How Influencer Marketing Can Grow Your Brand and Drive Sales

Jason Falls redefines 'influencer' for mortgage and real estate professionals, arguing that anyone who can persuade an audience to act qualifies — including local LOs and agents. The conversation covers how to build local influence using Cialdini's six principles and how to partner with community content creators. Best for LOs who want to grow a recognizable local brand but aren't sure where to start.

Takeaways you can run this week

• Audit your own social presence against Cialdini's six principles: reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, liking, and consensus. Write down which ones you are actively demonstrating and which are missing, then fix the gaps one at a time.
• Stop posting only listings or rate updates. Add at least one piece of educational content per week (e.g., 'What rising rates mean for your buying power this month') to build authority with your audience before you ever ask for business.
• Identify 3-5 local content creators or community connectors in your market — boutique owners, fitness instructors, restaurant reviewers, PTA presidents — and pitch a one-time guest appearance on their platform, bringing a financial tip relevant to their audience (e.g., 'How to budget for a home after your wedding' for a bridal boutique).
• Create artificial scarcity for your consultations or agent classes: limit seats to 10, close registration 48 hours before, and communicate 'only 3 spots left' in your promotional emails and texts to trigger action.
• Build consensus by collecting and systematically displaying social proof: ask your last 10 closed clients for a 2-sentence Google or Zillow review, then screenshot and post one per week on social media with a brief thank-you caption.
• Share genuinely useful third-party content (market data, buyer tips, local news) on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter 3x per week — this was Jason's entire early Twitter strategy and built him 100,000 followers; it signals generosity and builds reciprocity without requiring you to create everything yourself.

The playbook

1. 1. Define your geographic footprint — influencer marketing only works locally if your reach matches your market.
2. 2. Choose your content format based on comfort: video, podcast, written posts, or shared curated content.
3. 3. Apply all six Cialdini principles consistently: give value (reciprocity), show up regularly (consistency), teach your expertise (authority), be likable and human (liking), create urgency (scarcity), and get others to vouch for you (consensus).
4. 4. If you don't want to build your own audience, partner with a local influencer whose audience overlaps your target buyers — offer to appear once, bring value to their audience, and let their trust transfer to you.
5. 5. Graduate to long-term partnerships with 1-2 local creators rather than one-off sponsored posts, so their audience consistently associates your name with trusted financial expertise.

Worth quoting

“An influencer is anyone who can persuade an audience to take action.”

“Real estate agents, mortgage brokers — your audience is full of influencers because they come into contact with dozens of people every day.”

Best for

LOs who are active on social media but posting without a strategy and seeing little return on their time investment.