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With more mortgage brokers than ever before writing a record share of home loans, branding has never been more important to ensure brokerages stand out.
Low barriers to entry and a hot property market have resulted in a steady increase in the number of people becoming mortgage brokers, with a record broker population of almost 20,000 last year. But amid higher competition, brokers are having to increasingly focus on branding to ensure they’re standing out from the crowd.
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A key way of doing this is through building social media presence. APC Home Loans broker Aimee Bergan recently told The Adviser that she has leaned heavily on social media to promote her brand and diversify her sources for lead generation.
“About 50 per cent of my clients came through social media. I’ve been extremely lucky, but a lot of it is people recommending me on [group pages] Canberra Notice Board or Canberra Mums,” she said.
“But it’s dribs and drabs from everywhere. I think that’s what you need to look at; you can’t rely on one referral source because if that referral source goes or they decide not to use you anymore, then you’re stuck.”
Commercial broker Isabella Constantinou from Simplicity Loans & Advisory has similarly used social media platforms like LinkedIn to build her brand, telling the Elite Broker podcast that these have helped with lead generation.
Harnessing technology to deliver social media marketing messages and posts has been a core strategy for Joel Archer, broker at Newcastle-based brokerage Ascension Finance.
“I’ve recently started to delve into ChatGPT and AI,” he recently told The Adviser.
“I taught it to understand my business, my brand and my tone of voice. I’ve then used it to generate 30 days worth of social media posts. That’s all now ticking away in the background so I don’t have to touch that.”
For other brokers, it’s about harnessing the power of existing brands. Speaking to The Adviser, Loan Market Link broker Steven Toome stressed that a rebrand had been essential for his business to expand its reach.
Toome first created his brokerage under the name Port Lincoln Home Loans because he wanted his own localised brand, but was forced to rethink after realising this may have been limiting his leads to just mortgages and to clients in the local area only.
“So I was really struggling with missing opportunities. So I had to rebrand to be able to attract more customers for all of the different types of finance that we offer,” he told the Elite Broker podcast.
The Port Lincoln-based founder rebranded his business to become a franchise of Loan Market and benefited from an uptick in new clients. In December, under the new brand, his business achieved a 48.8 per cent increase in leads (year on year), he said.
Going from being an independently branded broker to part of a franchise helped bolster the company’s brand, Toome said, while also complementing its existing values.
“I kept coming back to Loan Market. [It] means so much to Australia and their investment behind what the brand means. And, and that’s why we chose it,” Toome said.
Much like Toome, Loan Market Scenic broker Samantha Barnett told the New Broker podcast that her decision to operate under the Loan Market brand rather than forming her own brand was strategic.
“It was going to take me five to 10 years to build [my own] brand,” she told The Adviser.
“Whereas if I took Loan Market’s brand, it was known, liked and trusted.”
Find out more about how to build your brand and rise over the canopy at the Better Business Summit 2024, run with support from principal partner NAB.
Hear from former Australian of the Year and Paralympian Dylan Alcott as he delivers an exclusive brand-building masterclass, learn how to harness video content with TikTok sensation Robbo the Aussie Mortgage Guy, and deep dive into the tools and tech that leading brokers use to generate new business with broker coach Christian Paterson, plus much more!
Find out more about the Better Business Summit 2025 – visiting five states between February and April 2025 – here.
Premium members can attend the Better Business Summit for free! Not yet a Premium Member? Sign up here!
[Related: Dylan Alcott to headline Better Business Summit 2025]
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