A majority of mortgage consumers do research online before choosing a mortgage product and mortgage company. Reaching those in the "research" phase is critical to influencing potential customers. That's why Quicken Loans saw a huge opportunity available with the launch of Yahoo! Answers and began putting together a program to become active in the Answers community; we wanted to provide solid and professional advice to people with mortgage-related questions.
We created the "Home Loan Guru" profile and began answering questions in March 2007.
We have one rule: Answer the question. Don't tell them how great Quicken Loans is. Don't tell them how they will benefit from our products. Don't tell them anything except what they ask.
And it's worked.
Yahoo! recently picked Quicken Loans as one of its first "Knowledge Partners" in the Answers' Real Estate and Renting category. This cemented Quicken Loans as a recommended and trusted source of information about mortgages, real estate and finance.
Since we launched on March 14, 2007, our answers to date have a 75% best answer rate. To our surprise, our profile has gotten zero negative feedback from the Answers community. We assumed some people would be offended at corporate participation in Answers, however any feedback we've gotten from the community has been positive.
What's most surprising? We've had a decent number of visitors from Yahoo! Answers to our website (over 400 as of this writing) with 18 actual leads (mortgage applications). We consider this a complete bonus. Our goal is strictly providing consumers with quality and valuable information, with branding and influence as a secondary benefit. Actual mortgage applications are something we didn't even consider when we created our campaign, but we will gladly take them.
The best part of this entire campaign? It's completely free!
Credit Information
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Client: Quicken Loans
Agency: Self
Budget: Undisclosed
Date of Campaign: March 16, 2007 to Present
Contact Name: Clayton Closson
Case Study URL: http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt=AtM3tAtedaE.V2uRaUCHbBOtxQt.?show=S4swOoyDaa
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