Recently I met with a childhood friend of mine that works for a large mortgage company in the Midwest. As with many loan officers in this market, he was struggling to close a decent amount of business. Being that I work as a marketing consultant for loan officers, I offered to review his business and see if I could see any areas that he could improve in order to generate more business.

After a few minutes of reviewing his marketing strategies, I saw right away what his problem was. He was relying too heavily on passive marketing, and it was draining his business.

Do you know what the difference between "proactive" and "passive" marketing?

Let's briefly see how Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines the two words:

Proactive: acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes
Passive: existing or occurring without being active, open, or direct

It basically boils down to the amount of control you have in the situation. Proactive marketing strategies force you to find the prospects that you are looking for.

Passive marketing strategies causes you to sit back and wait for the prospects to come to you.

From my personal experience, it seems that far too many loan officers and originators are relying on passive methods for generating business. And they are struggling.

Examples of passive marketing campaigns:

-putting a vanity classified ad in the newspaper
-your company provided website
-sending a mailing campaign to your database without asking for a call to action
-buying a Yellow Pages ad

Now there is nothing wrong with these methods. You will get a trickle of business from people who need your services right now. But these methods should be the first step and not the last one. By being proactive, you squeeze many more prospects from the same amount of marketing dollars.

If you are on a tight budget, you MUST be using proactive marketing strategies. Yes, they are a little more complicated to set up, but you get much more bang for your marketing buck.

Here is an example to crystallize my point:

You are in desperate need of some new business. So you follow your manager's advice and place an ad in the real estate section of the newspaper. It costs you $100 of your marketing budget and it results in one new loan. Sounds great, right? With the commissions you earned on this transaction you probably made five to ten times your investment back. Great, right?

Now let's see what a mortgage professional using proactive marketing strategies handles the same situation.

This loan officer also places a classified ad in the paper and also invests the $100. But here is where the proactive and passive strategies differ. In his ad, he lets readers know that if they are interested in purchasing their own home in the next three years, they can go to his website to download a free report on the best ways to make it happen.

The loan officers also gets one new loan from someone that is looking to purchase a home this month, but he also got 50 people to download the free report. Here is why this is important.

Those fifty prospects are automatically placed in his email follow-up system. Without him lifting a single finger, he is going to send those prospects emails a few days later, two weeks later, a month later and so forth. He is going to build rapport with them and provide them with the information they need. And by doing so, this next year he will turn 5 of those prospects into new clients.

So which is the better way? Turning $100 of your marketing dollars into one closing, or turning that same $100 into six new loans this year plus placing fifty people into your marketing pipeline who may do business with you in the future or who may recommend you to their friends, family and co-workers.

And consider this: what if the second loan officer ran that add every week? What if he also placed identical ads in the smaller newspapers in his area? What about advertising in the Home For Sale magazines? You get the picture.

Yes, proactive marketing strategies are a bit more complicated and do take more time to set up. But look at the results!

So if you are like many mortgage professionals and are in need of increasing your commission checks without increasing your marketing budget, then you need to be looking at proactive marketing methods to make it happen.