Influencer Marketing For The Wellness Industry.

Health & Wellness is taking over, no matter which social media channel you hop on to. Watching videos of impressive yoga poses on YouTube or posting Facebook updates about a new recipe of a healthy kale salad, or exploring CBD products on Instagram with hashtags like #selfcare and #goorganic on the rise of adopting the wellness culture.

Wellness products and services are more than just a trending topic or a fad. With a frantic modern lifestyle, more and more people are looking for healthier ways to stay physically and mentally balanced, profoundly changing consumer behavior. According to a Global Wellness Institute (2019) report, the wellness market encompasses everything from adaptogens, jade rollers, acupuncture, probiotics for gut health, CBD, collagen, boutique gyms to day spas, is now valued at a whopping $4.2 trillion industry.

Influencer driven collaborations are one of the latest and effective digital marketing trends across every industry. With overwhelming options on the market, consumers lose sight of what brands they can trust, and influencer marketing is a smart move. Wellness brands engage in highly visual content, and if you want to target niche audiences and build your brand awareness, digital influencers can be your thing.

Altimeter’s research reveals that Influencer Marketing is on the cusp of becoming one of the largest marketing investment areas for both agencies and brands. Below are some figures from their future influencer marketing report: When it comes to millennials, only 1% trust advertisements. However, 33% of them trust blog reviews for their purchases.

Around 40% of people reported that they purchased a product online after seeing it used by an influencer on YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter.

71% of influencers believe that it’s an honest and authentic voice that keeps their audience engaged.

That Marketing Lady gives you insights into what your brand needs to know when partnering with health & wellness influencers: 

Get Picky:

Influencers are known to generate higher user engagement. With such a diverse catalog of influencers to choose from, it’s essential to define and research which influencer can represent your brand and promote your product/service to the right target audience. 

Micro-influencers and professionals from a specific community or industry have lesser yet authentic and genuine followers, wherein their engagement with the audience is more intimate than a macro influencer. Their follower base represents a community of like-minded individuals that are already dedicated and interested in the specific content and reviews of their offer. It’s no secret that the larger the influencer, the lower is the engagement rate, and niche influencers are often seen as an authority on the genre they represent and work hard to cultivate a dedicated online following. 

Influencer Portfolio:

On the flip side, it’s also essential to know if the influencers themselves are selective about the brands they represent. In an extremely competitive market, you don’t want to collaborate with an influencer who showcases and reviews every product and company that approaches them. Just as a brand, you strive to be strategic in selecting the right influencers; genuine influencers are conscious and selective of the brands they represent. They need to make sure your brand message aligns with their reputation, values, and portfolio. 

Another critical component of a digital influencer marketing campaign is the influencer’s engagement rates and how in tune they are with their audience needs. Every influencer audience comprises a tightly knit community, and these followers rely on the reviews, ideas, suggestions, and data present by the influencer. Complementary to that, the influencers rely on their audience to gather information about their brand experiences. High engagement rates and responses from the influencers are an accurate indication of effective collaboration. 

Educate & Commit:

The average consumer nowadays is well informed and has all information available at the click of a button. Comparison of products or services for ingredients or price or performance is something so readily attainable. It’s essential for a brand when collaborating with an influencer to thoroughly educate them on the product/service and provide all the relevant information they need to represent your brand. This knowledge helps the influencers better understand your product themselves, answer consumer queries, and create relevant, informative content to showcase.

Committing to influencer collaborations for the long haul can be a significant step as a brand. Consumers want to see and track the benefits of the product or service over time. A considerable amount of time is generally required to achieve the desired result, whether from a collagen supplement or a sponsored fitness machine. Having an ongoing collaboration with the influencer to promote your product can help establish a more meaningful bond between your brand, the influencer, and the audience than they would have if they saw your brand promotion once and never again. 

Get Creative:

Quality creatives are a very crucial aspect when collaborating with influencers. The type of content they create needs to be tailored to your brand and unique; it cannot be a copy or a repetition of something seen elsewhere. The content material and ideas should complement your brand and not be overshadowed by the influencer themselves. Also, it’s essential to tailor your content and message for each audience on each channel. For example, Instagram story unboxing videos that showcase the product, packaging, and first impressions are impactful. On the other hand, YouTube is a great channel to demonstrate everyday use and long term results of the influencer’s product to integrate it into their health routine. Choosing to collaborate with influencers of different backgrounds so the end-consumer can get the full spectrum of how their products can be implemented into a diverse journey is also an effective collaborative strategy in many cases. By partnering with influencers from different health and wellness backgrounds with different routines and goals, the creative content your brand receives will not only increase but cater to several different audiences. With a more substantial variety of creative content, you’ll be able to repurpose and distribute them across your website, email campaigns, paid ads, and more. 

Influencer marketing isn’t going away anywhere, anytime soon. 

As reported by the 2019 Business Of Wellness Trends Report, by harnessing a level of connection with influencers during product development and launch, brands leverage an influencers’ highly engaged audience, create diverse content, earn credibility and brand awareness. They also benefit from their unique knowledge regarding consumer trends, pain points, or gaps in the market. To that end, influencers are becoming a more valuable business tool than ever before, with engagement and authenticity being the key factors that set influencers apart from one another.