Attracting more landlord customers

Raj Dosanjh is co-founder of Rentround

In the digital age, a successful mortgage lender marketing strategy includes researching the target customer, including demographics, content-consumption and behavior patterns.

The digital revolution allows lenders to pinpoint their marketing to specific characteristics, from age, location, annual income and gender. Untargeted direct mail and flyers just won’t cut it anymore.

Adwords, sponsored emails, and paid social media have paved the way for mortgage lenders to implement a fine degree of target market accuracy when compiling marketing campaigns.

Platforms such as LinkedIn let you create messages that cater to specific professions, locations & job types.

It’s never been easier to target and attract prospective landlords, including corporate landlords, professionals, and even accidental landlords.

So, who is your average landlord? What age are they? What time of day are they online?

Rentround’s landlord data

Landlords actually follow a certain pattern and if you look hard enough, you can find it.

To help show you the patterns we mean, we’ve used landlord data generated by Rentround that spans from June 2019 to June 2020.

Although this comparison site is geared towards letting agents and property managers, the data is useful for mortgage lenders as well, since the target audience is the same.

The data was collected from more than 11,400 unique visitors and over 5,100 landlord entries. Rentround used Google Analytics accounts and website databases, respectively, to compile the results.

Age isn’t just a number after all

Identifying your target audience is one of the most important steps of being a successful mortgage lender. Once you do this, you can cater to their needs.

Your website design, advertisements, and landing pages need wording and imagery that attracts your target market.

Based on the data Rentround collected, nearly 50% of landlords are between the ages of 35 and 54. The next largest group is aged between 55 and 64.

Only 5% of landlords are younger than 24, which means that your message and landlord marketing efforts should be designed for Gen-X, Gen-Y, and millennials.

The devices landlords use

Believe it or not, the device your target customer uses to search your mortgage lending firm is a key component in your marketing success. It’s no surprise that most searches these days are done on mobile devices.

In fact, data shows that nearly 73% of landlords use their mobile phones to perform searches.

This means that your website needs to be mobile-friendly if you want it to convert. Avoid using oversized images that can slow-down loading speeds, long blocks of text that bore visitors, or confusing navigation tools.

Timing is everything

Missed leads can kill your business, which is why you need to ensure your phone lines are open when leads come in and all of your emails receive a reply – fast!

The shorter the response time, the more likely you are to close a deal. Knowing when landlords are looking for lenders is an important part of creating a winning website and email marketing campaign.

Interestingly enough, the collected data shows a dip in searches on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

The most activity was reported on the weekends. Is your mortgage company open on Sundays? If not, then following up on fresh leads should be your first order of business on Monday morning.

Most landlords work a full-time day job which means they may not be available to chat.

It’s also important to target landlords during the right time of day. Data shows that the ideal time to capture new clients and capitalize on leads is 3:00 p.m.

Surprisingly, there’s also a lot of activity after 5:00 p.m. Although it’s not always possible, making yourself available during these times of day could work to your advantage since you’re more likely to get the landlord on the phone.

Many successful mortgage lenders are extending their office hours for this very reason.

Data offers insight into landlord patterns

Mortgage lenders use all types of data to find, attract, and pitch prospective landlords. Having the right data can help you make the most out of your efforts.

There’s no single data source that can reflect the behaviors and patterns of every landlord in your local area.

That’s why you need to use your own marketing insights and sales performance records to see, first hand, the patterns of your clientele.

Before setting off and starting your marketing strategy, you need to look at data of your target markets, i.e. landlords & property owners.

This will pivot certain decisions and increase the accuracy of where you should focus.

For example;

Are you targeting the wrong age group?

The number of landlords under the age of 25 is low compared to the over 50’s. Are pictures on your website full of people in their 20’s, when it’d be better to be more inclusive of older generations?

Is your site compatible with all devices?

Most likely traffic to your site is mainly from mobile phones, so optimising your site for mobile is where your web design budget should be focused.

Are you targeting the right words?

Paying to rank high on the word “mortgages” may get you a lot of clicks. However if your aim is to get more landlords, you’ll be spending a lot of mone