Veterans United Home Loans has grown from a company of 250 to over 1000 in just three short years. This brand growth has been spear-headed by social media efforts.

2. Background
•Rob Stretch
•Mizzou graduate
•Marketing team began work on VAMC
5 employees
• Some web exposure
• Generating roughly 20 online leads per week
Enter Search Marketing & Lead Generation
• Drive traffic to the Website
• How to Convert Visitors on your Website
Fast Forward 5 Years …
• Veterans United Home Loans
• Number 1 dedicated provider of VA Loans Nationwide
• 1,050+ employees in 15 states (18 locations)
• 2,000,000+ social subscriptions
• 350 closed homes per week

3. It all started with search marketing…

4. The Veterans United Process
Customer Customer fills
VAMC calls back
searches for key out form online
within two
phrase like “VA for more
minutes
Loans” information

5. This worked great… but what are
some of the problems with this?

6. Lead Cost
Not all charts that are up and to the right are good
Lead expenses for our main source
have more than doubled in the past
year.
At $15 per lead, click costs per closed
loan is $678. At $30 per lead that
comes to $1355, per closed loan.
For every hundred leads we will closed 2.2 loans
based on our current funnel.

7. Diversification… Not just for Finance
VAMortgageCenter.com
Portfolios
VeteransUnited.com

8. Beyond Search …
VUHL Searches for new
Online Marketing Channels
Lead Buying/Partnerships
Affiliate Marketing
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Social Media

9. Affiliate Marketing

11. Email Marketing

13. Display & Retargeting
“I see you guys EVERYWHERE online now!”
1. User comes to one of our
web properties
2. User gets “cookied” by an
invisible browser cookie
3. User sees our ads.
EVERYWHERE.
4. User comes back to our
website.

14. Content Marketing

15. Relationship Building/ Partnerships

16. Social Media

17. Social Media is a _________ platform.
What function does social media serve within a
company?

18. Social Media is a _________ platform.
“Social Media is a Public Relations, Reputation
Management, Customer Relations, and
Marketing platform all rolled up in one.”

19. Veterans United Invests in Social
Since 2010 at this time, Veterans United Home Loans has:
• Increased its social network from <500 subscribers to over 2
million
• Increased staff from one intern to a Staff of over 30 full time
employees and interns
• Exponentially increased ad spend on platforms such as Facebook
and Twitter
But why the investment?

21. Why invest in Social?
• Competitive advantages
– Large Scale Publishing platform
– Social Media for SEO benefits
– New way to target specific segments
– Branding benefits (strengthened conversions, brand awareness)
– Legitimacy, reputability
– Get while the getting is good – bury competition while it’s still
affordable!
– Extending the funnel
– We know the ebbs and flows of internet marketing, and we know the
time is NOW to invest in social!

22. Why invest in Social?
• Competitive advantages
– Large Scale Publishing platform
– Social Media for SEO benefits
– New way to target specific segments
– Branding benefits (strengthened conversions, brand awareness)
– Legitimacy, reputability
– Get while the getting is good – bury competition while it’s still
affordable!
– Extending the funnel
– We know the ebbs and flows of internet marketing, and we know the
time is NOW to invest in social!

23. Large Scale Publishing Platform
• Push out our content to an audience of
2,000,000+
• Key for securing blog traffic, email sign-
ups, promotional campaigns, awareness of
events, and anything other materials we want
to push

24. Large Scale Publishing Platform

25. Why invest in Social?
• Competitive advantages
– Large Scale Publishing platform
– Social Media for SEO benefits
– New way to target specific segments
– Branding benefits (strengthened conversions, brand awareness)
– Legitimacy, reputability
– Get while the getting is good – bury competition while it’s still
affordable!
– Extending the funnel
– We know the ebbs and flows of internet marketing, and we know the
time is NOW to invest in social!

26. Social for SEO Benefits
Google Bing

27. Why invest in Social?
• Competitive advantages
– Large Scale Publishing platform
– Social Media for SEO benefits
– New way to target specific segments
– Branding benefits (strengthened conversions, brand awareness)
– Legitimacy, reputability
– Get while the getting is good – bury competition while it’s still
affordable!
– Extending the funnel
– We know the ebbs and flows of internet marketing, and we know the
time is NOW to invest in social!

28. New Ways to Target
Can now target ads by:
• Location • Interests
• Age • Languages
• Gender • Education
• Relationship status • Workplace

30. Why invest in Social?
• Competitive advantages
– Large Scale Publishing platform
– Social Media for SEO benefits
– New way to target specific segments
– Branding benefits (strengthened conversions, brand awareness)
– Legitimacy, reputability
– Get while the getting is good – bury competition while it’s still
affordable!
– Extending the funnel
– We know the ebbs and flows of internet marketing, and we know the
time is NOW to invest in social!

31. Branding Benefits
• 2,000,000+ social subscribers
• 300,000,000+ friends of fans of our Network pages
• 1.8 billion ad impressions in 2011, over 5 billion in 2012
• 5B/ 100mm = potential saturation = 500 times per
user

32. Why invest in Social?
• Competitive advantages
– Large Scale Publishing platform
– Social Media for SEO benefits
– New way to target specific segments
– Branding benefits (strengthened conversions, brand awareness)
– Legitimacy, reputability
– Get while the getting is good – bury competition while it’s still
affordable!
– Extending the funnel
– We know the ebbs and flows of internet marketing, and we know the
time is NOW to invest in social!

33. Legitimacy, Reputability
• We use our large social presence as leverage
in a variety of marketing aspects:
– On the website for CRO purposes
– In the magazines and print materials
– In the on-boarding process for new branches
– In local branch markets for customers and real
estate agents

35. Why invest in Social?
• Competitive advantages
– Large Scale Publishing platform
– Social Media for SEO benefits
– New way to target specific segments
– Branding benefits (strengthened conversions, brand awareness)
– Legitimacy, reputability
– Get while the getting is good – bury competition while it’s still
affordable!
– Extending the funnel
– We know the ebbs and flows of internet marketing, and we know the
time is NOW to invest in social!

36. Lead Cost
Not all charts that are up and to the right are good
Lead expenses for our main source
have more than doubled in the past
year.
At $15 per lead, click costs per closed
loan is $678. At $30 per lead that
comes to $1355, per closed loan.
For every hundred leads we will closed 2.2 loans
based on our current funnel.

37. Competitive Advantage
• Ads are cheap, relatively speaking
• We want to bury the competition before
prices rise and competitors have a tough time
replicating
• Right now a connection on Facebook is just
under $1
• On Twitter, a connection is $3.00 - $4.00

38. Competition
• Our largest pages:
– Veterans United Network – 678,000 likes
– Veterans United Home Loans – 420,000 likes
– VA Mortgage Center – 167,000 likes
• Our Three Largest Competitors:
– USAA – 279,000 likes
– Quicken Loans – 52,000 likes
– Direct VA Loans – 4,000 likes

39. Why invest in Social?
• Competitive advantages
– Large Scale Publishing platform
– Social Media for SEO benefits
– New way to target specific segments
– Branding benefits (strengthened conversions, brand awareness)
– Legitimacy, reputability
– Get while the getting is good – bury competition while it’s still
affordable!
– Extending the funnel
– We know the ebbs and flows of internet marketing, and we know the
time is NOW to invest in social!

40. The Purchase Funnel

41. The Veterans United Funnel

42. Widening the Funnel with Social

43. One last benefit…

44. A New Engine for Leads!!!
• So far in 2012…
– 1505 organic social leads
– 3856 paid social leads
– Total of 5361 leads
– 30 total home closings
– Not counting the call-ins (thousands)
• And that’s without really flexing our lead generation muscles!
• Big things to come from social…

45. Some stats to leave with…
• Avg. 168,000 likes per month in 2012
• Averaging 10,000 followers per month on Twitter
• In August, 44,000 people came to blogs from social
(203,000 for 2012)
• 40 – 60 pieces of blog content put out each month
• Over 175 hours of our video consumed in last two
months (growth area)
• 461,000 organic impressions on Facebook last week!

46. Questions, Comments?