Social Media
Sorting the tweets from the chaff
Everyone’s talking about social media but big businesses are still only getting to grips with how they use it. Tonic Marketing’s Jeff Knight finds out where the industry is up to
Go back ten years or so and most lenders were communicating product changes via fax (often waking brokers up at 3am in the process) followed by sending a product guide in the post.
How things have moved on. Now websites are the norm, as are sophisticated email marketing software which delivers product news quickly. So how does social media fit into things today? Is it a viable link between lender and broker – as well as between broker and client? Or is it a simple case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?
Taking perSpecTive Well I can remember when online marketing was the new buzz word, just as social media is today. Online marketing was initially resisted by many, just as social media seems to be today. Like online back then social media is seen as a bit of a fad whilst others don’t get it or have got the resource to use it effectively. Then of course, regulation is a perceived added complexity and the uptake of social media has been slow. Yet social media is not scary and delivers many benefits and once you realise it simply a new communication tool, as websites were many moons ago,
it becomes easier to use. As Andy Lucas, head of Cambridge Direct, explains: “The main focus has been using social media as an extension of current communication tools, to inform journalists and brokers of new products and services.”
The bandwagon
Social media has an important part to play for everyone within the mortgage industry, with the likes of LinkedIn, Blogging, Twitter and Facebook offering varying levels of value. Even You Tube can be appropriate for some. Yet this does not mean everyone should simply jump on the bandwagon, because you could get caught out as Mike Raybone, head of marketing and operations at Mortgage Brain, says: “It’s a bit like the gold rush, where those making the money were the ones selling the tools.” Instead, you have got to plan it, but not in isolation but as an integral part of your marketing communication strategy.
SMall iS Social
Looking at how lenders use social media, the majority are still only dipping their toes in. However, it is the smaller lenders that have generally embraced social media more proactively. Perhaps being smaller,
they have been able to be more nimble with their thinking and creating structures and a strategy to incorporate social media into their activities. Whatever the reason, the likes of Cambridge, Saffron Walden, Ipswich and Kensington are using social media well, as is the Coventry which is a bit bigger in size.
Some lenders have realised the PR benefits of using Twitter, for example, which brokers could take note of for their own businesses. Indeed, Colin Franklin, sales and marketing director at Coventry, says: “We have just started to use Twitter to distribute our news releases. One benefit is that we can get news out immediately, and this seems to fit a world in which copy deadlines are less defined with journalists updating online news 24 hours a day.”
Alex Hammond, PR and marketing manager at Kensington, expands upon this and says: “The primary audience for our messages is arguably journalists, but we are also looking to communicate with media commentators, influencers, and mortgage intermediaries, so I will post links to press releases, news coverage and comment.”
The larger lenders also use Twitter as a means of distributing press releases,
Follow us on Twitter @mortgagechat 50 mortgage introducer NOVEMBER 2011
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