Mortgage leads / lead generation firms

Every time I hear lead generation in the mortgage market, it reminds me of a new connection on LinkedIn, followed by a message such as “I’m keen to have a chat with you regarding our amazing lead generation services. It can bring you 10 extra customers a month”. Most of the time it’s from people you have never heard off and mostly bots delivering automated messages. I find this is the easiest way for them to reach out to people but there’s no quality in it. How many other people have you sent automated messages to? These messages just get ignored. Most brokers have their own lead sources, ranging from estate agents to accountants, to their friends and family. I find fewer business owners resorting to lead generation services as the quality isn’t there compared to their current partnerships. A lot more needs to be done in the lead generation market. The biggest improvement any of them can make is not to advertise their own processes and services, but show how they can implement their services in the mortgage business’ current process and how it can complement that. This would be received positively by brokerages as it will bring in traffic through their system, without needing to create a new process for external leads, saving time and money. I have also noticed the cost of leads has increased. Not to say the leads are poor as there are a few that have aced this space, but with the cost having gone up, business would much prefer to spend this money on their own advertising, which also creates brand awareness which is a better outcome for them. I’m all for lead generation services, but there needs to be a more personal approach to the business rather than automated messages to get businesses to spend money on them for low quality leads.

When I first set up my company, I tried various lead generation firms. In my experience they all turned out to be awful. The leads would be low quality, mostly due to the customer not expecting a call from you, as they didn't enquire with you. It may be slower, and require more effort, but generating local leads yourself either directly or via an introducer will always be a better lead source, and as you generate them they will in turn generate more through referrals. Referrals are the holy grail of business.

This is a mucky side of the industry that needs clamping down on. The amount of misleading ads on social media promising rates that don't exist or pushing debt consolidation onto people is scary. God help the clients or brokers who are that desperate that they're buying sketchy leads from iffy places on the internet. There is no reason I can think of that anyone non-regulated should be talking about regulated business.