Mortgage Broker Marketing Specialists Compared 2026

To choose a mortgage broker marketing specialist, give every candidate the same written brief. Then compare their evidence of suitable enquiries, fee structure, account ownership terms, claim approval process and exit handover. The best marketing agency for mortgage brokers is the one that passes those checks for your brokerage, whether it serves only brokers or works across many industries.

Hiring an agency doesn’t hand over your obligations. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) guidance on common mistakes, last updated 15 December 2025, says a business can’t outsource its spam and telemarketing obligations. Your brokerage still needs proof of consent for every message the agency sends.

Set your objectives in a mortgage broker marketing plan before you approach agencies. Those objectives become the brief each candidate answers.

Specify the Brief

Give every candidate the same brief, covering your audience, offer, channels, budget and the commercial outcome you’re paying for. Identical briefs make proposals comparable, because each agency answers the same question instead of pitching the work it prefers.

A useful brief fits on one page and states these points.

• The audience, such as first home buyers in a named region or self-employed clients refinancing.
• The offer, meaning the service you’re advertising and what happens at first contact.
• The channels you’ll fund, such as search ads, social media ads, email to past clients or referral partner material.
• The monthly advertising spend and the agency fee, as separate figures.
• The commercial outcome, such as a number of suitable enquiries or settled loans each month, counted the way your customer relationship management (CRM) system records them.

Specialist or Generalist Agency

A mortgage broker marketing agency that works only with brokers can show you credit campaigns it has already run. Ask whether it runs the same campaigns for competing brokers near you, and whether it offers exclusivity in your service area.

A general digital marketing agency for mortgage brokers needs your approver to supply the credit advertising rules its other clients don’t face. Either kind passes or fails on the same test, which is the sample advertisement below.

Ask each candidate to price the brief in the same structure so the fees compare. Proposals can price the work as a monthly retainer, a fixed project fee, a percentage of advertising spend or a price per lead. Per-lead pricing compares fairly only when the agency counts leads by your definition of a suitable enquiry.

Test a Sample Advertisement

Ask each candidate to draft one sample mortgage advertisement for your brief and trace each eligibility claim to its lender source. For every claim, the agency names the lender, the policy document and its date, and the borrower conditions the claim depends on. It then shows where your broker reviews the claim before the ad runs.

Approval, savings and borrowing-capacity claims need that review most. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) issued Regulatory Guide 234 (RG 234) in June 2026. It says credit ads shouldn’t use terms such as “pre-approved” or “guaranteed acceptance”, because each applicant still needs an individual assessment.

RG 234 also expects a broker promoting a lender’s product to describe features that match current product information, and to flag features not every borrower can get. ASIC’s example is a broking firm that advertised a “100% success rate” and changed its advertising after ASIC raised concerns.

A savings claim, such as the amount a refinance saves, needs records that substantiate it. A borrowing-capacity claim depends on the lender’s assessment of each borrower, so the ad can only say a borrower may qualify. A credit licensee must also show its credit licence number in printed advertisements, as RG 234 notes.

In a hypothetical sample, an agency’s headline reads “Self-employed? You could borrow with one year of tax returns”. A good trace names the lender policy behind it, the date of that policy and its conditions, such as a minimum trading period or a maximum loan-to-value ratio (LVR). A weak trace points to a competitor’s ad or a blog post.

Your approver can check the agency’s trace with Bulma’s Policy Advisor, which answers from 52+ lenders’ policy documents. Each answer quotes the policy wording and shows the date Bulma last updated it, so the quote can sit with the approval record.

Check Relevant Results

Judge a candidate’s results by the suitable mortgage enquiries its campaigns produced, not by clicks or impressions. Define a suitable enquiry in your brief, such as a contactable borrower in your service area who wants a loan type you write and consented to contact.

Ask each candidate for a past campaign report that follows enquiries beyond the form. The report needs enquiries by source, then how many became appointments, applications and settled loans. The figures need to come from the client brokerage’s CRM, not the agency’s ad dashboard.

Cost per suitable enquiry compares agencies better than cost per click or cost per lead. A cheap lead from outside your area, or for a loan type you don’t write, uses your time without producing an application.

Results from another brokerage carry over only when its market, budget and offer resemble yours. Ask what that client spent, where it operated and which loan types it targeted. Get the report in writing and a client reference you can call, because a testimonial gives no enquiry or settlement numbers.

Name a Brokerage Approver

Name one person at your brokerage who approves every credit-related claim and client communication before it goes out. That covers ads, landing pages, email and text message templates, automatic replies and any chatbot script the agency writes. The approver can be the principal or a compliance lead, and the agency’s timeline needs a sign-off step for each version.

If you’re a credit representative, your licensee must monitor and supervise your compliance with the credit laws, according to ASIC’s Information Sheet 126 (updated May 2025). Ask your licensee whether it reviews marketing before release, and add that review to the agency’s timeline.

Keep an approval record for each version, showing the copy, the date, the approver and the source behind each claim. ASIC’s June 2026 RG 234 expects promoters to keep records that substantiate their claims, and the approval record holds them.

Retain Account Control

Your brokerage must own, or be able to recover, every domain, advertising account, audience, creative file and report the agency builds. Put this in the contract, then check the accounts themselves before the campaign starts.

For a .com.au domain, check the registrant in a .au WHOIS lookup. The .au Domain Administration (auDA) licensing rules, in force since 12 April 2021, require an agent applying for a domain to record its client as the registrant. If the agency appears as registrant, have it transfer the licence to your brokerage before you sign.

Create your Google Ads account under your brokerage’s own login, then link the agency’s manager account to it. As at October 2026, Google’s help page on client account ownership says a manager account that creates a client account becomes its owner automatically. An owner can add and remove the account’s users.

Your brokerage can still unlink an owner manager, but only a user with admin access can do it. Keep at least two brokerage admins on the account, because Google warns that an account with one admin can lose access to its tags if that person becomes unavailable.

Google also requires financial services verification for credit advertising in Australia. An agency admin can submit it, so check it’s completed on the account your brokerage owns, with your brokerage’s details.

Apply the same rule to analytics, social media ad accounts and business pages, which your brokerage creates before granting the agency access. Customer lists uploaded for audiences stay in your accounts.

Write the contract so your brokerage owns the creative files, ad copy, landing pages and reporting data. The mortgage broker marketing tools guide explains which accounts and tools to keep in your own name.

Changed Credit Conditions and Complaints

Compare candidates on what happens when a lender changes its policy or a client complains that an ad set the wrong expectation. Ask each agency who pauses the affected campaign, how quickly it acts and who supplies the earlier version of the claim. ASIC’s June 2026 RG 234 says ads should be current and withdrawn once they’re out of date, with extra care for fast-dating media such as social posts.

Your complaint response needs the ad exactly as the client saw it. Require the agency to keep every version of each ad and landing page with its run dates, and to send a copy within an agreed time on request.

Comments on your social media pages count too. Under RG 234, a business that knows about a comment or testimonial on its page and leaves it up becomes responsible for it. The agency must escalate credit-related comments to your approver.

Question to ask	Answer that protects your brokerage	Answer to probe further
Who pauses a campaign when a lender changes its policy?	The agency pauses on your approver’s instruction and confirms in writing	The agency reviews campaigns at its next scheduled report
Who supplies the earlier version of a claim?	The agency keeps dated versions of every ad and landing page and sends them on request	Only what the ad platform happens to retain
Who handles comments on your pages?	The agency escalates credit-related comments to your approver	The agency moderates every comment without telling you

Agree a Trial and Exit

Start with a bounded trial, such as three months, with the deliverables, fees, review measures, cancellation and handover terms set in writing. A short trial tests the agency against your brief before you commit to a longer retainer.

Term	What to set in writing
Deliverables	The campaigns, ads, landing pages and reports the agency delivers, with dates
Fees	The fee basis, what it covers and the advertising spend you pay separately
Review measures	Suitable enquiries, cost per suitable enquiry and approval turnaround, measured from your CRM
Cancellation	The notice period and what you pay for work in progress
Handover	The accounts, files, enquiry data and consent records the agency returns when the appointment ends

Review the trial against the measures you set. Extend the engagement when the agency met them. When it missed them, end the engagement under the cancellation terms.

Client Data and Consent Records

Require the agency to hand over every enquiry with its consent record and enquiry history when the appointment ends. The consent record shows where the person enquired, the wording they agreed to, the date and the channel. The enquiry history shows each message sent, each reply and every opt-out request.

ACMA’s spam guidance, last updated 29 November 2024, says your business must be able to prove consent, recording who gave it, when and how. Without those records, you can’t show consent for the first email or text you send to an inherited enquiry.

Where the Privacy Act applies to your brokerage, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) Australian Privacy Principle 7 guidelines add two points. The 22 July 2019 guidelines say a marketing contractor’s contract should reflect your direct marketing obligations, including passing on opt-out requests. A person can also ask where you got their details, and you must tell them unless that’s impracticable or unreasonable.

Appoint the candidate whose sample advertisement traced cleanly, whose results came from CRM data and whose contract returns your accounts and consent records. When the appointment ends, that handover lets your brokerage make a compliant first contact with each enquiry that consented, whichever agency runs the next campaign.