5 Ways Any Loan Officer Can Start Generating Leads On LinkedIn Today

As surprising as this may sound, LinkedIn is a place rich with opportunity for you as a loan officer. When I speak with clients and prospective clients who are loan officers, one thing they’ll often tell me is that their experience on LinkedIn has included nothing more than being annoyingly spammed by recruiters on a daily basis.

And while I know you’re not a fan of getting spammed, your opportunity for generating high quality leads on LinkedIn is just too massive to ignore. To be clear, we’re not talking about chasing realtors either. All too often I hear of loan officers getting the sudden idea that LinkedIn would be the perfect place to solicit and chase realtors who can refer them clients.

What you’re about to discover is an entirely new way of using LinkedIn, and likely different than anything you’ve heard.

If anything in this article sparks your attention, and you’re interested in learning more about using LinkedIn to generate leads, receive referrals and attract high-end clients as a loan officer, then I’d like to invite you to take my free quiz at Linkedleads.Us/Quiz and start turning your LinkedIn profile into a lead and referral generating machine.

You can visit Linkedleads.Us/Workshop to claim your spot.

Without further ado, here are five ways which you as a loan officer can start generating leads on LinkedIn today.

1. Join The Right Groups

Many loan officers make the mistake of joining groups full of other loan officers. While this can be beneficial when it comes to keeping up with professional practices, you and I both know that the loan officers in that group won’t be likely to have you do their next loan or refer their clients to you, especially when they're your direct competitors.

You also don’t want to join groups of just real estate agents because once again, you don’t want to spend the majority of your time on LinkedIn chasing realtors. When it comes to groups, join groups filled with your ideal clients and referral partners.

Groups full of real estate investors, financial planners, CPAs and even estate planning attorneys all immediately come to mind. These are all people who have the potential to refer you multiple deals a month and aren’t being bombarded by other loan officers.

Also think about groups full of your ideal clients. For instance, if you’re looking for more VA Loans, join groups and prospect within groups full of professionals who are veterans. Considering the average household income on LinkedIn is over $115,000, they’ll be much more likely to have a reliable source of income and qualify for the loans than veterans across other platforms. If you’d like to do more FHA loans, think about groups for young professionals. These are just some of the opportunities LinkedIn groups present for you as a loan officer.

When it comes to prospecting in LinkedIn groups, whether that’s for referral partners or end clients, there are also some best practices. Let me give you three of them right here:

A. Prospect in the right groups (Like we’ve been talking about)

B. Locate which groups your prospects and referral partners are members of

Hint: You can visit the LinkedIn profiles of your current connections who are similar to your ideal clients and referral partners. See what groups they’re a part of and join those groups.

C. Engage with content in groups instead of posting in groups

It’s no secret that most LinkedIn groups don’t receive a lot of activity. A trick for turning that in your favor is scrolling through the group’s feed and engaging with posts from people you’d like to further connect with. Since most posts in groups receive virtually no engagement, consider how pleasantly surprised your ideal prospects and referral partners will be that somebody is actually engaging with what they posted. It’s a much more organic and easier way of starting a conversation than by direct message.

2. Post Articles

LinkedIn carries a lot of clout when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Often times when people Google your name, your LinkedIn profile will be the first thing they see. That’s another reason why it’s so important to ensure that your profile is what I call “irresistible” instead of a liability.

You also have the opportunity to post articles within LinkedIn’s Publisher platform. Instead of having just another mortgage related blog on some other website, your articles will remain on your LinkedIn profile where they can be found by your ideal clients and referral partners. LinkedIn will also help ensure your articles get in front of your network, especially when you know how to maximize LinkedIn’s content algorithm, without you having to worry about how to drive visitors to your blog.

Since I know you’re a loan officer and not a writer, here are a few best practices to put in place when publishing content on LinkedIn.

A. Make sure you’re not using industry lingo which would confuse the average reader who didn’t know what an FHA Loan, Jumbo Loan, or Reverse Mortgage even was. Show your readers the bigger picture.

B. Keep your articles between 500-1000 words, and in some extreme cases, no more than 2000 words.

C. Make sure that you’re not writing like a professor would want you to. Keep things simple and if possible, at about a fourth grade level.

D. Break up paragraphs and use bolded words and bullet points when necessary so that your article is easy to read and not overwhelming to your audience.

E. Do whatever you can to write a compelling headline. Headlines are vital. Without a compelling headline, your article will be read a lot less.

F. Make sure to attach an image which grabs as much attention as possible. Along with your headline, your audience will also see the image you choose to attach to your article. The last thing you want to do is to have your image look like a boring old stock photo.

Also realize that with LinkedIn’s algorithm, connections of your connections, who aren’t necessarily connected with you, will have the chance to see your article in their feeds. Since users spend a lot less time on their LinkedIn feeds than Facebook feeds, it’s especially important for your headline and image to stand out enough for people to actually read your article. Additionally, you can also repurpose articles into video on LinkedIn, which is a new feature that’s just arrived.

The last thing I’ll mention when it comes to your LinkedIn articles is to always include a call to action. A simple call to action can be including your phone number and telling readers to call that number for a free consultation. A more advanced version of a call to action is to drive your audience to what’s called a landing page, where you can collect their contact information and turn them into a lead.

 Since we won’t get too in depth into marketing funnels for loan officers in this article, just remember to always include a call to action when you publish on LinkedIn. A connection of mine, who’s a loan officer in a mid-sized market, closed three deals which all came from just one article he published. Don’t underestimate the power effectively publishing on LinkedIn publisher can have when it comes to generating mortgage leads.

3. Connect With Influencers

Every community and group of people has influencers who play a factor in the majority’s decisions. As a loan officer, you have an opportunity to connect with organizational influencers on LinkedIn and get yourself, and your marketing, in front of many people at once.

The difference between this sort of influencer marketing and advertising is that you are not paying for an advertisement nor are you just advertising yourself as somebody people should go to when buying a home. You have the opportunity to take things a step further and provide information based marketing which educates these groups and starts to build the relationships you and they are looking for.

This way, you can put an influencer in an easy position to get you in front of their audience. Here are a couple of musts for making your information based marketing effective and attractive to an influencer:

A. Package the information in such a way where the influencer and influencees can see its value

B. Use just enough shock and entertainment factor throughout your content to keep that segmented audience engaged

C. Interweave your branding through the content and messaging

D. Set a unique intention and call to action for each piece of content you distribute to the influencer’s network

Imagine for a moment connecting with just one influencer who has the ability to get your marketing message in front of a few hundred potential high-end leads and also having all of those leads added to your data base so that when they’re ready for a mortgage, even if they’re not currently, you’ll inevitably become the first person they turn to. That’s just a glimpse into the potential influencer marketing can have for you on LinkedIn as a loan officer.

4. Form Strategic Partnerships

Think about the people who are already known, liked and trusted by your ideal clients. In this case, we’re talking about highly-qualified leads looking to borrow a high dollar amount for a mortgage. You can nearly always start building strategic alliances with these professionals on LinkedIn.

Once again, your goal isn’t to do what 98% of loan officers are doing which is holding their hands out and wishing for referrals. As a loan officer, you probably hold more clout than you give yourself credit for and can benefit a strategic partner in at least two ways:

1. You can help market their brand and business to your network whether that’s online or offline

2. You can provide their audience with information based, value-driven marketing

Your goal should be to form mutually beneficial strategic relationships with these referral partners, and there’s no better place to start nourishing those relationships than LinkedIn. Remember to think outside of real estate agents.

I had a client who received three new deals in a matter of six weeks, just from one new strategic partner he connected with on LinkedIn. Through the right strategic partnerships, you can create multiple referral streams which send you new deals every month.

5. Position Yourself As The Absolute Authority

Any loan officer can pay for radio advertising, join a networking group, or talk about recent changes to interest rates. You want to be considered as the absolute authority in your market instead, especially among a specific sub-niche you’d like to work with more. For your LinkedIn profile to help establish you as that authority, you’ll need what I call the 3P’s:

1. Prescence

Is your profile easy to find on LinkedIn? Does your profile easily stand out from other profiles of other loan officers in your area? Is it memorable to your potential clients and referral partners?

2. Positioning

Does your LinkedIn profile enhance your credibility as the expert to your market? Is it easy to see why you’re different? Does your profile further present you as a brand which is attractive to your ideal clients and referral partners?

3. Persuasion

Are there effective call to actions on your profile? Does your profile present a clear next step for ideal clients and referral partners? Based on your profile, how convinced are your ideal clients and referral partners in taking the next step to working with you?

Without these elements strongly in place, you’ll risk being perceived as just another loan officer who’s similar to every other loan officer in your market. Start seeing your profile as a tool to help potential leads and strategic partners take the next step in doing business with you and referring business to you. When fully refined, your LinkedIn profile will serve as one of your most valuable marketing assets when it comes to generating leads.

Without fully refining your LinkedIn profile for attracting ideal clients, you’re doing yourselves a major injustice and will be undermining the potential leads these strategies can produce for you. That why taking my free quiz at Linkedleads.Us/Quiz will be your next step in starting to turn your LinkedIn profile into a lead and referral generating machine.

Yakov Savitskiy is an Internationally Recognized LinkedIn Expert and Author of Disrupting LinkedIn: The Definitive Guide to Generating Leads, Receiving Referrals, and Attracting High-End Clients Through Marketing On LinkedIn. As the Chief Executive Officer of Linked Linked Enterprises, numerous CEOs, Key Influencers, Best-Selling Authors And Leaders Of Seven-To-Nine Figure Sales Organizations regard Yakov as a trusted advisor and their Go-To Authority when it comes to all things LinkedIn Marketing and Lead Generation.

Ready to discover a proven four step system for using your LinkedIn profile to generate new leads, receive entire streams of referrals and attract more high-end clients than you ever thought possible? Click here to register for free and attend one of our upcoming online trainings.