Using News to Power Your Marketing

Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting with the team over at MortgageInfluencers.com. Scott Schang and Frank Garay visited with me about using news in a mortgage originator’s marketing program. I enjoyed this conversation very much and shared four ideas that could benefit you.

My introduction to the industry occurred in 1990, when I went to work for a title agency as a courthouse researcher. It wasn’t until 1997 that I started working as a reporter for National Mortgage News in New York. That year, I wrote over 800 news stories about the mortgage industry.

What I learned through that experience is that stories are hiding everywhere. By focusing on my reader’s needs, I was able to find all kinds of stories to share with them.

Mortgage originators can do the same thing for the real estate agents and borrowers they serve. Here are four ways you can use the news to power your marketing efforts.

Curate

Sure, everyone has access to the same news sources and can easily Google anything they want to know. But humans are busy (some say lazy). It’s convenient to have someone put the most important news items in one place for us. If that place is a periodic newsletter that just shows up in our email, so much the better.

Illuminate

Even if people can find the news that will impact their lives, they can’t always make sense of it. Helping people understand what the news means to them is a great way to build your reputation in the market and your overall influence. It requires you to think about “what comes next” when you read the news and then share that with your network.

Dominate

If you’re working in a competitive environment, you’re likely to see your competitors working to get featured in the news. When they get that done, you have a responsibility to get into those stories, too. If, for instance, a competitor is featured on a morning news program saying that interest rates are rising and fewer homes are selling, you need to generate some content about interest rates. Your conclusion may differ, or not, but either way you can’t let yourself be left out of those conversations.

Disseminate

Once you get in the habit of reading the news, you’ll become familiar with how news stories are structured and you can begin writing your own. I’m a firm believer that a company should be putting out at least one press release about something every month. Where are those news stories hiding in your institution? We’ll talk about that in a future post.

You’re probably already keeping up with all the news that impacts your market. Start using it to power your marketing and see how quickly it elevates you and your team to expert status within your community.

This post first appeared on Scott Schang’s Second Opinion Loan Officer (SOLO) community. Find out more about his work on his website.