Many mortgage originators debate whether to market on-line or off. But the real question should be which marketing methods and strategies work best on-line, and which work best offline? Let's take a closer look.

Direct Mail & Telemarketing

Direct mail campaigns can be expensive with all the printing and postage costs, so use a combination on-line / offline promotion with these.

Begin by fine-tuning your postal mailing lists, then use targeted mailings to borrowers for special promotions over mass mailing everyone general reminders; smaller mailing can reduce your costs. Then for your larger mass mailing, use postcards, black/white printing or other less expensive means. While you are designing your direct mail, make sure to add your web site's address (URL) so your prospects can go on-line for even more marketing and sales opportunities.

Then on-line, market with interactive devices like forums or blogs, asking for comments/feedback from your readers. Offer downloads: reports, ebooks, etc to build relationships with your potential mortgage customers. These can either both be free to entice visitors to your site, or carry price tag and develop additional revenue beyond the mortgage transaction.

Establish telemarketers to get more leads for your on-line and offline marketing. Don't' worry about "getting the application" necessarily. Just get lead information for follow up, then put the prospects in a system where they will receive regular mailings.

Websites and Email Marketing

Websites today cannot be static HTML sites. The days to set it and forget it are over for all practical purposes. Sites that are gaining readership and converting to leads are ones that are interactive and constantly changing, like blogs.

Whatever you have, make sure to set up an auto-responder form to capture leads for an on-line mailing list. (This form can do double duty and ask for postal mailing addresses, too). Then conduct regular email marketing campaigns targeting particular mortgage needs in conjunction with your offline promotions.

Benefits and Disadvantages

Benefits of on-line marketing - Get more for your marketing $$! Ability to update your content instantly and change your target market overnight.

Disadvantages of on-line marketing - Email spamming is not allowed & many forget they sign up and report you as a spammer; keeping up with SEO (search engine optimization) is an art, as the search engines change their algorithms and requirements daily at times; technology - what work today may not tomorrow, so you need to keep up - not always easy time-wise or money-wise with software and learning systems.

Benefits of offline marketing - People get to "keep" something and often do, refer to it years later and showing their friends, etc.

Disadvantages of offline marketing - Higher printing and postage costs.

So the next time you are debating whether to market your origination business on-line or off, ask yourself which marketing methods and strategies would work best on-line, and which would work best offline for your particular items for sale. Then nix and match accordingly.