More and more, loan officers and mortgage lending executives are reaching clients through personal branding. It’s the same kind of personal branding more common among real estate agents, who have made mailings, billboards, social media presence and other marketing avenues a staple of the industry for years.

That kind of branding can work on the lending side, too, forming a connection in a homebuyer’s mind long after they’ve seen an Instagram post, television ad or door hanger featuring a loan officer’s contact information.

For some, forging a niche in the lending field can be essential to survival, especially in a housing market with fewer home sales and fewer refis — at least for now.

“I think it’s important for anyone in business, especially in the finance business, to brand themselves,” said Chase Moore, senior home lending advisor at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “At the end of the day, we all are selling the same product or really pushing toward the same goal. That makes it hard to differentiate yourself if you don’t have something that identifies with your brand. It pretty much verifies who we are and what we do with our brand.”

Moore points to his first name as an easy way to associate him with his business and connect with clients.

“My name is Chase; I work for Chase,” he said. “It’s like I’m always bragging. The first question a person is going to ask me is likely, ‘Your name is not really Chase, right?’ It is, so Chase and Chase. If I do a good job, they’re not going to forget me, and if I do a bad job, they won’t forgive me.”

Johnny Noriega, senior mortgage loan officer at Neighborhood Loans in Downers Grove, believes in finding one’s own niche and emphasizing it through branding. Individual branding on the part of lending officers fosters greater connections than relying on the company name to bring in business.

“I’m big on the actual person that you’re working with, not necessarily the real estate company or the bank that you’re associated with,” he said. “It took me a little while in the beginning to find what is it that I can brand myself on. Now that I’ve found it, obviously we go wherever the business takes us, but we always come back to what does your brand say about you? I think that that goes further, above and beyond the company on the second line.”

Joel Schaub, vice president of mortgage lending at Guaranteed Rate, has spent years building his personal brand through a mix of mediums that includes social media and billboards. Agents associate his strong company name and well-known personal brand with speed and trust. Schaub feels that if he worked for a smaller, lesser-known bank, he would push his personal brand more.

“Agents in Chicago know to Just Call Joel,” Schaub said. “The brand is everywhere. I’ve created this for going on… I’m in my second decade of doing this as a brand. It’s not about rates and programs. It’s Just Call Joel, because he’ll get it done.’ Someone says, ‘My other bank wasn’t available on a Saturday, and the heating goes.’ ‘Just Call Joel. They’ll answer.’ That’s how it all started; it was about availability and speed.”

Making a name through branding

Schaub made his name in part because of his billboard advertising, but he also uses television commercials, promotional events and social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to reach out and generate new business.

“The funny thing about billboards is half the passengers in the car are looking at their phone and not looking at billboards,” Schaub said. “And nowadays, half of the drivers are looking at their phones and not looking at the road or the billboards. So we’ve been doing a lot more on social just in terms of video and outreach to agents, not about what I’m doing. I’m more attracting agents to help them, so it’s all about speaking their language and how I can give back to Realtors.”

The housing market’s struggles in recent years led Moore to place a greater emphasis on using social media in his branding on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

“We’re dealing with historically high interest rates,” Moore said. “So I really wanted to bring awareness to individuals who are maybe considering buying a home down the road or are trying to kind of time the market. I just wanted to show that people are still buying homes. Regardless of the turmoil that you’re hearing on the news, regardless of what you’re seeing on other social media outlets or whatever you’re hearing word-of-mouth from other different financial sectors, people are still buying homes. That was the main reason why we started to post a lot more closings, just to really show people that, hey, people are still buying homes.”

Noriega focuses primarily on social media in his personal branding. The posts, flyers and videos he distributed helped him when he started out eight years ago. From there, he and his team have been able to focus on storytelling to show the mortgage process from start to finish.

“Whether you’re in the initial stages of the preapproval, whether we had to work a little bit on the credit side to get ready to get preapproved to where you’re under contract, and then you go through the inspection, the appraisal, the approval, the clear to close,” Noriega said. “Storytelling has become a big part of my journey, even on the personal side. Whether I’m … getting back to the gym, saying we’re trying to get a little bit healthier this year or self-care. That definitely helps us in the beginning. On the other side, when it comes to referral partners, I use a lot of social media and a lot of video marketing.”

Noriega sees mailers, as well as other traditional marketing tools, becoming a big part of branding for mortgage lenders. His team recently put up 250 door hangers in a subdivision.

“With the COVID years more and more behind us, face-to-face, happy hours, socials are going to be something that’s been helping me,” Noriega said. “Now that a few people are more familiar with me, that becomes a little bit easier to do.”

Maximizing the brand

Noriega feels that branding has become particularly important when loan officers go from one bank to another or switch titles. Strong, consistent branding helps those individuals bring their clients with them when they make a change.

“You’re building relationships with referral partners, so it helps when you’re going from one thing to another or one company to another, as long as you stick true to the brand,” he said. “If your focus is more like farms, or veterans, or you’re more for second-home buyers or investor clients, the fact that they can go to your profile page and see the constant sort of marketing that you do for the brand, or around what it is that you’re working with, is super important. Whether it’s a well- known corporation or a smaller kind of town bank or company, branding is definitely more important.”

Schaub’s branding works because he places an emphasis on how he can partner with agents and help them close more transactions, rather than focusing on rates in the way loan officers did in the past.

“To be frank, agents don’t necessarily care about rate sheets,” he said. “What they care about is somebody that’s going to take care of their client, that’s going to be trusted, who’s going to answer. It’s not so much about the old-school. You can think of these guys that are, ‘Hey, let me tell you about the programs and rates,’ and that’s not honestly what most people care about. What they care about is availability, speed and efficiency.”

Moore expects branding for lenders to continue to evolve. He personally intends to focus more on social media and take advantage of the platform JPMorgan Chase provides.

“We’re looking to get more videos and things of that nature to bring awareness to some of the myths and dispel some of the myths that are out there regarding the homebuying process, or maybe regarding working with Chase Bank,” he said. “That’s going to be a focus for 2024 — just Chase Bank awareness, Chase Moore awareness, and then educating the homebuyers and continue to show them proof by having actual images and things of that nature of people who have bought a home.”

Not everyone is comfortable in front of a camera or on social media, Moore said. For those lenders, the important thing is to find what works for them and use that to tell their story.

“Make sure people find out about yourself and that they know who you are, they know you exist, they know what you do,” Moore said. “Hopefully they’re able to see you helping other people, but if not, it’s all about making sure people are aware of who you are. There are so many different lending companies, there are so many different loan officers and you literally can go online and find several people. In an industry that’s saturated like that, I think individuality is important. Brand awareness is important. Because at the end of the day, we’re all selling the same stuff. People choose to work with us because of who we are and then the experience that we give them. We connect with them.”

EXPERT SOURCES

Chase Moore, Senior Home Lending Advisor, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Johnny Noriega, Senior Mortgage Loan Officer, Neighborhood Loans

Joel Schaub, Vice President of Mortgage Lending, Guaranteed Rate