1st CS Law: You can no longer build loyalty through personal relationships.
This requires planning. With more customers, comes more moving parts and new challenges. When your business has grown to the point that you can no longer maintain one-to-one relationships with each of your borrowers, it’s time to build trust at scale. A relationship marketing strategy creates a roadmap for the future to retain your borrowers after closing.
But before you put any strategy in black and white, make sure you’re set up for success. Any strong marketing plan will be true to your brand, so make sure your brand mission is well defined. Ask yourself:
• Why are you in business?
• Who wants to buy what you’re selling?
• What are you promising?
• How are you different?
When it comes to effective branding, the brand statement of Dyson, famous for its innovative appliance designs, comes to mind: Solve the obvious problems others ignore. Based on the model of a sawmill, James Dyson went through 5,127 prototypes before creating a vacuum that didn’t lose suction as its bag filled up. Clearly distilled in six words, Dyson’s directive sums up the ingenuity and distinctiveness of its products.
With your brand mission statement in hand, draft the retention section of your customer relationship plan. Think about how repeat business fits into the entire journey your customers walk with you. Two approaches to consider are flywheel marketing (using the momentum of happy customers to generate referrals and repeat business) and journey mapping (charting a customer’s experience over time).
Regular communication strengthens relationships. So deeply embed your tech stack, especially your CRM, into your plan to automate communication with your customers.
2nd CS Law: Customers and clients naturally tend to drift apart.
Now that your plan is in place, it’s time to put it into action through engagement. As any customer success manager knows, you must work to earn the trust of your clients constantly. Proactive interaction with your clients keeps them from fading away. So focus your plan’s engagement section on providing relevant, interesting content. Ignore the urge to lead with product-first marketing. Instead, put your clients’ needs first. Fortunately, you have something your clients want and need: financial knowledge.
As their mortgage advisor, think about how you can best educate your clients. Your content doesn’t need to ooze creativity or go viral, but it does need to be relevant — the more relevant, the better. What do your clients care about? Neighborhood info, pricing trends, interest rates, market data, loan scenarios? Consider whether your clients would attend a seminar to buy a retirement home, repair their credit, or invest in real estate.
Trust is the foundation of most marketing, and it’s up to us, marketers and salespersons, to build it. Sharing your thoughts and what’s going on in your life in a genuine way builds strong trust with your clients. When you share news and updates, use entertaining stories, videos, and images that reflect your personality. Again, use your tech stack. The best ones will provide you with targeted, timely, and personal communication that you can build upon in your own voice.
What are some of the best ways to retain your clients? According to a digital-marketers survey, email remains the most effective tactic followed by social media and content marketing. SMS, in-app messages, and push notifications are frequently used too. Effective educational tools include blog posts, webinars, events, explainer videos, and how-to guides. As you branch out beyond email, prioritize what you’re good at. And even if you’re someone who “doesn’t do video,” give it a try. Video is one of the best ways to show what makes you special to a larger audience.