Tag Archive for: marketing

Interest-Only Loans Can Shave $300 From Payment; Beware Of Slimy Marketing

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Interest-only loans are finally becoming competitive enough to make them a viable option for borrowers seeking payment relief. Interest-only loans are NOT a good option if borrowers end up with a 1% higher rate. But now that rate spread is closer to 3/8% for qualified borrowers. A $500,000 interest-only loan at 6.875% has a payment of $2,865. That same loan fully amortized at 6.5% has a payment of $3,160. NOTE: Many lenders use the same rate for the amortized loan as they do for the interest-only loan in their marketing. But that is misleading, as there is always a rate-premium to be paid for interest-only.Read More

Woohoo! It Crashed! Your Grandma’s SEO No Longer Works!

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We get as much as 50% of our business from online leads – thanks to the thousands of hours of work from our exceptional marketing team. And…much of that work was rendered null and void over the last six months, as our online volume plummeted this spring. The reason is AI – along with Google’s fast and furious SEO rule changes in response to the AI revolution.Read More

What Can We Learn From Nissan Motors’ Collapse?

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This is probably one of those many stories I shouldn’t tell – but I will anyway. My friend in high school had a very cool Datsun (now Nissan) 260Z that everyone admired. My friend and I were out one weekend evening, and he misjudged a light and ended up running a red. A cop unfortunately saw us from about a half mile away and turned on his overhead lights to stop us.Read More

Simplest, Easiest, Most Failsafe Marketing Content Idea

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We send out millions of marketing emails each year. Despite that massive volume, we have very high open rates, no spam issues, and very few unsubscribes because we ensure every email is short, interesting, and informative.Read More

Co-Marketing Fees = Higher Rates Always

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A loan officer is making the rounds offering agents $5,000 of co-marketing per closed transaction. I have nothing against the idea or co-marketing in general, but I thought I’d discuss it briefly in a blog, given that several agents have told me about the offer. Co-marketing, as most readers know, is simply an arrangement where a mortgage lender shares the costs of marketing with a real estate agent. For compliance purposes, it is important that the lender is featured in the marketing proportionally to the amount of money the lender spends.Read More

Picking Up Free Money – & Why I Am Amazed So Many Agents Still Step Over It!

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Why Commercial Banks Built Ornate Palaces for Branches For almost two centuries, American commercial banks built grandiose branches with marble columns, soaring ceilings, and ridiculously ornate décor. They did this […]Read More

What’s In A Company Name? (A Lot It Turns Out)

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JVM LENDING’S NAME About 15 years ago during my loan officer days, I was affiliated with a brokerage with an extraordinarily sweet deal that I never would have abandoned but […]Read More

Why You Should [NOT] Stop Building Your Own Brand

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Every client you get will google you before engaging you, and if you don’t stand out on page 1 of the search results, you will lose clients – guaranteed.Read More

Yoga Babble & Pizzas Under Cost – Heading Our Way Soon!

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A prominent mortgage bank posted this employment ad last week in a very popular mortgage blog: The company culture at ****** Mortgage is a direct reflection of the lender's vision to Inspire Hope, Deliver Dreams, and Build Prosperity.Read More

Predictive Analytics – Why You Need Them

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On Friday I blogged about life events that influence a decision to move and big data and mentioned that I’d elaborate on Predictive Analytics today. I mentioned also that we […]Read More

Nasty Fake Yelp Review – Follow Up; Yelp Horror Stories; Poor Yelp :)

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I received so much feedback from yesterday’s blog that I felt compelled to follow up today. The responses were so overwhelmingly anti-Yelp, that I actually thought to myself: “poor Yelp” […]Read More

Your Clients Will Google You, And You’re Losing Them

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We work with an agent who closes 150 transactions per year, and her “Google presence” is practically perfect. While her Google presence is not the only reason she does so […]Read More

Why Pixar Made Steve Jobs WAY Better at Selling Computers! It’s All About the Story!

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When Apple launched its “Lisa” computer in 1983, it purchased massive newspaper ads with several columns in nine-point font that set out ALL of Lisa’s features. And - nobody cared. Lisa flopped. And Jobs ended up losing his position at Apple. 14 years later, after Jobs returned to Apple after he had been at the helm of Pixar, Jobs marketed his computers with just this: THINK DIFFERENT. His much simpler marketing approach was far more effective, according to the author of Storybrand, because Jobs learned the power of stories and simplicity at Pixar.Read More

Hard Lessons from Our Digital Marketing Missteps

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Digital marketing can be a minefield of wasted time and money if you don’t know what you’re doing. After hiring multiple high-end consultants and spending thousands, JVM learned just how complex it really is — and why true expertise matters.Read More