As a loan officer, you're dealing with a housing boom right now. With the pandemic causing massive disruption to the way we live, thousands of people flee the cities.

New York estimates over 300,000 people left the city since the start of the pandemic, and that figure continues to increase.

It's the same across cities like Chicago, Atlanta, and LA. Continuing social unrest is causing people to rethink their housing situation.

As a result, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and the mortgage industry experiences record demand in H2 2020, with the trend expected to continue into late 2021.

People are snapping up homes across the country at rates not seen since the height of the housing bubble in 2007. This change in market events leaves mortgage loan officers with their hands full.

However, if your company isn't experiencing the same boom as other businesses in your sector, maybe it's time to re-evaluate your marketing plan.

In today's mortgage market, you need a website as the foundation of your company. With the world going online, your website forms the backbone of your digital marketing strategy.

The reality is that traditional marketing systems are dead. The world has changed a lot since 2007, and if you're not online today, you're leaving money on the table.

Maybe you already have a website for your loan officer business? How's that strategy working out for you? Is it bringing you leads?

Many mortgage brokers don't invest the money into making their website a marketing machine. Instead, they prefer to leave it hanging out in cyberspace as an information site.

If you want to supercharge your marketing efforts and drive a steady stream of new business to your website, it's time to turn on the digital marketing spigot.

In this post, we'll unpack the 12 characteristics of successful loan officer websites.

#1 Attractive design

The most important part of your website is the design. Your site needs an attractive and effective design template to attract prospects.

Your template is like a suit on a salesman. If you walk into a dealership to buy a car, and the salesperson is wearing a disheveled suit, with a 5 o'clock shadow on their face, do they create a good impression with you?

Your virtual prospects go through the same experience on your website. You want to make a lasting first impression on your prospect that keeps them dwelling on your landing pages.

Research the top companies in your niche, and look at their design. Take the best elements from your top three competitor sites, and incorporate them into your site design.

You'll need to partner with a design firm to build your website and create a custom template design.

However, with traditional design firms, you might have to wait two to three months before the design team finishes your site.

With the current housing market at its hottest levels in more than a decade, you need a website ASAP.

By working with B12, you can cut your website development time in half. The B12 team utilizes AI processes to speed up the website design time.

Try it for yourself, visit the B12 site, and sign up for a free AI draft of your website. The system takes a brief questionnaire on your business, using the data to produce a draft of your new website in a few minutes.

If you approve the design, the B12 design team reaches out to you to discuss your website requirements. The B12 team design beautiful and functional website templates for your loan officer website – give it a try.

In most cases, you'll have your site ready to launch in seven to ten days – that's a fraction of the time it takes with a traditional design firm.

#2 Functional landing pages

As a realtor or loan officer, you need to maximize every opportunity you get to open potential clients and close deals. To get the most out of your marketing efforts, you need functional landing pages that convert traffic.

Give your landing pages an uncluttered look, but ensure you have compelling content and useful widgets or tools on your site.

When the prospect enters your landing page, they usually take 5-seconds to decide if they like it, or they'll bounce back to search results.

Therefore, you need to do everything you can to convert them while they are on the page. If you can't convert them, you need to capture their contact details to add them to your sales funnel.

#3 Custom Domain and Easy Navigation

After settling on the design, you're going to need to find a custom domain for your site. Custom domains let you tailor your website URL to your company.

For instance, if you're a loan officer based in New York, your domain could be something like;

Instantloan.nyc

The domain is short, easy to remember, and tailored to an NYC domain.

In essence, your domain acts as your business card, giving your prospects their first introduction to your business before they open your site and look at the design.

Your domain needs to be simple and memorable. Avoid using long phrases, and never put numbers or special characters in your domain – people find it confusing, even if it makes sense to you. We recommend avoiding numbers as well.

After settling on your domain name, it's time to look at your site navigation. When the prospect lands on your website, they want to find the information they're looking for right away.

If you make them navigate your site, they're likely to bounce back to search and try another result. If the prospect is looking for your phone number, make it no more than a click away from the landing page.

Adding your phone number to the top of every landing page resolves this issue.

If the prospect is looking to refinance, they want to see that part of your site right away without having to navigate through confusing drop-down menus.

Making the site easy to navigate improves the user experience. Increasing the chances that your buyer will either convert right away or enter their details into your lead magnet.

#4 Opt-in lead magnets

When a prospect lands on your website, they'll need some encouragement from you to help you show them what they need to do. Think of it as taking a child by the hand, introducing them to all the aspects of your site.

The last thing you want to happen is for the prospect to leave your site without converting or leaving you their information. If that happens, chances are they're never coming back.

Using lead magnets for your lead generation strategy is an excellent way to grow your prospect list. Lead capture forms allow you to take down your client's phone number, email, and name.

After completing the lead, it goes into your sales funnel, where you put the customer through your automated sales process.

You can have different sales funnels set up for home buyers, commercial buyers, and other market segments. This strategy allows you to segment your marketing campaigns, tailoring your value offer to each demographic.

However, you can't expect your prospects to hand over their details for free. You'll need to incentivize them with a value offer relating to their need for using the site.

Offering a free appraisal service for their refinancing deal is a good start. You could also provide free e-book guides on what to look for when buying a home.

These value offers have one purpose – to get prospects to leave you their details. After completing your contact form, you can either contact them directly or add them to your sales funnel.

#5 CTAs

CTAs (Call-to-Action) are a vital part of your mortgage loan officer website design. When the prospect opens your landing page, they'll start consuming the content. After they finish, they need you to tell them what to do next.

It's at this stage that the prospect needs to identify and use your CTA. There is a range of statements and blurbs you can use in your CTAs. However, the best ones ask your prospect to take action. A few examples of compelling CTAs would be the following.

• Click here to get a quote right now
• Click to speak to a loan officer
• Get a loan by clicking here

Mortgage professionals need to understand that the online marketing game is as efficient and effective as an offline sales environment.

By using CTAs on your site, you're effectively using a form of a closing statement. Salespeople use these techniques all the time to close the deal.

How many times have you been in a retail establishment without the intention of buying anything? However, a salesperson starts pitching you on something and piques your interest.

At the end of the pitch, they need to close you by asking, "why don't you take it." This simple statement helps your brain understand what it needs to do next. You'll find it surprising how this simple technique can increase sales figures.

CTAs provide the same effect for your site. They offer the prospect a chance to take action.

#6 Sales funnels

Sale funnels are the heart of your digital marketing machine. The purpose of the funnel is to sort the wheat from the chaff – giving you a list of qualified prospects that are ready to engage with your services.

Sales funnels feature a content strategy designed to push your prospect through a series of emails designed to get them to convert.

You can tailor your service offering to independent markets and customer demographics. As a result, you create tailored marketing systems designed for each of your client personas.

Using tools like Google Analytics helps you monitor your traffic sources and how many visitors end up taking you up on your value offer.

By instituting sales funnels into your business, you automate the prospecting and marketing process, allowing you to focus on dealing with new clients.

#7 CRM

To get the most out of your digital marketing strategy, you can link your sales funnels to a CRM. A Customer Relationship Management platform gives you a central hub for your marketing and operations.

A CRM helps mortgage companies with eh automation of workflows and marketing tasks, allowing you to focus on the client relationship. A CRM keeps your client files and notes on hand and easily accessible to other team members.

Manage referral marketing strategies, mortgage lead magnets, and your marketing campaigns directly through the dashboard on your CRM.

There are various CRMs available, with differing levels of functionality. You get some designed as complete management and marketing solutions. Others don't have as many marketing or SEO tools but instead focus on managing your database.

Choosing the right CRM investment for your loan officer website is a big decision. Pricing on a solution could cost as little as few dollars a month, or hundreds of dollars for a monthly subscription, depending on the system features.

#8 Compelling content

Your content strategy plays a significant role in attracting new and returning leads and clients to your website. Your content acts as the benchmark of your service offering in your client's eyes.

If you produce interesting, useful, and insightful blogs, FAQs, and client testimonials on your site, you'll attract more eyeballs.

The purpose of your content strategy is to get prospects to take action on your CTAs and lead magnets. Let's say the prospect is reading your blog, and a pop-up shows on the screen asking for their email address to keep reading.

For the prospect to take the time to enter their email address and name, you had better be offering some good content, or they'll navigate away from the page back to search.

Other lead magnets that are efficient at capturing leads for loan officers include the following.

• Free PDF guides on homeownership and financing
• Video series explaining loan topics
• Exclusive access to featured content on your site
• Free consultation offers

Those are a few examples of lead magnets that cause prospects to take action on your website CTAs.

#9 Optimized pages

SEO is the practice of optimizing site functions and features to benchmark standards. This strategy involves clearing the clutter from your site, removing broken links, duplicate pages, and content.

There's plenty of work involved with SEO, and you need an internet marketing team helping you with the process. You'll also need to identify keywords for your on-page SEO optimization of service pages like your homepages, contact us, and about us pages.

Search Engine Optimization requires a specialized skill set to execute the necessary functions to optimize your site. Unfortunately, that means you'll have to hire a design team unless you work with B12.

B12 offers you outstanding web design, and the SEO and SEO Pro subscriptions get you access to SEO tools to optimize your site. There's no technical experience required to operate the tools, and you'll get outstanding results that boost your website in search.

B12 includes critical SEO security optimizations, like SSL certificates, with your website design.

#10 Analytics and tracking

The best loan officer websites feature compatibility with tracking and analytics tools to boost your marketing efforts.

If you're running PPC campaigns, analytics help you track traffic sources and what the traffic does on your site.

Analytics and tracking give you insight into where prospects leave your sales funnels. Using the data, you can adjust your marketing tactics to improve your results.

Metrics are the only way you can track your progress. While Google Analytics is efficient and effective, there are other marketing tools to help you gauge these critical metrics.

Platforms like Facebook ads manager offers you analytics and tracking on the performance of ad campaigns. CRM solutions also come with analytics and tracking included in some packages.

#11 Outstanding images and video

All the best mortgage broker websites rely on media to attract new borrowers to the lender's website. When a prospective client lands on your site, they're looking for a visual experience.

Sure, they'll be reading the text on the site to understand your offer, but a picture or video can say a thousand words.

Using whiteboard videos to unpack loan processes and other complicated procedures saves you time on the phone. These tactics also help to send you qualified leads through inquiries.

If you pick up the phone, the prospect already watched your videos on the process, and they want to apply for a loan.

#12 Social media integration

Look at the best loan officer websites, and they all offer social media integration. Social media changed the way we communicate, and it continues to evolve as we move deeper into the information age.

By now, every business should have a social media presence. Facebook offers you an enormous competitive advantage for sourcing local business to your website.

The ad manager component of your business Facebook page lets you create laser-targeted marketing campaigns for your prospects.

Your website needs social media buttons on the page, allowing your prospects to move seamlessly between your online marketing plan components.

However, you'll need to have social accounts and a viable social media marketing strategy to make the most of this feature.

B12 offers full integration of your social media accounts into your website design. With its AI-powered design process, you get a fast and efficient build with all the components you need to execute your digital marketing strategy.