Mortgage Broker Marketing: How to Get More Clients in 2026

I'm Chris from Studio Slate. We build fast websites for Australian professional services firms, and mortgage brokers keep asking the same question: the referrals are good, so why bother marketing? This guide answers that with data. Brokers win on trust and speed, a slow generic website undermines both, and there is a compliant playbook for building a pipeline that does not depend on who happened to recommend you at a barbecue last weekend.

Brokers are winning, which is the problem

The broker channel just hit a record. Mortgage brokers settled 81% of all new residential home loans in the March 2026 quarter, according to the MFAA's Quarterly Market Share Report compiled by Cotality. That is up from 74.1% two years earlier and 55.3% in March 2018. Australia now sits alongside the UK and the Netherlands as one of three countries where brokers write more than 80% of home loans.

More share means more brokers chasing it. Borrowers who once walked into a bank branch now start with a broker, and every broker in your postcode knows it. The channel growing does not mean your share of it is safe.

Most brokers run almost entirely on word of mouth. 72% of a broker's business comes from repeat customers and referrals, split between 44% repeat clients and 28% referrals, per the MFAA's 2025 Value of Broking report. That is a strong base. It is also finite, unpredictable, and completely invisible to the borrower who is searching "mortgage broker near me" right now with no one to ask.

A referral pipeline has a ceiling set by how many people your past clients happen to talk to. A search pipeline has a ceiling set by how many people in your area need a loan. One of those numbers is much larger.

How borrowers actually choose a broker

The word-of-mouth story is only half true. Referrals start the conversation. The internet decides it.

A Mortgage Choice study of 1,000 broker clients, conducted by Honeycomb Strategy, found that 77% of borrowers research a broker before choosing one. Yes, 57% take a recommendation from family or friends. But that same borrower then checks other sources before committing:

Source: Mortgage Choice / Honeycomb survey of 1,000 clients, reported by The Adviser

Read that as a sequence, not a list. A friend gives your name. The borrower Googles you, reads your reviews, and lands on your website. If any step returns nothing, or returns a slow, generic page, the referral leaks. The Mortgage Choice research put it plainly: brokers need to be "in the conversation around the barbecue," but they are "also actively managing their Google reviews and maintaining their online presence."

Borrowers also move fast. 62% chose their broker within seven days, and those who researched least moved fastest. You do not get a second chance to make the shortlist. Your online presence has to do its job on the first visit.

The trust is there to be won. 82% of clients said they trust their mortgage broker, against 67% for lender staff, according to the FBAA's Consumer Access to Mortgages 2025 report of 1,342 respondents. Borrowers want to trust a broker. Your marketing job is to give a stranger a reason to before you have spoken.

Compliance first, because this is finance

Mortgage broker marketing has a rule most industry marketing guides ignore. You are advertising a credit service, and ASIC watches how you do it.

Two obligations frame everything. The best interests duty commenced on 1 January 2021 under Part 3-5A of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, following the Hayne Royal Commission. It requires you to act in the borrower's best interests and to prioritise their interests over yours where they conflict. ASIC Regulatory Guide 234 governs how you advertise credit services, and both the MFAA and FBAA reminded members in 2026 to review their websites and social content against it.

The core test from RG 234 is simple. Every claim must be accurate and able to be substantiated. A compliance specialist at the FBAA summarised it: "Only say things that are factually true, and if you say something that you cannot substantiate as factually true, then don't say it at all."

A few specifics that catch brokers out:

• "Independent," "impartial," "unbiased." Section 923A restricts these words where you receive commission, volume bonuses, or other benefits. Most brokers cannot use them.
• "100% approval rate" or "guaranteed approvals." ASIC has flagged the first as misleading because it implies credit regardless of responsible lending checks. Approval timeframes depend on lenders, not on you.
• "Free." You are paid by lenders through commission, so "free" can mislead. "No cost to you" is the accurate framing, and it aligns with your best interests duty anyway.
• Calculators that overstate savings. ASIC obtained Federal Court orders against a broker whose online calculator showed large savings without disclosing that borrowers had to make substantial extra repayments to achieve them (RG 234, Example 4).

None of this stops you marketing. It rewards brokers who build trust the durable way instead of reaching for claims they cannot back. A borrower learning about the best interests duty is worth more to you than any slogan: the FBAA found 28% of borrowers are more likely to use a broker after learning what the duty protects.

The playbook: four channels that compound

Everything below is owned. You build it once and it keeps producing, unlike paid finance ads where the click meter resets to zero every month.

1. Google Business Profile and reviews

A Google Business Profile is free and it is the highest-return move a local broker can make. It puts you in the map pack, the block of three local business listings Google shows above the regular results, for "mortgage broker" plus your suburb, and it is where reviews live.

Reviews are the filter. 29% of borrowers read online reviews when choosing a broker, and more broadly, 67% of consumers say they often or always look at reviews after a local search (BrightLocal 2025, a US consumer panel, directionally relevant here). A referred borrower who finds you with two reviews and a competitor with forty has already half-decided.

Ask every settled client for a review while the relief of approval is fresh. Reply to each one. Keep testimonials genuine and specific to service, not to guaranteed outcomes, which keeps you clear of RG 234. This is the cheapest marketing you will ever do and the one most brokers neglect.

2. A fast website that loads on a phone

Your website is where the referral gets confirmed or lost. 46.1% of consumers judge a company's credibility on its website design, from Stanford's Web Credibility research. For a broker selling trust, a dated or slow site actively works against you.

Speed is not cosmetic. 53% of mobile visitors abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load, according to Google. A borrower comparing you against two other brokers on their phone at 9pm will not wait. The brokers who win the online shortlist have sites that load instantly, read clearly on mobile, show their reviews, and make it obvious how to book a call.

3. Calculators and borrower tools

Brokers have a content advantage most industries lack. Borrowing capacity, repayment, stamp duty, and offset calculators are the exact tools a borrower wants before they call. 77% of borrowers want a fully digitised process from their broker, per Connective's research, while still wanting the human relationship. A calculator on your site earns the visit and the search ranking.

Build them carefully. The ASIC calculator case above is the trap: a tool that shows optimistic numbers without disclosing the assumptions behind them is a compliance problem. State the assumptions plainly, and treat outputs as estimates.

4. Content that answers borrower questions

The borrowers going to brokers are the ones with the most questions. ASIC's research found that people who use a broker are more likely to be first home buyers with less knowledge and less prior research. They are searching for answers, and one in three expect their broker to educate them on the process.

Answer those questions on your site. How much deposit do I need. What is lenders mortgage insurance. How does a guarantor loan work. What can I borrow on one income. Each genuine question you answer is a page that can rank, and a reason a borrower trusts you before the first call. This is what SEO is: being the result that answers the question the borrower typed. It builds slowly, then it does not stop.

The honest ROI

Finance is one of the most expensive corners of digital advertising in Australia. Mortgage broker keywords run above $20 per click on Google Ads, and broader finance terms go higher. Paid search works, but the maths is brutal. At $20 per click with a modest conversion rate, a single booked appointment can cost hundreds of dollars in ad spend, every month, forever.

Owned channels invert that. A Google Business Profile costs nothing. A well-built website is a fixed cost that keeps producing. SEO takes months to mature and then delivers enquiries at close to zero marginal cost. For a broker whose upfront and trail commission on a single loan runs into the thousands, one extra client a month from owned channels pays for the whole program several times over.

The brokers who will still be busy in three years are building assets they own, not renting clicks. 80% of broker clients say they would use the same broker again. Your marketing job is to win them the first time, when a stranger's referral sends them to Google to check you out.

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Sources

• MFAA: Mortgage brokers reach record 81% market share (2026) - Broker channel now writes 81% of new home loans
• Mortgage Professional Australia: Brokers hit record 81% market share - Year-on-year growth and international comparison
• MFAA: Value of Mortgage and Finance Broking 2025 - 72% of business from repeat and referral
• The Adviser: How borrowers choose a broker (Mortgage Choice / Honeycomb, 1,000 clients) - Research behaviour and decision speed
• The Adviser: Borrowers trust brokers more than lenders (FBAA 2025) - Trust levels and best interests duty awareness
• ASIC RG 273: Mortgage brokers best interests duty - Duty commenced 1 January 2021
• ASIC RG 234: Advertising financial products and services (including credit) - Advertising compliance and enforcement examples
• Connective: Why borrowers choose brokers - Digital expectations and education role
• BrightLocal: Consumer Search Behavior 2025 - Review-checking behaviour after local search
• Stanford Web Credibility Project - 46.1% judge credibility by website design
• Google / SOASTA: Mobile page speed benchmarks - 53% abandon at three seconds