ezines.

Telemarketing: Call online mortgage companies in other cities and states and offer to exchange leads for customers you cannot service.

Public Relations: Do postings in various newsgroups and moderated newsgroups providing helpful information. Also add a mortgage calculator to your web site that anyone can use without logging in our having to complete a sign-in process.

Brand Recognition: This is something that is earned.

Spam: Unsolicited emails can produce short term results, but the negative connotations and possible loss of your ISP or web site host can destroy your business.

Other Ways Sex Sells

A few other ways "sex sells" (or "sex doesn't sell") for your mortgage web site:

A Pretty Face: Make sure your web site is attractive and pleasant in appearance. No one likes to see a mortgage site constructed with a FrontPage 97 template and with 13 different color fonts.

A Tight Fitting Outfit: If you are selling mortgages, don't offer anything else. Links to Amazon, your favorite sites, the IRS, are detrimental to you. Customers are hard to get…keep them on your web site.

Scantily Clothed: Don't skimp on information on your web site. If a visitor has to search, or heaven-forbid, call for ANY reason other to complete an application, then you haven't done your job. ALL information on rates, procedures, about your company, should be on your site.

Movies Are For The Theaters: Do NOT make your customers watch a Flash introduction of spinning houses, swirling interest rate symbols, flying dollar bills and end up at some monolithic edifice that is your office building. Visitors want info, not entertainment.

Talking Dirty: Never bad-mouth the competition from your web site.

The Promise of More Than You Intend to Deliver: Don't blink and blast an interest rate of 3.95% on your site if it only applies to loans of less than $50,000 and incomes in excess of $400,000. Show ALL your rates, not just the eye-stoppers.

Tricks are for Dogs: Any traffic generating trick, such as creating a Pamela Lee Anderson worship page on your site, that works will stop working next week when everyone wise to what you are doing and no one will fall for it.

Romance: People like to treated nice, they like to be cared for -- so, do this for your visitors at your site. Make it easy to navigate your site, answer their questions before they have to ask them and be responsive when they email you.

Stepping Stones To Acquiring And Maintaining Customers

What mortgage site owners are really seeking, is the same outcome that often occurs via sex... a marriage. Mortgage web site owners want a relationship that is good for both parties to occur. The sex and romance, while an integral part in the courtship maze, are simply the stepping stones to acquiring and maintaining customers.

The Hole In The Fire

Mortgage Promote — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 05:17:00 +0000

It was August 1949, a bone dry day in Montana with near 100 degree heat. The lightning-caused blaze burned more than 3,000 acres and controlling it required the efforts of more than 400 firefighters.

Fifteen brave firefighters parachuted into remote Mann Gulch to fight an out of control forest fire. Shortly after the smokejumpers were on the ground the fire jumped across a ravine, flared up and trapped them between the flames and a steep slope.

The fifteen firefighters panicked and ran, trying to make it up a 76% grade in hopes of reaching a crest for safety. It was hopeless, but they all dropped their heavy gear and ran, except their commander. He knew the climb was too great and the fire too swift and knew that it wasn’t going to work. So he stopped, took out matches, and lit a fire in front of him in the tall dry grass that was between him and the slope.

His fire rapidly spread up the slope creating an area that was hot, but couldn't burn anymore as all the fuel had burned. He followed his burned trail and yelled for his crew to come to him for safety. The others were so panic stricken that they just continued running and climbing up the slope.

The commander went into the middle of the burned-out area and laid down. The turbulent Mann Gulch fire raged everywhere around him, except for where he was.

A Hole In The Fire

Just 90 minutes after the 15 smokejumpers had parachuted, 10 were dead, unable to out race the fire as they were consumed by a wall of 200 foot flames. Two others died the next day due to burns they received. The commander of the unit lived as he had created a safety spot, "a hole in the fire."

This concept became known as an “escape fire,” and it became part of forest fire training. This tragedy later spawned the 1952 Hollywood movie, "Red Skies of Montana."

What was interesting about this was that the commander had found a way to benefit everyone; he had yelled and offered sanctuary to his crew. Ultimately the Forest Service taught this technique to all forest fire fighters. This was something that would benefit the many.

This now brings us to the internet and how this can apply to your web site. I will discuss two applications from the "hole in the fire" story: one, the value of a story, and two, how the "hole in the fire" works in reverse on the Internet.

The Value Of Stories

Does your company have a good story to tell? Can you share something with your potential customers that converts you from a cold heartless stop on a journey of a thousand clicks; into a reason to pause on your site and cause the viewer to pause and say, "I think I will stay on this site and explore a little bit more?"

Across The Frozen Tundra...

I was watching an interview with the owners of NFL films. This is the company that films the NFL with lots of slow-motion action footage, crisp editing, a musical background best described as a Star Wars / 70's action movie / Classical marching mind-meld.They were also famous for using rich commentary behind the powerful narration by John Facenda: "The autumn wind is a pirate, blustering in relentlessly from the sea. These cold winds whisper of high hopes as helmet against helmet breaks the silence of the crisp day."

They could make even a 17-0 sleeper look like the most dramatic game in the history of organized sports. For example, in a Dallas Cowboys highlight film in 1967, it first described Green Bay's football field famously as "a frozen tundra" (across the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field), as they were showing the muddied and bloodied hands of lineman in their stance and cold frost forming as they breathed in and out.

Remember, Remember, Remember My Name...

When they interviewed Steve Sabol, one of the principals of NFL films, he was asked why have they been so successful given that Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC and ESPN all do essentially the same thing. He replied that they were different and then stated, "Tell me a fact and I'll remember. Tell me the truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and I'll remember forever."

Fire In The Hole

If you have ever found your site ranked first for a "money" keyword or phrase (mortgage, San Diego home loans, refi), you find that you are absolutely besieged with visitors, questions, orders and sales, almost to the point where you are unable to handle the volume. It literally is a "fire in the hole." Often you are not quite sure what you have done to achieve the top ranking, and even if you knew, you would not tell anyone.

Unlike the "hole in the fire story" where what you have learned benefits everyone, when you have a "fire in the hole," situation, you just have no reason to share that information each person you benefit possibly has a negative impact on your site and rankings.

Confusion Can Lead to Positive Outcomes; or More Confusion

The confusion and lack of communication at the Mann Gulch fire prompted major changes in smokejumper training. It has resulted in greater safety and lives saved. What was learned during this tragedy has created a method that still works today - the back burn fire.

On the internet, there is a lot of confusion about what works, and what doesn't. Even when you find something that does work, it most likely has a short life span, due to frequently changing search engine algorithms.

An early example of a technique that once helped sites achieve top rankings was called keyword stuffing. If you had a site about, say, "Seattle home loans," you might have repeated the phrase "Seattle home loans" a hundred times on your site. This way the search engine would have surmised that, surprise, your site was more about "Seattle home loans" than any other site, so it would have ranked you first.

If you use keyword stuffing techniques today, you get banned from the search engines. And that would be a fatal fire you can't extinguish.

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MortgagePromote.com is a leading Internet marketing web site that provides hundreds of articles & information tips on web site promotion, search engine marketing and search engine optimization; to help loan officers & mortgage companies increase their online sales. Aries and Farris has been providing nationwide mortgage leads & Internet marketing services since 1998.
Web site: M ortgagePromote.com

For online mortgage leads please visit our mortgage leads page.

Originally published April 2007.

Hey, That's Smart Internet Marketing

Mortgage Promote — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 05:04:00 +0000

It is hard to stand out among the tens, hundreds, thousands of internet companies available to potential mortgage customers. In this month's article, I am going to mention a few smart things that separate successful mortgage firms from their competitors.

I Should Be in Pictures

My business partner, Robert, is a Wall Street Journal junkie. He is always reading about how companies do business online, then we discuss his findings and see what we can do for ourselves and our clients, if anything. Robert recently read about a company that converts those thousands of snapshots you have around the house into digital images. One of the companies mentioned, ScanMyPhotos.com, had an all-you-can-put into a box for $99 special. I purchased their box, filled it with the about 2,000 snapshots, dropped it in the prepaid box they sent me. Then, just four days (that is smart doing such fast turnaround) later I got the box back with all my pictures plus a DVD with the digitized images. Apparently they have some high tech machine that takes a stack of regular photos and converts them to jpg images. Here is where it got real smart...

Hey, That's Me...

Out of all those images I included, they actually selected one that they guessed was my family, and took my family picture and put it onto a postcard coupon for 30% off. In fact, four postcard coupons, all with my family's picture, so I could send it to friends so they would receive a discount on their order. I even gave Robert a coupon since he actually found the company.

Flowers For Mom

This past Valentine's Day I ordered flowers online for my mother, as I always do. I typically buy from a company called GrowerFlowers.com because I first tried them quite a few years ago, and they always had performed.

There is a little lesson in this as well, as if your current customers had a good experience during their loan, they are far more likely to come back to you next time they need another loan.

Back to the GrowerFlowers.com story. As I was checking out, I remembered they always had a place where I could select what kind of card was to be included in the order and what I wanted the card to say. This year I noticed a few things different; and better. First, they had more cards to choose from and they had images of both the outside of the card and the inside text showing where what I typed would go. Second, they added a feature where I could select a digital picture from my hard drive, and upload it to be imprinted into the card. For a moment, as I was thinking that is a cool feature, I pondered sending that picture of my wife in that cute little negligee that I liked so much... but then I thought mom would prefer to see her granddaughter instead. After looking closer at the picture of my wife, it was probably a good call.

And GrowerFlowers.com does other smart things as well. They have "suggestions" as what to say in your card if you are creatively challenged. They offer a handy reminder feature. I could enter names, birthdays, anniversaries etc of people and then GrowerFlowers.com would send me an email a couple of weeks before so I could remember what to do... Try missing your anniversary -- that is not so smart.

I am sure a few other flower companies are doing this, but I am so pleased that I just keep going back... And, telling my friends.

Car Buying

I recently was buying a used car for my daughter and I wanted to try and find out about a car history so I ended up at VehicleIdentificationNumber.com. Normally pop-ups are a turn off, but this pop-up said, "VIN Number Available? If not, please leave us your email address and we will send you a reminder to you."

What was smart about this, is that many people don't have a car VIN number immediately available and this site sent an email reminder to me so I could easily return to the site when I had the VIN number from my car.

Best Enjoyed By

The book, "In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies" By Robert H. Waterman, Jr., Thomas J. Peters; contains one of my favorite examples of how to be smarter about the presentation of your business.

Words are a very powerful tool, especially online, where words are the way a potential customer judges you. The "In Search of Excellence" book has an example of two companies and how they state the expiration date on fruit drinks. One company prints, "Expires on 6-25-07" on their product while the others states, "Best enjoyed by 6-25-07". Now the difference is subtle, but the "best enjoyed" has better wording.

Searching Your Back Yard

Search engines are getting smarter too. Now when you do a search for something than is best served by a local provider (i.e. dry cleaning, donuts, real estate, home loans) the search engines are reading the origin of the request by using your internet protocol (IP) address. The search engine can tell your location with your IP and deliver results that best meet your needs.

This is especially evident with Google and if you actually create an account with them, which I do. I just searched for the single, generic term "plumber" and I got back all my results that specifically said "San Diego" in the Adwords ad (that is the little column on the left of your screen that are paid advertisements). Google knows that if I get better results with them that I will keep using them. And if my results are better then I end up using the companies that advertise with Google, so these companies benefit as well. That's smart.

How's Your Child?

For a number of years, some doctors' offices will call after a visit just to say they are following up on our visit and to see if we have any questions. Hmm, I always used to think that someone had a Porsche payment due... But, it makes good sense for marketing and patient relations and also helps with limiting malpractice exposure. Even our veterinary doctor (at least his staff) calls after visits to his clinic. (He should be providing us with kitty limousine service given how much we spend there.)

How's Your Car?

I did buy a car for my daughter and then I had several calls from the dealer. The first was from a person who specialized in answering questions such as how does cruise control work or where is the spare tire found. The second call was from the person that sold the car thanking me for purchasing the car and just making sure I was happy. These guys should call because if you think cats are expensive, you should try daughters...

Get Smart With Your Site

So, take a few minutes and look at your site. Go back to your site and re-read how you have your wording. Try to click through your site as a first time visitor would. Is it friendly, concise, compelling, helpful and informative? Does your wording get you customers, or does your wording cost you customers? As you go through your site ask yourself what would you want to see? How can the navigation be better?

If you do this, you will find that your web site results in more closed mortgage loans. Ahh, so smart.

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MortgagePromote.com is a leading Internet marketing web site that provides hundreds of articles & information tips on web site promotion, search engine marketing and search engine optimization; to help loan officers & mortgage companies increase their online sales. Aries and Farris has been providing nationwide mortgage leads & Internet marketing services since 1998.

Web site: M ortgagePromote.com

For online mortgage leads please visit our mortgage leads page.

Originally published March 2007.

Time For You To Update Your 1999 Web Site?

Mortgage Promote — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 04:48:00 +0000

A few things have changed since you created your web site. There are probably many things that changed you wished hadn't: 9-11, dial-up, YouTube.com, the Google stock price, maybe your weight or even your spouse... Has your web site changed?

Maybe in 1999 you had a web site that you had created by your next door neighbor's kid. Hey, it's 2007 now, and even if you still have your site created by the kid next door, the site is bound to be better as kids are even smarter and the software is superior.

Party Like It's 1999

I remember as we were leaving 2006 (and every new year before) and getting close to 2007 that many radio stations were playing the Prince song, "1999." It was funny that Prince actually released that song 17 years before 1999. Now that we are on the other side of 1999, that song will probably get less and less play, as we move further away.

Is Your Web Site Getting Less Play?

Your mortgage web site is also well into 2007 and you should have had a chance to update your pages. The most common error we are still seeing is web pages that have copyright 2006 (or 2005 or 1999 or ...) at the bottom of the pages. When your visitor views your site and notices an out-of-date copyright year or time sensitive content in the body (Happy New Year) that is several months past its pull date, the visitor begins to suspect the quality of your site.

There have been many changes to the internet since 1999, and what used to work, may no longer be viable, or may now even get your web site penalized. Let's discuss a few of the changes.

Multiple Directory Listings

It is in your mortgage company's best interest to have high quality links directed to your site. Links vary in value, but generally a link from CNN.com is better than a link from AuntieSarahsBurgerJoint.com. And a link from MortgageLinkFarm.com may be detrimental.

DMOZ Directory

DMOZ (DMOZ.org) is great to be included in as it feeds the Google directory results. DMOZ is also very unorganized as most of the categories use volunteer editors who often are too busy to stay current, or they have their own listing in a directory and they reason they volunteer is to keep out competitors like you. Regardless, DMOZ has its value in the Google feed and it is free.

YAHOO Directory

To be included in the Yahoo directory, start with finding the RIGHT DIRECTORY category http://search.yahoo.com/dir you belong in and then look for the link at the top right of the page that states "Suggest a site." It will cost you $299 to recommend your own site, but it is $299 well spent.

WIKIPEDIA

Some companies will even use novel ways to gain additional links. Most people are not aware that you can easily create a Wikipedia page for your own business. In example, DiTech uses Wikipedia.org, the online encyclopedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditech.com) to promote its DiTech site.

"Ditech.com is a lender, offering mortgages and lines of credit as a member of the General Motors family of companies, specifically General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC). Ditech.com is a business unit of GMAC Mortgage."

ABOUTUS.ORG

AboutUs.org is similar to Wikipedia, except that its purpose is for businesses to insert their listings. Creating a page for your business on this site will also tend to rank very well for your business name.

In-Bound Linking Strategies

The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com offers tips from Google staff members and can be useful in finding out what to do and, as importantly, what not to do.

Google Ranking Algorithm Devaluing Exchanged Links

One of the ways sites would obtain high rankings in Google was to have many sites link to their site. The thinking was that if other sites were linking to a specific site, then that specific site must be valuable to the Google searchers. Over time this theory became abused with link farms (sites set up to do nothing but link), paid links (you pay for a link to your site) and bogus site links (companies create fictitious web sites with the sole purpose of linking to a specific site).

The Google staff has announced that they have "tremendously refined its link-weighting algorithms. We have more people working on Google's link-weighting for quality control and to correct issues we find. So nowadays, undermining the PageRank algorithm is likely to result in the loss of the ability of link-selling sites to pass on reputation via links to other sites." In short, don't use sneaky techniques for inbound links.

Link Baiting

Link baiting is a technique which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites and visitor rewarded content sites like Digg.com. The way the bait works is that you create high content or useful information as the hook. Hooks can take on a variety of forms such as: news hooks (what is the latest interest rates), contrary hooks (why to use a variable interest rates when fixed rates are 2%), attack hooks (how the Fed Reserve is ruining the economy), resource hooks (historical average VA and FHA interest rates) and even humor hooks (10 ways to tell if your blind date is really a mortgage broker).

Some people link bait their reputation by building an authority through services such as http://answers.yahoo.com. In this example a person might answer all the questions posed at Yahoo Answers (Should I get a fixed or variable mortgage? I have bad credit, how do I get a loan?) and others viewing the answers might find that person useful and be inclined to utilize their mortgage services.

Site Verification

See if you site is in Google using their Site status wizard https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitestatus and it will also tell you the last time the Googlebot last visited your site. If you are not listed you will find a link on how to add your site map to Google. Both Google (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/) and Yahoo (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) offer site verification and site mapping.A couple of advantages happen when you add your site, via your account, to Google and Yahoo. First, you are more likely to get indexed. Second, you have access to statistics and error information about your site.

Party Like It Is 2007

By the time you finish updating your site and submitting it to the various directories you will be ready to party... until it is time for the next round of updates.
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MortgagePromote.com is a leading Internet marketing web site that provides hundreds of articles & information tips on web site promotion, search engine marketing and search engine optimization; to help loan officers & mortgage companies increase their online sales. Aries and Farris has been providing nationwide mortgage leads & Internet marketing services since 1998.
Web site: M ortgagePromote.com

For online mortgage leads please visit our mortgage leads page.

Originally published February 2007.

The Donald Rumsfeld Manifesto and Search Engine Optimization

Mortgage Promote — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 04:17:00 +0000

When clients ask my partner Robert about search engine optimization (SEO), he likes to quote former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who Robert claims is highly relevant to search engine marketing. Mr. Rumsfeld was quoted as saying, "There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns, that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know."

Then he tells the client that is how SEO works, whether Google, Yahoo!, MSN or any other engine. Search engines seem to more closely to the world of TV Star Trek than the real world. The engines have nonlinear boundaries, appear to operate in multiple dimensions, somehow contain all the information known to man and have unwritten rules that frequently change, without warning.

"There Are Known Knowns; There are Things We Know We Know."

Here is what we know... If you want to be found on the internet you need to be found in the databases of Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Other engines are nice to be found in as well, but these three will account for 98% of traffic.

"We Also Know There Are Known Unknowns, That Is To Say We Know There Are Some Things We Do Not Know."

Matt Cutts is a Google employee who states on his web site "Hi, I joined Google as a software engineer in January 2000. I'm currently the head of the Google's Webspam team. I sometimes blog about things, but please bear in mind my disclaimer that the views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer."

Here are some comments from MattCutts.com on some "known unknowns" about Google and ranking.

URL NAMING: Using dashes over underscores to delimit words in URLs is better. In example, MortgagePromote.com/mortgage-leads.html is better than MortgagePromote.com/mortgage_leads.html

SPAM STRATEGY: Overall Google's strategy is to not spend time on correcting individual spam cases, but to concentrate on creating a better algorithm which takes into account spamming. Having said that, Google will take action on specific cases of spam.

SITE MAPS: A site map won't necessarily get your site crawled. It is more important to have good quality links to your site to achieve a higher degree of full site indexing.

SELLING LINKS: In order to artificially create a sense of high quality links, many sites buy links to their own sites. If you sell links, you should mark them with the nofollow tag. Not doing so can affect your reputation in Google. Earned-links are earned and given by choice. Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines. Google's is against selling/buying links, and Matt indicates they are good at spotting them - both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.

EGO AND SPLASH PAGES: It's not only Googlebot who doesn't watch a 20 second video load before the home page comes into view. A lot of users don't either. Splash pages can negatively impact your Google indexing.

FLASH VS. HTML: If you use Flash, you create a HTML version as well. HTML is easier to index and improves your chances of getting indexed.

META TITLES: Each pages should have its own unique and descriptive tag and headings for every page. In example, if your company is called Mortgage Promote, then Mortgage Promote should not be the meta title on every page. Titles should reflect the page substance. If you page is about San Diego Home Loans, then that should be the meta title.

SAY WHAT YOU MEAN: If your site is about "San Diego home loans" but the visible content of your site says "Get your mortgage loan with us," you won't be found for San Diego home loans" because those words aren't visible to the visitor.

"But There Are Also Unknown Unknowns - The Ones We Don't Know We Don't Know."

RANKING PARAMETERS: Factors such as "Page Rank (Google tool bar)" and "inbound links (more is better)" and "trusted sites (colleges and major corporations)" and "age of domain (older is better)" and "keywords embedded in URL (ie HomeLoans.com vs JohnsonAssociatesAgency.com)" and "ownership (do you own too many similar type domains?)" and a plethora of other unknown unknowns all impact where your site appears in the Google rankings.

GOOGLE UPDATES: Google updates everything all at the same time, typically every three or six months. This is what causes massive changes in rankings.

CLICK FRAUD: Many people want to know how Google prevents click fraud, but Google isn't telling. Google's priority is to protect advertisers, so that means not disclosing any proprietary methods which would allow click fraud perpetrators to reverse-engineer our systems.

The Right Stuff

Achieving success is not about doing a few things 100% right, it is about doing hundreds of things, many of which you don't even know, 100% right. As you can see, Rumsfeld was in a can't win situation. He had do everything right, he even had to be right in things he didn't know about. He couldn't and that is how he lost his top ranking.Maybe we should update Rumsfeld's quote to reflect the uncertainty of the search engines. "There are right rights; there are things we know we do right. We also know there are wrong rights, that is to say we know there are some things we should not do if they are not right. But there are also unknown right and wrongs - the ones we don't know we don't know if they are right, or wrong."

Now if that makes sense... you can do the right thing and get your site highly ranked in the search engines.

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MortgagePromote.com is a leading Internet marketing web site that provides hundreds of articles & information tips on web site promotion, search engine marketing and search engine optimization; to help loan officers & mortgage companies increase their online sales. Aries and Farris has been providing nationwide mortgage leads & Internet marketing services since 1998.
Web site: M ortgagePromote.com

For online mortgage leads please visit our mortgage leads page.

Originally published January 2007.

The Long Tail of Mortgage Leads

Mortgage Promote — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 04:05:00 +0000

Author Chris Anderson has a new book, "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More." The Long Tail has implications for your online mortgage site and your source for online mortgage leads. And it can also impact the amount of revenue you generate.

As you are aware, the abnormally variable interest rates of a few years ago are creating another boom in securing new loans. Many people may be seeking a new variable or new fixed loan for their property. This trend presents a real opportunity for mortgage companies, especially those with web sites.

Gosh, You Mean The Internet Is Different From The Real World?

In the real world a dog is man's best friend, wagging their tail, every time they see you. On the web, a visitor is man's best friend, using a mouse instead of a tail to greet you.

Not surprisingly, there are many distinctions between generating customers in the real world versus online client generation. In Anderson's book he explains that in traditional retail, you have the 80/20 rule, with 20 percent of the products accounting for 80 percent of your revenue. He goes on to say that online it is different; completely different.

In example, the average Barnes & Noble store carries 130,000 titles, which is quite impressive for a real world store. But when you look at the online book retailer Amazon, over half of their book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles.

More Is, Well... More

At Barnes & Noble all it can earn is on the books in the store, but at Amazon, since they carry more titles, they can earn more, and they do.

We also see that more is better occasionally in the real world; that is why my daughter's favorite ice cream store is not called "Baskin & Robbins 2 Flavors"

Less is More Too

Essentially The Long Tail describes the ability of the Internet to service micromarkets. This is possible due to the delivery system of the Web provides. Take for example Ecast, a digital jukebox company providing service to bars. They find that 99% of their top 10,000 will play at least once per month.

This why the subtitle of his book is, "Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More."

Long Tail, Plus Lots of Music, Equals Lots of Money

Kevin Laws, a venture capitalist, states this about the music industry, "The biggest money is in the smallest sales." I am sure there are just enough sales of such classics as Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through The Tulips" and "William Shatner's "Spaced Out" CD to add a few extra dollars to the bottom line of online retailers. When you add those dollars to the thousands of other songs that have just a few sales each month, the overall effect can be staggering.

My Mother's Long Tail

My mother is English, but has lived in America since she was 20 years old. She still loves English humor. I bought her a NetFlix annual subscription for Christmas. She rents the most obscure English DVDs imaginable. She also contributes to the bottom line of NetFlix.

When The (Real World) Music's Over

Even Wal-Mart, the largest music seller in the world, is physically challenged. They place their music section in highly visible locations at low prices but they are limited to about 3,000 titles in 500 square feet. They concede the niche music or older titles to the online sellers.

If you have ever been to Tower Records, an 89-store music retailer, you might recall walking down the aisles seeing thousands of music titles, or searching through the bargain bin for that one favorite song you have forgotten about. While that may be fun, online searchable databases and price comparison web sites can help you find the hard-to-find version of "Respect" by Otis Redding, (although Aretha's version is far more popular), in less time than it takes you to get in your car and turn the ignition.

As I write this article, I have just read that Tower Records can be almost $100M in debt and is on the verge of closing. The company went through a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing. Sources site the advent of the internet, from Napster to iTunes, as the downfall of Tower Records.

So How Does This Information On Books And Music Impact Your Mortgage Leads?

You can generate more business for your online mortgage web site by casting a wider net for mortgage leads. Take for example a relatively niched search like "San Diego Mortgage," and you will find the number of searches last month at Yahoo are as follows:

Search Number Keyword
2386 San Diego mortgage
1393 San Diego mortgage broker
986 San Diego mortgage company
857 San Diego mortgage lender
391 San Diego reverse mortgage
254 San Diego mortgage refinance
217 San Diego mortgage rate
146 San Diego mortgage loan
143 San Diego home equity mortgage
115 San Diego real estate mortgage
111 mortgage company in San Diego
109 2nd mortgage San Diego
90 second mortgage San Diego
45 mortgage broker in San Diego
45 mortgage in San Diego
42 adjustable rate mortgage San Diego
31 mortgage lead San Diego

Could You Use Even An Extra 500 Highly Targeted Mortgage Leads To Your Site Each Year?

There are few interesting facts about the above list. First is that I left off over half the related searches to save on space. Second, note that even something like "mortgage in San Diego" is searched 45 times per month, or over 500 times per year. Now assume there are about 60 keyword searches with similar annual search counts. That works out to over 30,000 extra visitors.

And, that is just for "San Diego Mortgage." A search for "San Diego Home Loan" found another 28,000 searches per year for related terms.

How To Apply The Long Tail To Your Site

You already might know what the top keyword searches are for your mortgage leads. Use those as a basis to create a list of keywords you might purchase at the various pay-per-click engines. Don't forget to add local communities in your keywords. For example, the town of Del Mar, with less than 5,000 in population, produces almost 1,000 searches a year for "Del Mar Mortgage."

Even the cheapest condos in Del Mar are in excess of $500,000 so you can imagine the revenue this could generate for your mortgage company. In San Diego, there are approximately 60 communities (Encinitas, La Jolla, El Cajon, Oceanside, etc.) Each of these communities can produce mortgage leads for you. If you assume just 500 searches per community times 60 communities, that is another 30,000 potential customers per year.

Wag The Tail

You can see in the physical world; sales are limited by physical space; so retail acts in the realm of scarcity. In the online world, it is full of abundance and only limited by your ability to service the type of loan inquiries you receive. You can use the internet to minimize your costs of acquisition.

If you create and then purchase a broad base of pay-per-click keywords, which, in turn, will result in additional traffic and mortgage leads to your site. At this point, you will be the one wagging your tail...

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MortgagePromote.com is a leading Internet marketing web site that provides hundreds of articles & information tips on web site promotion, search engine marketing and search engine optimization; to help loan officers & mortgage companies increase their online sales. Aries and Farris has been providing nationwide mortgage leads & Internet marketing services since 1998.

Web site: MortgagePromote.com

For online mortgage leads please visit our mortgage leads page.

Originally published December 2006.

How To Fight Spam, Both Personal and From Your Web Site - Part 2

Mortgage Promote — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 03:51:00 +0000

We will continue last month's discussion of how to control email Spam.

The Cost of Spam

In 2003, The Washington Post reported that Robert Mahowald, research manager for IDC, said his firm estimates that for a company with 14,000 employees, the annual cost to fight spam is $245,000. And, he said, "there's no end in sight."

By 2004 the cost of Spam was estimated to cost an average of $1,934 per employee a year based on lost productivity, according to a survey released Monday by Nucleus Research Inc.

In 2005, messaging market-research firm projected the cost of Spam to be $17 billion in the United States and $50 billion worldwide. These figures reflect the productivity loss to the diminishing number of business users without spam filters, the cost to purchase and administer anti-spam systems, and time wasted dealing with spam that gets through and with legitimate messages that have been misidentified as spam.

The above figures ignore viruses and spyware that often is attached to the Spam email. Consumer Reports estimates that American consumers spent almost $8 billion for computer repairs, parts and replacement over the past two years as a result of viruses and spyware alone. If you add the cost of phishing e-mail scams and the figure is probably double.

Obviously lost employee productivity dealing with Spam takes a toll of the profitability of mortgage web site owners as well.

Spam Control Via PC-Based Software Integrated With Your Email Program

Smaller companies can buy specific software like Cloudmark SpamNet or Qurb for Outlook, or Spamnix for Eudora, all of which integrates with your email program. You can then approve/deny email as it arrives. Once you block or allow (whitelist) someone, the rule will always apply.

For me, the result is 99% of all spam never gets into my in-box, and if it does, I add a filter, and if something gets kicked out for spam that shouldn't be, I add a filter to allow it to pass through all the above.

If you still use AOL for your email, there is a control panel to allow you to set the degree of email you receive and also to only allow emails you approve in advance to be received. I use this feature with my teenage daughter's account. If she receives an email from someone outside the whitelist, then that email never reaches her in-box. The only downside to this is that desired email from a friend will be blocked unless that email is pre-approved and added to her whitelist.

Gosh, That Sounds Like A Lot of Work

Some people initially have said that it seems like a lot of work to install software programs; then to manage the email you receive. Of course there is some work involved, I spent maybe 1-2 hours setting up the software then doing my initial whitelist, but now all I spend is about 10-20 minutes a week, adjusting filters when a client is added or a Spam email gets through.

And I now save at least 3-5 hours a week in no longer having to review so much Spam in my in-box, it has been a great return on investment, let alone a return on sanity and annoyance level.

Free Email Accounts Are Tacky

One more comment on the free email services such as AOL, Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail; NEVER use them for your business reply email. The use of a free email account is tacky and appears unprofessional. Generally people who use the free email services have to because they don't have their own business web site. If you have a business URL, use it. Why would you want to be LoanDude1986@hotmail.com when you can be Robert.Jones@MyMortgageCompanyName.com?

Also, many ISP email servers assign "Spam" points to the free email services as they are more likely to be from Spammers. This may impact how much of your mail gets through to your clients.

I want to repeat a comment from last month's article which probably can have the greatest impact on controlling Spam to your employees.

Spam Control Via Server

Ask your mail server provider if they have any Spam fighting software on your hosting account. In my case, Pair.com has highly effective filters (light to heavy duty), screening 99% of the email at the server so I don't end up having to download to my computer. Another feature they offer is to automatically insert the phrase **JUNK** in the subject line, before the subject line. You can set up an Outlook or Eudora filter that looks for **JUNK** and puts that in a Junk folder for easy review. If an email get labeled **JUNK** and it really isn't, I easily can go to the server control panel and "whitelist" the email address it came from and tell it not to insert **JUNK** in the subject.A tip: When reviewing a Junk folder sort the subject by alphabetical order, you can review just the subject lines, as many times the same subject line is used by several senders, and it speeds the review. Also if you sort by subject you never have to open the email - just look at the topic and delete.

Using a Family Domain Name

You can purchase a domain for the use of your family for about $8 per year and then, depending on where you purchase the domain, you can get multiple email accounts included with your purchase. This way you can have email addresses specific for each family member, i.e., Daughter@MyFamilyName.com, Son@MyFamilyName.com, Dad@MyFamilyName.com, Mom@MyFamilyName.com, etc.

Slow Conversion

If you do opt to acquire a new email name, be sure to keep your old email account active for at least six months to make sure everyone who emails you gets to you. Don't reply from your old account and when you do your announcement, send emails from both your old and new account saying that you have a new account.

Spam Forever?

Spam is not going away for awhile. As technology improves, so will the Spammers ability to evade technology. In the interim use common sense and implement anti-Spam safeguards as necessary, which should lower the cost to you and your mortgage business.

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MortgagePromote.com is a leading Internet marketing web site that provides hundreds of articles & information tips on web site promotion, search engine marketing and search engine optimization; to help loan officers & mortgage companies increase their online sales. Aries and Farris has been providing nationwide mortgage leads & Internet marketing services since 1998.
Web site: M ortgagePromote.com

For online mortgage leads please visit our mortgage leads page.

Originally published November 2006.