Following the 2023 Mortgage Industry Marketing Awards, Barcadia Media’s Andy Shields got together with a selection of this year’s winners to discuss branding, the fundamentals of marketing, and how to get started. Helen Carter (Barclays), Tori Johnson (Livemore), Pete Muglestone (Online Mortgage Adviser), Laura Martin-Jones (Sesame Bankhall Group) and Ryan McMurtry (The Mortgage Marketing Forum) took part, chaired by awards sponsor and industry marketing expert, Jeff Knight of the Mortgage Marketing Forum.
This installment of the series covers how to build a brand from scratch – with plenty for brokers new to marketing their business to take away.
What is marketing – and what is a brand?
Knight got the session underway by outlining the CIM’s definition of marketing: ‘managing a process that is responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying a customer or the client’s requirements, profitably so’.
Our experts expanded on that, with Livemore’s Tori Johnson simplifying it as ‘a variety of activities that a company would undertake to promote buying or selling of their product or service’.
Laura Martin-Jones (Sesame Bankhall Group) added: “When I talk to our advisers, I talk about how marketing is a customer touch point – how it’s every touch point you have with a customer. So that can be from insight through to communications to the experience they have with you.”
Branding, however, is part of that marketing: the personality of your business that you want to express through your marketing.
Building your brand
Mugleston went on to add that, while they were different things, branding was important to marketing – continuing:
“Having a strong brand isn’t just a logo, it’s not just a flashy website. It’s how you come across, what your values are and presenting them in the right way.”
As a starting point for brokers wanting to understand how to build a brand, Barclay’s Helen Carter said brokers should: “Understand more about what they’re trying to achieve [and] who they’re trying to target”.
Mulgetone stressed that having a unique selling point is useful when establishing a brand, continuing: “You can be a ‘Ronseal’ business, as I call it. Where you’re exactly what it says on the tin. Or you can be a generic brand that does a specific thing that the customer wants – but if you’re the latter, that’s a less powerful message than the former. Every broker now is whole-of-market, pretty much – that’s not a USP anymore. So you can really [stand out] if you are an expert in Japanese Knotweed mortgages.”
“I could go to ten or more brokers today and they could probably get me a decent mortgage, but I’ve got to choose which one to go with,” Carter added. “So storytelling is key. It’s trying to understand what resonates [with] people.”
Managing your expectations is key
All our experts counselled that starting to build a brand and create a marketing campaign was about incremental improvements – with Ryan McMurtry noting that starting to market your businessed can be ‘overwhelming’.
He added: “Marketing takes time and effort and patience – you need to be willing to take time to review and make tweaks, and see gradual improvements”.
To hear what else our marketing experts have to say, watch the entire webinar on the Mortgage Industry Marketing website.
Our marketing experts’ advice for building a brand:
· Understand the difference between marketing and branding
· Work out what makes your business different
· Establish the values that your brand stands for
· Tell a story through your brand that helps potential clients understand who you are
· Set realistic expectations for long-term results
