Is Your Marketing Full of We-We?
Does your mortgage marketing to real estate agents truly focus on them, or is it full of we-we? As proud as you may be of your marketing materials, most agents only care how much you can help solve their problems. If you want more agents to send you clients, your focus has to be on them.
With the words you use in your marketing messages, whether an advertisement, a postcard, a flyer or pages on your website, they determine how much focus is on the agent. Learn how to tell if your marketing talks mostly about agents or if you’re talking mostly about yourself.
Take the We-We Test
First, grab a piece of literature you use in your marketing, like a brochure, flyer or sales letter. Something with a couple paragraphs so you can truly measure the focus of your message. You’ll easily assess how much your message is full of we-we by measuring two types of words:
- Agent-focused words
- Self-focused words
It can be a painful discovery, but possibly the most important one when it comes to attracting more clients.
Total Number of Agent-Focused Words
Count how many times the words – “you”, “your”, and “yourself” appear and also include abbreviations like “you’ve” and “you’re” appear in the marketing piece. These words are what you consider being agent-focused.
Total Number of Self-Focused Words
Ok, here comes the scary part for many of us. Count all the words in the document that are self-focused, which includes – “I”, “me”, “my”, “mine”, “myself”, “our”, “us” and don’t forget to add your name and company name, if mentioned.
Calculating Your We-We Score
Now comes the moment of truth. First, total the sum of customer-focused words and self-focused words. Next, determine the percentage of customer-focused words is represented. Do this by dividing the total number of customer-focused words by the total sum of customer-focused words and self-focused words.
So for instance, if your total number of customer-focused words is 12 and the total sum of customer-focused words and self-focused words together equal 40, if you divide 12 by 40, you get a customer-focus rate of 30%.
Use a similar calculation for self-focused words. Divide the number of self-focused words by the total sum of customer-focused words and self-focused words. Or in the case of the example, 28 divided by 40. The self-focused rate is 70%.
If this was an accurate example of your brochure, it means you speak about yourself nearly 2 ½ times as often as you speak about the agent. Obviously not very good, and if that’s truly the case, begin immediately converting your message to be more customer-focused.
Which side of the scale is tipped greater, customer-focused or self-focused? If it’s toward customer-focused – congratulations – you really do focus on the agent! And on the other hand, if it’s not, like I said earlier, this could be your most important discovery about your marketing.
If you’re not happy with the outcome of the sample test and you’ve tested other mortgage broker marketing pieces only to come up with similar results, you’re capable of making improvements. Just don’t try to do everything at once and get overwhelmed. Take it one step at a time.
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Jeff Nelson helps loan officers increase loan originations by attracting quality relationships with real estate agents from the development of customized relationship-building strategies. , Become an Agent Magnet, that teaches you how to win more agent-referred business.
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