Mortgage Marketing
The Mortgage Marketing Agency
For Lenders Who Want Borrowers, Not Lead Lists.
Purchase borrowers, refinances, investors and self-employed buyers all search for a loan differently. We build the pages and campaigns that bring them to you directly, inside the advertising and fair lending rules your compliance team already lives by.
27,100
Monthly searches for “mortgage pre approval,” at a keyword difficulty of just 9
27,100
Monthly searches for “mortgage lenders near me”
49,500
Monthly searches for “dscr loan”
Source: Semrush US database, monthly searches and keyword difficulty, October 2026
Where Mortgage Marketing Breaks
Most Lenders Rent Their Pipeline From Someone Else.
Shared leads, rate tables and referral partners all work until the market turns. A lender with its own search presence keeps getting borrowers when rates move and lead prices spike.
Shared leads, shared borrowers.
A purchased lead is often sold to several lenders at once, and the borrower picks whoever calls first or quotes lowest. Every dollar spent there builds someone else’s marketplace instead of your brand.
Rate pages that go stale by noon.
Rates change daily, and a page quoting yesterday’s number is both a compliance problem and a credibility problem. Pages built around loan programs and borrower situations hold their rankings when rates move.
Program pages nobody can find.
FHA, VA, jumbo, DSCR, bank statement and down payment assistance loans each have their own searchers. Lenders that list every program on one page rank for none of them.
Loan officers market themselves alone.
Each originator builds a personal site and social presence with no shared plan, no shared compliance review and no shared data. The company brand and the LO brands compete instead of adding up.
Agent partnerships carry hidden legal risk.
Co-marketing with real estate agents can bring steady purchase business. Set up loosely, it can also look like paying for referrals, which RESPA prohibits.
Applications are counted, funded loans are not.
A started application is not a closed loan. If reporting stops at form fills, nobody can see which channels produce loans that actually fund.
What We Do
Mortgage Marketing, Built Inside the Rules
Six disciplines, each designed for a regulated lending business and reviewable by your compliance team.
How Mortgage Search Works
What Makes Mortgage Marketing Different
Lending is regulated at the federal and state level, and the ad platforms add rules of their own. These are the realities we plan every mortgage engagement around.
Reg Z
One Number Can Trigger Full Disclosures
Under Regulation Z, an ad that states a down payment amount or percentage, the number of payments or repayment period, a payment amount or a finance charge must also disclose the down payment, the repayment terms and the APR. That applies even when the term is implied, such as “80% financing.” Every headline and landing page we write is checked for triggering terms.
Google Ads
Credit Ads Cannot Target by Age or ZIP
Since October 19, 2020, Google has barred credit and housing advertisers targeting the US and Canada, home lenders included, from targeting or excluding by age, gender, parental status, marital status or ZIP code. Google also runs a financial services verification program that requires advertisers to prove regulator authorization in the countries where it is enforced, so we check every market a campaign reaches before launch.
Fair Lending
Where You Advertise Is a Fair Lending Question
The Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act cover marketing, not just underwriting. Justice Department redlining settlements in recent years have cited limited advertising in majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and required lenders to fund advertising and outreach there. Geo targeting and ad placement should be reviewed with that history in mind.
Trigger Leads
The Credit Pull Lead Pipeline Closed
The Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act, signed September 5, 2025, took effect March 5, 2026. It bars credit bureaus from selling mortgage trigger leads except to a borrower’s current originator, servicer or bank, or with the borrower’s consent. Lenders that leaned on trigger lists need demand they generate themselves, which is exactly what search provides.
RESPA
Co-Marketing Cannot Pay for Referrals
RESPA Section 8 prohibits giving or accepting anything of value for referrals of settlement service business. Joint ads, shared websites and lead programs with real estate agents have to be priced at fair value for real services. We structure partner marketing so it can be documented that way.
Licensing
NMLS IDs Belong in the Marketing
The SAFE Act gave every company and loan originator a unique NMLS identifier, and many state laws require it in advertising. Illinois, for example, requires ads to show the licensee’s NMLS ID and a link to NMLS Consumer Access. AI chat tools on lender sites raise their own risk: the CFPB warned in 2023 that poorly deployed chatbots can break consumer finance law, so we keep licensing and program facts in plain, reviewed page text.
Borrower Search Demand
The Searches Borrowers Run
National monthly searches and keyword difficulty for the queries a lender can build program and local pages around. Some high volume program terms are hard to win nationally but far easier in a single market.
Finding a Lender
- mortgage lenders near me27,100/mo · KD 64
- best mortgage lenders22,200/mo · KD 52
- mortgage broker near me9,900/mo · KD 51
Getting Started
- mortgage pre approval27,100/mo · KD 9
- mortgage refinance22,200/mo · KD 74
- first time home buyer loan14,800/mo · KD 81
Loan Programs
- fha loan110,000/mo · KD 81
- heloc110,000/mo · KD 86
- dscr loan49,500/mo · KD 55
- va loan27,100/mo · KD 94
- jumbo loan18,100/mo · KD 77
- non qm lenders1,900/mo · KD 4
Source: Semrush US database, monthly searches and keyword difficulty, October 2026
How We Work
How a Mortgage Engagement Runs
- 01
Map programs, states and margins
We start with the loan programs you want to grow, the states you are licensed in and what each loan type is worth to you, then check who ranks for those programs in your markets.
- 02
Fix licensing, profiles and LO pages
NMLS IDs and licensing shown correctly, Business Profiles for each branch, and loan officer pages that a borrower can trust. This is fast work that helps both compliance and conversion.
- 03
Build program pages and launch campaigns
One page per program and borrower situation, reviewed for triggering terms, with paid search covering the highest value programs while the pages earn rankings.
- 04
Report on funded loans by source
Applications, locks and funded loans tied back to the campaign and page that started them, without sending borrower financial data to ad platforms.
Working with Bryan Passanisi
“Bryan makes things happen and has an incredible attention to detail on all of the small SEO tweaks that add up to big results.”
Jean Kim Hahn, Senior Director Global Marketing, MiniMed
“Bryan takes the time to educate other business partners on SEO. Because of that, more integrated branded ideas were able to be executed.”
David Nielsen, Lead SEO, Genentech
“Bryan has an unbelievable drive to excel at everything he does. He thinks through all the approaches, identifies those most likely to yield the most impressive results, executes quickly, analyzes the results, communicates the insights and builds upon them.”
Mike Berry, Ex Adobe, eBay, PayPal
The Expert
Bryan Passanisi
Founder, Brown Bear Digital
Bryan Passanisi is establishing himself as one of the sharpest emerging voices at the intersection of SEO and AI search. With 15 years of hands-on experience building and scaling search programs, he brings a depth of knowledge most agencies simply can't match — and a relentless focus on what's actually moving results right now.
As search evolves around AI Overviews, generative engines, and large language models, Bryan is at the front of it — testing, building, and translating what's changing into strategy that compounds. He understands the full search landscape, from technical SEO and entity optimization to GEO and LLM visibility, and he founded Brown Bear to give businesses direct access to that expertise without the agency overhead.
- 15 years across SEO, AI search, and paid strategy
- Deep expertise in GEO, entity SEO, and AI Overviews
- Direct access — no account managers, no hand-offs
Awards
- 2025Semrush AI/GEO Award Winner
- 2022Digiday Awards, Best Search Campaign Winner
Common Questions
Mortgage Lenders, Answered
A mortgage marketing agency brings borrowers to a lender directly instead of through purchased leads. At Brown Bear that means SEO for loan program and branch pages, paid search built inside Google’s credit ad rules, AI search work so ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers describe your programs correctly, and conversion work that turns visits into completed applications.
They can, but a stated rate must be shown as an APR, and adding payment amounts or terms can trigger Regulation Z’s full disclosure requirements. Rates also change daily, so most of our campaigns lead with programs, speed or service and leave rate quotes to a licensed loan officer or a page your team keeps current.
It tends to matter more. When refinance demand drops, purchase, investor and self-employed borrowers are still searching, and terms like mortgage pre approval carry real volume at low difficulty. Pages built around programs and borrower situations keep working through rate cycles, while purchased lead costs swing with the market.
The Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act took effect March 5, 2026. Credit bureaus can now furnish mortgage trigger leads only in narrow cases, such as to the borrower’s current lender or servicer, or with the borrower’s consent. Lenders that relied on those lists need to build their own demand.
Yes, and often they should, but under one plan. We prefer strong loan officer pages on the company site, each with the originator’s NMLS ID, licensed states and reviews, so the company and its LOs build one body of authority instead of competing with each other.
Not as named clients. Our client work has centered on medical practices, mostly plastic surgery, where we run SEO, AI search and paid search under strict advertising rules. Mortgage marketing shares that discipline, but we will not claim a lending track record we do not have. We will show you an audit of your search visibility in your markets before you sign anything.
Further Reading
YMYL and AI Search Research
- How Long Does Medical, Legal, or Financial SEO Take?→Realistic timelines for SEO in the categories Google scrutinizes most, lending included.
- AI Search Ranking Factors→What the evidence actually supports about how AI tools pick which companies to cite.
- The Anatomy of an AI Overview→How Google’s AI answers are assembled and where your pages can appear in them.
- How to Track Brand Mentions in AI Search→A free system for watching what AI tools say about your company.
See Where Your Borrowers Are Searching
Tell us which loan programs and states matter most. We will show you who ranks for them in your markets today and what it would take to win those borrowers directly.