Our special guest on this week’s episode of Performance Delivered is Luke Shankula, CEO of Paragon Digital Marketing Group. Luke is a leading mortgage marketing expert who aims to help people systemize their work and go beyond lead generation. Besides running a successful seven-figure mortgage marketing agency, Luke is a Facebook Ad Expert and Mortgage Appointment Generator. We chat about utilizing Facebook Ads, as well as:
- Luke’s start as a mortgage lender
- Improving the quality of lending leads
- The impact of low-interest rates on the mortgage market
- Optimizing more local keywords in your strategies
- And more
Mentioned in this episode:
- Website: https://www.paragondmg.com
- Website: http://lukeshankula.com
Transcript
Voiceover: This is Performance Delivered, Insider Secrets for Digital Marketing Success with Steffen Horst and Dave Antil. Steffen Horst: Welcome to the Performance Delivered, Insider Secrets for Digital Marketing Success Podcast, where we talk with marketing and agency executives and learn how they build successful businesses and their personal brand. I'm your host, Steffen Horst. The topic for today's episode is lead generation for the mortgage industry. Here to speak with me is Luke Shankula, who is the CEO of Paragon Digital Marketing Group. Luke is a leading mortgage marketing expert with his results focused services, he aims to help people systemize their work and go beyond lead generation. Besides running a successful seven figure mortgage marketing agency, Luke has spoken at several legion of loan officer events. Luke, welcome to the show.Luke Shankula: Thanks so much for having me.Steffen: Now, let's start off with what are those legions of loan officer events? Tell us a little bit about that.Luke: Yeah, no. So Legion of Loan Officers is a basically a mastermind, that one of my buddies runs it. And so he, he has these events on a yearly basis, obviously, COVID is caused a little bit of issues there. But yeah, it's just, it's just a mastermind event that I've spoken at a couple times, just kind of talking about lead generation, different strategies that loan officers can use to generate leads, and to leverage different platforms to basically, you know, grow their business. Steffen: I see. Okay, well, listen, before we go into the actual topic, in today's topic, um, let's, let's talk a bit more about yourself. Tell our listeners a little bit about you. How did you get started with marketing?Luke: Yeah, it's a it's a pretty crazy story, right? So, back in 2016, I was working for a mortgage and mortgage company and mortgage lender in the mortgage industry, right. And they, in June of 2016, I was one of the Top Producing account executives, right. So what my goal was, or my job was to attract new mortgage brokers to work with us to basically sub send business to us, right. In July of 2016, they decided to, they were having some financial issues, they decided to lay off a whole bunch of people. And what ended up happening was a lot of my clients, a lot of the people that were sending us business, ended up leaving, just because we lost, you know, basically, our, our turn times went crazy. And it was taking longer for us to do things. Plus, you know, our pricing was way off, in comparison to our competitors, right. And so, I fell in almost to this, like, I wouldn't necessarily say I wanted went all the way full, full depression, but I was pretty mad. I was blaming everybody, but myself, I, you know, I started drinking, stuff like that I was super negative. And so I basically, you know, I went through this whole period, and then in, I think, was like October of 2016, I just randomly started listening to this podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire. And so he started talking about all kinds of different things, starting your own business, you know, obviously, obviously, he was interviewing different entrepreneurs every single day. And so it started kind of get my wheels spinning in my head, like, oh, maybe I can do something for myself. So I started talking to a couple buddies about maybe doing something started in a mortgage shop, you know, stuff like that. In January of 2017, basically, that business decided to shut down. And so we all got laid off in January. And so I was like, wow, this is the perfect opportunity to start my own thing. So I was the budget, a couple of a couple buddies were like, oh, let's start this, this company, right. And so we kind of started talking about it, and then we just quickly fell off. And so I tried to start a mortgage processing company, got a couple clients there realized really quickly that I didn't want to do that. Then I started and then I tried to get my I got my license to become a loan officer myself, and realized pretty quickly that I didn't want to do that also. But during that time, I started learning Facebook ads, started learning marketing. And I basically fell deeply in love with marketing, right? I was like, man, this is, this is amazing. And so around June of 2017, I decided that I wanted to start trying to do this for other people. So I officially launched my marketing agency, I'm using air quotes, because agency basically meant that I didn't have any clients. And I was just on myself trying to make it work. And so, you know, finally picked up my first client around August of that year, but you know, last a month later, picked up another client a little bit later lost in like a month or two. And so it just was kind of this this perpetual, you know, picking up clients losing them, and there's a lot of growth that had to happen. But that's kind of the journey to starting. doing marketing, right. It's like I kind of almost fell into it because of a need as I was trying to start a business and that's kind of how I fell into marketing.Steffen: Interesting. So what have you changed between 2017 and now that I assume you're no longer losing clients a month after you acquire them, otherwise you will be, you will have to be an awesome salesperson because you continuously have to new prospects. Right?Luke: Right. Yeah, well, a lot, a lot has changed. Right. And so, you know, obviously, I got much better at running ads, I was able to, you know, so a couple of different things that we did is we initially, the first thing that I started with was, I tried to generate as many cheap leads as possible thinking that that's what they wanted was just, hey, more and more leads, right, that was, you know, almost a vanity metric of how can I get as cheap a quality cheap leads, but what I found pretty quickly, especially in this industry, like mortgage where, you know, there's specific qualifications that people need, in order to qualify to buy a home or to refinance, right, and so I was just trying to generate as many cheaply as possible. And what that ended up doing was one it overwhelm the loan officers to they didn't have sales process three, a lot of them didn't qualify, right. And so I was like, Alright, how do I, how do I improve the quality of these leads? So what I started doing was, I started generating and I took a couple courses, I basically figured out how to run long form leads. Well, basically that means is, we actually started running people through surveys, and they were filling out 12, 13, 14 questions. And so the intent of the leads one way up, right, people are actually taking the time to fill in all these different questions to see whether or not they qualify for mortgage. Right. And so that was the first sort of step that we did to to improve the quality. And I say, we it's still was me at the time, by myself. So that was like kind of the first step. The next thing was like, Okay, these people, these are higher quality or higher intent. But yet the quality is still low, right? Because one of the things we were doing is we were, we're talking about 0% financing, we were talking about low down payment, things like that, right. And so what we were attracting was people that had no money, bad credit, and couldn't qualify for a loan, right. So the leads are still pretty cheap, but and the intent was high, because like, I want to buy a house, like I actually want to buy a house. But you know, they have a 400 credit score and zero money saved, and they make $20,000 a year, you know, they just weren't ever going to qualify for a loan. And so the next thing we did was is, and again, this was me, I keep saying weak, because I don't know, that's just what I'm used to. Now as we've grown to a team of 13. But back then it was just me. And so one thing that we did is we started changing, or I started changing the ads, right? Like, okay, how are we going to attract people that, that qualify for a loan. So when we started targeting people, like teachers, first responders, health care professionals, we started calling those people out in the ads and targeting those sorts of people. And lo and behold, the quality went up, and I started getting clients that were, you know, having success. But one thing that I realized was that most of these people didn't have a good follow up process. So we introduced a automated system, where we would actually include a CRM that had automations, emails, text, voicemail, jobs, things like that. And so we were trying to start conversations, we started seeing 40 to 60% response rates, but then we were still losing clients. And we found basically that the problem was they were getting the responses, and yet, they still can convert. So in 2000, think it was the tail end of 2019, we decided to in this at this point. Now, we did have some some some staff, we decided at that point to to bring on some one of our clients that was doing well as a coach. So we're like, hey, let's just test this out. And so we brought him on to basically train loan officers on how to convert internet leads, right? Because a lot of times, what happens is, a lot of times what people will do is they think that just throwing a bunch of leads into a broken system is going to lead. Basically, buying a bunch of leads is going to lead to more sales. But the reality is that throwing a bunch of leads into a broken system just leads to leads to broken results. So we learned that we needed to basically teach our loan officers the whole entire process. So it's like how do we get them as close to the sale as possible? And how do we essentially coach them into learning how to convert these leads? Because it's a very different process. So that's been the sort of the evolution and there's some other things that we do as well. But I've already gone on for a little bit, so I'll leave it at that.Steffen: Yeah. A lot of things that that you mentioned in your week, we had a quick chat prior to this recording about how digital marketing in general across industries is pretty much similar. I mean, there are specific when it comes to specific industries, but the general approach is the same, obviously have different messages, etc. But what you just talked about this process of lead generation, so first, you know, let's send or create as many leads as possible. That's what they want, right? It's quantity over quality. Make sure then you've identified Well, you know what? That's not the solution, right? I could send them so many leads, but if they don't convert, they're going to be unhappy. Right? Then it's like okay, what's the problem here? Let's let's figure the first thing out. Let's let's improve the quality, which you did. But you kind of found another challenge with that increased quality because you attract people that would never qualify for it. So you, you went next step in in kind of further qualifying or improving the process. And then finally, I think where you ended up is we have a system that not only optimizes the media buying part, which is obviously the first step where you generate leads, but then you basically said, you know, what, if the if the sales process is not optimized, if that's broken from a setup perspective and whatnot, then the best leads will not help a company. Luke: Right.Steffen: And I think that's, that's, that's very interesting, because, you know, we have had here on this podcast, but also in my conversation with with prospects and clients, the same information across several industries. And it's, it's, it's everywhere the same, you know, it's like, yep, yep, yep, you can do the best work from marketing agency perspective. If there is not a proper process with your client or on your client side, you will still fail. And I think that's probably also where we're us as agencies have to move towards, and not only say, Well, you know, our responsibilities is to get leads, here they are, and everything else, you have to figure out. There's an importance for us as agencies, to see how we can help our clients overcome that part. It goes more into consultation, I believe, right, then necessarily media buying, obviously. But it's, it kind of helps us also to retain, to retain client and to build strong relationships at the end of the day.Luke: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's, it's pivotal, I think that's the future of marketing agencies really is, you know, obviously, you can take a couple different approaches, you can you can turn clients like crazy and like you mentioned, like sell a bunch of people, or, or you can solve problems at a higher level. And and, you know, that's, that's what my goal is, right, is I want to keep people around long term. And I want to see the results of what my marketing provides. Because I know we have a good system, but you know, it's getting people to buy into the process that's required to see success. Like that's the biggest hurdle. I think that that agencies face today is like, Yeah, man, like, the biggest thing, especially if you run something like Facebook ads, or anything, that's this disruption type of marketing, because what it does is it exposes people to the greatest weakness, which is sales. And what's funny enough, is in most industries, people think they're good at sales, right? Like they have this, this, this ego around this fact that they're good at sales, because they can close 75% of their referrals. It's like, well, anybody can close 75% referrals, you know, like, that's not sales, you know, what I mean? Like, cold lead, like, that's a that's a totally different process that needs to be followed versus a referral or something, someone that came in organically, like even SEO versus Facebook ads is going to be a very different approach, because the intent levels are very much different.Steffen: Yeah, no, I totally I totally agree. Well, you know, let's, let's talk a little bit more about mortgage marketing in general. Right. So bear, obviously, at the moment, you know, just for the listeners, Luke, you obviously down in San Diego, I'm just outside of Los Angeles, here in California, the housing market is crazy. Right? Housing prices are increasing. I'm not 100% sure if that's the same across the country, just by taking that as an as an example, if the, if the housing market is so hot, does that mean the mortgage industry is positively impacted as well?Luke: Yeah, I mean, so So there's a couple, a couple different factors that are influencing, you know, the, the huge surge in demand, and part of it is, has been that that rates have been at historical lows here, basically, since the start of the pandemic, right. So, you know, rates were still already historically low, even prior to the pandemic, right, they were in the threes, which, which if you look at the context of the rate market over the last, you know, few decades, that's that's really low. But then the then the pandemic hit, and because the government was buying bonds, they're buying all these, you know, basically they were they were flooding the market with with money, it drove rates down. And so what that what happened was like there was so much opportunity to go out one to refinance loan officers have been absolutely slammed with refinances but then on the purchase market as well. It's been crazy because, you know, so many more people can qualify and also you can buy so much more home with with the rates. Steffen: So with a market that hot, what's the importance of digital marketing for mortgage companies?Luke: Well, interestingly enough, it's been it's been a little bit of a struggle to, to find loan officers that are that are willing to invest in a program like this really, because, you know, we've grown we grew throughout 2020 but the reality is so many loan officers are so busy that like, and I'm running, you know, probably about 15 grand a month in my own ads to attract loan officers. And I constantly get people commenting on like, if you need leads right now you need to get out of the mortgage industry. And because they're just so busy, right, and that's one of the biggest things that we found is, you know, while people have the capacity, money wise, they don't have the capacity timewise to handle more leads, right. And so that's been a big sort of problem. And to me, as a marketing agency, a higher rate market is actually more beneficial for me. Because, you know, the reality is that don't have leads falling from the sky, not every single person, you know, that owns a house can can refinance, because because of how low the rates have gotten, right, and so it's but in my opinion, the importance of marketing during this time is the people that are thinking long term, but understand that this great market is not going to be around forever, and they're building their purchase pipeline for the future. Because a lot of a lot of loan officers are focusing on refinances, which means they're neglecting the referral partners, they're neglecting their purchase pipelines. And at some point, inevitably, like we just saw, you know, almost a half a point increase, the rates are gonna go up. And so you know, that that refinance volume is just going to go away, and there's not going to be leads falling from the sky. So they're gonna have to find some sort of a solution to get to get leads. Right?Steffen: Yeah. So if we, if we take the current situation out of out of the picture, right. A lot of finance related industries are very competitive across different digital marketing platforms. I mean, clipping rights for Google ads can be as much as $50. And more. Right, right. How can mortgage businesses generate leads efficiently today?Luke: Yeah, so we I mean, we primarily use Facebook and Instagram, we're also doing some YouTube stuff. Yeah, as you mentioned, you know, I'm not the Google the Google experts. But I know that there's people out there that are that are generating leads for fairly cheap, and obviously, they're not optimizing for words like mortgage, because you know, if not, you're you're trying to play with the big boys. So obviously, you got to be a little better at, you know, longtail keywords and things like that what you're optimizing for just kind of more hyper local keywords is what you really want to focus on. If you're, you're doing Google, but again, I'm not the expert there. So we leverage Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as well to basically use interruption based marketing to find people that are in the market, potentially, in the market, thinking about being in the market, we're finding that you know, generally cost per lead is fairly cheap, right? I mean, you can find, you know, leads for, depending on the market anywhere as low as $1. I've even seen lower than that, for the type of leads we do, which are long form to as much as $40-$50, depending on the market, and depending on the time, time of year, and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of variables, that that go in there and the type of industry that you're targeting as well. But I think, you know, it's still like that, that beats a lot of times, you know, buying leads from these big players like Zillow who charge, you know, $100 $100 plus a lead. And then, you know, a lot of times we'll even sell those leads multiple times.Steffen: Luke earlier talked about how you improved your approach from quantity over quality, to focusing on quality leads, and helping your clients improve their sales process. How do you feed back information on what leads turn into sales?Luke: Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing there is, I mean, you know, we don't have any sort of sophisticated program like that. So mostly, it just comes comes down to getting feedback directly from our clients on what's working and what's not. So generally, what we'll do is we'll test a couple different angles on the front end. So like I mentioned, we go teachers, healthcare professionals, first responders, veterans, and we target those sorts of first time homebuyers, we talked to these sorts of we do put out ads for those sorts of angles. And so what we do is we generally start with two or three different side angles, and then say, Hey, you know, give us feedback, what's going on? What's the feedback? Because that's, that's generally what we do and say, Hey, like, we'll actually scale the one that's working the best for you. Right? So if it's the first responders, and we'll just shut off everything else, and we'll just put all the budget towards first responder, because, you know, they're the ones that are gonna be able to give us the real time data. As far as like conversations, the biggest thing with loans is, it's a long sales cycle, right? Like, you know, they don't they don't get just paid right away. So it's like, Alright, well, I because the applications, are the people actually qualifying, you know, they have to they have income, or they have too much debt. And so that's the sort of information that we're picking up on, and getting that feedback directly from our clients that we know, okay, well, this, this angle isn't working in this market. Because the thing is, like, just because it works in one market doesn't mean it works in another market. In addition to that, sometimes it comes down to the actual, the actual LO, right, like, you know, maybe an LO used to be a first responder and so they connect really well with first responders, or, you know, maybe they have a family member, that's the first one or maybe they are a former veteran, so they connect better with veterans. And so sometimes it just comes down to preference, as far as like, what do they connect with and what are they able to convert at a higher level. And that's, that's really the data that we pass back through. It's just like, you know, customer feedback. At this point. We don't have any super simple It sophisticated, you know, metrics that we're tracking, it is something that we're looking at doing is potentially tracking some of that to actually do some offline conversions and stuff like that, to track that back into audiences with with unfortunately, with housing stuff on Facebook, we don't have a lot of wiggle room as far as choosing audiences, and things like that, because because of, you know, compliance and legal, legal things, we actually have to choose the housing housing category, which doesn't allow us to do a lot of different targeting. And so unfortunately, we can no longer do a lot of things that we used to be able to do. We used to be able to exclude, like people that had, you know, lower credit, and you know, stuff like that. But, you know, we create look alikes and then exclude people that say they have a low credit. But, you know, unfortunately, I can't do that anymore.Steffen: Yeah, yeah. So with with that handicap, let's call that way. How, how have you adopted because that requires you as a media buying company, to adopt the approach, right? If you're no longer able to fine tune your targeting, you need to find other ways to only attract people that you know, fit the roster, so to speak. So how do you do that?Luke: So we use the the primary way we do that is we segment our traffic using pixel. So essentially, anybody who self report 620 credit or less, we send to a thank you page that doesn't have a pixel on it, right? So essentially, what we're telling Facebook is we want more people that look like the sort of people that say they have a 620 credit or better, right, so obviously, facebook, facebook doesn't know what we're optimizing for. But, you know, as as Facebook has been gathering all this data from everyone over the last 14-15 years, or however long they've been around, they've put the essentially group people in the buyer pools or into persona pools, right? And so what they'll do is they'll pull these characteristics from each user and say, Okay, well, these, these, all these people have these things in common. So let's go find more of these types of people. Right, so then what we do is we obviously, we're calling them out on the ad, we're calling, you know, because we have to be more relevant now. Because in the past, what we could do is we could literally target first responders, we could target, you know, but now we can do that, because that's not no longer an available targeting option. So we use specific pixels that are essentially, I would call them trained to go after those sorts of people. But essentially, you know, we optimize them to go after those sorts of people. Because we also have a relevant ad copy relevant images, relevant headlines that are calling out that specific audience. Yeah, right. And so you know, we're able to use bigger, broader audiences. And I actually find that, you know, it was it was tough at first, right? Like when we switched, and I had to figure it out. But I find that sometimes it's even cheaper costs, and just allowing Facebook degree than allowing Facebook to, to go out and find the right people, as long as you're able to feed it the right data. Because if you feed it, if you feel it that the 620 and lower credit scores are good, Facebook is going to go out and try to find more of those people because they say, Hey, I'm trying to find the cheapest cost per action. And so if you're optimizing, if you're, you know, if you're still firing the pixel on 580, 580 and below, Facebook's gonna go find more people that look like those people that say they have a 580, because that's the cheapest, you know, people are desperate, they don't have they don't have money, they don't have credit. And so they're like, sure, like, oh, often this. And so you don't want to continue to feed it that that that data?Steffen: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So what you're basically doing is you you build specific look alike pools.Luke: We're just basically using the pixel, not even so much, because can even use look alikes especial audiences, and we've tested special audiences, it doesn't seem to work very well, because it doesn't have the same. It doesn't, it doesn't allow us to do look alikes, they call them that look like under the housing is called special audiences. But it doesn't tend to work as well. Right. And so, we, we just use the just pixels that we share. So we have, I know, with iOS 14, we're gonna have to adjust again, but, but we basically share, you know, those five pixels across all of our accounts. So all of our clients leverage the same pixel data across all of all of the different accounts so that we have a first responder pixel, a teacher pixel healthcare pixel. And so those ultimately are able to gather that data. And I know people talk about, you know, the data is all stored at the ad account level. But I've seen I've seen the opposite be true. Maybe, maybe it's just a placebo effect, but seems to work with what we do so.Steffen: Interesting. Well, then, obviously, you know, is the fact that you are focusing on the mortgage industry, so you're going after the same people makes that possible at the end of the day, right. The sharing.Luke: Right, right. Exactly. Exactly.Steffen: Yeah. Now, you mentioned earlier that you almost have to retrain or train the the mortgage officers or loan officers on how to do deal with these online leads. Because, you know, you said, closing referrals is much easier than closing online leads. How can mortgage professionals or loan officers or that case be more efficient with the leads? What is what have you identified specifically that they do wrong? And they need to do in order to close more online leads.Luke: I mean, I think the first the first thing, the first thing that we addressed, obviously, was the follow up process, which is why we introduced the automations. Right. And so the first thing is having a good dialed in follow up process, both from an automated standpoint, but also from a manual standpoint. And I think the biggest thing that people fail at is calling once or twice and thinking, well, that leads us not interested. So I'm not gonna call them anymore. And the reality is that the perfect prospect requires a persistent professional, right, my buddy basically came up with that sort of phrase, and I loved it, because what the reality is the people that are most qualified, the people have the money to have credit, they have downpayment, those sorts of people are more likely than not to be busy, to not be desperate, so they're not picking up the phone in the middle of the day. And so people have this, this perception that you're bugging someone, if you're calling them and the reality is like, the faster you can call them, and you know, calling them multiple times at least six times, you're actually going to be able to capture a much larger percentage of the people out of that that buyer pool. Because, you know, they sometimes they need that extra, that extra push, and they need that extra follow up. And so that's the first piece obviously, is having a dial that follow up process where you're touching them at least six, before you give up. You know, and that's the one of the biggest problems that I see. Second thing is not having a good sales process, right, assuming, you know, I don't know, like a lot of times that they'll talk to someone like, oh, that they weren't interested. And the reality is a lot of times because you know, they are coming from Facebook, it is interruption marketing, they don't know like or trust you, you have to build that you have to understand that, you know, the consumer is constantly looking for a red flag. And if you give them any opportunities to get out, right, they don't want to make they have this fear based response. And a lot of times people have this brush off excuse of like, Oh, I'm not interested. It's like, well, did you you know, are you not John Doe that just filled out 10-12 questions? And are you not looking to buy here? And, you know, San Diego for $350,000? Oh, yeah, I filled that out. But I was just interested, I was just looking. Alright, and so then you can kind of get into the actual conversation of like, what is it you're looking for? Right? I think so many times people just take, take the initial objection, as truth. And you know, people are liars. People don't tell the truth. People don't, you know, they filled out that many pieces of information, they're interested, right. And so part of it then comes down to this conversation, what is your process, and a lot of people don't have scripts, or they try to educate people in the buying, right. And the reality is that people don't buy things that make sense people buy when they have a problem in an intense desire to solve that problem. And do so now. And what our job is, as sales professionals, is to basically agitate that pain to discomfort so that at some point, they seek a solution to that, and you can show them that the solution is your your service, right? And a lot of times people just want to give them all the information, and then hope they buy. And then people aren't aren't asking for the sale either. Right? Like they don't they don't ask for the application. They don't ask to do the next steps. And they also don't set expectations on future. They don't future pace them on what to expect next, what's the next steps of this process? Right? There's so many different little nuances to the sales process that needs to be followed. And again, if, if anything, if any part of the process seems off the consumers like, awesome, I knew this was a scam. Right? I knew this wasn't, I knew this is too good to be true. I knew whatever. Right? So they're looking for reasons not to buy. So if you don't have a dialed in process, it's very easy to lose people that way.Steffen: That makes total sense. Now, what do you just said to me sounds like problems I have seen heard off across a lot of industries. I mean, I don't I don't think that's anything specific to the mortgage industry. It sounds like challenging sales people have period, you know. It's like, I don't follow up enough, you know, things like, Oh, I call them two or three times didn't pick up very well, you know, I actually, you know, what, I always references, you know, 10 to 12 times as the ideal touch points that you need to start talking to someone or even close something. Right. Yeah. I mean, don't don't be pushed off. I mean, there's a reason why they fill it out in the fall. You know, so just get into a conversation. I think that it's really an education topic. You know, it's an education problem that a lot of people get thrown into that sales role and then they just like the basic knowledge to handle objections for express or what the right processes and i think that's that's kind of responsibility or the employer to provide them with the right information so that they can be more successful. Now, we're unfortunately coming towards the end of this podcast recording today, Luke, before I let you go, um, what are some top tips you have for mortgage professionals as it relates to generating leads?Luke: Sure, as far as actually generating leads, you know, my suggestions are for anybody who wants to generate leads is is never talk about 0% financing or, you know, downpayment assistance type of programs, or talking about your lowest that you go on credit scores and things like that, because what ends up happening is like, well, those sound like good angles to attract people, what ends up happening is you're actually going to attract the wrong people that don't qualify, they don't have money. And so you know, basically trying to filter people out a little bit, because the reality is, you're still going to be people that need downpayment and still don't have good credit. And so you don't want to attract more of those types of people that just aren't going to qualify, you're gonna waste your time. Right. So that's the first tip. Second tip is, I think filling out an online survey is huge, as far as increasing intent and increasing friction in the process. And the more friction you introduce the higher quality and higher intent those leads are, right. And so that's super pivotal too, if you don't want to waste your time with a bunch of people that don't qualify are a bunch of people that because the reality is even with the extra friction, right, like, you know, average conversion in the in the mortgage industry is like, you know, one to 3% are good, good guys are taking, you know, between 10 to 30% application, and they're like, five to 10% closing, but average is really one to 3% and like, you know, kind of normal, like, some some, some top some better performers are closer to like three to 5%. But in the mortgage industry that's printing money. You know, it's just kind of understanding that, but I would say really, the average is probably closer to 1%, based off of you know, not following up not having a good sales process, not understanding how this works. So, you know, the biggest thing, right is having, you know, not attracting, not attracting people that that don't have any money, qualifying them a little bit. And then really, the third is don't generate leads unless, unless you have a process right or generate leads, but understand that you need to create a process to convert these leads and not give up a month in when you haven't closed a single deal. Because you're not following up enough. You're not saying the right things, you know, all of these things, right? So, so again, being a little bit more patient, but also having that system to follow up.Steffen: Well, Luke, thank you so much. Thank you for joining the Performance Delivered podcast and sharing your knowledge on lead generation for the mortgage industry. If people want to find out more about you and your company, how can they get in touch?Luke: Sure, sure. So you can check out our website Paragondmg.com. So it's like Paragon Digital Marketing Group, but Paragondmg.com or you can find me on Facebook. I mean, I'm pretty active on Facebook. Add me there, shoot me a message or something there. And that's probably the easiest, easiest way to get a hold of us.Steffen: That's good. Well, thanks, everyone for listening. If you liked the performance divide podcast, please subscribe to us. And leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast application. If you want to find out more about Symphony Digital, you can visit us at symphonicdigital.com or follow us on Twitter @symphonicHQ. Thanks again and see you next time.Voiceover: Performance delivered is sponsored by Symphonic Digital. Discover audience focused and data driven digital marketing solutions for small and medium businesses at symphonicdigital.com.
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