This is very long, sorry.
I'm just starting out in my "freelance marketing consultant" business.
I have a consultation today with a mortgage broker and tomorrow with my insurance agent.
My lead in was "your website sucks" I didn't actually use those words, but my contact at the mortgage broker told her boss I said that.
ops:
All I know about the mortgage broker is from their website and working with them on a couple loans for a couple loans to sell my houses.
I've done business as a client with the insurance agent for a number of years and his father before that.
The insurance agent has been mailing a 6X9 glossy postcard monthly for the last several months and has a "vanity" website as well as a yellow page ad and some newspaper ads.
The postcard is all about promoting the carrier.
Not looking here for suggestions on what their stuff needs but how to get the business. How much education do I do on direct response methods and how it will help them would you do?
Here's what I've sketched out for the mortgage broker.He needs leads because the mortgage market is drying up.
1. What marketing are you doing now?
2. How many leads are you processing each month? Is that consistent, increasing or decreasing?
3.Do you know where your leads are coming from?
4. If I could wave a magic wand, what would you like to see happen?
I will tell them that I'm not really a web site designer, but I make web sites a tool that increase sales and profits.
What I really do is lead generation.
Off the top of my head, I came up with 4 areas that could be approached.
A. Realtors have the most capacity to deliver leads. Promote strongly to them and (possibly) offer incentives. Legalities would need to be verified on any method.
B. Past clients. I'm guessing they've already approached them to re-fi their loans but there could be several ways to approach them. Referral source, home equity for debt consolidation, college tuition...Testimonials.
Tell a friend and be rewarded.
C. FSBOs. Whole bunch of ways to utilize them.
D. Buyers. No way to know who to mail but advertising that targetted them. An angle could be to get pre-approved because they can negotiate a better price.

Fix their website to be a lead gen site. Add autoresponder and content such as lead gen reports and articles.
Lots of possibilities. Copy for each of these.

The insurance agent.
Scrap his postcard and do another that does a better job. Not sure if he is marketing to his existing list or he bought a list since I get the card and I'm a client.
Actually, I think there should be several postcards. One promoting auto, another promoting homeowners' and another for financial planning/retirement...
He does not cross sell. He has never approached me about different areas such as health, financial planning...
Convert website to capture leads and create content.

What do you think? How would you approach and sell this?

Larry Foster