When you think of influencer marketing, what comes to mind? A fitness expert promoting a new athleisure brand? A “Get Ready with me” video praising the latest plant-based moisturizer?
While influencer marketing has become synonymous with industries like fashion, lifestyle products, and food and beverage, the possibilities extend far beyond that. More than half of marketers say influencer marketing has a significant impact on both brand awareness and customer loyalty, according to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse survey.
For traditional industries like financial services, healthcare, and insurance, this should be a wake-up call. Brands in these sectors have been slow to adopt influencer marketing for a variety of reasons, including industry regulations, assumptions about their target audience, and a preference for full creative control of their campaigns.
But as younger generations increasingly focus their content consumption and purchasing preferences on social, these are the brands that stand to benefit the most from influencer marketing. If legacy industries expect to grow, now is not the time to rely on traditional marketing strategies.
Influencer marketing has the power to reroute the customer journey in some of the most traditional sectors. Why stagnate when you can innovate?
Influencers open the door to the next generation of customers
Working in influencer marketing, it has always been difficult to get established brands to understand the power of influencers. But the “sell” is not surprising. All businesses need to meet consumers where they are, and increasingly that's happening on social.
Refusing to work with influencers who have built an engaging audience on social is just plain wrong.
According to a Q3 2023 Pulse survey, marketers recognize that the most valuable opportunity with influencer marketing is expanding their reach to new audiences. Given how product discovery habits are changing, there is an urgent need to get in front of untapped audiences. Consider that 77% of Millennials and 73% of Gen Z want to handle more of their next purchase from home. Alternatively, 66% of Gen Z have used YouTube to find banking information, and 44% have used his TikTok.
We often hear about how brands are working with influencers to increase credibility, but that only reveals a small part of the business case. Consumers are smart. They will recognize ads and paid partnerships, even if they come from influencers they follow and trust. But influencers can give traditional industries something that has been nearly impossible to achieve in the past: the ability to bring the experience of a product or service to life in a more authentic way.
Let's take the automotive industry as an example. Automakers like Subaru and Toyota balance the quality of content and experience by leveraging influencers to show their vehicles in action.
These partnerships can support a buyer's research process long before they set foot in a dealership in a way that a mass-produced commercial or website slideshow cannot. There's no reason a similar approach wouldn't work for retail banks, insurance companies, and consumer electronics brands.
Influencer marketing strategies and metrics shouldn’t exist in isolation
For brands accustomed to running campaigns on TV, print, and radio (not to mention organic social), influencer marketing brings new measurement challenges. Almost half of the marketers we surveyed said they struggle to quantify an influencer's ROI.
The fundamental issue is that influencer marketing cannot be compared on an apples-to-apples basis with other channels such as paid social advertising or display advertising. Partnerships with influencers are unique to the medium in that advertisers get two outcomes: organic impressions and creative assets that can be reused across channels. There are multiple factors to consider when it comes to spending. Marketers need to understand the industry benchmarks for each channel they use before declaring whether their efforts are successful or not.
Influencer efforts shouldn’t exist in silos, so measuring performance solely on organic influencer posts doesn’t give a complete picture. Strategically weaving influencer assets into the broader media mix makes influencer marketing highly effective. Defining a clear measurement approach upstream that considers the entire “influencer media buy” is the way to understand the true impact of influencer campaigns.
How you measure an influencer's effectiveness depends on the type of campaign you're running at the time. An influencer's evaluation of a partnership aimed at increasing brand awareness is very different from evaluation of a partnership aimed at encouraging repeat purchases by customers.
Another important (but often overlooked) variable in the influencer ROI equation is cost savings. Yes, influencers provide reach and content creation expertise. But the content they provide goes far beyond social, and the cost is less than working with some creative agencies. A 6-month influencer partnership quickly turns into a complete asset library that can drive your paid initiatives, website content, and even email marketing. It's hard to put a price on working smarter.
Be creative even in a restricted space
The magic of brand-influencer collaborations is best seen when marketers relinquish control. Influencers know their audience and what will (or won't) be a hit. But for brands bound by strict regulations and compliance obligations, it's difficult to let go of the creative reins.
If you can’t get away from having an overly prescriptive content brief, it’s worth asking whether influencer marketing is the right choice for your brand. (Partnerships on Reels that require formal credit at the end are beside the point.) That doesn't mean influencers should get carte blanche rights, but be firm and flexible. There needs to be a proper balance between the sexes.
This means involving influencers earlier in the ideation stage so that the final product is a true collaboration. It also means writing a clear, non-rigid brief that specifies what cannot be included to comply with industry regulations. For example, alcohol brands often have to ask partners working on summer campaigns to not show body parts underwater at pools or beaches. While drinking alcohol, even dipping your toes in the water can be considered dangerous.
Most importantly, brands need to remember that influencer marketing content is more than just studio-produced advertising. In the same way that mascots like Progressive's His Flo and Dos Equis' The Most Interesting Man in the World have become cultural icons, influencers are growing their brand where their audience spends most of their time: on social. We can create cultural and relatable moments around the world.
This doesn't have to be hard-sell content detailing the details of your coverage plan and deductibles. It should be a brand that gives your brand a voice and (sometimes) a face and stays alive rent-free in the consumer's memory until they finally need your product or service.
Chart smarter customer journeys with influencer marketing
Influencer marketing may be unfamiliar territory for regulated or traditional industries, but it's well worth considering. To grow, companies in these sectors need to acquire new customers. If you don't meet potential customers where they spend the most time, you can't expect them to invest in you.
Ready to start building your business case for more influencer marketing resources? Use the influencer marketing budget template to speed up the planning process.
