Facebook ads for a mortgage broker: getting enquiries without buying resold leads

Brokerage has a particular acquisition problem: the product is invisible, the decision is slow, and lead generation platforms resell the same contact to four firms.

Online advertising gets you out of that, on one condition: your raw material is not the product, it is you.

You are the content

A broker cannot film a building site. No removal, no installation, no spectacular before and after.

What works instead is your face explaining something a consumer does not understand and does not dare ask their bank.

The subjects that hold attention longest:

• What the bank looks at first in an application
• Why two equivalent applications do not get the same rate
• What mortgage insurance really costs over the life of the loan
• The three lines of a contract nobody reads
• What stalls an application two days before signing

No figures promised, no rate displayed. Just somebody explaining their trade. In credit and insurance it is just about the only content that builds trust before the first call.

The constraints to know before launching

Financial services are a special category on Meta. Two things to take in.

Distribution costs more than in most other sectors. Competition on these audiences is fierce, and it feeds straight into the auction.

Some targeting options are restricted for credit-related ads. The rules change regularly, so check at launch rather than from an article read six months earlier.

The practical consequence: fine targeting is partly closed to you, so your creative carries an even larger share of the work. A video that speaks precisely to a first-time buyer will attract first-time buyers, even if you cannot target them by name.

Qualification, vital here

A badly qualified brokerage appointment costs you an hour of meeting, a file review, and zero commission.

The questions that change everything, asked before the appointment is booked:

• Live project or just gathering information
• Employment situation and length of service
• Deposit available
• Is there already a signed agreement
• Have you already spoken to your bank

The most discriminating field is the signed agreement. Someone who has one has a real deadline. Someone who is "just having a look" may come back in eight months and does not deserve an appointment today. They deserve to be kept warm in a retargeting audience.

Call back fast, but not to sell

Someone filling in a brokerage form has often done it on three sites the same evening. The first to call back gets the appointment.

With a nuance specific to the sector: the first call is not for selling. It is for checking the application exists, giving an order of magnitude, and setting the real appointment. Ten minutes, not an hour.

Those who try to handle everything on the first call burn their time on applications that will go nowhere.

Retargeting, more important here than elsewhere

A property project is decided over several months. Someone who watches your video in February may sign in June.

Hence two distinct campaigns, not to be mixed:

Prospecting, which fills the reservoir with explanatory content and asks for very little.

Long retargeting, on people who watched your videos through or visited your site. Different message: reassurance, a concrete case, an invitation to talk.

The useful retargeting window is longer than on an impulse purchase. Thirty to sixty days, sometimes more, where e-commerce works on seven.

What that means in practice: do not judge a brokerage campaign on three weeks. Your first January contacts convert in the spring, and if you only look at the current month you will cut a campaign that was working.

What I would not do

Display a rate. Promise a figure saved. Stage a fake client testimonial.

The sector is regulated, and beyond the regulatory question, it is the kind of advertising that attracts exactly the people you do not want: those comparing a number, not a professional.

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Further reading: Why Facebook quote requests have a bad reputation and Why your ads cost more and more. And on buying leads in general: buying leads or generating them.

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