Fairway Independent Mortgage
Underwriting Media Investments Through a Mortgage Market Downturn
When the mortgage market turned, Fairway needed media to do more than build awareness, it needed to generate qualified opportunities fast. Arm Candy rebuilt the strategy around market-level demand and loan-officer capacity, driving 18,261 leads while reducing cost per lead from $257 to $83.
Fairway Independent Mortgage is a national mortgage lender offering a wide range of home financing options, including conventional, FHA, VA, USDA, and refinancing loans. With branches and loan officers across the country, Fairway combines national reach with a local, relationship-driven approach.
CREATIVE AOR
Commerce House is a Dallas-based advertising agency offering strategy, creative, digital, social, video, media, and analytics services.
BY THE NUMBERS
18,261
Total Leads
$86.53
Overall Cost Per Lead
68
Decrease in CPL –
from $257 to $83
4,032
Probabilistically-Attributed DRTV Leads
The Challenge
Arm Candy was originally engaged to build greater awareness and consideration for Fairway’s mortgage services through an integrated, multi-market media strategy.
The original plan was intentionally long-term and full-funnel, addressing distinct audiences including homebuyers, first-time buyers, veterans and service members, refinancers, realtors, B2B audiences and competitive-conquest opportunities.
Then the mortgage market changed.
As the industry entered a significant downturn, Fairway’s executive team needed to reduce expenses and generate more immediate business value. The mandate shifted quickly from building future demand to creating qualified mortgage opportunities that loan officers could work today.
This was no longer an advertising problem.
It was a business problem that required media to adapt
The Result
In approximately two months, Arm Candy and Fairway transformed the program from a broad awareness strategy into a localized, data-led acquisition engine.
The new model connected media investment with Fairway’s market-level business data and loan-officer capacity, allowing investment to move toward the markets where Fairway had both consumer opportunity and the operational ability to convert demand into business.
Most importantly, Fairway experienced its strongest second half of the year for qualified loan opportunities available for its organization and loan officers to work.
The Strategy
Start With the Business, Not the Media
The question was no longer simply: Where can Fairway reach more prospective borrowers?
It became: Where can media generate qualified demand that Fairway is actually positioned to turn into business?
Arm Candy integrated Fairway’s loan-officer and market-level data into media planning to better understand where the organization had capacity to work additional opportunities.
That intelligence changed the investment strategy.
Rather than treating every market equally, media could follow both consumer opportunity and business capacity.
Generating additional leads in a market where loan officers were already operating at capacity created less incremental value than generating those same opportunities in a market positioned for growth.
Media investment was therefore redesigned around the needs of the business, not simply the availability of an audience.
The Execution
From Broad Reach to Local Opportunity
Fairway’s original strategy was built to establish the brand at scale. The new strategy needed to generate opportunity locally. Arm Candy shifted portions of the broader national investment toward localized programs, allowing media support to follow market opportunity and loan-officer capacity. Traditional television evolved into Direct Response Television, with schedules, calls to action and creative designed to generate measurable consumer response rather than awareness alone. Across digital, Paid Search became the acquisition anchor. Arm Candy prioritized high-intent keywords with strong conversion potential while shifting dollars away from upper-funnel channels that were less suited to Fairway’s immediate objective. Paid Search and Facebook ultimately drove 90% of total leads.Making Traditional Media Accountable
A more performance-oriented television strategy also required better measurement. Arm Candy implemented probabilistic attribution and form-level pixel tracking to connect television exposure with website sessions and lead generation. Traditional media was no longer simply creating awareness. It had become a measurable part of Fairway’s acquisition strategy.impact of aligning audience intent, market opportunity and business priorities.Flipping the Digital Funnel
The digital program underwent the same transformation.
Upper-funnel video tactics were reduced as investment shifted toward channels with stronger short-term acquisition potential.
As the strategy matured, overall cost per lead improved from approximately $257 to $83, demonstrating the impact of aligning audience intent, market opportunity and business priorities.
The DRTV program delivered:
133,000+
Spots across 10 states
267,554
Website Sessions
4,032
Probabilistically Attributed Leads
$2.44
Cost Per Session
The redesigned digital program generated:
16,833
Leads
558,000
Visitors
$86.53
Cost Per Lead
Flipping the Digital Funnel
The digital program underwent the same transformation.
Upper-funnel video tactics were reduced as investment shifted toward channels with stronger short-term acquisition potential.
As the strategy matured, overall cost per lead improved from approximately $257 to $83, demonstrating the impact of aligning audience intent, market opportunity and business priorities.
The redesigned digital program generated:
16,833
Leads
558,000
Visitors
$86.53
Cost Per Lead
Better Media Starts With Better Business Intelligence
Changing a campaign is easy.
Re-engineering a multi-market investment strategy while the underlying industry and business are changing is considerably harder.
Fairway required Arm Candy to connect media strategy with operational reality: loan-officer capacity, market opportunity, lead quality, acquisition efficiency and the organization’s immediate financial priorities.
Deep collaboration across Fairway’s executive, marketing and operational teams made it possible to execute that transformation quickly.
The outcome reflects a principle that continues to shape how Arm Candy approaches media:
The best media strategy does not start by asking how advertising can perform better. It starts by asking what the business needs advertising to accomplish.
And when that answer changes, the strategy should be intelligent enough to change with it.