Do we even need marketing?

This was a question asked by one of our clients recently, a title company in Virginia focused on growth. They had hired a young, talented Marketing Director to help attract more real estate agents. They were confident in her ability to help them grow — after all, she knew everything about SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, and WordPress. After six months, they had a redesigned website, a social media strategy, and had spent a few tens of thousands of dollars on Google Ads…and they were pretty much in the same spot as before they hired her.

Which brings us back to Doug, the title company owner, asking a question that none of his staff could answer:  Do we even need marketing?

He kind of had a point. Why should a title company keep spending money on something that doesn’t work? Right?

Obviously, the answer to his question was “yes.” The problem, however, is in how a title company thinks about “marketing”. Title companies need to adopt a completely different approach to marketing than most products or services out there.

Title Company Marketing — A New School of Thought

Most product or service marketing reps spend their time and money attracting and converting prospects into leads or clients. Title company marketing, however, should focus more on servicing and building the brand for existing clients. Why is that?

Because growing a title company is a pure referral-driven effort. A real estate agent or lender will only pull the trigger and send you their first closing (and become your de-facto client) if they really trust you, and no amount of ad spend on social media, testimonials, case studies, or smart content on your site is going to boost that trust in the same way as when another real estate agent or lender is telling that prospect of yours “Oh yeah. I work with this title company. They’re awesome”.

The stakes are simply too high, and without that referral validation, your prospects will always be on the fence. They simply don’t want to risk the livelihood of their buyer or seller if there’s nobody they know and trust who will vouch for your title company.

So, your most important question, if you want to drive more growth to your title company is simply “How do I drive more referrals?” That’s it.

You now shift your focus from the outside world, with all the potential real estate agents and lenders you don’t currently work with, to your most important asset: your existing clients, to whom your quality of service is everything.

Start listening to what they really need. Start putting up rules and structure so that you make sure your reps are reaching our constantly to each and every one of them so that your title company is always top of mind.

Now you realize that in order for these people to drive a referral, they have to LOVE you. And if you want to create that romantic relationship, you need to know their pain points, make sure communication is excellent, make sure you’re giving them functional value – the tools that may make their life easier (such as TitleCapture’s branded app), teach them, train them, mentor them, go above and beyond to keep the buyers and sellers in the know, at every stage of the closing process. And once in a while … sure, take your top producers to dinner!

When you focus on providing the BEST service to your existing real estate agents and lenders, one of two things will happen:

Either…

Whenever one of their colleagues will look for a new title company to work with, your existing clients will be the first ones to recommend yours and VOUCH for it, no holds barred.

Or…

Your existing clients will be such fans of your title company, that they will actively go out and try to convert everyone they work with into a client of your title company. Because they LOVE you and they simply need to share it.

I beg of you. Change your focus. The quality of your service towards your existing clients is the absolute single best driver of growth for your title company.