The Influencer Effect: Benefits, Strategies and Considerations for Influencer Marketing

The Influencer Effect: Benefits, Strategies and Considerations for Influencer Marketing

Influencers have become the trendsetters of the digital age and are powerful allies in the financial services world. They help shape consumer preferences, including how people think about money, investing and financial planning. Their ability to connect with audiences in an authentic and relatable way can transform intimidating financial topics into manageable, and even interesting, conversations. This can all have significant impact on the businesses and brands they promote.

Although influencers often have high followings on social media, they don’t necessarily have to. An influencer’s value isn’t tied solely to the size of their following – in fact, some of the most impactful influencers may have smaller yet more highly engaged communities. While exceptions exist, it’s generally a reliable assumption that those considered influencers meet the following criteria:

• Relatable: They can speak with authority on their topic and are generally well liked. 
• Trustworthy: They think strategically about their approach.
• Content Creator: They can create high-quality content that resonates with their audience and keeps them entertained, inspired and interested.
• Audience Understanding: They know their audience well and understand why they follow, trust and support them.
• Consistency: They show up every day with a consistent message and produce useful content regularly.

Benefits of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing offers numerous advantages, and effectively communicating these benefits to your clients can be key to securing their commitment to partnering with influencers.

• Increased Brand Awareness: Influencers have established audiences who trust them, so partnering with them can quickly introduce your brand to a large number of potential customers.
• Builds Brand Authority: Influencers are often seen as authorities or trusted figures in their niches, so their endorsement can significantly enhance your brand’s credibility.
• Enriches Content Strategy: Influencers are skilled content creators. Collaborating with them can lead to high-quality content that you can use across your own marketing channels.
• Improves SEO: Influencer collaborations often lead to backlinks and mentions across the web, which can improve your website’s search engine ranking.
• Targeted Reach: Influencers typically have a specific niche, so you can target a very specific audience that aligns with your brand, ensuring more relevant exposure. 
• Improved Engagement: Influencers often have highly engaged followers who are more likely to interact with your brand’s content when promoted by someone they follow and admire.
• Elevate Stakeholders: By aligning them with respected influencers, internal stakeholders and executives can enhance their visibility and credibility, positioning them as thought leaders in their industry and fostering stronger connections with key audiences.
• Cost: Compared to traditional advertising, influencer marketing can be more cost-effective, especially when working with micro-influencers who have smaller but highly engaged audiences.

What’s New in Influencer Marketing?

Unlike the early days when brands were merely dipping their toes into the world of influencer marketing, the landscape has evolved significantly. Staying ahead of these ongoing changes is crucial for crafting effective influencer marketing strategies that resonate with your clients to drive brand success.

Beware of AI: While tools like TikTok Symphony are revolutionizing how brands create content by using AI-driven features, the rise of AI generated images and videos could lead to a mistrust in influencer marketing.

The Growth of Niche: Influencers will continue to develop expertise in their niche or industry, making them even more sought after by brands in those verticals.

Monitoring Platform Shifts: Traditionally viewed as a hub for career networking and job postings, LinkedIn is increasingly becoming a vital player in the influencer marketing arena. 

Longer Partnerships: Brands are increasingly recognizing the value of developing deeper, longer-term collaborations with trending influencers who align with their brand’s values and audience.

Follow the Money: Where engagement happens, marketing dollars typically follow—which is why 75% of B2B marketers are now investing in influencer marketing and why industry leaders like Intel and Hootsuite are developing relationships with LinkedIn influencers.

Considerations for Financial Services Firms

Before finalizing partnerships with influencers, there are a few critical factors to consider. Moreover, some firms may have ‘dream influencers’ they aspire to collaborate with, making it essential to take these preferences into account as you evaluate potential partnerships.

Regulatory Compliance: From adherence to financial regulations to legal disclosure, the amount of risk associated with a financial services influencer campaign is much higher than a traditional B2C campaign. There will likely need to be much more time spent pre-campaign to mitigate the risks associated with influencer partnerships, including reputation management.

Content Authenticity: AKA the “cringe” factor. Ensure that the content created by influencers is authentic and resonates with your audience. Overly scripted or forced endorsements can damage credibility. 

Micro vs. Macro: Choosing a micro-influencer over a macro-influencer can be advantageous for a financial services brand because they often have a more engaged and niche audience. While they will likely have a core group of trusted followers, it’s important to set expectations when it comes to their potential impact.

Measurement and ROI: It’s critical to define clear KPIs before launching the campaign. This might include metrics like engagement rates, lead generation, conversion rates, or changes in brand perception. Evaluate both short-term metrics and the long-term impacts as financial services often require longer customer journeys, so the influence might manifest over time.

Brand Fit: For any influencer campaign, it’s important to make sure the brand of the influencer – who often have their own unique personas – is a fit for the company. A mismatch here can cause the campaign to fall flat.

Brand Safety: Associating with influencers who might engage in controversial behavior or share misleading information can damage your brand’s reputation and erode customer trust. Ensuring brand safety helps protect your company from regulatory risks and maintains the integrity and reliability that are vital in the financial sector.

Client Case Study: A Phased Approach

We recently partnered with one of our clients to build out their influencer marketing program. Once we identified the influencers we wanted to leverage, the next step was to build out a strategy to engage with each one.

For this particular campaign, we recommended a phased approach that allowed us to build credibility with our target influencers by amplifying their voices and steadily engaging with their content on a regular basis. Our recommended approach comprised of three phases: 

Phase 1: Employee Engagement

The first phase of our activation strategy was designed to begin the process of nurturing a relationship between our client’s organization and target influencers. By encouraging all employees to follow, regularly like and engage with influencer content, we started to organically grow our relationship with each influencer. 

As employees engaged with influencer content, we established a clear link between the client’s organizational values and the influencer’s platform. It also helped lay the groundwork for Phase 2, when we began to have key executives at the organization engage with the influencer’s content.

Phase 2: Brand Amplification

The second phase focused on amplifying our selected influencers by having key client executives and their corporate LinkedIn account share and engage with influencer content. By engaging with their content on a regular basis, our influencers should become more familiar with the client’s brand in a natural, organic way.

Phase 3: Influencer Partnerships

In this final phase, we started to engage the influencers in formal partnerships. At this point, they were already familiar with the brand/content and even began to react to some of our engagement.

As we spent more time engaging with their content, we also got a better idea of how we wanted to leverage each influencer (bylines, podcasts, webinars, etc.). We then started to formally engage with the target influencers to gauge the level of partnership they’d be comfortable committing to.

At Vested, our teams propose, manage, and execute strategic partnerships between brands and influencers in the unique spaces our clients occupy. For more influencer marketing insights and best practices, feel free to reach out to us here to learn more.