In order to leverage new relationships built from a presence on the platform, lenders must build systems that allow their loan officer-content creators to engage with every comment, respond to every inquiry and organize that information for the lender's records. That's no easy task in this wild west of marketing: launching social media campaigns without a plan to handle engagement can backfire spectacularly with negative attention.
Check out our discussion with NFM Lending's Chief Business Development Officer Greg Sher, who leads the company's Influencer Division. He covers how to get started on TikTok, how to build the automation around the lead flow, how to close loans in every state from this vertical, and he'll share some data behind who is responding on the platform. It's a can't-miss conversation about the bleeding edge of lead gen innovation.
Heidi Patalano (
Welcome to today's Arizent Leaders session, TikTok and Mortgage, how to leverage leads from social media. I'm Heidi Patalano, editor in chief of National Mortgage News. I'm here today with Greg Sher of NFM Lending. Hi there. Thanks for joining us today.
Greg Sher (
So happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Heidi Patalano (
Thank you. So you are the Chief Business Development Officer at NFM, right?And the thing that we're here to talk to you about is the creation of the influencer unit that you started at,start of the year. So could you tell us a bit about the formation of that?
Greg Sher (
Yeah, well it started really 18 months ago. While we kind of made it known to the world January 4th, 2022 that we had launched this, there was about nine or 10 months prior to that of brick laying and lots of mistakes and lots of lessons learned. We finally got to January and we felt like we were in a really good, stable place to share with everyone that we were launching this influencer division. It was kind of launched in March or so of 2021, but we officially were ready to go full guns a blazing in January, and it's been remarkable what we found.
Heidi Patalano (
Yeah. So part of the team are influencers. How many influencers do you have? And also, how did you find those influencers?
Greg Sher (
Well, we have currently 11 influencers. I'm gonna give you something that I've learned: They like to be called creators. This is something I've learned by calling them influencers because to them t's an art form and it really truly is. I catch myself all the time, especially when I'm talking to our number one influencer-creator, Scott Betley, @thatmortgageguy, who's got 850,000 followers. There are 11 of us. And how did I get him? I just started with Scott, approached him one day with a shocking discovery. I had started watching him late 2021 on TikTok, and I saw all of these DMs coming on his TikTok and I saw all of these people trying to communicate with him, and I noticed that he wasn't able to get back to a lot of the people that were responding to him.
(
And so it dawned on me, "does he have a mechanism by which to provide a great experience?, which is what Gen Zs want. We can get into that in a moment. But, I reached out to him and ironically, he was in our backyard, just as luck would have it. The number one TikTok mortgage guy happens to reside in Maryland, in our corporate offices in the state of Maryland. I called him and I said, your company must be bending over backwards for you and building you an empire. And he said, 'Actually, it's quite the opposite. I'm hardly getting recognized. They have no idea when I'm on to, I'm a one man band on an island.' I was floored. I've got somewhat of a marketing background and understand media. So I, I said to him, 'Can we please get together?'
(
So I had to chase him for like 90 days, literally, because everyone was at a nipping at his heels. But what I discussed with him was, what if we built a really dynamic lead automation platform and some really consistent operations for you, so that all you had to do was focus on being a creator, performing your craft? And he said, All right, let's get together and talk about it. So that was the beginning. He joined us in April or May of 2021. And, you know, the rest is kind of history. We've since grown from then. He's an incredible guy and humble and an amazing leader.
Heidi Patalano (
I think one thing I definitely want to ask you about is building that automation around the leads that come from that. But, but first, he was basically the inspiration for this unit, so tell me about building, getting the rest of that group together and finding those people.
Greg Sher (
Heidi, there's so many pieces to the puzzle, which I found out the hard way, because if you've never done this before, it's literally like starting a new company is what it is. So NFM is a lender where we have all the tickets, Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie — we are top 25 lender. We have all of the gadgets and the accoutrements. You'd want to do the normal mortgages, but this requires a completely different build out because of the nature of the person that responds when they inquire. And then most importantly, the expectation that you're going to meet them with the same urgency that they have, knowing all the while that the vast majority of these people are not ready right now. And that's the catch. There are many catches, but that's, that's really one of the catches.
(
We built through Surefire. I know you know who they are. Top of Mind is kind of one in the same. So we started to build out some automation through them, and then we discovered that we had to have a call center, but not in like, the typical sense that people think about when they think of call centers. They think about, you know, headsets and you're sitting in a room and you're taking calls. It's not like that at all. These are people that are responding in earnest with text messaging, emails in, these are the ways that these people in this demographic, which is 24 to 32, that's where 70% of the responders are. They don't want to be called. So it's a whole new world. They want a text message and they want to respond when it's convenient for you. Then there's the it part of it, building out reports, things of that nature. Then there's the marketing aspect, getting people set up, having links set up that so we could track which influencer or creator brought in the potential client. There are so many facets of this, we could go on and on and on, but those are four of the main cogs.
Heidi Patalano (
Yeah. So I, I thought it was really interesting before we met today to talk, you had mentioned that like there's a lot at stake in terms of becoming an influencer or a creator when you don't interact with those people who have reached out to you. And that's why you had to build a lot of this infrastructure around responding. So does that influencer, is that person still kind of associated with the person that they reached out to? Do they step back into the process?
Greg Sher (
There's a lot of messaging. Yep. There are a lot of touch points where we have videos, with them addressing the consumer directly, but they're always available. But in a lot of cases people are responding. This is another one of the tricks to the trade that, that you want to know, is that when you make a great video, you don't have any control over where people respond from. So if Scott Betley, @thatmortgageguy who I've been talking about, if he's only licensed in four states and he makes an incredible video, which really connects with his following, we may get 600 people reaching out to us, of which only 10 are in his states. So he's not able to interact with them in terms of terms and conditions and all the things tied to the NMLS. So we make sure that we obviously follow those rules, but they're interacting with him all the while through.
Heidi Patalano (
Yeah.
Greg Sher (
Yeah. In one way or another, just they're not always getting the quote from him because he may not be licensed in that state, but he's got a team that's licensed everywhere. We do business, which is 49 states.
Heidi Patalano (
Right. Right. So, so they'll get contacted like, Hey, I'm a friend of Scott's, we got your message. Like, how
Greg Sher (
Not, not really, not really a friend of Scott's. I'm a teammate of Scott's.
Heidi Patalano (
So do you have someone who then contacts the client and they reach out saying, I am a partner of Scott's.
Greg Sher (
And Yep. I'm a member of Scott's team. We're here to serve you. What is your timeframe? You know, all the, the list of questions, which we ask, which are centered around the three same main ingredients that are centered around any mortgage. You know, income, assets, obviously in credit. So, in some ways it's fundamentally as it's always been, and in some ways it's not, because the traditional way of doing mortgages is — for a lot of places that aren't call center-heavy or refi-heavy — a real estate agent gives you most often a qualified lead. They're teed up. They're ready to go. In this instance, that's not the case. There's so much nurturing that has to take place in the process. And that's his team's job, to kind of figure out where the consumer fits and ensure whether they've got a 480 FICO or an 800, that they both leave feeling the same. That, you know, they're heard that they're gonna have a team working with them, whether we can close in a month or we can close in a year or longer.
Heidi Patalano (
Right. So what does that nurturing look like? What is the communication like for that 480, potential borrower who's a ways off.
Greg Sher (
Well pick a path. Are we talking about vanilla, someone that's ready to go, who's got a 740 FICO and money to put down and great income? Because that just moves fast. That's, fill out an application. We confirm verbally that they are who they say they are because we have an intake form initially. So if you were to go to Scott Betley's TikTok page right now — and this is public knowledge, so no trade secrets here — you can click on his profile link and you'd be taken to a blue page, which collects information, self-rated information, like what is your down payment? How would you grade your credit? What is your household income? Do you want to refinance? Do you want to buy? Are you working with an agent? If you're not, are you open to an agent introduction, which an astounding 90% of these people are.
(
That's how much in the infancy people are. What the call center does, the pre-qual team — is what we call them — they start communicating immediately, usually by text or email to confirm what they filled out on that form. Mr. Jones, you indicated you had a household income between $50 and $150,000. Where exactly do you fall? Do you have a co-borrower? So, they confirm all that stuff and if it looks good, they check the box and it becomes what's called an LO alert. That is then when the introduction to a loan officer is made. The borrower is presented with an application. Now that is an anomaly, let me just tell you. Right. It's a tougher journey than that. So more often than not, these people are not ready yet.
(
NFM has developed a proprietary app that's in the app store and Android and Apple and it's called Home Stretch. So the idea of home stretch is, we do an intake. When we discover that they're not ready now, we say, 'All right, look, time out. You're not ready now, but we are gonna stick with you on this journey and we are going to invite you into this program we have called Homestretch, where we're gonna first identify your areas of need through a AI tool that we use, which talks about where they're strong, where they're weak. Once we have that snapshot, we then welcome them into Homestretch, which is a library of 30 to 40 tailor-made videos, many of which are speaking to their situation. Maybe they want information on timing to buy a home or down payment assistance or gift funds.
(
Because when you might laugh and be like, Well, gift funds, everyone knows what gift funds are, but again, you have to remember, 24 to 32, 34 is our sweet spot. These are first-time home buyers. They've never heard gift funds, the majority of them. So you literally have to walk them through that. And oftentimes they go from thinking they don't have any money to put down to realizing, Oh my goodness, my rich uncle or my dad or my mom, they're gonna help me out. That can also propel them forward. But once they go into that ecosystem, they're then given that library of videos to watch. When they graduate and they've watched it all, we give them a $500 lender credit for going through the program. We don't charge them, we're actually giving them something. Then we have like a readiness tool at the end because some people may be very eager and might just want to binge watch videos and then try and apply tomorrow. Well, if you have a 550 FICO, it's gonna take a little longer than that. So we have a tool at the end where we kind of measure, are you really ready? That's the whole experience for those that aren't quite ready.
Heidi Patalano (
Right. Right. Now, you founded this NFMTV in 2017. We were talking about that before recording. So are these videos that you had made like these educational videos?
Greg Sher (
I had hand on it, but we really have an incredible team. So many people and we've three videographers on staff in a state-of-the-art studio at NFM and some really bright minds. I can't take credit for that. I recorded a couple of them. There's a lot of diversity in the videos, so every walk of life is in there. We obviously wanted to make sure we did that because people are of, you know, all races, religions and everything. It's all in there. It's a melting pot. We wanted to make sure that we recognized that. I recorded a couple, but there are 85 or so videos in the library and I might have recorded three of them, but we wrote, edited, produced, filmed, all of that. Soup to nuts was us.
Heidi Patalano (
Right, right. I think it's really great that you're talking about those people who aren't ready yet, because especially right now, as you know, we're seeing volumes on the decline. There's a lot of people that you could build relationships with now who may be ready further on down the line.
(
One thing I wanted to ask if we could go over some of the numbers that you shared with me, can we talk about those numbers?
Greg Sher (
Heidi, you didn't ask permission like this. You put me on the spot. How can I say no to you?
Heidi Patalano (
Oh, alright. Well, you showed me a glimpse of your dashboard, I believe that's just from what you've generated since, since when? Since January.
Greg Sher (
Well actually if I could grab my phone real quick. We don't have to stop. Let me just lean over front my screen here. I actually got some updated numbers prior to this meeting so I can give you some real statistics. Right. Are you ready?
Heidi Patalano (
Yeah. Hit me
Greg Sher (
This is in the last 60 days. So, all of these data are as a result of videos that were done on multiple platforms. These are stats that are 100% from videos in the last 60 days. So TikTok, Facebook, Instagram reels, you name it: 45 million views, 24.6 million on TikTok. And then you go down the list in terms of the people that have landed on what I called the blue form. These are people that saw the video, click the link, went to this place to figure out how to take the next step. 42,000 people have, uh, taken that step. Then from that, about 6,100 have taken action and have said, help me.
Heidi Patalano (
Right.
Greg Sher (
So those are super compelling: 90% or so of these individuals don't have real estate agents and 90% of them are open to an agent introduction.
Heidi Patalano (
Right.
Greg Sher (
Which really underscores your point. It's not just that it's a slow time in the market, but we're getting people at their infancy. Every company loves to talk about this idea of customer for life. Everyone has their idea of what a customer for life is. Now, nine times out of 10, I think it's safe to say customers for life were someone else's customers before they were yours. So it's your job to kind of hang on them. We're so early that we really have a chance to make a great connection and make a pledge very early on and live up to that pledge. So that we are truly their lender for life. So I think that's really unique here.
Heidi Patalano (
Yeah. Well, one thing that I thought was really interesting that I wanted to talk to you about is the content of these videos. Checking out some of Scott's videos, a lot of them, he's being very frank with people about how hard it is for a young person now to save versus their parents who, he had a really funny video about how easy it was for someone with just a regular job to buy like a four bedroom house and that in 1980 versus today. I loved that truthfulness and the like, 'Hey, I understand it's hard.' Just identifying with their audience. I wanted to ask about the ideation process. Do you run these things through, like as a team, do they collaborate? Do you have standards of 'do this and not that'? Can we talk about some of your rules?
Greg Sher (
That sounds like a compliance avenue, you're taking me down here. Do I look like a guy that follows compliance? No, it's fine. I'll answer that question. We're obviously looking at these videos all the time. We want to make sure that we follow the cardinal rules: no rates, terms and conditions. And for the most part, you nailed it. They're talking about stories mm-hmm. That particular video that you're talking about, I know what it is. We had multiple team members put that same story out and it got I think 3 million plus views. It really hit home with a lot of people. That is what is really at the core of being a creator, is this connectivity with your audience. Everybody wants to know. I see all these seminars going on right now about how to be an influencer, how to be a creator.
(
It's not that simple. You're not an influencer, a creator just because you have a phone and you make a video. You have to be very real and very authentic and genuine and passionate about what you're doing. You have to really come across in a connective kind of way. We have 11 influencers on our team. Some have a better following than others. They're constantly working on it and refining their evolution so that they can build that community. That's really what it is, is a community. So I think it's important to underscore that they talk to each other all the time. Get into your other question about, you know, how are they think-tanking? All day long our people are on a text thread, sharing the trends and sounds and things that are working and are not working, which is really one of the key ingredients to making a great short form video.
(
I'm in my fifties and you probably can tell, um, so you know, I'm not Gen Z Right. But I understand it and I listen to these guys when they talk and there are certain sounds that just go off and you have a very small window to climb in and to be able to, uh, take advantage of that and leverage that, that sound might go away in a day. It might go away in four hours.
Heidi Patalano (
So yeah, you're talking about, a sound like it's used in TikTok and gets replicated over and over again. Like for example, I was thinking about — and this is going to date our interview a little bit but — Corn. "It's corn!" There's a TikTok thing that went viral I think a week or two ago and everyone was using that sound. Or for example, there's King Khan's "I Love You So." That song is [used a lot] So this is what you're saying.
Greg Sher (
Like, sounds like you've been spending some time on TikTok.
Heidi Patalano (
Little bit too much time. A little bit too much time, definitely. Um, so this is what you're talking about. Using those things, getting in on those as they go viral, creating content that kind of pegs off that, which then gets more eyeballs.
Greg Sher (
It's one of the components. You have to have your ear to the ground. You have to understand the when and the where and be able to jump on it quickly and drop everything you're doing. You can't just be posting once a week and call yourself a creator. I takes a high level of commitment.
Heidi Patalano (
Right. Right. That was another question I wanted to ask. How often do they have to post?
Greg Sher (
Two to four times a week? I'm sorry, let me go back. Two to four times a day.
Heidi Patalano (
A day. Yeah. On, on just on one platform. You're talking about like two to four videos a day.
Greg Sher (
Videos a day is the kind of our cardinal rule. Wow. That's how you get the most traction. It's a lot of work. Although once you get the hang of it, you can make these videos quickly.
Heidi Patalano (
Right. That's another thing. If you want to use the effects that are trending, for example, that can take a long time, I would think. But then there are some where you could just be talking in your car. Do you have an average of like how much time it takes for some of these things?
Greg Sher (
Oh, I don't. Believe it or not, like I'm following a lot of people and for some reason people are following me, but I've never made a video in TikTok. Oh,
Heidi Patalano (
Oh I saw that. I saw that Greg. I checked it out.
Greg Sher (
So I yeah, I know. I've not actually not done a TikTok video. I wouldn't know how to do one. But I understand the mechanics of it for sure. Everything up to making the actual TikTok video and editing. But these guys and girls are so slick. They're so good with technology. It's amazing what they're able to do in such a short period of time. I think it once our people come up with the idea, it probably takes them, assuming there are no props, 15 minutes all in to create a video. But it doesn't start that way. It's very daunting to think about how to even dip your toes in these waters.
Heidi Patalano (
But there's no production budget necessary for these videos, is there?
Greg Sher (
There really isn't. That's our secret. How did you know? Free marketing? Is that, is that what you said? No, but you have to put a lot of support in the back-end to ensure you don't mess it up because you don't get many shots to get it right. You get one shot really to make it right. So you're not putting a lot of resources up front in the traditional marketing sense, which you're putting a lot on the back, you know, and throughout the process to make sure people are getting touched as often as they need to be.
Heidi Patalano (
Yeah. So could you say per influencer, like how many other people are supporting each influencer? Could you estimate?
Greg Sher (
Well, uh, we have a Friday morning huddle.
Heidi Patalano (
Yeah.
Greg Sher (
Which we everyone attends religiously. It's about a 45-minute meeting and there are 40 people on that meeting. That's between the CIO, me, the marketing team, the influencers, the call center pre—qual team, the managers managing the business to make sure it flows through properly. We're meeting our SLAs, the loan officers that are licensed in all these states that are taking the leads as they come in and the borrowers are ready. So I don't know if that answers your question, but it's a team of roughly 40 people, give or take
Heidi Patalano (
All-in that are supporting these influencers. Wow. And so do they all post to multiple sites or you're taking that TikTok, you're also posting on Instagram reels? How are you, uh, using multiple platforms aside from TikTok?
Greg Sher (
Now that's getting into the trade secret territory a little bit there. See that, you finally cross the line. Suffice to say without going into too much detail, things are changing. They're changing and they're changing fast. There are huge companies out there jockeying for position trying to be the next TikTok. So if you think you're just gonna go out there and be on TikTok and that's all you need to know, it's not the case. And I know this sounds crazy, but they may not be in first place much longer. They might be in third or fifth or obsolete one day. You just don't know. I mean, you know how technology works, right? And if Facebook is working really hard to take away meaningful market share and it's working as well as some other platforms.
Heidi Patalano (
Right. Well, yeah. That's another thing you mentioned, in a previous conversation that I didn't even know about this, uh, YouTube Shorts
Greg Sher (
People are gonna think we talk all the time.
Heidi Patalano (
I know, I know.
Greg Sher (
It's like the second time we've ever talked.
Heidi Patalano (
I know, I know. It's true. It's true. But yeah, YouTube shorts. That was one that you highlighted as an emerging.
Greg Sher (
For sure, it's one of them. But people that are listening are, they're thinking, I'm sure the people that aren't into it yet, 'YouTube short. What is that? I was just ready to go to TikTok and learn that.' That's why being in an environment where you're surrounded by others that have the knowledge really helps move you forward fast. So I just wanna point that out.
Heidi Patalano (
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, for example, I know my 12-year-old niece is still on Snapchat. Well, not still on, she's on Snapchat all the time.
Greg Sher (
It's old school. Yeah. We gotta hip her up a little bit.
Heidi Patalano (
I know, I know. But then I thought, well maybe if Snapchat is gonna come back around, because if the tweens are using it right now, you know... but who knows? It's always changing, right?
Greg Sher (
It is always changing. But just think about a world we live in where people feel comfortable watching a video for eight seconds, feeling so connected with a creator that they're willing to just lay down and give you all the information. Right. That is a big responsibility. There are two things to learn from that. One is it's an emerging generation and people need to get used to figuring out how to serve that, because that is going to be the bulk of our first-time home buyers now for the next however many years. So, that's super important.
Heidi Patalano (
I think it's really interesting that you're building these relationships early. This is what people are trying to do to really create that awareness with younger people. We're at the digital mortgage conference right now, and we had someone at Experian who said they did a survey that [found that] a lot of people that aren't home buyers yet, they go to their family for advice or their friends, and they, they still don't know who to contact outside of their immediate people in their lives. So there's still not this like, I'm gonna go to a mortgage broker when I want, when I'm thinking about whether or not I can afford...
Greg Sher (
Well, that window is closing, make no mistake. That is shrinking. These younger people, they've got these phones and this is how they're used to communicating. This is their love language. They're on their phones. They want a mortgage, they're gonna click a couple buttons, they're gonna see someone they follow and trust, they're gonna click a couple buttons and they're gonna expect mostly the entire experience to be through here. Let me upload my docs. Let me know when I'm ready to close. I'm so busy.
Heidi Patalano (
So Greg, what advice would you have for lenders who want to get into this but don't know where to start?
Greg Sher (
Make sure the backend is built. Make sure you don't rush in and go out and try and make friends with the creator and get 'em to come overvand then all of a sudden you're left not being able to support the customer. So you almost have to reverse engineer the process. Now, easy for me to say, since I didn't do that, right? I brought the person in. I'm telling you, don't make the same mistake I did because it took me probably eight months longer to get where I needed to go. But I didn't know any better and now your audience does, because we've had this conversation. Hopefully I've helped some people out there. And they understand that you just have to build, you have to understand that a lot of these leads can come rushing in, in high volume. So how are you gonna nurture them? How are you gonna meet them where they are in the process and make them feel really connected, whether they're top or bottom of the credit food chain. That would be my biggest, my biggest advice.
Heidi Patalano (
Yeah. Well, Greg, it's been really great having you here today. Thanks so much for your time and we look forward to seeing what else your team does in the future.
Greg Sher (
I know if, if, if we get together in a year, it'll be fascinating to see where this is. Yeah. So I hope I'm invited back.
Heidi Patalano (
Absolutely.
Greg Sher (
All right. Is this an invitation now? Official?
Heidi Patalano (
It's a promise, yes.
Greg Sher (
All right. Thanks for your time.
Heidi Patalano (
All right. Cool. Thank you.