Mortgage Broker Marketing: What Actually Works

Why marketing got harder while the business got easier

Lender access stopped being the problem years ago. Brokers wrote a record 81.0% of new residential home loans in the March 2026 quarter, up from 55.3% in March 2018. The channel won. The trouble is that every other broker is standing in the same queue, and the MFAA counted 22,265 brokers as at September 2024, 12% more than a year earlier.

So marketing for mortgage brokers is now about being chosen, not being available. The brokers who grow fastest usually have a named specialty: first home buyers in one council area, self employed borrowers, medicos, expats, construction lending. A specialty makes referral partners remember you and gives your website something to rank for. Being available for everything ranks for nothing.

Referral partners take longest to build and are hardest to lose

Real estate agents, buyer's agents, accountants, conveyancers and financial planners all sit in front of people who are about to need finance. A referred borrower arrives already trusting you, so they close at rates no paid channel matches.

• Start with the people whose clients need a loan this month. Sales agents and buyer's agents first. Accountants matter more for investors and self employed borrowers.
• Make the handover one step. A three way text or a shared booking link beats asking a partner to sell you.
• Close the loop every time. Tell the partner what happened. Partners keep referring when they can see their client was looked after.

The catch is time. A partner network takes a year or more to build, and the best local relationships are usually already taken. Build this channel constantly, but do not count on it for this quarter's settlements.

Your database is the cheapest marketing you own

Every past client and every enquiry that went cold is a future refinance or upgrade. Borrowers rarely think about their loan until something makes them. A short email that answers one real question keeps you the first call when they do.

That is one quarter and owner occupiers only, before you count investors. An annual repayment review, sent by you before a competitor sends theirs, is the best return a broker can get for the price of an email tool.

• Review every loan on your trail book once a year. Say what the rate is now and what it could be.
• Keep the enquiries that did not convert. A borrower who was six months away in March is ready in September.
• Write to a person, not to a list. Naming the suburb or the lender in the subject line does more than any design.

SEO for mortgage brokers means local first, articles second

Someone typing "mortgage broker near me" has the highest intent of any audience you can reach. SEO for mortgage brokers is mostly the work of turning up in that moment, and most of it is unglamorous.

Be realistic about timing. In a quiet suburb you can be visible within a few months. In a capital city, cracking the map results can take a year, and there is no way to pay your way past it. Treat digital marketing for mortgage brokers as an asset you compound while something faster funds the pipeline.

Google Ads for mortgage brokers, and what a small budget buys

Paid search puts you in front of a borrower at the moment they are looking. That is why it costs what it costs, and why the sums are worth doing before you switch anything on.

Run those numbers against a ten dollar a day budget. Ten dollars buys about three clicks. At a 2.64% conversion rate, three clicks a day is roughly one enquiry a fortnight, and that assumes your landing page is as good as the average one. Finance also carries one of the lowest conversion rates of any category, well under the 8.18% average across all industries. A token budget here does not give you a slow trickle. It gives you almost nothing while you pay for the clicks.

Google Ads works for brokers who can fund a real test and send clicks to a page built for one loan purpose rather than a homepage. If that is not you this quarter, buying the output of somebody else's ad account is usually cheaper than learning on your own.

Social media builds memory, not enquiries

Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn do one job well. They make sure a borrower already knows your name when the time comes. They are poor at catching someone who is ready today, because nobody opens Instagram to find a broker.

Post the things only you can post. A settlement you got over the line after the first lender said no. What the last rate decision does to a $700,000 loan. Generic rate graphics get scrolled past.

Paid social is a different thing again. Instant form ads are cheap and prefilled, which puts volume and weak intent in the same box. We compared the two in Facebook lead ads vs verified leads.

Buying leads, and when not to

Lead generation for mortgage brokers has a shortcut. Pay somebody else to run the ads and buy the enquiries they produce. PrimeLeads does exactly this, so read the next few paragraphs as an interested party explaining its own model.

What we sell is a fixed price per lead, agreed before you start, with no retainer and no lock in. Every enquiry is exclusive to one client, phone verified by SMS, checked for duplicates, and delivered live into your CRM. Campaigns are tuned weekly. If a lead is invalid we review it within five business days and replace or credit it. It is built on the Gold Coast and the data stays in Australia. The full sequence is on our verification page.

Verification matters more in finance than in most categories, because a borrower who cannot get finance is not a client. Across our property enquiries, 51.8% of high income enquirers fail on finance grounds. On leads cleared through our PrimeProof checks, which use up to 98 data points, that failure rate drops below 5%.

Now the part most lead sellers leave out. Five situations make buying leads the wrong call.

• You cannot call back within minutes. Bought enquiries decay by the hour. If they sit until the end of the day you will get a poor result and blame the leads.
• Nobody owns follow up. Most bought enquiries convert on the third or fourth contact, not the first. Without a CRM and a sequence you are paying for contacts you will never work.
• You are already at capacity. More enquiries do not help a broker who cannot fit another appointment in. Fix that first.
• What you actually want is a brand. Bought leads buy conversations, not recall. They do nothing for the referrals you might get in three years.
• You cannot fund a proper test. A handful of leads tells you nothing either way. If the budget only stretches that far, spend it on asking clients for reviews instead.

Where it does fit is narrower than most ads suggest. You have call capacity now, a gap in the pipeline this quarter, and the discipline to work every enquiry that lands. The mechanics are on mortgage refinance leads and pay per lead.

Advertising a credit service comes with rules

Whatever channel you pick, the ad itself is regulated. ASIC Regulatory Guide 234 covers advertising financial products and services including credit, and it exists to help promoters comply with their obligations not to make false or misleading representations or engage in misleading or deceptive conduct. ASIC updated the guide in 2026 after consulting industry.

• Rates. If you advertise one, the qualifications have to be as prominent as the headline, not buried underneath it.
• Savings claims. A number like "save $500 a month" needs a real basis, and the assumptions behind it stated.
• Disclaimers. Fine print does not repair a headline that misleads on its own.

This catches brokers most often on social, where a graphic gets reposted without the qualifications that sat on the original ad. If a compliance person would not sign it off, do not post it.

Picking the two channels you will actually run

Nobody runs six channels well. Pick one that compounds and one that produces enquiries this month.

Most brokers should keep the database and referral work running permanently, because both are close to free, then add one paid channel while the free ones mature. Which paid channel depends on whether you would rather own an ad account or own your calendar. The same ground from the client acquisition side is in how mortgage brokers get more clients.