As your loan book and team grow, so does the value of your brand and the cost of leaving its communication to chance.
You've built something worth protecting: a brand clients recognise, a loan book that's grown past what one person could manage alone and a team now operating under your name. That's not a small achievement, but the problem is that most brokerages reach this stage without a plan for managing it.
Marketing gets handled the way it always has: a newsletter here, a social post there, whoever has time to pick it up that quarter. It worked when it was just you and a handful of clients. It's harder to sustain now that there's more at stake and more people representing the brand.
This is usually the point where most owners start weighing up a hire. A part-time marketing coordinator or a junior admin person who can take it off your plate. It's a reasonable instinct, but it's worth checking the maths and the alternatives before committing.
The cost of an inconsistent brand
An inconsistent brand rarely fails in an obvious way. It's quieter than that, often a slow drift of opportunities that just don't come your way anymore.
When clients haven't heard from you in a while, they're less likely to think of you when their circumstances change, less likely to mention you to a friend, and less likely to call you first when they need a broker again. Over time, that surfaces as referrals and repeat business going somewhere else.
Across a team, this adds up. If every broker communicates a bit differently, clients end up with a different brand experience depending on who they dealt with. That's usually the last thing you want to discover and often right when you're trying to show a buyer or a partner what your business is actually worth.
Why hiring isn't always the answer
Hiring someone to manage marketing can work, but it's a bigger commitment than it first looks. There’s the time needed to hire and train them, the risk of losing knowledge if they leave, and the challenge of finding someone who understands the complexities of compliant broker specific communications across email, social and web. For a brokerage, that's a lot to take on for a function that, when set up properly, should largely run itself.
A third option: systemising the brand
There's a middle ground between doing it all yourself and hiring someone: utilising a purpose-built program that keeps your marketing running consistently, no matter who's busy. That's the role AFG's Smart marketing program plays for growing brokerages. Smart provides professionally designed websites, newsletters, educational content and social media assets, along with automated campaigns that keep clients engaged across their loan journey.
For Jason Zammit, Managing Director at Complete Finance Group, that's exactly the function Smart serves.
"I've been using Smart for 6 years. The program enables me to easily and consistently stay connected with clients and keep them updated on the market. Clients will often respond to one of the automated emails with a loan question, which converts to new business. Utilising the Smart program removes the task of newsletters, updates and creating email lists from your monthly to-do list. It also means you can use the articles on your social media platforms, which is great for extra content each quarter. I would recommend Smart to all brokers."
Protecting the asset you've built
The brokerages that keep growing tend to treat their brand the way they'd treat any other asset: with a system behind it, not just good intentions.
Smart isn't a replacement for the relationships you've built. It's the infrastructure that keeps those relationships active across a growing client base and a growing team.
The loan book you've built has value. Making sure the brand behind it is communicating consistently is how that value keeps compounding.
Interested in learning more? Download AFG's information pack >
Thinking about making a move? Talk to the AFG team about joining >
