Transcription:
Kristin Messerli (
Great. well, I am so excited to be on this panel today. We are talking about financial literacy and an era of distrust. So, I have an incredible group of panelists today. Mosi from loanDepot and Margot from, what is it? Financial Triangle, and Melissa, right from American Pacific Mortgage. each of us have focused a lot on how to build trust, especially with NextGen borrowers in today's consumers. Mosi, is up 18% since this time last year in her closings and has focused a lot on the low to moderate income and underserved markets. She trains a lot of real estate agents and builders on how to grow their business in these markets. Margot has over 300,000 followers on TikTok, over 50,000 followers on Instagram, and is focused a lot of her business on non QM entrepreneurs and, just growing her business through some of these new channels and mediums of connecting with today's borrowers. And Melissa, is the chief or head of sales and marketing at American Pacific. and her and I have been talking about this topic for quite a while. I visited all of her sales, events over the last year and, we really talked about her passion for financial literacy and helping to grow your business in building trust. So, I am really excited to hear from each of you today. I wanna frame up the discussion a little bit by sharing some of the data that I think is really interesting around, this era of distrust. So today's borrowers are, less trusting than we have ever seen in the market. we, I did a study of NextGen consumers, that we looked at 3000 NextGen borrowers over the last couple of years, and people that had recently bought a home or were about to buy a home and two and three NextGen borrowers said that they did not think lenders were trustworthy or reliable. And at first I thought this was all related just to the financial crisis and how we've come, since that time. And it really focused that, this distrust in the mortgage space. we see a huge lack of financial literacy education. And, overall, I think it was one in four of the next gen respondents said that they did not, they felt that a lack of education or lack of understanding was their biggest challenge when buying a home. However you think about today's world coming out of the pandemic and how much distrust there is across every area of business, when you look at distrust in healthcare, you look at dis distrust in government, even faith-based institutions and, media technology, Everything is changing around this, how we approach institutions and businesses and what we think about how we can trust and work with businesses today. So I think it's, a really important topic. And while I feel like if you look at the big picture, it can feel really scary both from the consumer perspective and from a business person's perspective on like, how do you navigate a world where there's this much distrust? how do you sell to consumers? Who are this distrusting? Well, we have a panel of experts in this area that are all doing this in really unique and interesting ways. So I wanna kick us off by talking about, a little bit of, of framing the problem. So, Mosae, could you share just a little bit about, what do you feel has been one of the biggest challenges in building trust with consumers today?
Mosi K. Gatling (
What I've ran into a ton with the consumer is when they come to you looking for a product, of course it's the internet, right? They're force fed so much advertising, with me being an originator, it's the interest rates that are advertised on websites. It is, come get this low rate, come buy this, you can do this. If you have no money, you don't have to have credit to buy, right? All these things that are kind of thrown out there and they come to you and they expect you to deliver on each and every one of those things they've already seen. So it does take a lot of unwinding of that information and a lot of education that may not be specific to their personal scenario, of actually getting qualified. And yes, as a loan officer, you come to me to get qualified, so now I have to go all the way back to get into, this is how you buy a home, This is what credit is. Things like that to just really set the table all over again and get them dialed into what it really looks like to buy a house when this advertising just pounds, everybody, I mean, I'd love to think everything that I see on the internet is true, right? I can go lose 30 pounds and four days according to Instagram or whatever that looks like. So, if I have to live in the real world, I have to get the people that I'm doing business for and with to live in the real world with me too.
Kristin Messerli (
That's so good. And that's such a good segue to talking to Margot, who is advertising in a way on Instagram. And, and I think that, we are constantly bombarded with all this information. So Margot, how do you feel, you and I talked about this a little while ago on an interview. So could you describe a little bit about how you think we've failed as an industry to educate today's consumers and just share a little bit of your, perspective on that?
Margot Ettedgui (
Yeah. I think, the biggest thing when it comes to financial education, I don't think it's the industry to blame, obviously the education system is that blame. Out of the 50 states, really only 20 states are offering financial classes and courses to their students who are in that stage of their life where they need to understand, well, how do I get a student loan? How am I gonna buy a house? All of those things. And of those 20 states, only six of them even make that a required course. So, I think right off the bat, it's not really on the lenders what they did wrong, but more so now, how do we educate them into what is correct? And, really touching on what Mosae said, it's a very personalized process and every person is gonna have a different mortgage, and every mortgage is gonna be structured according to that individual's needs. So, I do use, social media to advertise and to generate the exact kind of leads and clients that I'm trying to obtain because I work in such a niche product like non QM. And something that I really, was gravitating towards on social media, especially on TikTok, was how genuine and carefree it really felt. And I really started social media at the beginning of the pandemic where I felt like a lot of people were receiving marketing emails, video emails and things that just didn't feel personalized. It really felt like, Okay, team, let's sit down and let's see what the best thing we can do to push out there. And just felt too advertising. So, I kind of stripped that all away and made it more relatable, more accessible to understand and that's kind of the approach that I've always taken with social media because I feel like the new generation needs to feel that you can ask questions and there are other ways and other solutions to be able to buy a home no matter what your situation is, no matter how you make your income. Because the new generation has figured out faster ways and newer ways, to generate income that the traditional lenders maybe don't fully understand. And so I think that just being, a representative of the new generation buyer, it's important. I think the most important thing is for every individual in our industry to really be authentically themselves. Whether that's creating video content, whether that's making articles, but really being an expert in your field, social media allows you to tap into such a massive resource of distribution when it comes to getting information out there. I like to kind of make it fun and entertaining by reenacting certain scenarios that went wrong and how they can go about it the right way. So, but everybody here is gonna do that differently and that's gonna be different for everyone. But I think the main thing is really to understand what do you know best? What do you feel, what kind of problem is still out there in the industry? Would your clients still having a pain point and finding that pain point and creating content around it to make that education a lot more accessible? It's easier to tap into your buyers on their phone where they're already spending 10 to 12 hours a day on there rather than have them expect to open a video on an email. I just don't feel like that's how people wanna consume content or really anything when it just comes to being advertised. People don't wanna feel like they're being advertised anymore. They just wanna feel like they can connect and learn on their own terms.
Kristin Messerli (
Yeah, definitely. It's interesting hearing from both of you who are working directly with consumers and you can see how there's been a shift in the way that they're, you're approaching this from Yeah. An authentic standpoint. You can't rely on traditional advertising, you can't rely on traditional branding even to some degree it's all about how you're authentically connecting with them. Absolutely. So, hearing from your perspective, it's now gonna be interesting to pull Melissa in who's coming at this from the lender standpoint. So from the lender's perspective, how have you seen either financial literacy or just overall trust kind of shift in the market and what have you been doing to support that?
Melissa Wright (
Yes, thank you. Hello everybody. So I absolutely agree with what they both said. And I also support that the loan officers are the ones educating and being the face of education. And at the same time, I take very serious the responsibility we have as a lender to also lead out with that. So whether we're just leading out for the loan officers to follow or consumers that search their information and wanna know the companies they work for, what's behind us. So, some of the ways that we have failed in the past as an industry in general is we talk a lot of mortgage talk. Yeah. We have, it either goes to the extreme of we didn't provide enough information because we didn't wanna devalue the loan officers. So, like, everything's like, you can't really find anything cuz we don't wanna give you the answer we want you to call. There was that extreme, or the other extreme was a lot of things around mortgage, product, mortgage, acronyms. And I still see some of that out there. And, you think about the consumer and how are they supposed to be educated when we say 90% LTV, and this is a conventional loan. Like they don't even know what that is. And so that's where some of this problem comes from is in the past or even currently, they're searching out information and it's just like a little bit too much and it's not in solutioning. And so what we've really moved to is this concept, with, they ask you answer if you've read the book, they ask you answer. So give all the information, lead out and provide it, but then double check yourself with what you're saying and how you're communicating. So we know with Gen Zs, one of the things that they really want is for you to solution for their, where they're at in their life. And so traditionally if you're just talking a mortgage product, if you just said non QM Yeah, right. They're just gonna be like, they're gonna pass by you. So what we've been, talking about when it relates to that are things like, how do we look at side hustle income. So what do we do if you're living multi-generational, but talking about a solution and getting into solutioning I think is the real key. So it's all about how you're seen and found online and what's there. So everything from what we put on social to what we put on YouTube to what we put on our website and we can talk loan officers a little bit later, but like in general as a company, I think it's really critical to put stuff out there that truly educates, but educates in solutioning and get rid of all the acronyms, all the product names, and really help them understand the process. Do you offer a step by step? Do you have a checklist? Do you have a book? So we've spent a lot of time with a ton of eBooks, a ton of checklists, ton of worksheets and things like that that they can grab and have and use to kind of guide 'em through the process. Yeah,
Kristin Messerli (
That's so good. I think we take for granted a lot of times how much of the vocabulary that we know and use, and even recently I was doing a research survey and had some consumers take a look at it and is like, lock your rate. We don't know what that means, I mean, just really basic stuff that we have to constantly question and challenge ourselves with how we're using that, but I also think to your point around personalization, that has been the number one thing across all of the Gen Z research and next gen stuff is just people want to know that you understand them and that you feel that you're empowering them with information, you know. So, Margot, I wanna come back to you to talk a little bit more about your social media strategy. we talked about this, but I think it's really unique though it's a growing trend. how much content that you're able to produce on, TikTok and Instagram in particular. So, I'd like for you to share a little bit about what that strategy looks like for you and how that has helped you build your business.
Margot Ettedgui (
Yeah, so, going back to like what Melissa was saying about the acronyms and making, the mortgage industry information and education more relatable and accessible, one of my content strategies is kind of like creating skits, to kind of recreate what a non QM product is and have them understand what a bank statement loan looks like through skits, through real life skits that they can understand and say, Oh, that makes sense. And social media is also a place where they can directly consume and, connect with the agents and ask them questions where they just feel more comfortable as if they're like texting their friend. as content strategy itself, something that's been very interesting with social media is that I find for me and for other creators, what works really well is just being organic posting. If you had a closing that went good or that went bad, kind of recreating scenarios to teach them the dos and the don'ts so that they can avoid those mistakes and just can understand it in more real life perspective. And I, really just like can't talk enough about like really authentically putting that out there. And I don't mean, teaching, in a more direct way, but more so just making it relatable and accessible information and making information easy enough for a five year old to understand. Because, if a five year old can understand it, then you know it's gonna be more widely reached. And that's kind of very important because what's interesting with TikTok and social media is that sure you have the younger generation that's consuming and that's spending time on there, but they're also the ones sending information, sending and sharing videos to their parents, to other people that they're hearing in their community may need that service. So, I hope that answers the best,
Kristin Messerli (
Definitely, that's great. How many of you in the room are working directly with consumers? Okay. How many of you in the room are working on the corporate side to support people that are directly working with consumers? Okay, cool. So we have more people on the other side. So I think, it'll be interesting. All of this is very relevant no matter what, but I wanna, talk about how we can frame this back to, supporting or empowering your team to be able to deliver authentic information as well. so before we come back to Melissa, I wanna go to you Mosae and ask you, what has been successful for you in building trust with consumers or, or, or being able to build your business, especially in a really difficult time in the market you've been able to increase your business. so yeah, what's been successful for you?
Mosi K. Gatling (
What's worked a ton? like you said, both of these wonderful ladies, I think we're all on the same path and our respective lanes, but really getting to the consumer, a cultural perspective. I'm gonna throw that out there. What I made sure to do when I hired, junior loan officers to work under me, because frankly I outgrew my business very quickly, is to make sure that I had a diverse staff again looking like the people that are buying homes, ages. I hired a loan officer directly outta high school. So, he's been with me for two years now and, he's not even 21, but again he has a different lane on his own. He relates to people differently than I do at my age. I'm like his mom's age technically. But having that cultural perspective is huge because you can relate to them on a different level. I also, do not talk high level to people. You will be amazed the difference between buying a home and even renting an apartment. You walk into an apartment, they say, Hey, you need to make three times the rent to qualify. Why are we throwing around debt to income ratio? That's too many words, right? And then you have to explain what that is. Quit making up terms that you have to go back and then re-explain, keep it simple. Because honestly, if you're using big words and terms and jargon, I mean if you wanna sound smart, great and they have no clue what you're talking about, they're definitely gonna lean toward the person that can sit and have that real life conversation. Not even the doctor feel conversation. I will be your Oprah or the cool home girl up the street and we can have this conversation like we are friends to what you need to do to get where you need to be to own a home. Just being relatable that, that cultural perspective, the diversity, let them feel comfortable and kind of just sit back in that chair these days with everything that is online because they can see all this stuff. They really wanna sort out what's true, what's correct and what works for them. So, being able to explain that in a comfort level where they can even check what you're saying is probably your literally your best bet to make them feel okay going forward and not really have that distrust. No, one wants to be told to, Hey, get in the car with me, where are we going? I'm not gonna tell you. But then you pull up and you say, Here's your keys. And they're like, Awesome. I have no idea how I got that. Got the keys. I know I gave my stuff. They couldn't repeat it or explain it to their friends or family, You're in trouble. And that's really what you should be thinking about. The second you talk to that person, can they repeat what you said to their family or if they're older to their children and pass it on generation to generation and make it sound right or are they embarrassed to repeat how they got to owning that home besides, Hey, my house is great cuz they really have no clue you drove them there and dropped them off at the door. Nobody wants to feel like that. So, I just try to keep that in mind and make sure everybody that works with me has that in mind as well when they're talking to customers and really making them feel comfortable and, meeting them where they're at in that moment to help them buy a house. Not trying to bring them up to being a loan officer for over 20 years. They're not gonna be that. So meet them where they're at and let's have that conversation about buying and owning and sustaining.
Kristin Messerli (
That's so good. It's interesting because I feel like just a few years ago it would be enough to say, Let me just walk you to your home basically. And now if you don't fully understand what's going on, you're gonna be freaked out and step out of the process. And I think when we talk about the psychology of money, you have to talk about the emotions around that and how we are feeling so much anxiety going into this topic or going into this process and that plays a role in how we digest information in how we move forward. I always talk about when I bought a home a little over a year ago, that was the second time for me to buy. I built my career on education in home buying. So, like I knew what I was doing and yet when I started I just kind of freaked out. Like I was worried, I wasn't understanding everything and it, it was the emotion and anxiety behind that. Right. And, so I think no matter how much information they actually have, if they're not able to totally understand what that means for their personal situation in a way that's very clear, no matter how smart they they are, whatever it really is going to make them so anxious, they're gonna step out of the process. So, I think that's been a really big shift in the market. So, Melissa, I wanna come back to you to talk about this again from the lender's perspective. Is there, and I've seen you writing down some things, so I want you to share whatever is on your mind, but I wanted you to talk a little bit more about what has been successful in supporting your loan officer specifically.
Melissa Wright (
Yeah. I always take notes of just things that I hear and I I appreciate the wisdom up here. So, what's interesting about today's consumer is there was time, and there probably still are some viruses way, but they did want you to just hand hold and do it all. Hand me the keys, I'll get in, I just wanna trust you, but my trust means I don't need to know any of that. Right? And then today's consumer is like, No, no, no, no, I need to know all that. And so I I I find that really fascinating on how radical that has changed. So when I think about like as a lender, so I mentioned earlier I need to support my loan officers to show up well and show up in this manner. And so, but I also have to lead from the front. So, some of the things that we're really focused on is I've gotta create content for them. Not that they have to use it exact, but they need it for ideas where they need it. Like, okay, now I know what to do with that. So anything from short term to long term videos to scripts, right? So they can use it, not use it, make their own. We create blogs, we do weekly tips on social to break it all down really simple. Everything's like theme based around, for the month. So, we're always solutioning for something for the month and then we create a bunch of content around that solution. The other thing we do is really help them on the technology side of things. So, we have technology, we use total expert for our, platform there for our CRM and our marketing. And we use that really heavily on the journey side and the journey side. We have, I hope soon by the end of the year maybe we'll have like a hundred, but we have like a ton of journeys to try and educate at the right time with really relevant things that matter. That's where you kind of let automation and and tech help you out, but it's never gonna replace. So we, add in them along the way. Another thing put a lot of time focusing on let's turn to Mortgage Coach and using that platform to really educate, you said the number one thing that they want is to be empowered. Well that tool really helps do that. You can use that platform to involve them. You can build the TCA with them and so they can really see the options. Talking a lot about seller paid buy downs right now and then presenting it in a way that it's digestible and they can understand it. You can't just say, Oh it's always better, it's cheaper for you and the seller. It's like, but show me the numbers. Help me know that platform's really good in that. And then the other thing we do is we provide a weekly webinar which we call APM Life. And we have something every Thursday for loan officers to just help them craft their skills and help them know how to digest all of this. There's so much coming at them with like trends and technology and marketing and what should I do, but I've got out my pipeline and my agents and there's so much and so we just try to take it in small bites, simple steps that we can do. We use kind of that platform to do it.
Kristin Messerli (
Amazing. Those are really amazing tips. Thank you so much. So, with five minutes left I want to open it up and see if we have any questions from you guys that we can answer. Yeah. Lovely.
Audience Member 1 (
So thank you all great panel. And I'm to bring up the idea of, I think it's always really interesting to see how you don't is she had 18% improve in closings for that you focused on? Not sure what context was, but I would love to just ask as about, building practices for my audiences, diverse audiences or whatever they be. Talk little about being a planner yourself accountable and measuring your progress.
Kristin Messerli (
So good. Okay, so if you couldn't hear that in the back, what is your plan for accountability and tracking your success in these areas? Anyone is welcome to chime in here.
Melissa Wright (
Sure, So some things I can, track are really, detailed with data on how is the ROI and some things you have to just do. I'm never gonna be able to fully track like how that blog worked other than I can get viewer shifts and I can see on my seo. So, I can track all of that. I can check how long they're on pages on my website from when they bounced. And if I have high bounce rates then I know it's not digestible information. So, there are things like that I can look at all my email campaigns, all my journeys I mentioned and see of each of those. What was the open rate, what was the response? In fact, we just did this exercise where I looked, we had a journey of like an eight part series and I was like, wait, email four was a flop because our open rate was so low, we've gotta change that. So, there are a lot of things that you can do. And then as far as online you can track your, if we do ads, sometimes we do, we'll run ads trying to give away information just to try and source that they can have all the information they want, but sometimes we'll use that to generate some leads and then you can just track the ROI of that.
Kristin Messerli (
That's great.
Margot Ettedgui (
Yeah, for me, I have a smart form, a type form that I embed, on all of my socials and I can see on that form cuz the last question will say, where did you find this form? So, I'm able to track pretty much when the leads come in, which platforms are they coming from, so that I can also understand which platform should I dedicate a little bit more time to which platform deserves more engagement with that audience so that I can really make sure to convert those leads. But an interesting thing with social media is that you have a lot of industry professionals and other referral partners, real estate agents, architects, interior designers that are learning what you do and then refer you to their client source and their client base. So, it can get a little bit more manual and, chaotic if you're like kind of just looking at what's coming from social media. But I definitely think that smart forms and type forms so that you can really track which platform they're coming from, is gonna be key. And of course with social media, all the analytics are built in right there, right in front of you, right per video. So, you can see how far did this go, how many people clicked on my link from that video and kind of adjust accordingly, right? If one video performed very well on a certain subject, maybe you wanna reanalyze your content strategy and continue to create content about that, so that you can really generate the the right type of leads. I think it's very important to niche it down a little bit when it comes to marketing because the mortgage industry is quite vast. So I think it's just important to make sure that you're an expert in your niche.
Kristin Messerli (
So good, so with just a minute left, what, we could talk about this forever. That was a great question because I do think it's really important that we emphasize the importance of metrics and tracking each of these areas, especially as creators and working with the feeling side emotion or psychology side of the business. There are things you can do to stay accountable and to track your progress. But I want us to leave on the note of just one piece of advice that you would provide lenders with how to, build trust in a market like we're in today.
Mosi K. Gatling (
My advice would be, telling your, whoever your audience is, the why. If you ask them something or ask them for something, tell them why. The why is what's huge and we also survey when someone goes literally from application to contract, we ask them how the experience was and if they had any questions, it really gives you the opportunity to kind of jump back in and bring them back to the why and educate them and figure it out before they get to the end and say it was horrible.
Kristin Messerli (
Amazing.
Margot Ettedgui (
I think for me, the biggest advice that I would give to lenders is number one, support your, mortgage loan officers. They are the ones that are going to really generate the leads and the exposure for the company. So, I think that that's huge and allow them to authentically present themselves however they think is right to service their community, to service the type of clients that they're going to produce the best. I think that's kind of the biggest thing is really allow them to be rock stars in their own sense. So that's my advice.
Melissa Wright (
Yes, I love that. I would end with just kind of how I began. Number one advice is look at as a lender, how are you showing up online? Are you showing up? Well, check your websites, check your social check videos, Check how you're seen and found. Do you like how you're seen and found? Adjust accordingly. Do you sound like too much, acronyms, too many loan products, too much detail, too many words on the page, like all the things like check that and clean it up and just make it a little bit more inviting. Check your bounce rates, do all that.
Kristin Messerli (
Amazing. Well there is another really great panel coming up right after this. Oh, okay. I see yeah, we're out of time. So we would, I think all love to continue the conversation so hopefully we will see you around. And thank you guys so much for your incredible advice and participation in the panel. Thank you. You.