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How Influencer Marketing Can Grow Your Brand and Drive Sales · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
• 0:04
  the real estate agents is essential for success.
• 0:06
  However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge.
• 0:11
  With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it
• 0:15
  can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections.
• 0:20
  Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read.
• 0:25
  Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals.
• 0:31
  And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
• 0:34
  with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business.
• 0:39
  To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy
• 0:45
  of the case study today.
• 0:47
  You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million
• 0:52
  in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too.
• 0:56
  Don't miss out.
• 0:57
  Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today.
• 1:03
  Hey, listen to what's up, Jeff Zim, for welcome to another edition of The Mortgage Marketing
• 1:13
  Radio Podcast.
• 1:14
  I am thrilled you decided to tune in today.
• 1:16
  I want to make the most of your time and I want you to leave your feeling that this was
• 1:21
  a good use of your time.
• 1:22
  Time is, of course, our most precious commodity.
• 1:24
  We can never get it back.
• 1:26
  And I'm really focused this year on making this show, these episodes even better than before.
• 1:33
  Year number six, well over 200 episodes now and we are mixing it up with different types
• 1:41
  of content.
• 1:42
  So letting you know that the goal moving forward is to mix up the interviews and the guests
• 1:47
  and I basically have figured this out last night.
• 1:51
  Maybe it was in the shower.
• 1:52
  I don't know.
• 1:53
  You know, you get those creative thoughts when you're in the shower, but I've been really
• 1:56
  trying to thank for some time as how do I take this podcast to the next level?
• 1:59
  There's a variety of different ways I want to do it production-wise, which you're not
• 2:02
  hearing yet, but you will soon hear some changes on the production elements of the podcast,
• 2:07
  but also another way to take it to the next level is with interviews and guests and things
• 2:11
  like that.
• 2:12
  So I've decided moving forward, this is how we're going to mix up the content at least
• 2:15
  for the near short term, which is this, out of one episode per week, so essentially
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  four episodes in a month.
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  One episode will be an interview with a loan officer, somebody successful in the mortgage
• 2:28
  space.
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  One interview will be with real estate agent or somebody who's succeeding in doing some
• 2:34
  pretty interesting things in the real estate space.
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  One interview will be with a thought leader, influencer, speaker, author, coach, and
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  this could be outside of your industry and very often will be because I think that you
• 2:46
  often get a lot of great perspective and insights when you're not solely focused in your
• 2:51
  own industry, but looking outside.
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  And then lastly, one of the interviews or one of the episodes per month will be yours
• 2:58
  truly, me bringing specific content to you, whether it's what I'm thinking and working
• 3:03
  on, whether it's news from the streets a day in the life, a day in the trenches of me
• 3:09
  out there doing the same things you guys are doing, which is, you know, working with
• 3:12
  the Bull State agents, building my personal brand, right, all that.
• 3:16
  So those will be the exist at least for now, the four different types of episodes you'll
• 3:20
  hear.
• 3:21
  And if you want to add your input to that, have any suggestions?
• 3:24
  Hey, you can go over to the Facebook group and jump in the podcast, mortgage marketing
• 3:28
  radio podcast group over there on Facebook.
• 3:30
  If you want to join the conversation there, you can also leave me a question at askgefanything.com.
• 3:36
  There's links to all this in the show notes.
• 3:37
  So you have to do is conveniently tap with your thumb or your finger and you'll instantly
• 3:41
  go to any one of these destinations.
• 3:43
  You're hearing my voice describe for you right now.
• 3:47
  And then of course, lastly is let's face it guys, right, the market has shifted and refives
• 3:51
  are down and you want more referrals from real estate agents, more purchased business probably
• 3:56
  than you have in the last couple of years because you've been living high off the refice.
• 4:01
  I know it.
• 4:02
  And now that percentage of income is going to be taken away, right?
• 4:05
  But here's the challenge.
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  There's lots of loan officers going after agents bringing no real value.
• 4:10
  Therefore what loan officers need is a system to rise above the noise, did not be seen
• 4:15
  as a number and to get agent relationships and referrals at scale, right?
• 4:21
  So what we do here at mortgage marketing institute is provide a turnkey done for you process
• 4:27
  and platform for loan officers to succeed in getting attention, getting conversations
• 4:33
  and getting referrals from real estate agents.
• 4:35
  How do we do that?
• 4:36
  We provide a turnkey system and platform of educational content in the form of classes
• 4:42
  you teach digitally, over zoom and in person, souped and that's done for you, whether
• 4:46
  you've never spoken a word in public before or you're, you know, a well versed experienced
• 4:51
  class teacher, trainer speaker, doesn't matter.
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  I think the challenge that most loan officers have told me is they would be teaching classes
• 4:59
  to real estate agents if they had the class content done for them, because who has the
• 5:04
  time to create and prepare that?
• 5:05
  Well, that's where we come in.
• 5:07
  That's what we've done for you with my agent classes and what you get is every, you know,
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  we have a library of over 12 turnkey agent classes.
• 5:15
  We're talking PowerPoints, speaker notes, we're talking, train the trainer videos for
• 5:18
  me, training you, showing you how to actually teach this class, handouts social media
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  promotional images for you to promote on social media, email campaigns, text campaigns,
• 5:28
  landing pages for them to make reservations.
• 5:30
  So you can build your database for real estate agents and tap into that source of ongoing
• 5:36
  purchase money business.
• 5:37
  You want to learn more?
• 5:38
  Real simple, go to mortgagemarketing.pro, check out the short video and you can learn
• 5:41
  more there.
• 5:42
  All right.
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  So now to my special guest this week, this is along the lines with me mixing up the content
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  and the guests.
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  And so this week I have my special guest, his name is Jason Falls and Jason is a leading
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  digital strategist, author, speaker and thinker in the digital and social media marketing
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  industry.
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  This guy's done a lot in his career.
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  He's an award-winning and widely read industry pundit and he's been named a top influencer
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  in social technology and marketing space by Forbes, entrepreneur, advertising agent,
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  others.
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  As a matter of fact, a 2014 Forbes article named Jason, one of 10 business leaders and
• 6:23
  entrepreneurs that you should follow on Twitter, along with in that same list, Jason was
• 6:28
  included to be named amongst Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, Tom Peters and Tony Shea, formerly
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  of Zappos.
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  Jason's the author of three books, WinFluence, reframing influencer marketing to ignite
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  your brand, no bullshit social media and the rebels guide to email marketing.
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  And I'm just thrilled to have somebody of Jason's caliber come and share his insights
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  into this whole thing about influencer marketing, right?
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  What is, what really is an influencer?
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  You might be surprised by his answer and what's the future of, quote, influencers and having
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  influence, right?
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  And how can you perhaps in your business, your local market actually become an influencer?
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  And again, not necessarily in the context that you think it might be.
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  So we're going to put links in the show notes to all Jason's stuff, his books, his newsletter
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  and a guy's just a wealth of knowledge and information.
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  So I definitely encourage you to check those links, follow him, subscribe to his newsletter,
• 7:32
  check out the book of WinFluence or one of the other two books as well.
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  So without further ado, let's get into this week's show.
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  Jason, welcome to the show.
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  Oh, great to be here, Jeff.
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  Thanks for having me.
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  It is an honor and a pleasure, sir.
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  I saw you at social media marketing world.
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  I don't know when that was 2019, maybe.
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  Here's the time distortion post COVID, you know, but yeah, I wouldn't remember where
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  it was either.
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  I think back on the events that I've spoken at and I've been fortunate to speak it a lot
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  of them.
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  And you know, you meet a lot of people and see a lot of folks.
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  And so I'm sure we met at somewhere along the line, but where and when I would have no
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  recollection of.
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  So I want to make sure we set this up properly.
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  So you've written a couple of books if I am correct.
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  Your most recent one is called Wind Fluence, reframing influencer marketing to ignite
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  your brand.
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  And my audience is mostly mortgage professionals, originators, loan office brokers, some real
• 8:26
  estate agents as well.
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  Obviously you have heard this before when we think of the concept of influencer, you know
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  what comes to mind for people, right?
• 8:37
  Yeah.
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  He signed up lips.
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  That's normally what people think of exactly, exactly.
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  So how would you define influencer?
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  What does that mean?
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  Well, you know, most people certainly think of it very commonly as somebody who has a
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  lot of followers on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube and they, you know, are the misperception
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  I think is that they're very superficial and they're probably not worth investing in
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  if you're a brand and you're trying to, you know, get the word out about stuff because
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  they're, they're the peace on duck lips set, right?
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  You know, they don't really pose, they live, they're living their best life.
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  That's about all they got.
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  But that is a very small sliver of the marketplace out there for content creators, which is kind
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  of the new term for them because they're really good influencers that have real influence
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  over their audiences and can persuade them to take action, which is my definition of
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  what an influencer is, is anyone who can persuade an audience to take action.
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  Those, those content creators are people who have worked very, very hard to accumulate
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  an audience and do a good job of creating content that engages that audience over time
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  and they have trust from that audience.
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  So for instance, your podcast by default makes you an influencer because you have built
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  an audience, the people who listen to this show trust you, they listen to you regularly
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  because you bring good guests, good expertise, good perspective and you help them with their
• 10:01
  business.
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  So if you were to be approached by a brand, it doesn't really matter what brand it is and
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  said, hey, we'd like to partner with you because we have a message that we think would
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  be relevant for your audience.
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  So how can we collaborate with you to, you know, to communicate that?
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  Now ideally, in a good influencer marketing, you know, approach from a company or a brand,
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  they would come to you and they would collaborate, they would say, well, here's the messages
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  we want to get across, here's what we want your audience to know, how would you best communicate
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  that?
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  And they would, you know, kind of, there'd be a back and forth there.
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  It's not that the brand wants to just buy an ad and stick it in front of your audience.
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  They really want to collaborate so that it's much more genuine and your body in on it
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  because that's where the trust exchange happens.
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  And so that superficial part of the influencer marketing world is a very small sliver.
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  I would say probably maybe 10, 15% or the fashion beauty lifestyle folks who are the
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  peace sign duck lips.
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  The rest of it are incredible content creators who have captive audiences and they may be
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  very small audiences or they may be very large, but they can persuade that audience to
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  take action.
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  And those are true influential people, people with influence.
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  And so the kind of theme of the book is let's take the R off of that word and stop thinking
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  about influencer marketing because that pushes us down a path, a preconceived notion of
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  who we're talking to.
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  And let's try to think about what we're trying to accomplish, which is achieving influence.
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  We want to influence an audience to take action.
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  So let's call it influence marketing and widen the guardrails a little bit and that
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  sort of opens it up.
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  It doesn't have to be even online.
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  It can be anyone who can persuade an audience and I've got a clever little thing for your
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  audience here in a minute, but I'll stop there and let you let you ask your next question.
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  What's popping in my head, which is kind of one of those obvious questions or answers
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  to that question is, can anybody be an influencer or have influence today?
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  Absolutely.
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  Should they be?
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  Well, should they be is a different question, but anyone who puts themselves out there,
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  who shares content, who posts anything on social media, but also who just gets involved
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  in the community.
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  And this is where I think a lot of your audience probably doesn't realize real estate agents,
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  mortgage brokers.
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  The one thing that this audience does more than anything is they network with people.
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  They talk to a lot of people, they know a lot of people in the community.
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  And from a local perspective, your audience is full of influencers.
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  And the reason I say that is because a couple of years ago at Cornell, where my day job
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  is I work at an ad agency during the day.
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  And we developed an influencer program for a hospital health care system a couple of
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  years ago.
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  And we really wanted to engage the, you know, the local online influencers who had the
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  food reviews and things like that, because we knew they had really good reach within
• 13:00
  our target audience.
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  But we also wanted to use people who were influential in the community.
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  So we got the mayor involved, we got the president of the urban league involved.
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  And as we started to ask around and kind of look and see who really impacts a lot of people,
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  we came up with two primary categories, dentists, doctors, real estate agents, right?
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  Because people who in their day-to-day job come into contact with dozens of people in
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  the community, add that up over a couple of months and you've got someone who impacts
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  several hundred, if not thousands of people.
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  And so our local influencers are not necessarily people who are on Instagram or TikTok, they're
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  people who are doing their jobs in their day-to-day life.
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  But obviously a lot of people don't think of themselves in that light.
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  That's true.
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  That's true.
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  And, you know, when you're looking at the term influencer marketing, you know, brands
• 13:52
  are hiring people who have big followings online.
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  In that context, it's hard to think of yourself as an influencer.
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  But again, when you are a local business, you have a geographic footprint that's small
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  and cohesive within a community.
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  Then someone who has 400,000 followers on Instagram doesn't do you any good because
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  less than 1% of their audience is actually going to be in the community, right?
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  You need someone who impacts that community footprint.
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  There's going to be some local bloggers and food reviewers and things like that that have
• 14:28
  an impact on that community.
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  But the influential people, not influencers, but the influential people are going to be the
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  music director at the local Presbyterian Church who's involved in all the local arts
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  things.
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  It's going to be the people who are involved with the Boys and Girls Club.
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  It's going to be the president of the PTA.
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  It's going to be a real estate agent who's really popular in town and involved in a lot
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  of the civic community stuff.
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  So you've got to look at influence rather than influencers, particularly if you're working
• 15:00
  on something for a local business because the online world, you know, the math doesn't
• 15:05
  work out.
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  They're not going to hit your audience the way that you want them to.
• 15:09
  All right.
• 15:10
  So as a few things flowing through my head right here, I mean, some of the ideas that
• 15:14
  have been presented to agents, for example, and even mortgage brokers is, you know, this
• 15:19
  concept Gary V.
• 15:20
  You think made it famous digital mayor, right?
• 15:24
  And so what that looks like in the real world is like, hey, go interview local influential
• 15:28
  people, right in your community or in interview business owners and be the dude featuring
• 15:33
  the coffee shop and all that.
• 15:35
  And what's what I'm thinking about is I'm curious, A, what you think about those, but then
• 15:39
  I was also thinking so you have a choice in terms of if we're going to leverage these social
• 15:43
  media brands and let's just face it or platforms.
• 15:47
  If you're a real estate agent, I always tell them you're in a position that requires you
• 15:51
  to become well known, right?
• 15:53
  So the whole joke about the secret agent like the secret agent they don't survive, same
• 15:57
  with the mortgage broker.
• 15:58
  So it's either you become influential, right?
• 16:02
  Or you attach yourself to somebody who is that's yeah, that's absolutely that's pretty
• 16:07
  much the two sides of that coin.
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  The whole digital mayor concept of you becoming influential and interviewing people in town
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  or providing, creating some sort of content that people within your local community are
• 16:19
  going to thank you for, appreciate you for.
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  That's probably the primary, you know, great idea.
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  That's the personal brand that you give something to the community in the form of your content,
• 16:30
  your expertise, whatever you can share, whatever you know.
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  And the thank you on the back end of that is that sort of inbound marketing when they're
• 16:39
  ready to buy what you sell or need what you do, they're going to come to you because you
• 16:44
  are the person of trust who has built that trust up over time.
• 16:47
  I would recommend that to anyone in any position at any time, as long as you're comfortable
• 16:54
  doing that because some people aren't comfortable doing live videos.
• 16:59
  Some people aren't comfortable doing podcasts, they're not comfortable posting pictures,
• 17:03
  writing things on Twitter.
• 17:04
  If you're not comfortable there, then it's not going to be a good place for you.
• 17:08
  And therefore you flip the coin and say, okay, how can I be of service to those people who
• 17:13
  are influential in my community or how can I do a guest little thing on their live stream
• 17:20
  or on their podcast just once, not all the time, so that I can get in front of the audience
• 17:26
  that they've accumulated.
• 17:28
  And when you look at it that way, using an influential third party person who has an audience
• 17:33
  to get in front of them, it's really not any different than old school media relations,
• 17:38
  public relations, right?
• 17:40
  You know, the tactics that we use to market in this industry, whether it's real estate
• 17:44
  or mortgage brokers 30 years ago where, well, it's right a guest column for the local
• 17:49
  business paper or, you know, let's do something to provide tips to the local TV station once
• 17:54
  a month and maybe sponsor a segment.
• 17:56
  Well, do the same thing with the influential people who are creating that highly relevant
• 18:00
  content locally and you're going to be in front of those audiences.
• 18:06
  Any more examples of what that looks like locally in the community.
• 18:10
  You know, I'm trying to think of examples where the mayor's one easy example to go to,
• 18:16
  but it's pretty hard to get, you know, time with the mayor.
• 18:18
  You know what I mean?
• 18:20
  But I'm thinking like, how many local business owners, if you will, you know, are
• 18:25
  becoming thought leaders, becoming these influential brands?
• 18:28
  I don't maybe you see more than I do, but I don't see a lot doing it.
• 18:32
  Well, I think we don't see a lot because we're just not looking in that direction.
• 18:37
  Because I think if you look at, if you pick out any random business, especially ones that are
• 18:41
  kind of the buzz is building about them in town and they're starting to, you hear their name a lot,
• 18:47
  go look at their Instagram feed, go look at their TikTok, go look at their Facebook,
• 18:51
  they're probably doing something to generate that buzz.
• 18:55
  There's a local, you know, women's clothing store in Lexington, Kentucky,
• 18:59
  just down the road.
• 19:00
  It's actually where Cornette is is in Lexington.
• 19:02
  I live in Louisville about an hour away, but there's a local clothing store there for women.
• 19:08
  And I see their content popping up all the time because a lot of the people I work with and a
• 19:13
  lot of the people I know in Lexington follow their feed.
• 19:16
  And so when they like that content, they comment on that content.
• 19:19
  It's going to pop up in my feed as a natural extension of that algorithm.
• 19:24
  And so I see that all the time.
• 19:25
  I don't necessarily follow that women's clothing store online because it's not my thing,
• 19:30
  right? I'm not a cross-dresser, I don't need that kind of stuff.
• 19:34
  But it's a top of mind kind of boutique for me if I want to buy something for my girlfriend or
• 19:39
  my mom or my daughter, right? So it's those kinds of opportunities.
• 19:43
  So for a real estate agent, it might be a little bit more challenging actually for the mortgage
• 19:49
  when you're a broker community. It's probably going to be a little bit easier.
• 19:52
  If you can approach someone like that and say, hey, why don't we, I bring some
• 19:57
  financial expertise to your show. Find an angle that makes what you know relevant to their audience.
• 20:05
  If they're women shopping for clothes, so they're shopping, they're spending money, right?
• 20:10
  There's going to be some angle that you can find to kind of wedge yourself in there and say,
• 20:14
  what if I came on your show, brought my wife or if you're a female, if what if I came into shop
• 20:20
  and in that experience, in that exchange, I give your audience some really good financial advice,
• 20:27
  whether it's refinancing their house or watching the financial markets or whatever it is.
• 20:32
  If you have a really good relationship with that boutique owner or develop one,
• 20:37
  that's going to give them better content. It's going to make their show more broad more appealing
• 20:42
  and make them more of a thought leader because they bring that expertise to their audience.
• 20:48
  That's interesting. One wouldn't think, and maybe this is only my limited belief here,
• 20:52
  but one wouldn't think that women's clothing would want to provide financial advice to their
• 21:00
  followers. I guarantee you, if the women's clothing boutique owner is married to a mortgage broker,
• 21:07
  that's going to happen. Now you've just got to find the ones. If your wife or your husband doesn't
• 21:15
  own the women's clothing store, find somebody who does and build a relationship with them and say,
• 21:19
  hey, let's help each other out. Maybe there's something for the audience that you're trying to build
• 21:24
  that a women's clothing boutique owner can bring to you. It's probably not going to be women's
• 21:28
  clothing. It might be, well, here's a financial situation that I attacked for my business and
• 21:33
  here's how it came out, but if you can work that tit for tat kind of thing, then you can share
• 21:39
  content and help each other out. Interesting. Let's transition and talk about, I love that you
• 21:46
  feature Robert Chaldini in your book, The Six Principles of Influence. This is appropriate.
• 21:54
  We're all trying to influence at some level. It just depends on what version of this that we're
• 21:58
  talking about. Where do you think, I mean reciprocity, we already talked about that, and I think
• 22:05
  conceptually people get that, but are you pretty well versed on this, I assume, because it's in your book.
• 22:12
  I'll try to remember it all, but yeah, I think I can hang with you.
• 22:16
  Do you want me to run through them? I don't want to put you on the spot. I know the reciprocity,
• 22:21
  scarcity, authority, consistency, liking, and consensus. He's added a seventh, though, now he's
• 22:27
  trying to confuse us because he's got a new version of the book out, and he's changed him up a
• 22:32
  little bit. I don't have the seven memorized. He altered one or two of them and added another one,
• 22:37
  but they're mostly tied to the consensus authority. They're just variations of the theme.
• 22:46
  Well, let's define these then. We know what reciprocity is, and I don't know,
• 22:50
  did these go in the order of, like I see in your book, reciprocity, scarcity, or does the order
• 22:54
  matter? Let's just talk. The order doesn't matter for me, really, but we know what reciprocity is.
• 22:59
  It's, you know, you give to get advice versions, which is, by the way, I don't want to gloss over
• 23:04
  that, but to your point about sharing content and all that kind of stuff, that's extremely valuable.
• 23:09
  Oh, yeah. And if you go back 15 years when social media was basically Twitter,
• 23:15
  and I guess it was my space, but that was a little obnoxious. But back in the early days of
• 23:20
  Twitter, and you know, O607 around and there, the way that you built social media credibility was
• 23:25
  you shared good content on Twitter. You found good YouTube videos and shared links. You found
• 23:28
  blog posts and shared links. I mean, my whole Twitter, I literally wrote down a Twitter strategy
• 23:34
  and tacked it to my bullet and board back in at Doe Anderson in 2006. I think it was. And it
• 23:40
  said Twitter strategy shared good stuff. And that was my, that was my whole strategy. And I wound up
• 23:47
  with 100,000 followers or whatever, just because I shared good content.
• 23:50
  Right. Right. And so yeah, that reciprocity is a big one.
• 23:54
  And that's still true today. Share good content.
• 23:57
  Yeah. I mean, sharing content has become a little bit more challenging on some of these
• 24:02
  networks. You don't, you don't really share content on Instagram the way you would. And you
• 24:07
  could do it in stories a little bit easier now. And they've added the ability to add links to
• 24:11
  stories. But, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are just, you can share links all day.
• 24:18
  And it's really good stuff. And it helps you build your credibility there.
• 24:22
  Right. And of course, we know, you know, this probably better than I, like sharing these links to
• 24:26
  outside platforms, Facebook in particular, doesn't like that. So they're going to suppress.
• 24:30
  Right. Let's keep you in the metaverse. So to speak. Yeah. Yeah. They like to, they like to keep
• 24:36
  you on on platform. So you kind of have to be smart about it. If you really want to share
• 24:40
  a YouTube video, you got to try to find the Facebook version of it or whatever. But, you know,
• 24:44
  sometimes it's just, let's just put it out there. And if the algorithm favors me great fine,
• 24:48
  if it doesn't, that's okay. But if you do great content consistently, the algorithm is going to
• 24:53
  favor you, right? Because you're, you're the people who follow you are going to look for you.
• 24:56
  If they don't see you in the feed, they're going to come find you.
• 24:59
  All right. So I told you this is going to be totally organic. So what about Facebook organic?
• 25:05
  There's particularly business pages dead, dead without paying for it. Oh, yeah. Pretty much.
• 25:10
  Yeah. You're, you're, you're lucky. If you have a thousand followers, you're lucky. If ten,
• 25:14
  see your content, if you're not putting your personal image. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the
• 25:20
  game we're playing. All right. Um, scarcity. Yeah. What do I mean? Okay. So in the context of,
• 25:28
  of the book, what, the way that I explained these six is through an influencer who tried to launch
• 25:36
  her own clothing line and it failed. Right. And so I went back and looked at, okay, what did she do
• 25:43
  or not do? That looking at the Chaudini six principles of persuasion. What, where did she drop
• 25:50
  off? Where did she fail? And so the scarcity one was she just said, okay, my store is open. Here's
• 25:57
  all my apparel. Go buy it. Oops. Sorry. Go buy it. There was never a, the idea of scarcity is,
• 26:03
  you know what? I'm going to launch this store on Friday, but I'm only selling this one item to
• 26:09
  the first 100 customers. So you need to be the first 100. If you create that air of scarcity,
• 26:17
  this is going to sell fast. There's only 10 of them, etc. Now all of a sudden, there's a psychological
• 26:22
  trigger in your audience that says, ooh, I better get there on time. I better be first. I better,
• 26:27
  you know, go do that. And so she just opened up, you know, the shop and said, here's a thousand
• 26:33
  items of everything. Go buy them. And nobody had any motivation to want to go buy them because,
• 26:38
  oh, if I don't go buy them today, it's okay. They'll be there tomorrow. There's plenty of. So creating
• 26:43
  that air of scarcity motivates your audience to act. Yeah, because people want what they can't
• 26:48
  have. They don't want to miss out all that kind of stuff. Fear of loss. Interesting. And I know there's,
• 26:52
  there's some examples for my listeners where they could use that where they have limited availability
• 26:56
  on their calendar, for example, you know, consultations on a limited basis, or I know a lot of my
• 27:02
  listeners like they teach classes and, you know, maybe you to get in this class, you have to achieve
• 27:09
  a certain level of production. There's lots of different ways to structure that. All right,
• 27:12
  back to your case studies. So she was wide open. So she was, it was just like, it's always going to
• 27:16
  be there whatever we can do whatever we want. Authority. All right, tell us about that.
• 27:21
  So authority is, you know, it kind of goes back to that reciprocity when you're building your
• 27:25
  brand and you're building that sort of, you know, the the mayor, you know, of the internet or the
• 27:29
  mayor of content for you, the mayor approach. When you do that and you offer up really good
• 27:35
  expertise in whatever, you know, vertical, whatever topic is your sort of forte, you're building
• 27:41
  authority, you're establishing yourself as a thought later, you're establishing a level of trust
• 27:46
  with your audience. If you don't do that, like this young lady was in the fashion space and she
• 27:53
  opened up her own apparel brand, but all of her content really prior to launching was just her
• 28:00
  in a nice outfit with, you know, chilling out emoji, emoji, emoji as the content. There was no
• 28:09
  fashion tips. Here's, here's what I think about the latest styles. There was no sort of academic
• 28:16
  establishment of why I should trust her for my fashion ideas. It was pretty picture, pretty picture,
• 28:22
  pretty picture, pretty picture. Now there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're trying to turn
• 28:28
  your influence or your audience into customers, you have to give them a reason to want to buy
• 28:35
  from you. This young lady is just throwing up pretty pictures and she's going to keep doing that
• 28:40
  no matter what. That's what her audience watches her feed for. They don't watch her feed for fashion
• 28:46
  tips or makeup tips or the newest styles or the reaction to the newest styles. So there's no authority
• 28:53
  in her. She's, you know, she's a model and that's the extent of it. If she had shared expertise
• 29:01
  consistently over time, which consistency is the next one. If she had built that up consistently
• 29:06
  over time and become an authority in fashion and style and then launched a fashion brand. Now,
• 29:13
  all of a sudden it's like, oh, I'm going to buy from her because she, I trust her. She's
• 29:16
  authoritative and she's been that way for a long time. And so those two are checked off authority
• 29:22
  consistency. I'm going to buy from her. Yeah. A lot of applicable use cases for my listeners for
• 29:28
  sure content and makes me think of listing agents or real estate agents who just post listings all
• 29:32
  the time, new listing, new listing, new listing. It's just pictures of homes, you know, without them
• 29:36
  taking time to establish, you know, their knowledge and authority around buying and selling real estate.
• 29:43
  Missing out on that. And then of course, consistently showing up. We know that. Okay. So next one is
• 29:46
  liking. Yeah. Liking is one of those that I always have to remind myself what that is because
• 29:51
  like, well, people like you, they like you, right? But that's really what it is. It's sort of about,
• 29:57
  you know, do, do, do people do you do things that make people like you? You know, are you a nice person?
• 30:03
  Are you, you know, someone who, and it kind of, all these kind of weave together, are you giving
• 30:10
  to get? Are you providing value? Are you being consistent with that? You know, are, are you someone
• 30:17
  that is likable? Is there, is there a likability to what you do and how you interact with people?
• 30:23
  And so if you have that, then that's not the only thing that's going to turn an audience member
• 30:29
  into a customer, but it's certainly going to help, you know, sort of grease that path for the,
• 30:35
  the audience member to become a customer. You want to do business with people that you like,
• 30:39
  that you know, that you trust. And that's, you know, one of the important parts there.
• 30:44
  We're about to get a visitor here on the, on the podcast. My cat just jumped up on the desk.
• 30:49
  Oh, cool. Well, is the cat likable? The cat is right now. She's, he's not likable because he's
• 30:55
  messing around with my wires. But if I grab him, it's going to make a, a mess. So I just kind of
• 31:00
  got to let him go. As long as he's not chewing through the wires. Yeah. If he starts chewing on
• 31:04
  stuff, I may have to, may have to grab him. Well, that's all we love about these. So last one is
• 31:09
  consensus. What does that mean? Yeah, consensus is, is really that sort of, you know, the,
• 31:16
  the quality of having multiple sources point to you as the, the place to go. And so it's like,
• 31:25
  you can be as consistent with your content. You can establish authority. You know, you can have
• 31:31
  the reciprocity and the liking. The scarcity is really more of a product centric kind of thing.
• 31:37
  But consensus is do other people tell the audience that you are trustworthy, that you are someone
• 31:45
  you should be able to buy from because there's not an influencer out there whose audience only comes
• 31:50
  to that influencer. They go to lots of other people in that vertical in that space. And those other
• 31:56
  people need to reinforce the fact that you are a relevant voice in that, in that conversation.
• 32:03
  And so that's why you see, you know, people like us, we go to marketing conferences and we
• 32:07
  network and whatnot because I'm going to, you know, be on, on your show. You're going to be on my
• 32:12
  show. And so within our two audiences, there's consensus that we are authoritative. And if you do
• 32:18
  that over the course of dozens of dozens of other people, now all of a sudden you've got a consensus
• 32:22
  within the marketplace that you're a trusted resource. And of course, consensus is what other people
• 32:27
  say about you, as you said, and in the online world today, that's reviews, online reviews,
• 32:33
  word of mouth, client testimonials, you know, so many different ways to think about this.
• 32:38
  You know, it's funny. And in talking through this, I've never actually, although I know
• 32:43
  Chaldini read his book years ago, I've never actually sat here and put the pieces of the puzzle
• 32:48
  together that if anybody's listening to this right now, that that literally is a looking at your
• 32:53
  graphic in the book. And of course, we'll link all this up in the show notes. That is the menu
• 32:59
  for how to grow your influence. Duh. Here he is. Here with the cat, pesky cat. The cat is very
• 33:10
  influential. Yeah, I mean, you're right. And the chapter in the book, I literally, I almost
• 33:17
  second-guessed myself when I was writing about this young lady, because I literally took her
• 33:22
  Instagram feed and her online presence through each of these six. And unfortunately, she didn't
• 33:28
  really do any of them. You know, she was, she was likable, certainly, with her content.
• 33:33
  She was consistent with her content, but she wasn't consistent with building the authority,
• 33:38
  et cetera, things like that. And she certainly didn't use any of this sort of sales tricks,
• 33:42
  like scarcity and whatnot, to present this opportunity. So it's a really good, I think it really
• 33:47
  drills in and shows you, this is how to build real influence, not just a bunch of followers online,
• 33:54
  which is what she had. That's a key difference, by the way, because you said earlier, she's
• 33:59
  just posting, posting, posting, but yeah, not, and I've been guilty of that, too, and actually
• 34:03
  struggle with that sometimes, like trying to figure out who's my brand, how do I want to show up
• 34:07
  in the world, right? But also, it's both art and science, I think, you know, maybe that's
• 34:13
  the struggle of a creator. Like they don't, they just want to create, they don't want to think like,
• 34:17
  oh gosh, I better sell something, you know, like most artists are starving. Sure.
• 34:22
  Well, and that's, it's a great point because, you know, the people who are outstanding on,
• 34:28
  let's say, Instagram or TikTok are creators, they're content creators, right? They create good art,
• 34:33
  they create good photography, good design, they produce good videos. The difference between
• 34:39
  someone who stops there and is successful as a quote unquote influencer online creator is someone
• 34:46
  who also has business sense to turn all of that into real influence, to be able to motivate
• 34:52
  people to buy a product, try a product, take action. What's wrong with influencer marking today,
• 34:59
  and what do you hope changes? Man, there's, I've got a list probably. I think you'd take up
• 35:05
  another hour or worth the, worth the show. I think really right now what's wrong with influencer
• 35:10
  marketing is we still have a lot of brands who look at influencers as an advertising channel.
• 35:17
  They see, when they see, okay, it's going to cost me $2,000 to have a post on this influencer's
• 35:25
  Instagram feed. They think of that in terms of the same terms they think of a paper click ad
• 35:31
  or an online media buy or a billboard or a TV. They think, okay, let's see, this person's got
• 35:37
  100,000 followers. It's going to cost me $2,000 to do that. That's a $20 CPM, so that's a pretty good
• 35:43
  rate for me. What that does is it completely disregards the influencer's time. It completely disregards
• 35:53
  the influencer's talent. It completely disregards their ability to create content that engages those
• 35:59
  100,000 people or some percentage of those 100,000 people. The biggest problem right now is brands
• 36:06
  still don't see influencers as contractors, freelancers, people who are earning a living,
• 36:14
  creating content that you need and that you want and that you value. They're still looking at
• 36:20
  them as just an advertising channel that they can throw money at. When brands start to see influencers
• 36:26
  like freelancers, if you go out and hire a graphic designer, you're not going to ask them to work
• 36:31
  for an exchange of product. You're going to say, I value your time, I value the designs you do,
• 36:38
  how much do you charge? Let's agree upon a payment structure for that. That's how you have to
• 36:43
  treat influencers because they are, in essence, freelancers that are capable of creating content
• 36:50
  just for you. You can engage them to do that too. They just happen to also have an audience with
• 36:55
  them that allows you to reach a certain number of people through their creative vision that brings
• 37:02
  your brand or your message to life for their audience in a relevant way. That's the biggest problem
• 37:07
  with influencer marketing right now. Secondarily to that, well, actually probably primary to
• 37:13
  primary problem from other people's perspective. That's the one that I deal with because I'm dealing
• 37:19
  with the nuts and bolts every day of doing influencer marketing. But there is still a huge pay gap
• 37:24
  in influencer marketing between whites and non-white creators and men and women. In some
• 37:32
  verticals, women far out earn men. But when you look at the per post price in most verticals, men
• 37:40
  still earn more. That's the byproduct of patriarchy and institutional racism that applies,
• 37:47
  which we're all dealing with and we're all becoming more educated about. That is something that
• 37:53
  is not endemic to influencer marketing. It's endemic to everything. But it's certainly manifesting
• 37:58
  itself there. That's interesting. I remember listening to your podcast about that. You guys
• 38:02
  had all the data on the different platforms. It's very interesting to see. I think if I remember
• 38:07
  correctly, was it on TikTok that the women are out earning? Yeah, it's actually TikTok and
• 38:13
  Instagram both per post women are out earning men. It's on YouTube where the men kind of trump
• 38:21
  everything. But I will say the interesting thing is about 83% of all quote unquote influencers who
• 38:28
  make money are women. So in total, women are far exceeding the earning potential of men.
• 38:35
  But when it's a one-to-one comparison, men typically make more money, which they probably
• 38:40
  shouldn't. Fair enough. All right. Just about to wrap up here. I'm just back to your book. I
• 38:46
  just put a cap on that whole influence thing. We just talked about types of impact. Four types of
• 38:51
  impact persuasion, consideration, exploration and information. Why I paused on this is because
• 38:59
  I have bought things off of Instagram because of influencers. Yeah. Products, right?
• 39:04
  Oh, yeah. Because you follow somebody and how many listening have already done the same thing.
• 39:08
  The question I wanted to ask you this, I guess, to we might close out on this. But what about the issue
• 39:15
  of an influencer is rep in a product, which you and I'm thinking some of the nutritional products
• 39:22
  I've bought, for example, where you say to yourself, come on, dude. You're really using that.
• 39:29
  You're just getting paid. How do you deal with that? That's one that we're always going to have
• 39:36
  that. Because if you turn on the home shopping network or QVC or whatever, you're going to get
• 39:43
  that. That's always going to be there. I think from a brand perspective, if you're reaching out
• 39:49
  to influencers, I think you just have to be really thorough in vetting who you're going to reach
• 39:54
  out to, really consume and study their content, know how they treat sponsored content so that you
• 40:00
  can say, this person just doesn't seem very genuine. And if they don't, then they're not a good
• 40:05
  influencer for you. You want to work with people who, A, have a set of standards. Like, look,
• 40:12
  I'm not going to rep your product unless I like it. So I have to try it first. And I need to be
• 40:17
  educated and you need to give me lots of background and assets and whatnot so I can figure out if I
• 40:22
  do like it first. If they give you that out of the gate, they're probably going to be pretty good
• 40:27
  to work with, especially if they like your product. And if they don't, they're a great source of
• 40:32
  feedback, but obviously you don't want to engage them for an influencer thing because they're not
• 40:36
  going to be honest with, if they are honest with their audience, it's not good for you if they
• 40:42
  don't like your product. So you just have to be really diligent about picking the right influencers
• 40:47
  if you're on that side of things. If you're a consumer and you're on the outside, you're going
• 40:52
  to trust the influencers who are more transparent, who are more genuine about the products that they
• 40:57
  do rep. And so everybody has their own filter and you're going to believe some people and not
• 41:02
  believe others. And so I think that's to each their own. There's going to be a number of people
• 41:07
  out there, whether it's the coupon clippers or the the gullible or whatever, there's always going
• 41:14
  to be an audience for those people who are just chills. But for you personally, you're going to
• 41:20
  trust who you trust based on how you react to their content. So just keep that in mind.
• 41:27
  Yeah, it's interesting. I'm thinking of the one influencer in particular that I've purchased
• 41:32
  from and the funny thing about it is he so rarely even speaks. It's always just those video clips
• 41:39
  of him like doing different things, workout related or whatever. And then it's just like, you know,
• 41:43
  there's the thing, the product, the whatever. And you know, I've definitely had some DMs with him
• 41:46
  and all that kind of stuff. But I'm looking at back to the influence thing. It's just like, okay,
• 41:52
  all you do is like work out on video. You know what I mean? You've got some authority there,
• 41:56
  but there's not a lot of liking. There's a little bit of consensus lacking because there's
• 42:01
  nobody else saying anything about him. Right. It's funny. It's a little bit of self study here.
• 42:06
  But there's also that psychological, you know, thing in there of aspiration, right? That person's
• 42:12
  working out and you like the fact that they are obviously fit. They look good. They feel good.
• 42:19
  You know, you can you're getting inspired by this workout. And so you aspire to be like them.
• 42:24
  And so when they stop and go, I use these vitamin pills. You know, I get me the vitamin pills.
• 42:29
  Sweet. You'll have six pack abs if you take these vitamins. All right, man. This is a fun
• 42:37
  conversation. Let's close it out this way. What is the future of influencer marketing? Because I
• 42:42
  think some people still, you know, question it, whatever, what's what's the future? Is it here to
• 42:48
  stay? I think I definitely think it is. And the reason it is is because we just live in a signal
• 42:53
  to noise ratio world. And right now, the signal is, you know, content creators who have,
• 43:00
  you know, the ability to capture the attention of people online, create compelling content and
• 43:05
  engage them around it. And that's not just the territory of the big media companies anymore.
• 43:10
  It's the territory of anyone who can plug into the internet, create good content.
• 43:15
  There's a lot of people, most people are plugging in and creating content. The vast majority of
• 43:20
  them are horrible at it and boring and we don't want to, you know, it's just noise. But the ones
• 43:25
  that stand out, those are your influencers, those are your influential people, the people who are
• 43:30
  collecting an audience around something. And so I really think they are here to stay. I think you're
• 43:36
  going to start to see more and more brands and agencies realize that a TikTok influencer,
• 43:42
  which is a perfect example, is a unique content creator. They create something different that
• 43:48
  at agency creatives don't really create marketing. People don't really create. I think you're
• 43:53
  going to see a lot more of those online content creators get hired full time at agencies and brands
• 44:00
  to just create content for them. I think you're going to start to see it become a, you know,
• 44:06
  sort of ubiquitous within brands and agencies. We've got this, you know, social media content
• 44:11
  creation team over here. And it's not just your traditional art directors and copywriters.
• 44:16
  It's actually, you know, digital natives, stars of TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and whatnot.
• 44:24
  I really see that becoming, you know, more of a thing in the future. But I also see brands getting
• 44:30
  more sophisticated about partnering with influencers in relevant ways. Instead of doing the sponsor
• 44:35
  post one off at a time, having an influencer that there's a good Venn diagram overlap with your
• 44:42
  audiences. And you say, you know what? I want to partner with you for the next five years.
• 44:47
  And I just want to make sure that at some point your audience immediately looks at my brand and
• 44:52
  goes, yes. So cause I do that. We're in a world now where if my teenager comes to me, you know,
• 44:58
  we have the talk, we were mentioned, you know, going off to college, but the teenager says,
• 45:02
  nope, I want to be an influencer. Like, there's a pretty good chance your kids going to make a lot
• 45:09
  more money than you are if they're good at it. So encourage that. Yes. Like it's, I mean,
• 45:14
  if they, if you can see that they have a passion for it and they have some degree of knack of talent
• 45:20
  of creating compelling content, maybe not for you, but their age group, you know, see what they're
• 45:26
  doing and see how people are reacting to it. Fan those flames, man, I think we should be teaching
• 45:30
  influencer marketing skills, content creator skills in elementary school for crying out loud.
• 45:36
  I mean, you literally have, I talked, I interviewed for a piece I'm writing for entrepreneur.
• 45:41
  I interviewed a 17 year old girl two weeks ago. She started making slime videos on Instagram when she
• 45:50
  was 14 years old. Her company is now worth a couple million dollars. And she's in college now.
• 45:57
  Right. Her parents wanted to be a doctor or lawyer. And she said, you know, after I showed them,
• 46:04
  you know, the first real quarter of earnings from selling slime through my Instagram videos,
• 46:10
  they shut up about being a doctor. They're like, Oh, okay, we'll just get out of here right now.
• 46:14
  Do your thing, honey. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, listen, this is a fantastic, really
• 46:20
  fascinating topic as well, this whole influencer thing. Before we go, of course, we want to allow
• 46:25
  people to connect with you. What I just realized, just don't on me, because I'm looking at the books
• 46:29
  you've written besides the one we just mentioned, which will put links in the show notes. Once again,
• 46:33
  that is win-fluence. But the other two books, dude, that just hit me. You wrote the Rebels Guide
• 46:41
  to email marketing and no bullshit social media. And I was like, Holy shit, I've read those books,
• 46:46
  man. That's awesome. Thank you. I did write those. Yeah. I wrote those with DJ Waldo and Eric
• 46:53
  Decker, respectively. And had a good time. That was back in the days when, you know, we were all
• 46:59
  still trying to figure out social media and, you know, Eric and I were out there early on with
• 47:04
  we should be talking about how to use this strategically instead of just joining the conversation.
• 47:10
  Yeah. And the book did really well. And then DJ and I wrote the Rebels Guide to email
• 47:13
  marketing. He's the more the email marketing guy. I just kind of brought the flavor to it, I guess.
• 47:18
  And yeah, both of those books were a lot of fun. Yeah, for sure. All right. So for people who,
• 47:23
  you also have a podcast, real quickly, tell us the name of the podcast.
• 47:26
  It's also wind fluids. It's wind fluids. The influencer marketing podcast or the, I'm sorry,
• 47:31
  the influence marketing podcast. And yeah, twice a week, I do a commentary on Mondays and then I
• 47:37
  interview somebody from the from the industry on Thursdays. And it's a fun show. Come, come join in
• 47:44
  and listen. So the best place to obviously we'll put links, I said, like I said, regarding the books,
• 47:48
  probably just to the Amazon, you know, links here or best place would be for people to connect with
• 47:53
  you. Go to your website. Where do you want to send them? Jason Falls dot com will give you a
• 47:58
  menu to find everything. The book, the podcast, my other podcast digging deeper, which I do for
• 48:04
  a cornette, which is more of a marketing strategy interview show. Everything's there. Jason Falls dot
• 48:09
  com. Awesome. Hey, man. Appreciate you making time today. Thanks for having me. This has been great.
• 48:14
  Awesome. Awesome. Hey, everybody listening. You know what to do. If you like this episode,
• 48:17
  hey, leave us a review. Appreciate you. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.
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