Movement Mortgage is one of the nation's largest and fastest growing retail mortgage lenders. Before partnering with Yext, though, the business was struggling with one critical aspect of its brand awareness — maintaining an accurate and consistent presence across search experiences for its many loan officers.

Founded by former NFL star Casey Crawford in 2008, amidst one of the biggest financial meltdowns in American history, Movement Mortgage is never one to shy away from a challenge. And the brand knew that creating and maintaining a strong digital presence for each of its loan officers was key to capturing new business, and to providing a good customer experience. Still, it struggled to find a way to manage all of that information cohesively and efficiently.

"Some of our loan officers had really sophisticated business listing presences online, but most did not," explains Jake Fehling, Vice President of Marketing at Movement Mortgage. "Listings are the backbone of any online presence, and we wanted to shore up our digital footprint online. We knew that if we standardized that across the board with all of our loan officers, that would amplify Movement's voice and reach overall."

A centralized solution to put loan officers front and center across search experiences.

Fehling evaluated what the brand was currently doing to support its loan officers in managing their profiles across third-party search experiences like Google, Amazon Alexa, Apple, Bing, Yahoo, and Yelp.

"We had to look at ourselves," Fehling states. "We had to turn the mirror around, and realize that what we were providing our loan officers at the time could have been better. So we acted pretty swiftly, vetting some of the major players in this part of the digital space, and we decided on Yext. It's been a great partnership ever since."

Movement Mortgage uses Yext to update and maintain the public facts about its individual loan officers — including addresses, phone numbers, and business hours — across the many search experiences consumers use to ask questions online.

"To be able to talk to our loan officers, and to recruits, and to show them that we can provide a cohesive listings presence through Yext has been a game changer for us," Fehling said. "What they know and care about is, 'Oh wow, all of a sudden I've got a Google My Business page.' I think loan officers have been pleasantly surprised to learn that the air cover digital marketing we provide is among the best in the industry."

Looking ahead, Fehling is eager to broaden the scope of Movement Mortgage's search experience strategy. "Now we've got these business listings," he explained, "the next step is, 'Now what can our loan officers do with them?' And our last couple of meetings with Yext have really shined a light on that."

Results

In the 20 months since launching with Yext, in September of 2018, Movement Mortgage has driven more than 2.7M impressions and 75k clicks to its listings. As of April 2020, 35% of the Google search queries it appears in results for are unbranded. This means that people who don't already have a specific loan officer, or even Movement Mortgage, in mind are discovering the brand and its representatives organically when they ask questions about mortgages in search — exposing the brand to new prospective customers who otherwise wouldn't have sought them out by name.