A new reverse mortgage TV commercial will hit airwaves in early July featuring former M*A*S*H star Wayne Rogers for Senior Home Loans.
The commercial, featuring Rogers, who has made a second career as a financial advisor was the brainchild of Senior Home Loans’ Jason Levy, who worked formerly with the Robert Wagner campaign, along with his SHL team.
We sat down with Jason to hear about the new campaign and why reverse mortgageTV advertising is not a guessing game, but a science.
When can we see the ad on live TV?
We will launch our new initiative on or about July 9. It will be a national campaign with a very robust budget.
The intent is to ramp up our lead flow as aggressively as our recruiting efforts. Only certain people in our industry have the skill sets to ramp up a national call center campaign that will be driven through brand development. Other companies try to gain market share by relying on third parties to provide leads, and to me that is simply a very unstable model.
If you can procure your own leads and develop a diverse lead marketing campaign then you will have a competitive advantage that can sustain a scaled concept.
Why Wayne Rogers? What’s the new message he brings to reverse mortgage marketing?
Wayne Rogers is a well-known professional actor. He was one of the stars of the television series M*A*S*H*, a Broadway producer and is now a news contributor to the Fox Network. He has been involved in investment activities for over forty years.
Wayne connects well with the senior baby boomer demographic and can deliver the message that our reverse mortgage product is a safe financial tool. (It also doesn’t hurt to mention that Wayne has served as an expert witness at various Senate Banking Committee hearings.) Our call to action is strictly educational. We’ve had tremendous success over the years developing relationships with prospective borrowers that were built around the foundation of education first, need evaluation second and maintaining pristine service levels ensuring a pleasant experience all around.
The home in your new ad looks updated, spacious… are your efforts toward a higher home value borrower? Or Saver clients?
The look and feel was not designed to attract a specific type of client, but rather to capture a real life look at the reverse mortgage experience.
The reverse mortgage candidate does not fit one small specific profile but rather a very diverse profile that involves different social classes. Over the years, we’ve seen inquiries with home values ranging from $20,000 up to $6 million. The reverse mortgage borrower has evolved over the years while our economy tries to find its way. It is critical to recognize and adapt while this evolutionary process develops.
Any metrics to share in terms of your testing of this ad and expectations for it?
We’ve tested television campaigns with and without a spokesperson and had success on both fronts but at different levels.
We will have the most success with our efforts to ramp up our distribution channel in a more efficient manner driven by the credibility behind Wayne Rogers’ message. Seniors spend more than 40 hours per week watching television, 23 hours reading newspapers, close to 14 hours listening to the radio and close to 11 hours per week on the Internet. You can’t guess at this game, it’s a science.
You’re either in the laboratory testing or pretending to understand how our senior demographic responds to various media strategies. A scaled model can only reach critical mass through national TV, while other media outlets can be successful in either local market targets or strictly serve in a complimentary manner to a television campaign. We have learned to be diverse in both national and local markets and making sure our overall spend covers TV, internet SEO, print and radio. Our efforts will also help us recruit talented loan officers who recognize that an affiliation with a national reverse mortgage lender that can develop its own leads organically will ensure a long standing career opportunity.
What else is on the horizon for Senior Home Loans?
We are developing a national correspondent lending channel. We believe that selected partners of our correspondent channel will be able to benefit from purchasing our high quality leads as they look to expand their business base.
We also plan on rolling out warehouse lines for selected correspondent partners that meet our credit risks. We have identified that many potential partners want to lend but don’t have access to the capital markets for warehouse lines of credit or sufficient warehouse lines of credit. We believe that we can help those selected partners and help them maximize their revenue streams.
Written by Elizabeth Ecker
