How much should a mortgage broker spend on marketing?

A solo broker trying to build a direct pipeline can start close to the floor: Google Ads near the $600 management minimum plus enough spend to compete on "mortgage broker near me" and purchase or refinance searches in their province or state, since a thin, sporadic budget rarely produces enough volume to matter against comparison sites.

A broker with a mix of purchase, refinance, and renewal business typically settles into $1,500 to $3,000 a month, splitting spend across campaigns for each of those file types and an SEO program past the 10-page floor that builds authority on the questions first-time buyers and self-employed borrowers actually search.

A brokerage covering a wider region, or one running renewal outreach at real scale, often needs $3,500 or more a month, since keeping every file type visible across a bigger market takes real ad spend, not just a bigger management fee.

Google Ads management is 10% of your spend, floored at $600 CAD or $450 USD a month, with no markup on the media dollars. For a broker, this channel matters most for capturing purchase and refinance searches directly, so the borrower reaches you first instead of a comparison site that will also sell the same inquiry to two or three other brokers.

SEO is $50 CAD or $38 USD per page starting at 10 pages a month. For a broker, that typically means pages explaining pre-approval, self-employed and non-traditional income scenarios, and renewal timing, built around the exact questions borrowers search before deciding whether to use a broker at all. It builds slower than ads but eventually produces inquiries you're not paying per click for.

A website is a separate one-time cost, from $1,500 to $20,000 and up. For most brokers, the deciding factor is whether the site needs a real pre-approval form that starts in a few minutes on a phone and a clear explanation of your lender panel, or whether a simpler brand-focused site is enough for now.

LocaliQ and WordStream's 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks report shows Finance & Insurance averaging $74.44 per lead and a 2.64% conversion rate on Google Ads, one of the lower conversion rates in the report, reflecting how many financial searches are early research rather than an immediate application.

Use the figure as a planning anchor, not an exact promise. If a proposal's implied cost per lead runs well above roughly $74 for purchase or refinance terms with no clear reason, ask what's driving it, since rate-comparison sites and national lenders often bid aggressively on the same broad mortgage terms a local broker wants. A tightly targeted campaign for a specific borrower type can beat that average.

How concentrated your volume is with a small number of referring realtors matters a great deal. If most files come from two or three agents, losing one to retirement or a switch can take a big share of a year's volume with it, which is a strong argument for building a direct pipeline through ads and SEO rather than relying on referrals alone.

Renewal timing is worth planning around separately from new purchase volume. In Canada, mortgage terms typically renew every few years, and a client's own lender often mails a renewal offer months before term end, so outreach that reaches a client before the bank does can protect a file that was already yours.

Seasonality follows the file type. Purchase demand tends to peak in spring and early summer, while refinance interest spikes whenever rates move, so many brokers shift budget between purchase and refinance campaigns through the year rather than spending the exact same amount on each every month. There's no setup fee, plans run month to month, and the first 30 days carry a guarantee: if you're not satisfied, you don't pay. A free proposal scoped to your brokerage and market is available within one business day.