Starting a mortgage brokerage: the website and marketing stack for month one

Opening a brokerage is a hundred tasks at once: entity paperwork, the company NMLS record, state licenses, wholesale lender approvals, an office or a service area, and the first loan officers. Marketing tends to get squeezed into whatever’s left. This plan puts it in a sensible order so your website and marketing are ready the day you can legally use them — and not a day before.

What order should you set things up in?

Licensing first, marketing second. You can draft privately at any time, but nothing should go public until the matching license is real.

Under the SAFE Act framework, both the company and each individual originator are licensed or registered through NMLS, and both identifiers belong in your advertising. Borrowers can verify them on NMLS Consumer Access.

One company site or a site per loan officer?

Start with one site. Add personal sites later for LOs who earn them.

What goes on each LO profile?

• Photo and a bio in the LO’s own words
• The LO’s individual NMLS ID and the states they’re licensed in
• Specialties and languages
• Reviews collected for that LO on the company’s profile
• A personal booking link and an application link that route to them

How should you route leads?

Routing is where most new brokerages lose leads. Agree the rules before launch and put them in the CRM:

1. State license first. A lead in a state goes only to LOs licensed there. Out-of-state leads get flagged, not assigned.
2. Language. If a borrower prefers Spanish, route to your Spanish-speaking LO.
3. Source. A partner’s referral link always goes to that partner’s LO.
4. Round-robin for everything else, so new LOs get fair chances.
5. Speed rule. Every assignment triggers an alert; unacknowledged leads escalate to the owner.

Explaining the broker model

Borrowers often don’t know what a broker does. Your home page should say it plainly: the brokerage compares options from the wholesale lenders it’s approved with, and the borrower chooses with the trade-offs explained. Two cautions:

• Don’t name lenders you aren’t approved with, and be careful naming any — approvals change and lenders have their own brand rules.
• Don’t promise better pricing. Explain choice, not guaranteed savings.

If you add jumbo program pages, explain jumbo relative to the conforming loan limit, which the FHFA updates every year:

Link to FHFA’s figures rather than hard-coding them across many pages — that number changes every year.

Google Business Profile, reviews and answering

Company Google Business Profile

Set it up once the company has a real address or service area. Keep the business name, address and phone exactly the same on the website, the profile and every directory listing.

A reviews routine

Ask every closed borrower, consistently, with a one-tap link to the company profile, and show each review with the LO’s name. Never buy, fake or gate reviews — the FTC’s rule (16 CFR Part 465) covers all three.

Answering every call

New brokerages are thinly staffed. An AI receptionist or a shared answering line keeps the company number covered while everyone’s in meetings, and books time on the right LO’s calendar.

Co-marketing with agents

Before you build co-branded pages or share ad spend with real estate agents, talk to your compliance lead about RESPA Section 8, which restricts things of value exchanged for referrals of settlement services.

What does the first year cost?

Here’s one example built only from our published prices, for a three-LO brokerage on yearly billing with Google profile setup, a logo kit and the all-channel AI Engine:

Your numbers will differ. The point is to see the whole year on one page before you commit to anything.

Should a new brokerage have a recruiting page?

Often, yes. Growing brokerages recruit, and loan officers research brokerages the same way borrowers research LOs. A “Join the team” page should be factual: what kind of loan officers you’re looking for, how the brokerage supports them, which states you’re licensed in, and how to start a confidential conversation. Avoid income claims you can’t support, and route these enquiries to the owner only — not into the borrower pipeline.

Brand basics for a new brokerage

You don’t need a big brand project in month one. You do need consistency:

Consistency matters for search too: search engines and AI assistants connect information about a business more confidently when its name, address and identifiers match across sources.

Month one, week by week

Week 1 — foundation. Company site live for approved states, LO profiles for sponsored LOs, routing rules in the CRM, and phones covered.

Week 2 — visibility. Company Google Business Profile created, directory listings claimed and made consistent, LO email signatures and social bios updated.

Week 3 — relationships. Each LO sends a personal introduction to the partners they’re allowed to contact, with their own profile link.

Week 4 — routines. Reviews requests switched on, weekly lead-review meeting started, and a short list of the questions borrowers asked most (your first content topics).

What to measure from the start

Keep it simple. Five numbers reviewed every week beat a dashboard nobody opens.

Choosing a domain for the brokerage

Pick the domain before anything else is printed. Three rules keep it simple:

1. Match the licensed name as closely as you can, so borrowers and regulators connect the two.
2. Register it in the company’s name, on an account the owner controls — not a former employer’s, not a designer’s personal account.
3. Keep it short and spellable. You’ll say it on the phone, print it on signs and type it into every profile. Avoid hyphens and creative spellings.

Then reserve matching social handles and use the same name format on your Google Business Profile and directories. That consistency is what lets search engines — and AI assistants — confidently connect your company’s website, profiles and reviews as one business.

The month-one checklist

• Company NMLS record and first state license confirmed
• Site drafted privately; published only for approved states
• Company NMLS ID and licenses on every page
• A profile per LO with their NMLS ID and states
• Routing rules written down and set in the CRM
• Company Google Business Profile created and verified
• Reviews routine switched on for every LO
• Phones covered, with handoff and alerts
• Co-marketing plans reviewed for RESPA
• Every approval saved

A brokerage’s first month is chaos. The website shouldn’t be part of it.

Written by

Maren Holt, Launch Editor

Maren writes our launch guides: what a new or moving loan officer needs live on day one, and in what order.

Editorial persona — GetsMortgageNow launch desk · Writes from our build checklists and onboarding notes