I went to Centre Parcs a few weeks ago.
Everywhere you looked, the marketing was aimed at the kids.
Not the parents paying for it. The kids.
The posters, the screens, the activity boards. All of it spoke directly to the child standing in front of it.
Because Centre Parcs knows something most businesses don’t.
Speak to the right person, and they’ll do the selling for you.
Carousel posts on Instagram can do exactly that.
They’re popping off on Instagram right now.
Offering more engagement & more reach.
But most mortgage brokers are doing them wrong.
And it’s all to do with the first slide, but it can be fixed.
The mistake I see is that the first slide will start with something like this:
“See how we helped our client get a mortgage.”
It sounds fine. It ticks the box. You’ve posted something.
But it speaks to nobody in particular.
And when you speak to nobody in particular, nobody stops scrolling.
Here’s the shift.
Instead of writing for everyone, write for one person.
Not “a client.” A specific person, with a specific problem, in a specific situation.
Take that line above and rewrite it like this:
Weak: “See how we helped our client get a mortgage”
Strong: “How we helped a self-employed plumber borrow £28,000 more than his bank said was possible”
Same case study. Same result.
But now there’s a self-employed plumber somewhere in your town stopping mid-scroll thinking “wait, that’s me.”
That’s the whole point.
Centre Parcs didn’t put up a poster saying “fun for the whole family.”
They put up a poster that made a seven-year-old grab their parent’s sleeve.
Your carousel headline needs to do the same thing.
Make the right person stop.
Make them feel seen. Make them think you’re talking directly to them.
Because you are.
How to write yours:
Take your next case study and fill in these blanks:
“How we helped a [specific type of person] [specific outcome] even though [specific obstacle they faced]”
So it becomes something like:
“How we helped a self-employed builder buy his first home after two declined applications”
Or: “How a freelance photographer on a variable income got a mortgage in 6 weeks”
The job title. The obstacle. The result.
That’s your carousel headline.
The broker in your area writing posts like that is getting way more engagement.
The one writing “see how we helped our client” is wondering why nobody’s getting in touch.
Speak to one person, not everyone.
Chris
P.S. You can use the same method when creating videos; case studies perform well when you’re talking through them on screen.