Look, I’m going to make a bold call here. In five years time, the majority of the top 100 brokers will all be influencers. Not might be. Will be. And if that sounds crazy to you, you’re probably not paying attention to where this industry is heading.

The Personal Brand Reality

Do brokers really need a personal brand?

I’m a massive advocate for brokers building a personal brand to build their business. I’ve seen first hand the sheer amount of high converting lead flow that comes from having a strong personal brand. And I’d go as far as saying that in five years time, majority of the top 100 brokers will all be influencers.

This isn’t just theory. This is what’s happening right now. The brokers who are building audiences, who are showing up consistently online, who are putting their face and their message out there – they’re the ones getting the best leads. Not just more leads. Better leads. People who already know them, trust them, and are ready to work with them.

The old model of referral partners and BDM relationships isn’t dead, but it’s being supplemented by something far more powerful: direct access to your ideal clients through your personal brand. You become the authority in your niche. You become the obvious choice. And when someone in your audience needs a mortgage, they’re not shopping around – they’re coming straight to you.

But Here’s the Thing About All Those Leads…

Getting leads is one thing. Converting them is another game entirely.

If our conversion rates suck, the best way to improve them is to make it as easy as possible for our clients to do business with us.

I see brokers celebrating that they’ve got 50 leads from their content, but they’re only converting 10% of them. That’s not a lead problem. That’s a conversion problem. And usually, it’s because we’re making it too hard for clients to actually work with us.

There are a ton of strategies and tactics we can use to lift our conversion rates. Here are a couple of bangers we can implement in our biz today.

Number One. Complete the fact find alongside the client

Instead of sending it out and hoping they do it on their own. This is massive. When you send someone a form and tell them to fill it out, you’re creating friction. You’re giving them homework. And most people hate homework. They’ll put it off. They’ll do it half-heartedly. Or they’ll just never do it at all.

But when you jump on a call and complete it together? You get better information. You build rapport. You move them forward in the process immediately. There’s no gap where they can lose momentum or get distracted by another broker.

Number Two. Help them through the doc collection process

Especially if they’re not that tech savvy. Document collection is where deals go to die. It’s where clients get overwhelmed, where they procrastinate, where they ghost you because they’re embarrassed they haven’t done what you asked.

So don’t just send a list and hope for the best. Walk them through it. Show them exactly what you need and where to find it. Make it feel easy. Make it feel like you’re doing this together, not like you’ve given them a mountain to climb on their own.

Number Three. Implement a simple follow up strategy

That helps the client get unstuck if they’re stuck at any part of the process. This is about being proactive instead of reactive. Don’t wait for them to reach out when they’re confused. Check in. Ask if they’re stuck. Make it normal and easy for them to say “actually, yeah, I don’t know how to get that document” or “I’m not sure what you meant by this.”

The easier you make it to work with you, the more deals you’ll close. Simple as that.

Targeting Your Niche With Ads: The Two-Layer Approach

So you’ve built your personal brand. You’re getting organic reach. But now you want to scale it faster with ads. How do we target our niche using ads?

There are two layers.

The first layer is the technical side

Each platform has its own mechanics that let us narrow down our audience to people who best align with our ideal client niche. Facebook has detailed targeting options. Instagram lets you target specific interests and behaviors. LinkedIn lets you go after job titles and industries. Google lets you target search intent.

This technical layer is about using the platform’s tools to get your ads in front of the right eyeballs. Age ranges. Income brackets. Geographic areas. Interests. Behaviors. All of it.

The second layer is the creative side

This is where our content and copy do the heavy lifting, speaking directly to our ideal clients. That’s what filters out the people we don’t want and pulls in the ones we do.

You can have perfect technical targeting, but if your creative doesn’t speak directly to your niche, you’ll get rubbish leads. The creative is where you demonstrate that you understand their specific situation. Where you call out their pain points. Where you position yourself as the obvious solution for people like them.

When you nail both layers, that’s when ads become a machine. Technical targeting gets you in the right neighborhood. Creative targeting gets you in the right house, talking to the right person, about the right problem.

And just like most things in the mortgage biz

When something needs a higher level of technical skill, we got three options:

1️⃣ Learn to do it ourselves

2️⃣ Pay someone else to do it

3️⃣ Or find the sweet spot between the two

I’m personally a fan of option three for ads. Learn enough to be dangerous. Understand the principles so you can direct the strategy. But bring in someone who lives and breathes this stuff to handle the execution and optimization. You don’t have time to become a full-time media buyer. But you also can’t afford to hand it off completely to someone who doesn’t understand your business or your niche.

Putting It All Together

Here’s the full picture: Build your personal brand. Become an influencer in your niche. Use that to generate high quality leads who already know, like and trust you. Then make it ridiculously easy for those leads to convert by removing every bit of friction from your process. And when you’re ready to scale beyond organic reach, layer in ads with both technical and creative precision.

The brokers who figure this out in the next year or two? They’re going to dominate. The ones who ignore it and keep doing things the old way? They’ll be wondering why their business isn’t growing while watching the influencer brokers eat their lunch.

Your call.