There is a lot of talk about educating the consumer and providing the proper content so that they can make informed decisions. In the finance space this content is completely missing from the lead generation process. In the EDU space there is content overload.

The finance space provides very little information about the companies the consumer is being matched with until after the consumer has committed to receiving phone calls from unknown companies. There are a few companies that are changing that process as we speak, but I can continue to make that general statement until it becomes the norm. What the finance space does do well is cap the amount of companies that will contact the consumer. While we all know there are companies that sell their leads more then they claim, we can assume that most legitimate companies are being ethical and responsible with their distribution model.

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I am not sure if you have noticed the trend of TV commercials that supposedly trick the consumers into believing they are eating food from a fine dinning restaurant, but are in fact eating fast food. These commercials have been driving me nuts. Let me tell you why.

First, if you haven’t seen the commercials here is a good example:

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While researching search terms and keyword trends there are a two that I will always check out of curiosity and the they are “Mortgage Quotes” and “Mortgage Leads”. I believe the last time I checked these two keywords was over 3 months ago, possible much longer. Either way, it is worth noting for lead buyers the results I found.

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December is traditionally a slow month in the mortgage industry where contact rates and funding rates tend to drop by at least 15%. Loan officers start scheduling significant time off and prospects get very busy. I remember even during the mortgage heyday our loan officers dreaded this month. Is anyone experiencing the December drag? Have your contact rates dropped in the last few weeks?

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From time to time I spend the evening playing with Google Trends and Microsoft’s AdLabs. There are a few keywords that I always check in Google Trends. The first is Mortgage Leads and the second is Mortgage Refinance.

Here is what I found: According to Google Trends there is a decrease in searches for mortgage leads. Not really all that surprising, I guess. Especially with so many brokers and LO’s shifting out of the mortgage industry.

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First, and most obvious start doing it.

Stop whatever you are doing right now and look at your website or any marketing material you have laying around. Who are you talking to? If you have terms like IO, ARM, LIBOR, The Fed, or DTI you are talking to yourself. Throw it out and start over. Borrowers are in a complete state of confusion right now–don’t add to the noise.

Here are some immediate steps to help you gain trust with consumers and build a great consumer focused lead generation platform:

1. Start with a list of questions. What are the top 20 things prospects or clients ask you in the mortgage sales process?
2. Turn 5 of those questions into consumer presentations (PDF and make available for download)
3. Turn 5 of those questions into 5 consumer focused press releases (publish one every two weeks)
4. Turn 5 of those questions into an online consumer education center, with links to the other 5 downloadable presentations, and the 5 press releases
5. Turn 5 of those questions into blog posts

By the way, if you do mortgages in a local community plaster the city and State on everyone of these pieces of content and add social tags–you will own that corner of the Web for search on mortgage <your hometown>, <State>.

Have your friends, family, neighbors, and clients digg, reddit, stumbleupon, and delicious your content.

Write your success story below.

Tags: mortgage, marketing, lead generation, consumer

Here is another video from Inman News. This video is of Konstantin Guericke the co-founder of the very popular LinkedIn Network.

He explains Click-to-Call and the new development of a widget that can be added to your website to generate inbound sales leads.

Real Estate Video by – Real Estate Blogger

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I wonder if mortgage companies and the tightly coupled lead generation companies have the guts to depart from the “Gigantic Lead Generating Contraption for Business-As-Usual?” What does that mean? What would it look like?

Glenn Kelman at Redfin has a proposal that seems like what a lot of us in the idustry have said, but few have had the guts to execute:

Our purpose is to use technology to put consumers in charge of buying or selling their home. This is the most valuable change we can offer the consumer. We hope that it can lead to our becoming the most valuable company in our industry.

Hats off to a leader in putting smart consumers in the drivers seat!

-Silence Dogood
telldogood@gmail.com

Hi, I would like to introduce myself as Silence Dogood! Yes, I am obviously the namesake of the slightly prudish widow of Poor Richard’s Almanac. I felt obligated, having observed this market for numerous years, to wade in where there lacked a fair representation of the fairer (and notably smarter) sex and an advocate for the poor and downtrodden Internet consumer.

Enough introduction. You will grow to know, love, and perhaps even fear my pen a bit in the coming months. Therefore, I think it is only fair to warn those who will come under my wrath and those who will receive my fair praise…This is my mantra:

“I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary consumer thrashing and unlimited power to lead providers”

And since a proper lady does not herself wade into the muck and mire of Internet consumer lead “gin” feel free to reveal those who deserve the mighty pen: telldogood [at] gmail

-Silence Dogood

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”
Benjamin Franklin

Is your website living up to its full potential?

Many websites give 100’s of irrelevant options to the user. When was the last time you checked your website analytics? Maybe the better question is, do you have any type of analytics platforms set up for your website. If not, get with your web developer and have him implement a simple 3 sentence HTML code that Google provides and set up the best analytics software available, Google analytics.

I would like to give you a couple of radical ideas that could increase you sites conversions and reduce your bounce rate. Now, if you aren’t currently monitoring any analytics for your site you may not even be aware of what bounce rate is. The bounce rate of a page is fairly simple. It is a percentage of how many visitors come to your site and then immediately leave. They can leave for a number of different reasons but usually they leave because they did not find what they were looking for. Example, there was a point in time where I was bidding on the keyword “mortgage rates” which I have no where on my site. Because of this the bounce rate on visits from that keyword purchase was extremely high. I obviously had two choices, add mortgage rates to my site or discontinue the bidding of that keyword. I chose to stop the bidding on that keyword. I stopped bidding on this keyword for the same reason why you need to update your web-page.

I have a friend that has a popular e-commerce site, which sells tennis gear and apparel www.doittennis.com, he has been working on perfecting is PPC campaigns and noticed that he was spending money on keywords that did not convert. He also found that specific keywords that may have lower impressions, but that were “buy keywords” converted at a much higher rate and generated a higher ROI. Illuminating the the lower converting keyword bids saved him time, money and lost opportunity.

So here is my advice to you, cut out the crap! Really, get rid of it. Make it simple. Seth Godin, points out the “small is the new big” and he is absolutely right. I like to put a slight twist on his quote and say, “simple is the way to go”. There are service out there that will set you up with a template website and it will include all the bells and whistles, such as  an A La Mode xSite. These site are, in my opinion a waste of money. If you want a corporate site that does not generate leads than fine, but last I checked we all want to generate your own leads.

So first you need to set up Google analytics on your site. You than need to dive into it and find what consumers are doing on your site. Are they coming to your page and then bolting? If so, they are probably becoming overwhelmed with too many choices or just not finding what they want.

My suggestion is to simplify. Give the visitor to your site 3 choices immediately:
Your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) This should be placed in the top left section on the site and should should stand out. This could be a tag-line, a special offer, or 2-3 bullet points.
A box that include the first three questions of a lead form. (See LowerMyBills)
Give them 3 choices and make these choices bold and easy to figure out. An example would be: Special Products, Rates, Definitions, About the Company. Each page should have some corresponding call to action, “Want more rates?” “Lock in your rate today”, “Learn more about ‘company’”.

My second suggestion is to test different images, formats and USP on the home-page. The key to a successful website is testing. Try different colors too. Obviously you will need to stay to true to your corporate colors however test different colors for your call to action buttons. Many people will tell you that red is the best color for call to action buttons, but I want to tell you now that all websites are different and you can not assume this will be true for your site or even every page on your site.

I know many of you guys where many different hats out of necessity and are thinking when am I going to find the time to do this? Well, I don’t know…lol. I would suggest first, if you don’t have a website , find a developer that is fluent in Internet Marketing, not only design. Second, spend an hour a week reviewing your analytics and looking for ways you to increase your sites conversions.

If you have any further questions let me know or if you would like me to evaluate your site and give a few tips, shoot over an email to me a info at leadcritic dot com.

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In this Podcast we briefly speak with Atul Patel former co-founder of LeadROI about where lead-gen is going. Although he is departing from the lead generation space, we reviewed the session. We also discuss the ideas that were gathered during the session. The group discussed the idea that the consumer could own their own information and therefore sells their information to the bank or broker. I believe that this is the future of lead generation.

What do you think?

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This is a recap, question and answer with Connie from Lowlender . We briefly reviewed the first session of leads2007, which was entitled “Improving Consumer Experience”.

The first annual leads2007 un-conference has come to an end and the overwhelming response was that it was a great success.

I want to briefly recap day 2’s discussions for those of you who could not attend.

The first session was moderated by Noel Collins and discussed the lead buying process. Here are few points and key topics that were discussed.
How many leads should you purchase to determine the failure or success of a lead provider? Many people agreed that 50-100 leads over a one month period seemed to be ample time to gather enough data to judge a lead provider. Many added that it depends on the number of LO’s with the company, but all added that a 30-60 time frame is needed to gather the correct data to analyze and base judgement.
Are affiliates bad? The consensus was that yes they could be bad and typically are if they are mismanaged. Providers must be active and hands on with their affiliates to have success and minimize fraud and the overselling of leads.
What are the key questions that a buyer should ask all potential lead-gen companies? Does the company or their affiliates participate in coregistration? What methods do they use to generate their leads? Ask for references. Especially ones from company that similar in size to you. Is the Lead Provider licensed in the states that you are buying in?
The session evolved into talks about the formation of a third party organization that would evaluate and vet lead providers in the space. Basically giving lead providers stamps of approvals.

The big take away from this session was the discussion about the need for a third party organization that could facilitate the grading of lead sellers and buyers as well. Yes, lead buyers too. A number of the providers expressed the need for the vetting of lead buyers so that they too can make optimal decisions when building their client base. They would like to have an open source to file complaints about lead buyers that do not pay their bills. At first glance I was concerned that this would encourage or foster a “you complain about me I am going to complain about mentality”, but maybe this is a good thing. I think  it is only fair that the lead sellers have a place to judge or complain about dishonest buyers just like many of the buyers want a place to judge or complain about the sellers.

It has been really great to see many of the top tier sellers and buyers agreeing on such standards and initiatives. I really feel the desire to clean up the industry and rebuild its reputation from all the parties involved.

Day 2, Session 2

The topic of this discussion was titled the “Interaction between Publisher, Advertiser and the Consumer.

The general discussion revolved around ideas for improving the customers experience.
A few of the questions that were asked included:
Is the level of questioning sufficient?
Would the increase of more specific questions really improve the customers experience?
What is the optimal number of times a lead should be sold?
Should all companies be required to show which companies the lead has been matched with?

From there the discussion broke out into new opportunities to improve the customers experience. The idea of flipping the scenario was discussed heavily. For example: Based on the consumer profile banks would compete for the consumers interest. Once a bank was chosen by the consumer, based on product offerings or rates only then would the contact data be given to the bank/s. The idea of giving the consumer more control over the process was a hot topic.

Out of that discussion came the questions does the lead generation game or processes need to change to really make a difference in the consumers overall experience?

Really great discussion took place during this session again and the future of lead-gen space will surely be effected one way or another by what was discussed here.

Day 2, session 3

Thinking About a Telemarketing Front end.

Another great session that reviewed the positives of implementing a telemarketing front end to your sales process. The room discussed and reviewed the pitfalls and challenges that may arise when implementing this strategy.

Day 2, Session 4

Briefly discussed the ability to capitalize on web 2.0 marketing and lead generation techniques. Blogs, social networks, notification networks (Twitter) were all discussed during this session. The room also discussed the different experiences people had with these types of platforms and services and how they can beneficial and cost effective.

Please look forward to Leads2007 podcast which should be available in the next few days.

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Leads2007 is currently under way! Discussions between lead sellers and buyers are plentiful and meaningful. Being that this is the first conference or “unconference” of its kind No one knew what to expect. We all only hoped that there would be something to take back to our own businesses and capitalize on and from the first day alone, this has far exceeded any expectation. Those of you who were on the fence and chose to stay home are unfortunately missing out on an industry and business changing event. I do, however want to recap today’s events and discussions for you.

The first discussion involved improving the consumer experience. Bill Rice spurred discussion by first presenting a large yellow square sheet of paper with a black dot in the middle and asked the audience to tell him what they saw. The exercise encourage the people to be more observant to the whole, complete process and not just the obvious. So many times lead buyers/brokers and lead-gen companies tend to focus strictly on what directly influences profits and do not review the complete picture. Have we been throwing the consumer experience to the way side and strictly focusing on what will make us a dollar today rather than executing practices that will not only generate a sale today but also tomorrow. I think we all have to admit that we all fall victim to this on one level or another. Currently there are buyers that will distribute a single lead to multiple LO’s within an organization in hopes have increasing the odds of a conversion. On the same token there are a number of lead sellers that are strictly focused on generating the highest volume of leads and sacrifice the consumers overall experience for an extra lead sale.

Discussions included standardizing the lead-gen process, matching the consumers with the appropriate buyers and at the same time informing the consumer who to expect phone calls from, a standardize lead grading scale based on analytics and feedback and lastly, lead providers gather consumer feedback regarding their experience. Proper loan officer training was also a popular discussion.

An interesting statistic from Forrester research, via Colleen of LowLender, stated that 70% of the people that went online did not intend to complete the process online. This bring up a number of questions and concerns as well and I would love to here your thoughts on the statistic.

The second session included discussions which detailed what technology’s currently in the market place help improve processes?

Loan Management Software was the voted the most influential. Unfortunately, many LMS users are not effectively using the software or know how to implement the software properly into the business. This was expressed by a number of different lead-gen companies. The crowd voiced a small wish list that would help improve many of the current LMS solutions in the marketplace. This included a wider array of analytical reports and closed looped sales reports from lead to funded. A few of the lead-gen companies requested standardized reports.

The 3rd session discussed different approaches to maximize relationships.

This included ideas about placing more ownership on the LO’s by mandating that they pay a portion of the lead cost or even rent seats within the sales organization. Most were agreed that this was a difficult model to incorporate and expressed that this may do more harm then good. Discussions included email marketing, remarketing, the request for referrals and customer service follow up teams.

Session 4 asked the question “does technology increase conversions?”

This included talks about automated pricing engines and the appropriate ways to implement the tool. The question was also asked, “are we simply implementing technology for our own ease or is it actually to improve the overall customer experience?”

A huge discussion broke off from this topic which include the industry wide standardization of date returns and feedback delivery from each of the LMS’s to each of the Lead-gen companies. Every one was in agreement that this could benefit all parties involved and many lead-gen companies pledged their allegiance to the idea. The question still remains who will actually follow through with the coordination of the integration.

Lastly, session 4 discussed the different points of views with the lead ecosystem and brought forth the need to be aware of the different views. It was interesting to see the polar opposite views of the lead-gen companies and the lead buyers. Each demanded the other party need to improve and in my opinion both are correct. The session encouraged partnerships between the two groups rather than working against each other.

Over all the first day was excellent and informative and I look forward to tomorrow.

We will be posting podcast of a the session recaps tomorrow so look out for those. I am exhausted from today and am about ready to fall over so please pardon any grammatical errors in the post. I think by now many of you have excepted the fact that I am a horrible writer anyway so you probably have not noticed any difference anyway.

Harte-Hanksurveyed more than 530 companies and found that Direct Marketing and E-mail Marketing delivered the highest ROI amongst all other medias.   The study points out that many companies are following the trend of devoting a majority of their marketing budgets towards the Internet. Many find that there is a lack in quality data reporting and feel that it is holding back their success on the Internet. However the survey did show that the quality of the reporting has improved year over year, but still remains as the most frequant reason of why ROI from Internet ads are less than direct mail and e-mail campaigns.

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Based on a few comments on the “Selling Leads Multiple Times” post I wanted to share this article I came across.

There are actually some situations when you can benefit from letting a customer go and Sprint actually made the aggressive move:

“Recently, Sprint decided to cut its losses and give a number of CSRs a break from the nagging when it pulled the plug on nearly 1,200 of its mobile customers. Apparently, these whiners were dialing in “40 to 50 times as often” as the “average customer,” and after failing to appease them, the firm chose to “terminate the relationship with those customers to allow them to pursue other options.”

What a brave move by Sprint. I wonder how many clients or customers of yours you are wasting your time and money on?

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I was playing with Google Trends today and came across these stats. This graph shows the volume searches for the specific terms “Mortgage Leads” and “mortgage refinance”.

Here are the top towns that search for “mortgage leads”

Here are the top ten cities searching for a “mortgage refinance”

A little closer look shows the demand for leads or the number of people searching that term making a strong little push in volume.

I think it is interesting to think back to the specific times on the graph that show fluctuations and speculate what was going on during those times.

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The Internet is getting closer to taking the number one spot away from Television for being the considered the most essential median available. Newspapers seem to be taking the biggest hit. The increase in online news sites and social media sites like Digg, Newsvine and Reddit it easy to see why.

Radio also looks to be taking a big hit. The increase in satellite radio units, iPods and MP3 players which encourage user programed, advertisement free music will continue to make an impact on this median.

Just more affirmation of why you need to focus on Internet Leads, Internet marketing, and SEO. Speaking of SEO, the ad to right for the SEObook is one worth checking out. Yes, I receive a little kick back if you buy the book, but it is arguably the best SEO book in the industry. Aaron Wall is very highly respected in the SEO world and if you want an excellent SEO resource you need to check this book out.

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Over the last 6 months Google has been steering to more personalized search results for its users. Currently searches can be narrowed down to specific geographic areas and can also be personalized to you. Over the last month Google as taken one more step to personalized search with the addition of Google’s Web History. This could be one of the most disruptive changes ever made for SEO’s and Internet Marketing professionals. I will elaborate later.

Google will now be tracking every move you make. Of course they were already doing this to some extent, but now they are willing to reveal the exact surfing habits of millions of users. The new Web History now records the full text version of every site you visit and holds it for later viewing.

What does this mean to the business owner, Internet Marketer, and SEO? Google, if not already, is becoming kind of scary in their quest for the ultimate search results. Now that Google will be tracking every move you make or better yet every move that a person makes on your website. They can now, very accurately, decide if a website is relevant, popular and/or informative.

Google as been able to decipher between good and bad links and has also been slowly devaluing links that don’t meet their standards. With the type of data that Web History will bring they may never have to look at links again. They will only have to evaluate how often people come to your site, do they come back, and how long do they stay. Along with the content on the site and its relevance to the specific search you have recipe for an algorithm that will be difficult to game. Of course those who have been on top of the current changes t0 the Google algorithms will be ahead of the curve. Many of you have been focusing on content for some time now and have seen results. This addition now leaves your ranking in the hands of the people.

Google no longer has to guess about your popularity and relevance.

So now what do you need to be concerned with and how are you going to gain or sustain search placements? You now need to be more strategic about the placement of your content. You now want your users to actually read the content. Before you were writing strictly for the search engines. You now write for the people.

I used to think the new frontier of search was “Natural Search” or “Natural Language Search”. Natural Language search refers to the processing of a search inquiry in a natural linguistic form. Currently search engines base result only of the keywords or phrases. I now can see the light…the new search will still be based on natural search but not the linguistics kind but more the historical kind. Google will now base its results of what is natural and specific for you. Google knows what feeds you read, what sites you visit, what ads you click on, how much you spend (Google checkout), what items you buy and what geographic area you live in. They are rumored to have aligned with Salesforce as well and one can only speculate what they plan on doing with those analytics.

The bottom line is that ranking in the search engines is becoming more natural and relevant and to be successful you will have to be popular. Forget about keyword tags and buying links and concentrate on writing good content that keep people at your site.

Simple enough, right.

It’s official, the Morinsight Forum is live today.

I am really excited to bring this new feature to you today. My hope is that it will be a place of open discussions about lead providers, lead management, Internet marketing, real estate and much more, without all the spam.

There are currently a number of mortgage and real estate forums on the Internet, but the problem with many of them is that they are not monitored for spam comments. My opinion is that the creditabilty of the forum is lost when the spam comments enter. So for this forum to be useful each registration will be reviewed and all comments on the forum will be monitored for spam. When signing up for the blog please use your company email address and also list your company website.

I encourage everyone to register. I think it will be beneficial to all.

 Register Now.