When the dust settled, the companies that communicated clearly found they were able to bounce back quickly. Why? Because in tough times, when you look out for your customers, they are more likely to show loyalty and thank you in one way or another when they can, and that came in the form of returning business.
Do you need to provide weekly updates about the state of your business? Probably not, but you should be communicating with your customers about any program or product updates, company milestones, or other information that could affect the way they do business with you. Never discount the power of staying in contact with your customers and rewarding them for their ongoing loyalty as being able to capture repeat business is often low-hanging fruit.
Have A Strong Online Presence
The mortgage industry has always seemed to lag behind other industries when it came to digital marketing, but COVID made it necessary for companies to pivot to a marketing plan that relied more heavily on a successful digital strategy. Over the last year there was a renewed focus on updating company websites, and developing better email marketing, social media marketing, and pay-per-click campaigns.
With people staying at home more during the pandemic, they had more time to read those marketing email blasts or felt more compelled to scroll through their various social media feeds to kill time. Companies saw many of their efforts pay off because of this uptick in interaction with digital media, but having a strong digital footprint is something a company should also think about going forward.
While conferences and live networking events are returning, it’s about time the mortgage industry caught up and realized the importance of multi-layered marketing campaigns. Companies should now be thinking about what digital channels they saw significant success with, whether it was certain social media ads, email marketing efforts, PPC campaigns, etc. and continue to build on those campaigns and weave them into other parts of their marketing plan to ensure future growth.
Hit The Pause Button On Certain Efforts
So, while certain marketing efforts were highly effective during the pandemic, there are some that will probably meet their demise once we start getting back to normalcy. The top one on the list is fully virtual conferences. While so many event coordinators tried to replicate the experience of in-person events through a virtual platform, there really is no substitute for the real thing.
However, while fully virtual conferences will probably die out, what virtual conferences taught marketers is that there is significant value in having a hybrid approach to events. Being able to network and schedule meetings ahead of time and easily capture contact information from attendees during an event via an app is something that should continue to be utilized even for in-person events.
