11 ways broker firms can drive traffic to their website – Part 1

I’ve pulled together 11 sure-fire ways that you can improve your site traffic for your mortgage business - and added a bonus tip #12, just for Financial Reporter readers, but you will have to wait until next week!

#1 Fast & responsive

Short and simple, this one might seem really obvious. However, if your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load you could be looking at up to 90% bounce rate. There are tests that you can run to check the speed of your site, and some free tools will even tell you what’s slowing it down and how to fix it.

It’s not just site load time that can impact your website bounce rate. If your site isn’t responsive- i.e. set up for multiple devices such as mobile, then your customers will go elsewhere.

#2 Partner marketing

Being a broker, you’re used to building strong relationships with your clients. Building strong partnerships with other businesses can aid your distribution strategy as well as your website traffic.

If you partner with companies that have a large influence or following in your industry you can increase your site referral traffic. You’ll need to negotiate something that your partner gets in return, perhaps a revenue share or an initiative you can partner on that’s mutually beneficial.

#3 Social media

You may have seen #3 mentioned in our top tips for lead generation blog post (hot tip you can download the guide for free too). It’s important to be present and active where your customers are so you ensure you’re getting good exposure for your brand.

Organic social media (unpaid) will help you drive traffic to your website as long as you’re posting helpful content. You can gain a good understanding of what content will resonate with your audience if you have done your research. This can also be identified as persona marketing- we’ll cover this in a later post.

It’s good to have a diverse strategy for your social channels. And making sure that you are delivering real value is how your posts will translate into web visits or engagements. Don’t forget you’re human, so post like it. Talk to your audience, engage with their interactions and be authentic to your brand.

✨ Top tip: Don’t spam your followers. Plan your editorial calendar carefully and have consistency. Try a jargon buster.

#4 Paid ads

Experiment with paid ads. This doesn’t mean that you need to spend a fortune either. Just make sure that you’re using the right channels and targeting so your marketing spend isn’t going down the drain.

With paid ads, you can drive traffic to your site quickly via search engines and your social channels. You’ll need to set aside some budget for this inbound activity, we’ve pulled together a quick step-by-step for you just below:

A step-by-step:

• Choose your objective – in this case, increase web traffic.
• Select your audience – mortgage prospects, aged x, living in x- be specific with your targeting.
• Think about where to run your ad – which channels do your audience use?
• Set your budget – benchmark against the industry for a starting point.
• Pick a format – image, video or text.
• Launch and test – try A/B tests with creative.
• Measure and optimise – see what performs best for future campaigns.

#5 Email marketing

Email marketing still outperforms every other channel in marketing. It’s a great way to upsell and promote your content to customers and prospects who have signed up to your mailing list.

And guess what, talking to your current contact base via email is a great way to drive traffic to your website. Product/ rate updates, new mortgage blogs or content upgrades can be promoted to your contact base. This will help you measure your engagement as well as give your site a traffic boost which can result in conversions and purchases.

It’s also a great way to encourage repeat purchases and show your customers you care. Like when your customers come to remortgage.

More to follow next week!