INTERVIEW: How financial marketers can embrace influencers

The pandemic has boosted the value of influencer marketing, leading to more scrutiny on outcomes rather than the pursuit of “vanity metrics”, says the author of a book on the subject.

Neal Schaffer is a consultant and speaker on the topic of social media, who published “The Age of Influence” in 2020. In the book, he argued that brands were chasing “vanity metrics” and not taking an objective-based approach to working with influencers.

“Influencer marketing before Covid was always ‘we don’t know who we’re investing in, but they have lots of followers and the agency told us to do it.”

Neal names three significant changes during the last two years. More companies are working with influencer with smaller followings, due to greater authenticity. There is also a growing emphasis on co-creation of content.

“Influencers can amplify content to their communities but [brands] might also want to leverage influencer content.

“We’ve seen a lot of companies now working with influencers where it’s solely based on content creation, not necessarily on amplification.”

Thirdly, there has been a rise in influencer marketing platforms, called brand ambassador platforms, which work with influencers to train and foster them.

“Influencer marketing did not die with Covid, there are some people who think that might be the case. On the contrary, we value the real and the raw. It’s changed the way influencers operate.

He cites celebrities doing livestreams from their homes with poor lighting, giving this as an example of “the authenticity we crave”.

Neal argues brands have got “smarter in working with people out there that have that authentic, raw self. They’re not gaming the system, they’re not buying fake followers, and they truly engage with their community.”

The financial angle

This broad lesson applies no less to financial services. The key element underpinning successful influencer marketing is being human.

Neal also argues many customers now want to do business with brands that represent them and their values.

“There’s a lot more content around CSR, sustainability, SDGs, employee branding – a lot of day in the life of employees, a more human side.

“At the end of the day, the more human you are when approaching the social media and messaging, the more successful you’re going to be.”

He argues that customers and employees can both play a role in this.

“Let them be the bearers of your marketing message as much as possible, because at the end of the day, social media was made for people, not for business.”

He notes that major companies in the IT industry are talking more about social issues such as diversity and inclusion.

“They’re talking about the things that people really care about, and showing that they are a company that represents that, a company you might want to work at, but also a company you might want to do business with.”

Neal argues that this is about relevance and humanising, “and you can’t do it through a brand logo. You’ve got to do it through people. I would start from the inside and go through there.”

An example of this is the use of podcasts involving interviews with customers, whether on the consumer or business side.

The community approach

Neal talks about how some financial brands have created communities of customers, who also function as influencers.

Speaking of companies that are doing this well, Neal highlights Lush, which completely pulled out of social and “let people do the talking”, as well as creating a community on their own website.

Communities can offer a source of new content and a launchpad for new campaigns, but this has to be done right and viewed “strategically”.

“When you align it with this notion that we’re going to leverage our community for amplification, content creation and to recruit other brand ambassadors, it becomes very powerful.”

He highlights Bank of America as one financial brand that has launched a community but that hasn’t necessarily succeeded. As a customer joining the community, Neal says that all that happened was he received an email asking him to take part in a survey but that it didn’t really offer much else.

“They had the great idea of creating the community, but then, once you create it, how are you going to activate it? What’s the ROI for the participants? It seemed like it was a one-sided conversation and therefore I actually pulled out of that community.”

The rise of the use of case studies in marketing financial products, whether mortgages or insurance, also shows the value of having customers as spokespeople. Neal highlights an example from the cosmetic dentistry industry, where a dentist offers services in exchange for influencers on Instagram and other platforms talking about their experience.

“You can translate that into financial services; if you’re going to do a case study, why wouldn’t you reach out to an influencer and say: ‘we have a new financial product or we have a new app or whatever it is.”

“I know people just want to get it done and therefore paid Facebook and Google ads is a very, very easy and efficient way to do things. But [you can] take a little bit of that and begin investing in these content creators.

“There’s only so many people that talk about mortgage strategies or the best way to invest money. If you consider all of these separate influencers, they’re at a lesser scale than traditional media, but they are up and coming.”

Relevance, not size, matters

Neal argues that the newer fintechs are already doing a lot of work with smaller scale influencers, but more established financial services companies should also be taking advantage of it.

“Leveraging influencers makes you relevant to the conversation today. It brings in new demographics that are heavily using social media; not just Gen Z but also millennials in general.

“In many ways, working with an influencer can humanise your institution. When people are talking about the good experiences they have with your institution and these people have some sort of reach in the community, there is positive impact.”

The key issue is not “big or small, but relevance”. While larger influencers have greater reach and may have high levels of trust, they may not be trusted on this specific issue, while a smaller influencer with a more niche audience may be trusted specifically on financial services advice.

Smaller fintech players with smaller budgets are showing a strong impact from working with these companies.

TikTok – a maturing social network

LinkedIn is obviously a popular platform for financial services marketers, but other platforms are growing in relevance. The audience for Instagram is a younger one, and younger still with TikTok. Neal says TikTok is a community where people “can see through things” and want authentic, user-generated content rather than advertisers and brands.

“The content is more dynamic and raw.

“The younger you go, the more important it is to engage with influencers and let them be your promotional vehicle in terms of your own content.”

He argues that instead of brands trying to do it themselves, influencers are the best gateway into a platform like TikTok.

“Once you find influencers that are resonating with their audience and also seem like a good cultural fit, that’s when I would engage with those influencers to potentially create content for you. From there I would look at what they do, how they do it and try to replicate it.”

Neal says that social networks tend to mature over time, becoming broader and easier for brands to take part in.

“Right now, TikTok is going to be really, really hard for a brand for those reasons. I would almost have a 100% influencer marketing strategy when it comes to that.”