• Not segmenting their market

“Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets” – Nido Qubein

Most Brokers have a one-size-fits-all approach to their marketing. They have one set of brochures and marketing materials they give to all clients irrespective of their lending needs. When the message you are sending covers everyone, it has little meaning to anyone in particular. You need to take the time to build marketing assets that speak directly to your immediate target market to send the message that you understand their specific circumstances.

This is true in your initial marketing to potential clients and your post sales marketing to past clients.

Rightly or wrongly, your potential clients perceive their situation to be ‘different’. If that client is choosing a Broker, they will choose the one that appears to have a lot of experience with others in their situation ahead of a ‘generalist’ broker.

Specialising pays because it allows you to identify the particular issues and pain points these types of clients deal with. This in turn allows you to develop a sales presentation that addresses these problems. Personalisation, and the right message at the right time and on the right medium are all crtitical.

  • Trying to reinvent the wheel

“The organizations that succeed realize that offering a remarkable product with a great story is more important and more profitable than doing what everyone else is doing just a bit better.” – Seth Godin

To have a good business you don’t need to be a great innovator, and even if you are, in a competitive industry the advantage of innovation is shortlived as it simply breeds competition. And even if you do come up with that amazing idea that the thousands of Brokers around you haven’t, the reality is you still need to get the message about it out to the public. And if it is ground-breaking, you have a huge educational process ahead of you to catch the public up to what you are doing.

Mortgage Broking itself is a huge innovation in lending and brings great benefits to consumers, but it has taken decades to get it to a point where it is kind-of understood by most people, yet still poorly understood by many.

I accept that there is nothing I can do that another broking business can’t do. I do try and take full advantage of my strengths, and largely that comes from the fact that I am able to devote most of my time and resources to learning and building marketing systems for the Brokers that work with me.

As such, I think the normal Broker is best placed just to look at the best practice processes of sales and marketing and implement those into their businesses, tailored to suit themselves. This is preferable to trying to find that great place to advertise that no other Broker has thought of or that cheap lender that no other Broker is using. You should always try and improve your business and learn the best ways of doing things, but time spent directly prospecting and marketing and building a client base is going to be the best return-on-investment you will get.