Total Expert presents. THE CO-MARKETING GUIDE: Four Common Co-Marketing Pitfalls Mortgage Lenders Face and How to Avoid Them

Transcription

1 Total Expert presents THE CO-MARKETING GUIDE: Four Common Co-Marketing Pitfalls Mortgage Lenders Face and How to Avoid Them

2 Introduction For decades, lenders have worked with Realtors to drive new mortgages through Marketing Service Agreements (MSAs). However, instead of marketing themselves to the actual consumer, most lenders were in effect marketing themselves to the Realtor in the hopes of obtaining more referrals. This caused the perception, and in some cases the reality, that through these MSAs, Realtors were steering consumers to the lender without the consumer understanding why. The consumer was generally never aware of the monetary exchange between the lender and brokerage. Lenders are now shifting their marketing budgets away from MSAs and into true lender-realtor co-marketing. As lenders make this transition, a few common co-marketing pitfalls have surfaced. The following report outlines the most common pitfalls associated with co-marketing and how lenders can avoid them. 2

3 1 A Reactive vs. Proactive Approach Mortgage loan officers (MLOs) receive frequent requests for a variety of marketing materials from their co-marketing partners. Hoping to accommodate their co-marketing partners, many MLOs react by trying to shove these requests through a standard workflow and compliance approval process that is simply not designed to efficiently handle the complex nature of comarketing. This commonly results in delays and frustration not only for MLOs and their comarketing partners, but for the marketing and compliance teams who support them none of which helps the customer. Align Sales, Marketing and Compliance with an overall co-marketing strategy that comprises the most common requests from your company s MLOs and their co-marketing partners. Decide which marketing materials would have the highest impact for your brand and company initiatives, then clearly define a go-to-market strategy for these marketing materials. Communicate this strategy, along with your company s approved co-marketing materials (flyers, postcards, landing pages, etc.) to your MLOs and their co-marketing partners for a more proactive and efficient approach to co-marketing. One Total Expert client has a clearly defined bottom-up approach, where they meet regularly with a sales council of top-producing MLOs who provide guidance on the types of marketing materials they would like developed to the marketing team. Based on these insights, corporate marketing creates compliance-approved materials that are made available to all MLOs for easy, automatic delivery via the Total Expert system to their co-marketing partners, as well as their prospects and clients. This process has helped this particular lender to be compliant, efficient and go-to-market quickly with new marketing materials and to meet the needs of their MLOs. 3

4 2 No Centralized Compliance Review of Marketing Materials Regulators expect lenders to be able to hand over marketing and advertising materials within five days, and typically sooner. Laws require that lenders maintain these materials and that they be easily and quickly accessible to auditors. Without a centralized compliance review process, lenders will likely have to go to several different places to pull all marketing materials together a very time-consuming and fragmented process, which may also make you miss deadlines during an audit. Mitch Kider, Managing Partner at Weiner, Brodsky, Kider PC says the very best practice in regards to marketing compliance is to centralize your compliance review of all marketing materials, including co-marketing, social media, web advertising, print media and all things marketing. A centralized repository of all your marketing materials will also make them easily deliverable to regulators, in case of an audit. 4

5 3 Out of Control Rogue Marketing Rogue marketing is any marketing or marketing material that is deployed by an MLO or branch manager in the field without approval from the lender at the corporate level. An example of rogue marketing would be an open house flyer that was created and sent out by the MLO, but was never approved by the corporate marketing and compliance departments. While this may seem harmless, it s not. According to Kider, if a lender can t control rogue marketing, they have a compliance management system problem. Put simply your system has failed. Lenders must train, educate and discipline (if necessary) their MLOs and branch managers because the potential liability of rogue marketing is spectacular. A centralized compliance review process and proactive approach to marketing can help your organization reign in rogue marketing. 5

6 4 Failure to Document Pro Rata Share of Costs RESPA clearly sets forth the requirement that each co-marketing partner pay no more than and no less than, their fair share of costs when marketing their services together. However, lenders have various interpretations of how co-marketing assets (flyers, postcards, landing pages, etc.) should be divided between co-marketing partners in both space allocation and the subsequent percentage of costs paid by each co-marketing partner. Experts in RESPA Section 8 compliance agree that failure to follow the pro rata method of calculating co-marketing costs will dramatically increase compliance risks. To satisfy RESPA requirements and help mitigate risk, lenders must have a consistent, defined method for properly documenting how they calculated the pro rata shares for all marketing materials, and how percentages of total costs are assigned to, and paid by, each co-marketer. This type of due-diligence by the lender shows that your organization is implementing defined compliance policies and procedures. Co-marketing is the most effective way to drive growth as long as it is done right. Being aware of these pitfalls and taking appropriate action to avoid them, is critical to the long-term success of any lender in today s market. 6

7 The Total Expert Properly managed co-marketing practices and compliance tracking is vital for today s lenders. Total Expert can help lenders add efficiency and simplicity across the marketing and compliance departments, while giving sales the sizzle they need to grow their business. Total Expert empowers lenders to precisely calculate, document, track and report all aspects of their co-marketing activities across multiple channels at the enterprise level. Enterprise-level delivery and reporting of marketing materials helps ensure greater brand control and assists in preventing rogue marketing. A simple profile-based system allows MLOs to connect directly with co-marketing partners to market their services using corporate-approved marketing assets. For more information on Total Expert or to request a free demo, visit 7