Mortgage Marketing: Guaranteed Rate, a Super Bowl advertiser and the nation’s third-largest mortgage lender, is betting on reaching Hispanic consumers on their terms. Last September, the Chicago-based company introduced an extensive Spanish-language mortgage program. It followed up with its first-ever advertising campaign specifically targeting the Hispanic demographic. Portada interviewed for Guaranteed Rate Camilo Escalante, Executive Director of Diverse Segments.
The U.S. Hispanic economy is thriving. At 48.6%, the Urban Institute projects that 70% of new home buyers in 2040 will be Hispanic from the current 51% (2022). However, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in 2021, there were 13.1 million mortgage transactions (purchase and refinance) in the mortgage industry, in a record year. But only 6% of all mortgage transactions were to Latinos in 2021. Regarding homeownership, the challenge for Hispanics, particularly Spanish-dominant and first-generation immigrants, is affordability and inventory. For many corporations, another challenge lies in allocating resources to market appropriately to this audience and opportunity. Guaranteed Rate, the third largest retail mortgage lender in the U.S., is starting to do just that… and the initial results are promising.
Mortgage Marketing: Enabling LEP Consumers
According to Escalante, more than 60 million Latinos are in this country. Over 40 million are bilingual and 16 million are not English proficient (LEP, Limited English Proficiency). “They are hard-working people, and the most important transaction of their lifetime, purchasing a home, does not have documentation in Spanish. No company has built the platform to reach out to this community,” Escalante claims.
That is why Guaranteed Rate’s mortgage marketing machine built the first end-to-end mortgage application in Spanish, providing language accessibility. Consumers can get loan approval in less than 24 hours. The entire process is in Spanish, including all the paperwork and access to bilingual loan officers so that folks understand the process & know exactly what they’re signing. Spanish is used throughout the process, including automated email approvals, loan disclosure, etc.
Advertising in Spanish-language
