Why You Should Have a Niche

In the mortgage industry, there’s a buzz around establishing a niche. This just means narrowing your target audience down to a specific group of people. Targeting a niche market isn’t essential to be successful, but it can help LOs stand out from the competition, attract new business, and build their brand. Here are a few things to consider:

The Benefit of Having a Niche

It may seem smart to keep your target market as wide as possible to not alienate any prospects, but this could do you a disservice at some point. Catch-all marketing lacks focus and doesn’t allow much room to stand out from your competition. However, if you choose to specialize in a particular area, you’ll start attracting clients that want to work with an expert. Your pool of competition shrinks, and that helps you attract more business. Another benefit of establishing a niche is that you’ll become more credible within your area of expertise and can build your reputation faster. This credibility speaks for you and contributes to your inbound marketing, making it easier for prospects to find you first.

Choosing a Niche

If you decide to establish a niche market, you should start by identifying where you have the most knowledge. Choosing an area where you’re already knowledgeable will save you a good amount of time, but even that won’t guarantee profitability. You should look for areas not already dominated by local loan officers, which will offer more opportunities. Also, a single niche will usually be more successful than choosing several.

Niches to Consider:

Geography

This niche may seem like the most obvious one for mortgage professionals to establish. You can create a niche based on a county, city, or in a specific neighborhood if the city is large enough.

Demographic

This is based on your target client and can be subject to age, occupation, or some other factor. For example, some popular demographic niches for loan officers are Veterans, the self-employed, millennials, or older, more experienced homebuyers.

Circumstantial

This will also be based on your target client and what separates them circumstantially. A few examples are families looking for a second home or vacation home, single parents, growing families, newlyweds, and empty-nesters.

Loan or Property niche

This is based on specific loan types (FHA, VA, Condo loans, etc.) or specific properties (waterfront properties, luxury homes, condominiums, etc.).

Marketing Your Niche:

Do Your Research

The first step in marketing to your niche is to research the wants and needs of your target audience. Once you know what they’re looking for and pinpoint their general interests, you create an effective marketing strategy that caters specifically to them. Even if you already specialize in an area, you can always benefit from additional knowledge.

Develop a Strategy

Once you know what your target clients are looking for, you can start to focus your marketing and content on those needs. You want content that’s geared toward your niche specifically, and you want to market in a way that that makes it easy for those prospective clients to find. You should also update your branding to include this focus on your niche. The key is to make yourself appealing to your target group and demonstrate that you understand (and can meet) their unique needs. More on creating effective content, here.

Deliver Results

When you find clients within your niche, make sure you give them everything you advertised. This will increase the probability of getting referrals in the future. By providing a highest-level client experience, you consistently build your reputation within your niche as the go-to loan officer.

Good luck and let me know how any of these tips may have helped you!

Don

If you’re a loan officer, sales manager, or branch manager considering new opportunities, don’t hesitate to reach out to hear about some terrific opportunities.

Don Riggs

P: 303-249-8274