Most mortgage brokers I speak with live on two things: referral partners and repeat clients. A couple of real estate agents, an accountant or two and past clients who come back when they refinance. When those relationships are busy, so are you. When the market slows or an agent starts sending deals to someone else, the pipeline dries up.
The other problem is that borrowers see brokers as interchangeable. Most brokers can access a similar panel of lenders, so from the outside you all look the same. When a borrower can't tell you apart, they shop on rate, or they go straight to their bank.
Some brokers try to fix this by buying leads. Those leads have usually been sold to three other brokers, and you end up in a race to call first and quote lowest.
This guide is the system we use at Social Wave to build something better: borrowers who come to you because they already trust you. We've run it for 100+ Australian businesses since 2019, and mortgage brokers are one of the groups we work with most. I'll walk you through how it works for a broking business, what to film, how to run the ads and what we'd do in your first 90 days.
Why mortgage broker marketing is different
Finance is a lower-trust industry. People are about to sign up for the biggest debt of their lives, and plenty of them aren't sure what a broker actually does for them. They want to see and hear you before they hand over their payslips and bank statements.
That's why a quick lead form and a phone call often fall flat in finance. The borrowers who convert are the ones who've already watched you explain how things work, and who feel like they know you before the first meeting.
There's also timing. Most people only think about their loan when something changes. A rate decision, a fixed term ending, a growing family, a first home buyer scheme changing or a bank knocking them back. Those are trigger events. If they've been watching your videos for months, you're the first person they call.
A note on the rules
Credit advertising in Australia comes with legal obligations, and they apply to reels and YouTube videos as much as a print ad. In plain terms:
- Don't promise approvals, borrowing amounts or rates. Every borrower's situation is different.
- If you mention an interest rate, comparison rate rules apply. The safest move is to talk about how things work rather than quoting numbers.
- Make it clear your content is general information, and that people should get advice for their own circumstances.
- Check anything you're unsure about with your aggregator or licensee before it goes live.
Everything in this guide is built around educational content, which works best anyway. People trust the broker who explains things over the one who shouts about a low rate.
The Content Ecosystem Funnel for mortgage brokers
We call our system the Content Ecosystem Funnel. It has five layers, each with one job:
- Organic social tests ideas at volume.
- Awareness ads put your best content in front of the right people.
- YouTube builds real trust.
- Lead campaigns turn warm viewers into enquiries.
- Email keeps you in touch until they're ready.
On their own, each layer has a weak spot. YouTube builds trust but starts slowly. Organic reach goes up and down. Lead ads to cold audiences are expensive, especially in finance. Together, they cover for each other. Someone might see a reel, then a YouTube video, then join your email list and book a call a month later. Someone else might go straight from an ad to a booking. Either way, all roads lead back to you.
Step 1: Pick one type of borrower
Your topics decide who watches. Talk to every borrower and you end up with a general audience that compares you on rate.
Pick one group and make your content for them. For example:
- First home buyers
- Self-employed borrowers and business owners
- Property investors building a portfolio
- Families upgrading to their next home
- Medical professionals
The content is the targeting. A video for self-employed borrowers mostly gets watched by self-employed borrowers, and specialists get trusted faster than generalists. If you serve two very different groups, start with the one that's worth more to you.
Then go back through your last 20 client calls. Write down the exact phrases people used to describe their situation. Those phrases become your titles, hooks and ad copy.
Step 2: Build a topic list that brings in borrowers
Every topic should come from one of three places:
- Pain points: the problems your borrowers are trying to solve.
- Frequently asked questions: the things you answer on every first call.
- Knowledge gaps: the things borrowers don't know they don't know, and the mistakes they make before they ever meet you.
Here's what that can look like:
- Why the bank said no, and what to fix before you apply again
- The three things that shrink your borrowing power without you noticing
- Fixed or variable: how we decide for each client
- How long does pre-approval actually take?
- What happens when you refinance with the same bank
- The mistake first home buyers make before they even meet a broker
Keep a running list. Add every question and objection from your client calls, and watch for trigger events like rate decisions and the federal budget. Within a month you'll have more topics than you can film.
Layer 1: Organic social
Organic social is where you test ideas. Post often, see what lands and use the winners everywhere else. Instagram is the main platform for most brokers, with the same short videos going to TikTok and Facebook. Aim for 15 to 30 pieces a month. Volume matters more than polish here.
What to film as a broker:
- Talking-head reels answering one borrower question in under a minute
- A quick explainer the day a rate decision lands: what it means and who it affects
- Whiteboard clips on one concept, such as how lenders look at self-employed income
- Carousels on the steps to pre-approval, or what to gather before you apply
- Client stories, with permission, about the problem they came in with and how you worked through it
Set your profile up to convert. Use a photo of you, not a logo. Put "Mortgage Broker" in your name field so you show up in search, write a bio that says who you help, and pin your three best posts. Our organic social page has more on how we run this.
Don't chase viral. A video that goes viral with renters who aren't planning to buy does nothing for your pipeline.
Layer 2: Awareness ads
Organic reach is unreliable. Awareness ads give you reach you can count on, behind content you already know works.
- Each month, pick your best performing reels.
- Run them as awareness or follower campaigns to your ideal borrower. No hard sell.
- Start at $5 to $10 a day per reel for one to two weeks.
- When you're testing properly, budget about $20 a day per creative.
- Swap in fresh winners each month.
Aim for a cost per follower under $2.50, and watch your profile visit to follow rate. In a low-trust industry, this warm-up layer does a lot of the work. You wouldn't propose on the first date, and you shouldn't ask a stranger to send you their payslips after one ad either.
Layer 3: YouTube
A 30-second reel gets attention. A 15-minute video builds trust. When someone watches four or five of your YouTube videos, they trust you about as much as they would after 100 to 200 short clips. For a borrower deciding who to trust with their biggest financial decision, that depth makes the difference.
Start with three cornerstone videos:
- Your signature method. How you work with a client from first call to settlement and beyond. How you assess their situation, how you choose which lenders to approach and how you check in after settlement. Give it a name.
- Case studies. At least three real client stories, with permission: where they started, what made it tricky and how you worked through it. Don't present one client's result as something every viewer can expect.
- Your contrarian view. What does the industry get wrong? Maybe you think chasing the lowest rate costs people more over the life of the loan, or that refinancing every couple of years costs some borrowers more than it saves. Say it and explain what you do instead.
Long, well-researched videos work especially well in broking. SF Capital's best performer is "Australia's Housing Crisis: What I Learnt From 100+ Hours of Research", a deep dive that answered the big question their clients were asking.
Name your ideal borrower in the title. "Self-employed? Here's why the bank keeps saying no" will bring in more of the right people than "Home loan tips". Deliver the title's promise in your first line, say what's at stake, then get into it.
You don't need to be a natural on camera. An interview format, with someone asking the questions you hear on client calls, gets most brokers sounding natural fast. Half a day of filming usually gets you 2 to 3 YouTube videos, and reels come in at about 3 to 4 per hour of filming. Here's how we run YouTube for clients.
Layer 4: Lead campaigns
Once people have followed you and watched your videos, it's time to ask.
Retarget the people who know you: video viewers, followers, people who've engaged with your posts and website visitors.
Start with a video sales page. In most industries we start with instant forms, the quick forms that open inside Facebook and Instagram. Finance is different. Because it's a lower-trust industry, we launch brokers with a video sales page: the ad sends people to a landing page with a short video of you explaining how you help, followed by a short form or booking calendar. You get fewer leads than a bare form, but better ones. With a strong brand behind it, we typically see a cost per lead of $50 to $60 on this kind of funnel. That's a benchmark, and your numbers will depend on your market and your offer.
The offer. Use this formula for your headline: get [the outcome they want] using [your signature method] in [timeframe] without [the thing they're worried about]. For a broker, that might be a clear borrowing plan for self-employed buyers, built in one 30-minute call, without chasing paperwork first. Then remove the three things that stop people: effort, confusion and doubt. Show how little they have to do, spell out what happens after they book and back it with real client stories. Keep it general and never promise an approval or a rate.
Keep the page simple. A headline, a short video and a single button is enough. Keep it separate from your main website so people don't click away. Ask only the questions you need, such as purchase timeframe and employment type, so you can tell who's ready.
Judge on data, not days. A finance lead costs more than a cheap consumer lead, so it takes more spend before you can tell whether a campaign works. Wait for roughly 15,000 to 20,000 impressions, or enough spend to expect real lead flow at your target cost, before you change the budget. If you need to slow down, wind it back to $5 to $10 a day rather than switching off. Our Meta ads page covers how we set these up.
Follow up fast. Call or message the same day, ideally within the hour. Send a confirmation with a short video from you and links to your best YouTube videos, so people arrive at the meeting already warm.
Layer 5: Email
Most borrowers aren't ready to apply the day they find you. Some are saving a deposit, some are waiting for a fixed term to end and some are just starting to think about it. Email keeps you in front of them until they're ready.
Grow your list with something useful, such as a pre-approval checklist or a guide to what lenders look at. Send a plain, personal email every week with one idea and one link to your latest video. Your past clients belong on that list too, because they're your next refinance and your best referral source.
Where to start
- No YouTube channel yet: start with organic social and awareness ads, then add lead campaigns and YouTube.
- You already have a channel: film your three cornerstone videos first, then run ads and short clips that send people to them.
- Starting from zero: paid ads and organic social first, because they get you traffic fastest. YouTube follows once you know which topics land.
What we'd do in your first 90 days
Month 1: Plan and film. We pick your ideal borrower, build a topic list from your client calls, check the content approach against credit advertising rules, fix your profile and outline your three cornerstone videos. Then we film your first batch in a half-day session and start posting short clips.
Month 2: Build trust. Your cornerstone videos go live on YouTube. Awareness ads run behind your best reels at $5 to $10 a day each. We set up a lead magnet and email sign-up, and you send your first weekly email.
Month 3: Start asking. We build your video sales page and launch a lead campaign to your warm audience, with fast follow-up in place before the ads go on. Then we review what worked and do more of it.
Most of our clients start getting enquiries from people who already know them somewhere between month three and month six. Every business is different, so treat that as a typical timeframe, not a guarantee.
What this looks like in practice
SF Capital. SF Capital works with business owners who need complex loans, and generic mortgage ads weren't reaching them. We built long, researched videos on the questions their clients ask, a podcast with business founders and highlight films from their client events. One video passed 448,000 views and brought in 50+ high-ticket leads. Across the work, SF Capital has seen a 6x return on marketing spend. Read the SF Capital case study.
That's one broker's result, and every business is different. What carried it was picking a specific borrower and answering their real questions in depth, so they trusted SF Capital before the first call.
Your next step
You can run all of this yourself, and our free 2026 playbook goes deeper on scripts, landing pages and what to measure.
Or you can have us do it with you. We plan, film, edit, post and run the ads, and you spend half a day on camera. It suits established broking businesses with a marketing budget of $2,500 a month or more. See how we work with brokers on our marketing for mortgage brokers page.
Whichever path you take, ask every new client how they found you. People watch a video on their phone and search your name a week later, and tracking software misses that. What they tell you shows which content is working.