Defining Your Nonprime Niche

Obviously, there is a need in the market for mortgage products that serve customers on both ends of the spectrum, but their brokers may not think of your company’s products as a good fit when these borrowers come to them for mortgage advice. If you’re looking to increase your nonprime originations, your first job is to help your brokers create a connection between your company and their customers. What’s the best way to do that? Build your brand.

You may already have a brand identity in your brokers’ minds, but is it the right brand? My own company has been in the mortgage marketplace since the early 1980s, but our brand identity was all over the place. Having gone through several logo and tagline changes over the past five years, we knew that we needed to strengthen our brand identity or lose market share while competing in a thriving business-to-business mortgage market. We had to define who we were and what we did best as a company.

You can’t create a brand in a vacuum. Without feedback from your brokers and buy-in from your employees, any branding campaign is doomed to fail. You must first understand what your company’s brand is today — both inside and outside — to discover any existing misconceptions that you may need to overcome. Your employees are your best brand ambassadors. If they are part of the new brand’s creation, they will rally behind your new message and will incorporate it into their own value messages as they sell your products to your brokers.

What does your company promise to do for your customers? What do your brokers need? What can they expect if they work with your account executives and inside staff? A good brand answers all of these questions immediately in the minds of your customers. Your company’s brand is not just about the types of products you offer — it’s about giving your customers a rewarding experience.

To successfully deliver your brand, it must be defendable, recognizable and relevant.

Be sure, however, that your brand promise is accurate. For example, if you say your company can underwrite a loan in 24 hours, be sure that your underwriters can do it in 24 hours or less. If you promise big, deliver even more. The worst thing you can do to damage your brand, your reputation and your bottom line is to make a customer pledge that you can’t keep. A successful campaign doesn’t just tell customers what the company does; it backs it up by showing them.

From application to close, my company’s brand promise to provide simple, flexible, hassle-free home loans is consistently integrated into every step of the process. That’s who we are, that’s what we do and that’s what our brokers can expect in this and every future nonprime deal they do with us. It’s reinforced every step of the way on every single deal. Because we have created a resonant definition of our nonprime niche, our brokers now know to look within our guidelines for loans that fit their first-time, low-cash, self-employed and credit-challenged borrowers’ needs.

The brand must be consistently reinforced through every single touch point of your customers’ brand experience. Your Web site, your marketing collateral, your loan processing, your broker application process and even your customer service experience must all work in tandem.

Remember: You’re building the brand while making the sale. You are what you do — if you want to boost your nonprime sales, you’ll have to boost your nonprime brand along with it.

Stephen Corsi is senior vice president of marketing at First Franklin Financial, where he has worked since 2003. In addition, Stephen was previously in marketing at a large Canadian bank and has over 15 years’ marketing experience — with a background that includes retail, B2B, traditional and e-commerce advertising and marketing.