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Steve Hall (Invicta Solutions) Mortgage and Lending

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Steve Hall
location_on Boise, ID — Invicta Solutions
Get to Know Steve Hall

We create and implement marketing strategies for the real estate and mortgage industries.

Our flagship marketing system is the national real estate marketing platform, Real Estate Marketplace.  Real Estate Marketplace contains nearly 2 million properties for sale, updated every single day, and a plethora of lead capture and lead generation tools. Not to mention a marketing system that specializes in driving traffic to individual listings and supercharging individual lead volume.

Our goal is to help lenders and real estate agents nationwide create and maintain long lasting, mutally beneficial partnerships; while at the same time providing a fast and easy to use system for consumers to view properties and browse at their own speed.

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After the housing bubble burst, and the near financial collapse of 2008, like most mortgage companies we quickly determined that our business model was going to need updating. The days of fast and easy loans were coming to an end; and although refinance business was still plentiful, rapidly declining home values were taking a toll on our market.

We decided that in order to survive, and thrive, we would have to be more aggressive in the purchase market and we would have to aim more of our marketing at purchase business. To accomplish this, we would also need to focus on building Realtor relationships; which isn’t always the easiest task when you are dealing with entrenched Realtor/Lender relationships. The question quickly became, what can we do that is different? What can we do to get in the door? We knew that driving around with a box of doughnuts and a rate sheet, or offering cut rate services were both no-win strategies. In order to garner more purchase business, and build referral relationships, we needed to become the Gatekeeper; we had to find a way to interject ourselves into the early stages of the home buying process and become gatekeepers of that business.

From this goal, Real Estate Marketplace was born. Honestly, the first generation of the site was very pedestrian, very amateurish; in fact, looking back at those designs is almost embarrassing today. However, as goofy as it may have looked and as little functionality as it truly had; Real Estate Marketplace quickly began generating leads. I remember when we had our first 1000 visitor and 25 lead month; we thought we were on top of the world! In our fourth month of running the site, we closed 7 purchase loans; and we haven’t looked back since.

Within a year, we were getting close to 10,000 monthly visitors and generating an average of 55 purchase leads every month. As our little site became more successful, we started looking at new designs and added functionality. The second generation of the site added some design flair and additional follow-up capabilities, and was based on a common WordPress theme. When it was time for a 3rd generation rebuild, we chose to scrap the initial design completely and build something all new from the ground up. We stepped away from the limitations of the WordPress platform and created an all-new, custom coded site that could handle even higher traffic volume and enhanced features. We learned through this process that there really wasn’t anything we couldn’t do, and that each upgrade improved not only the look and feel of the site, but the traffic and lead volume as well.

Less than 3 months later, we decided it was time to integrate the site with our local Multiple Listing Service. After being told by 4 different designers/developers that there was no way to accomplish this, we finally struck out on our own and contacted the MLS directly; quickly becoming an approved 3rd party vendor and gaining access to our member brokers’ MLS feeds. Once the MLS integration was complete, this signified the 4th generation of Real Estate Marketplace, and our traffic and lead volume exploded. We quickly eclipsed 150 leads generated per month, and broke the 15,000 site visitor mark for the first time. The idea of opening up this product to other companies had been in our minds’ for quite some time, and it felt like that moment was quickly approaching. Perhaps a few more modifications and we would be ready for “prime time.”

The current incarnation of Real Estate Marketplace is now the 5th generation of the site, and in version 5.0 we added some of our most powerful features. We turned a great deal of attention to Search Engine Optimization, and looked at different strategies that will propel Real Estate Marketplace to the top of the search engines over the next 6-12 months. We altered our MLS integration so that our listings updated every single morning, without fail, at 12:00 AM. In doing so, we assured that no other site has more up-to-date listing information than ours; if a client sees a property on our site, it’s an active listing.

And, finally, we added an additional contact method to the site. Visitors can choose to call the number associated with each listing through our Live Call Transfer system. Phone calls are transferred directly to each agent, while our system tracks each call so we can account for how many calls an agent receives and gauge our effectiveness.

We also integrated our call transfer system with the national caller ID database. When the call is complete, our member receives an email that includes the name (when available) of the caller and the number that they called from. We believe this feature is truly ground-breaking.

We now fully believe that Real Estate Marketplace is “ready for prime time.” In fact, based on our testing and using this system ourselves, we are convinced that we have created one of the most powerful lead generation systems ever designed for the mortgage and real estate markets. And we’re not finished yet…further upgrades to the site and the system will make a great system even better.

If there is one thing we’ve learned over the past three years it’s that you can never stop growing…and anything is possible.

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Former loan officer andfFounder of Invicta Solutions, creator of programs such as Vicarius and http://realestatemarketplace.org