Whether you’re a mortgage lender, real estate agent, or insurance broker, mortgage leads can keep your business thriving. Rather than cold-calling or investing your time‒and money‒into landing new customers, you can nurture warm leads and spend more time finalizing the deal.
But, what are mortgage leads, and how do you get leads for mortgage loans? In sales, a ‘lead’ refers to a potential customer. Cold leads are potential customers who haven’t expressed any interest in your brand, product, or service or aren’t aware of it. Warm leads, however, are potential customers who have expressed some amount of interest in what you offer, but may not be ready to buy just yet. Hot leads are potential customers who are in the final stages of the sales process.
There are several ways to get leads for mortgage loans, and some require a higher financial and time investment than others. In this article, we’ll take a look at the cost of various leads, where to find them, and how mortgage leads can benefit insurance agents.
Where to Get Leads
In this digital age, there are several ways you can generate leads without ever leaving your home or desk! This can include creating compelling, search engine-optimized content for your professional platforms, developing a website with outstanding reviews of your services, buying pay-per-click digital ad space, or purchasing lead lists.
While you can earn leads yourself with many of these options, they do require you to flex some of your other skills, such as web design, graphic design, content creation, and more. Many agents opt to hire a third party to do full-service website optimization to drive more organic web traffic to their website and social media, with the hope that the influx of traffic can turn into more leads.
If you choose to do all of this on your own, however, you may end up spending more time trying to get new leads and neglect your current client base or have less time to nurture the warm leads when they finally come in.
How Much Do Leads Typically Cost?
Depending on the route you take to generate mortgage leads, you could easily spend several hundred or several thousand dollars on leads. Factors that impact the cost of leads can include current housing market performance, how much work you’re willing to put into converting your leads, and the strategy you use to secure them.
For example, some lenders or insurers will pay a third party to generate lead lists. These are essentially lists of leads that have expressed an interest in your industry or market‒they are your target audience. Depending on the list and market performance, these leads can cost anywhere between $25 to $75 per lead. And remember, a lead from this list doesn’t guarantee a sale. Some may require a heavy sales pitch and frequent follow-ups, which is also a major investment of your time.
Using paid advertising or web content marketing can also be costly. Designing your website to be user-friendly can cost anywhere between $2,000 and $9,000 for the website alone. If you need to optimize your website to include sales funnels and push site visitors to request a quote, this can range from $20 to $500 per month.
Mortgage Leads for Insurance Agents
If you’re a full-time agent and need to build your books, mortgage leads can be critical to your success. Think about it–home buyers are often in the market for more than just a mortgage; they may also be shopping for homeowners’ insurance or may not know all of the other insurance options they need to consider for their big purchase.
This can include property insurance, mortgage protection insurance, and liability insurance. If you are able to present yourself as a trusted professional, you can be their go-to agent as they navigate their next chapter in life.
Get Ahead, Get More With Insurance Pro Agencies
Navigating leads can be complicated, especially if you’re a scratch agency or a newer agent finally working independently. It can be challenging to build a reputation for yourself with only a few leads, and investing in organic leads can be a financial strain.
This is where Insurance Pro Agencies steps in. Our insurance aggregate creates a professional community for small agencies and independent agents so that you have all of the same resources and networking opportunities as established agencies. Ready to give your client books a boost? Contact us today for our Mortgage Lead Generation Program!
