How to get mortgage clients: a UK broker's honest guide to every channel

Where mortgage clients actually come from

Every client you'll ever win comes from one of three places. The trap is leaning on only one of them.

• Referral clients. Past clients, estate agents, solicitors and accountants sending people your way. The trust is already there, so they convert better than anything else. Slow to start, then they compound. Your bread and butter.
• Inbound clients. People who find you: your Google Business Profile, your website ranking for "mortgage broker in [town]", your social posts. Close to free, takes months to build, then works while you sleep.
• Bought-in demand. Paid ads, lead lists, and booked appointments. Instant, but it costs money and the quality swings wildly depending on the model.

A healthy broker runs all three. Referrals and inbound are the long game and cost almost nothing but service and time. Bought-in demand is how you fill the diary today while the free channels mature, or how you scale once they're already working. Lose one referral source as a single-channel broker and you're in trouble. Run all three and you barely feel it.

Every channel, compared

Here's how the main channels stack up. The "converts to client" column is rough. It blends UK industry ranges with what I've seen at Bluewave, so read the order as the point rather than the exact percentage.

Cost-per-lead figures are typical UK 2026 ranges for general residential leads; specialist verticals like buy-to-let and equity release run higher. The conversion column blends those ranges with my own Bluewave numbers (the real figures are in the next section). Read the table for shape and order, not precision.

A quick word on conversion rates

Conversion is where the cheap channels fall apart, and I can put real numbers on it. When a referral lands with me, near enough 100% turn into a fact find and about 95% go on to a completed case — the trust is already done. A cold, bought lead is a different animal: my contact rate is around 15% and only about 5% ever become a client. Booked appointments sit much closer to the top, because the hard part (the applicant agreeing to a time and showing up) is done before the lead reaches you. So judge a channel on cost per client, never cost per lead. I've broken my own figures down properly below.

The real numbers from my own desk

Most "how to get clients" guides wave their hands at conversion. I'd rather show you mine. These are my actual figures from Bluewave, not a survey average, so you can do the maths on whether a channel is worth it before you spend a penny.

Referrals vs bought leads: the conversion gap

This is the single most important table on the page. Same broker, same skill, wildly different outcomes depending on where the person came from.

Read that again. A referral that reaches me is a near-certain fact find and a 19-in-20 shot at a completed case. A cold lead I've bought? I'll be lucky to speak to one in seven, and one in twenty turns into business. That's not a knock on bought leads, it's just the truth about cold demand, and it's exactly why the price per lead tells you almost nothing.

It also shifts by case type. On cold leads, first-time buyers are easier to reach (contact rate nearer 20%) but harder to convert (3–4% complete), because they need far more hand-holding and a purchase has to fall into place first. Remortgages are harder to reach cold (around 10%) but convert better once you do (6–7%), because the need is real and the timeline is shorter. Whatever the source, the follow-up is what closes the gap, and I've put my actual call scripts and 30-day cadence in mortgage lead conversion tips.

And here's where my completed cases actually come from: roughly 70% referrals, 20% paid, 10% social, and — honestly — 0% from Google/SEO so far. Bluewave was built on referrals for years before I leaned into search, so don't read that 0% as "SEO doesn't work". The reviews on my Google Business Profile are exactly what convert those referrals when a nervous buyer checks me out, and search is the channel I'd compound next. It's a slow burn, not a dead end. Note too that "paid" is now 20% because I stopped running my own ads and switched to booked appointments — paid done right, not the £5,000 I set fire to doing it myself.

What one mortgage client is actually worth

Before you decide any paid channel is "too expensive", you have to know what a completed case is worth to you. Here's mine:

By total value a first-time buyer is worth the most to me, then buy-to-let, with remortgages lowest. But even the smallest case is comfortably four figures, and that's the number to hold in your head for the next bit.

So is a £110 booked appointment worth it?

This is the question I get asked most, so let's run it with my real numbers. An experienced broker turns 3–4 booked appointments into one sale. At £110 a show that's roughly £330–£440 to land a case worth ~£1,795 in fee and proc alone, before any protection or the repeat business in two years' time. A newer broker needs 6–7 appointments per sale while their technique sharpens, so call it £660–£770 per case — still a fraction of what the case pays. That's the whole argument: judged on cost per completed case, a booked appointment is one of the cheapest clients you'll buy, precisely because they showed up.

How many clients should you be closing — and how much does that take?

For a rough yardstick, here's what I'd expect by experience level:

The reason the appointment numbers are so much tighter than the cold-lead ones is the contact rate. You can't convert a lead you never get on the phone, and with cold data you're missing six out of seven. With a booked, pay-per-show appointment the conversation is already happening.

How long until you actually get paid

One more number that matters for cash flow, because it's not the day you sign the client, it's the day the case completes. The timeline is very different by type:

This is why a healthy broker mixes the two: remortgages keep cash coming in while the slower purchase cases mature behind them.

What to do no matter what (the guaranteed wins)

Some things are free, fast, and there's no good reason not to do them. If you do nothing else on this page, do these four.

1. Set up a Google Business Profile (today)

This is the highest-return thing a broker can do, and it costs nothing. When someone searches "mortgage broker near me" or types in your name, your Business Profile is what shows up: your reviews, your phone number, a link to your site. It's the front door to local search.

This is the one that clicked for me. At Bluewave Mortgages the reviews stacked up, 33 five-star ones and counting, and pointing a nervous first-time buyer at that wall of reviews closed more business than any ad I ever ran. Claim it, fill in every field, add photos, and start collecting reviews from day one (more on that shortly).

Upside: free, fast, high-intent, and it builds trust. Downside: it's local only, and it lives or dies on you actually gathering reviews.

2. Create a Facebook page and an Instagram profile

You don't need to become an influencer. But you do need a Facebook business page and an Instagram profile that exist, look professional, and show you're a real, active broker. People check. A buyer who's been referred to you will look you up before they call, and an empty or non-existent profile plants a seed of doubt. Set them up, post occasionally, and pin your reviews and contact details.

Upside: a free credibility check, somewhere for referrals to "verify" you. Downside: organic reach is poor, so don't expect it to generate clients on its own. It supports the other channels rather than driving them.

3. Put up a simple website

It doesn't need to be fancy. Mine isn't a lead machine; it earns trust. When a referral or a Google searcher lands on it, the job is to make them think "yes, this person is legit, I'll get in touch". It won't conjure strangers out of nowhere. A clean homepage, a page for each service (first-time buyer, remortgage, buy-to-let), an about page with your face and credentials, your reviews, and an obvious way to book or call. That covers it.

Upside: it's the hub everything else points to, it works around the clock, and you own it. Downside: on its own nobody will find it. It needs the next step.

4. Do the basic SEO on it

You don't need an agency for the basics. The 80/20 that gets a local broker site found looks like this:

That's the lot. It builds slowly for months, and then one day enquiries start arriving without you lifting a finger.

Referrals: your bread and butter (and how to build the engine)

If I had to keep one channel and bin the rest, it'd be referrals, every time. They cost nothing, they convert best, and they last. The catch is that most brokers treat them as something that just happens to them. It's actually an engine, and you can wire it up on purpose.

Step one: deliver a service worth talking about

This is the whole foundation, and there's no shortcut around it. Referrals come from clients who were genuinely impressed, not merely satisfied. Call when you say you will. Explain things in plain English. Chase the lender so they don't have to. The brokers who drown in referrals tend to be the ones who are a pleasure to deal with, not the ones with the cleverest funnel.

Step two: build the referral engine

Map everyone who meets your buyers before you do: estate agents, conveyancing solicitors, accountants (brilliant for the self-employed), letting agents, even financial advisers who don't write mortgages. Build proper relationships with a handful of them, be the broker who's reliable and easy to deal with, and reciprocate where you can. A couple of solid estate-agent relationships can keep a diary full on their own.

Step three: actually ask

Most referrals are lost for one daft reason: nobody asked. Ask when the client is happiest, on completion, with the keys in their hand. Make it specific and easy. "If you know anyone else buying or remortgaging, send them my way, here's my link." A vague "let me know if you need anything" gets you nothing. A clear ask gets you names.

Step four: follow up and stay in the picture

A mortgage is a five-year relationship, not a one-off. Keep a simple database and stay in touch: a check-in before their fixed rate ends, a quick note when rates move, the odd helpful message. Stay front of mind and you get the remortgage and the introductions to their friends. It's the highest-return marketing a broker can do, and hardly anyone bothers doing it properly.

Step five: turn happy clients into Google reviews

This is the part that ties everything together. The moment a client is delighted, send them your Google review link and make leaving one a single tap. Those reviews build up on your Business Profile, which lifts you in local search, which brings in more enquiries, which become more happy clients, who leave more reviews. That loop is the whole game. Reviews are the fuel that makes the free channels feed each other, and I can't overstate what it did for Bluewave.

Should you run ads?

Eventually every broker asks this. Having done it the hard way myself, here's the honest answer.

What "running ads" actually means

You pay a platform to put you in front of people. There are two kinds, and they behave very differently.

• Google Ads catch intent. People are searching "mortgage broker" or "remortgage advice" right now, so the quality is higher. The catch is that mortgage keywords are expensive and you're bidding against banks and comparison sites.
• Facebook and Instagram (paid social) catch attention. You interrupt someone mid-scroll and create demand that wasn't there a second ago. Reach is cheaper and the volume can be big, but the leads are colder and you live or die on your creative and your follow-up.

What ads actually cost you (and what you need to be good at)

The cost isn't just the budget. To run ads profitably you have to be good at things most brokers aren't: writing ads that convert, building landing pages, reading the data, following up within minutes, and staying compliant. That last one matters more than people expect. A mortgage ad is a financial promotion, so it has to be clear, fair and not misleading, with the right wording. Get it wrong and you've got a regulatory problem sitting on top of the wasted spend. Budget at least £1,000 a month just to gather enough data to learn what works, and expect to set fire to a fair bit of it along the way.

I'll be straight with you. I burned through £5,000 trying to run my own Google ads, and I failed. The reason was simple. I'm a broker, not a marketer. I didn't really know how to run Facebook ads, my targeting was off and my creative was weak. And you're not competing with other local brokers on ad performance, you're competing with big platforms that pay whole teams to do nothing but market, all day long. That's a fight you start out losing. The £5,000 taught me as much, and it's the reason I built MortgagesBooked.

What agencies charge

A lot of brokers turn to an agency next. A specialist mortgage marketing agency will typically quote a small brokerage £2,000+ a month as a retainer just to get going, and that's before the ad budget, which you still fund on top. They can be worth it if you've got the cash and want it off your plate. Just know that you're now paying for the platform and the expertise, and you still carry the no-show risk on every lead the ads bring in.

The easier on-ramp: booked appointments

That gap is the reason MortgagesBooked exists. Running paid social well means either becoming a marketer yourself or paying an agency a premium to do it for you. There's no free version. Booked appointments fold all of it (the ad spend, the compliant creative, the years of working out paid social) into a single per-show price. You pay a premium per appointment, yes, but you skip the retainer, the learning curve, the wasted spend and the compliance headache, and you only pay when someone actually shows up. For a broker who wants calls in the diary rather than a second job in marketing, that's the trade worth making.

Buying leads vs booked appointments

If you're going to pay for demand, know what you're actually buying. Pay-per-lead means you buy a contact record and do the chasing yourself. It's cheap per record, but shared lists have low contact rates and you pay whether they answer or not. Booked appointments mean the call is already in a calendar, and with pay-per-show you only pay when they turn up. The sticker price on a lead list looks lower, but once you price in your own chasing time the maths often flips. We worked that through in exclusive vs shared leads and priced every UK provider in how much mortgage leads cost. To see the difference without paying anything, the lead quality page shows what's captured before you spend a credit.

The order I'd build it in

If you're starting from scratch, or rebuilding, this is the sequence I'd follow. Do them roughly in order, because each one makes the next work better.

On that last point: some of my steadiest growth came from working with other brokers rather than against them. We built a small firm that shares leads around, so a case that isn't right for one of us still gets placed instead of wasted. If you've got more demand than time, or a niche you don't write, a shared-lead arrangement beats turning business away. I wrote up the full process in how to hire mortgage brokers for your firm.

None of this is a magic trick. Get the free wins in place, make referrals your engine, and use bought-in demand to fill the diary while the rest compounds. That's how you get mortgage clients, and how you keep getting them. (Wondering what all those clients add up to over a year? I broke the numbers down in how much mortgage brokers make. And if you're still deciding between going DA or joining a network, I compared every UK mortgage network and club in a separate post.) If you want calls in the diary while you build the slow stuff, the free preview shows this week's appointments, no card needed.

FAQ