About the Author

Silence Dogood, the namesake of the slightly prudish widow of Poor Richard's Almanac. Reformed Internet lead buyer and consumer grinder. Inclined now to focus on how to turn Internet client advocacy into increased conversions and long-term production. You might also catch me engaged in rumor mongering or needling the less intelligent.

What Everybody Ought to Know About Talking to Consumers

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:

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

Popularity: 5% [?]