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An unconventional marketing decision to start a coffee shop a year ago is paying off for broker Cherisse Morgan, director of Morgan’s Mortgages, who has used her coffee shop’s clientele to diversify.
Morgan (pictured above), who started her brokerage three years ago after working at Aussie Home Loans, was previously focused on first-home buyer business from her base in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane.
Despite achieving success on social media, particularly through TikTok, the rising rate environment impacted her flow of leads, as first-home buyers found it more difficult to break into the market.
“When I first started broking, the interest rates were at an all-time low. And so I was getting so many leads coming through, because in that environment everyone wanted to buy,” Morgan said.
That changed when the Reserve Bank began to steeply raise rates, hitting younger buyers hard.
“That was a big challenge for me; I guess social media wasn’t bringing in as many leads as it used to, and I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ That’s where the coffee shop came in.”
Morgan converted the front office of her more sizeable commercial office space into a coffee shop with the aim of connecting more with her local community and boosting her marketing efforts.
Morgans Mortgages provides a special offer for clients – customers who take out a new home loan through the business are entitled to six months’ worth of free coffees from the shop.
While Morgan still gets first-time buyers through social media, the main clientele sourced through the coffee shop have been people buying investment properties or refinancing existing deals.
“It is a slightly older clientele; through social media, clients are often in their 20s or 30s,” Morgan said. “Redcliffe though is a bit of an older area, so you see a lot of established couples, for example.”
Morgan said the diversification benefits for her business were clear. “It's been amazing. It's paid for itself 10 times over, I would say, with the leads we have gotten through.”
The coffee shop has gone so well that Morgan is expanding the purely coffee-focused venture into food, although she will also rebrand it so that it does not dilute her mortgage broking brand.
While it will still be connected – and free coffee will continue to be on offer for mortgage clients – Morgan said her focus would be on expanding her brokerage business beyond the current single broker model.
Currently, Morgan has a loan assistant in the office in Redcliffe, who assists with collecting loan documentation, and has also recently engaged a virtual loan writer to process the loans.
“I want to hire a couple of brokers,” Morgan said. “I want to have enough leads coming in to provide for them, so they can then work under the business structure, and I can have them in the big enough office where I can set up a couple of different spaces for them.”
