Financial Services Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is on the up and up, tipped to hit up to 10 billion by 2022, and it’s no surprise why. Social media’s user base is vast and ever-growing, standing a whopping 4.2 billion users in 2021 (more than half of the global population!) and expected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025.

Consequently, brands from various industries are battling to be noticed by their target customers on social media. Finance-related companies have spotted this trend and entered the influencer marketing pool too. Many are making a huge splash, proving that influencer marketing isn’t just for the lifestyle brands among us.

Yet, there’s still more space for financial services brands that are brave enough to leave behind their traditional marketing comfort zone and reach their audience in a way that reflects the digital-first trend sweeping the globe. This leap of faith won’t go unrewarded as there are countless profitable opportunities they can lay claim to.

If this sounds like something your brand is ready to invest in, join us as we dive into the advantage of entering this budding financial influencer marketing segment and share inside tips to make your campaigns a massive success.

The growth of Influencer Marketing in the Financial Services industry

Companies in the financial services industry aren't the first things that spring to mind when thinking about influencer marketing. After all, industries like fashion, beauty, and entertainment make up most of the influencer content we encounter. Plus, financial services companies tend to have long sales cycles with high stakes, unlike their retail and entertainment serving counterparts, whose sales cycles are short and rapid. With digital transformation swooping in and altering how businesses operate and communicate with consumers, banks, financial software companies, and everything in between have been swayed to hop on board the financial influencer marketing train. And, for good reasons! So, many of your target customers are on social media. To give you an example, 70% of the US population have social media accounts summing to a staggering 223 million (and still growing)! Just imagine the opportunities you can harvest from an audience of this size. Influencer marketing is a great way to guide decision-makers through the customer journey through collaborations with industry experts and influencers they trust. It can help you:

Stay top of your target customer's mind.
Accelerate sales.
Build brand authority.
Start conversations with hard-to-reach segments in your target audience, i.e., c-suite executives.

With influencer marketing, everyone's a winner! It benefits your business, audience, and the influencer. Prospects get the information they need from a trusted source to make informed decisions, reducing customer uncertainty, abandoned carts, and churn. Your business drives sales by tapping into the influencer's knowledge and following, and the influencer secures payment and clout if you're an established brand.

Why Influencer Marketing in Financial Services is Now More Important Than Ever

Some executives are married to tried and tested marketing methods like roadshows, trade shows, and roundtables. So, when you suggest exiting this comfort zone to embrace influencer marketing, it can be challenging to get executive buy-in. Some may question its conversion generating capabilities, while others may query its long-term feasibility, opting to stick to what they know. But times and customers have changed, making this rigid approach to marketing risky for many reasons. For example:

Various scandals in the financial services industry combined with instability in the global markets have harmed consumer trust. So, it's crucial you invest in restoring confidence.
The celebrity-like spokespeople financial services companies like to deploy don't tend to land well either, as many consumers view them as inauthentic.
People trust other people like them these days, making influencers the most natural medium to introduce your brand through. 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations to make purchases.
As companies shift to a digital-first approach, traditional methods for building connections like subway ads, billboards, in-person conferences, roundtable, networking events may change irrevocably.

So, there's never been a better time to get your business ahead of the curve and thrive with influencer marketing.

Financial Services Influencer Marketing

The financial services industry has traditionally taken more conventional and cookie-cutter approaches to marketing, but in recent years, have shifted tactics to influencer marketing. Influencer marketing allows finance companies to connect with the right audiences through storytelling of relatable everyday experiences around finances – the questions, concerns, ideas, actions, and successes – on a human to human level, while leveraging the connections financial influencers have established with their audiences to build credibility, and ultimately, drive brand awareness and consideration. With viral movements like #FinTok and #StockTok, the finance vertical is making a splash with the new and improved approachable tone towards bridging the gap to financial conversations.
— Crystal Ling
Account Manager

The Untold Benefits of Influencer Marketing in Financial Services

There are tons of benefits you can look forward to when you tap into financial influencers to propel your financial services business forwards. Here are a few advantages you can look forward to:

Attention! Opportunity overload

Despite nearly 87% of banks surveyed by the American Banking Association saying they are active or somewhat active on social media, many businesses in financial services haven't caught on to influencer marketing's game-changing power. So, the potential is huge for early birds like your company as influencer marketing can get the lion's share of leads and sales.

Stay on the pulse of consumer wants and needs

When you don't engage with customers regularly, it's easy to exist in your own bubble and operate based on what you think your customers want. But influencer marketing allows you to see exactly what they think of your brand and product(s). It also establishes a communication loop (through social listening) that you can feedback to your product teams to optimize existing offerings.

Humanize your brand

The need to be accessible and approachable in today's noisy digital world can't be understated. Without these traits, you risk alienating the very audience you're targeting. Financial influencers gifts your brand with humanity and relatability, helping boost consumer affinity with your brand.

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What types of financial information do consumers want?

Gen Z

Investing
Budgeting
Financing large purchases
Building savings
Saving for an emergency

Millennials

Investing
Saving for an emergency
Building savings
Budgeting
Credit score management

Gen X

Retirement
Investing
Savings
Saving for an emergency

Baby boomers

Investing
Fraud ID protection
Retirement
Building savings

Source: Facebook

How Influencer Marketing Fortifies Each Stage of Your Customer Journey in Financial Services

Consumers are more clued up on tech than ever. They search social media and websites for information on products they are interested in at each stage of the customer journey. 54% of social media users hop on to social sites for research purposes. The same applies to your target customers. From the awareness stage to the purchase stage, they dedicate heaps of time and effort to inform themselves on financial products. This fact provides your business with the perfect opportunity to target prospective customers at scale with influencer content throughout their customer journey. Let's zoom in on each stage:

Awareness Stage

Influencer marketing becomes a 'meet and greet' at the awareness stage, connecting your brand with a financial influencer's following to kickstart a conversation. This characteristic alone is immensely powerful for financial services companies because your customers tend to have a higher lifetime value and loyalty rates. So, the more prospects you can entertain and close later on, the better your company's revenue will be. Expose your target customers to your brand and pique their curiosity to learn more. It can help you:

Introduce your offerings to start your prospects' customer journey.
Expand your reach and test new audiences.
Engage and entertain your prospects to encourage them to stick around.

Consequently, you can begin to forge connections with your audience (and reach new ones), improving your odds of converting later down the line.

Consideration Stage

Consideration stage influencer marketing helps you build trust-based relationships with your audience by answering specific questions about a problem they want to solve. You can have financial influencers talk about your product(s) strengths and flaws, which increases your brand's genuineness in the consumers' eyes. It can also help your brand:

Establish itself as the go-to resource for your target audience.
Showcase your brand's authority in your niche within financial services.
Demonstrate you're a trustworthy and transparent organization.

For example, say your product is a money management app, you could host a webinar on Clubhouse with industry experts to teach people how to control their finance. You could also have financial influencers create honest videos on your product, comparing it to your competitor's offering to confirm who your products will work best for. Then post them on your social channels like YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn. You could also repurpose the influencer content and share this content on the brand’s website and social channels too.

Decision Stage

Decision stage influencer marketing will help you advocate for your business and position your offering(s) as the best option for your prospects. This is where influencer marketing can be incredibly profitable. It can help you:

Win over prospects who are on the brink of buying into your offering.
Drive sales and boost revenue with social proof.

Loyalty Stage

Help customers get the most out of their products and suggest additional products to solve their pain points. In turn, you can sustain your results from past influencer marketing campaigns and increase sales even further. This tactic can:

Reduce churn rates.
Improve average order value.
Boost referrals from happy customers.

For example, you could collaborate with a financial influencer to develop an educational video and eBook series educational post series sharing exclusive tips on how to use your products and get the most out of them. You can get the financial nfluencers to promote some complimentary products.

Creative Brand Storytelling : 3 Financial Services companies that have nailed their Influencer Campaigns

Some brands know how to rock an influencer campaign and make their audience pay attention. The best part is you can do the same! To give you some inspiration, here are some financial services companies acing influencer marketing in the financial services industry:

Fidelity

The team at Fidelity understands the power of storytelling and influencer marketing. In promoting the smart saving and investment app Spire, we helped them work with financial influencers who shared their authentic and personal stories. Each story was unique and covered a wide range if topics including paying off student loans and planning for your family's financial future.

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SoFi

We’ve helped SoFi transform online presence with emotive and inspiring influencer collaborations like the aptly named 'Get that raise' initiative campaign. SoFi worked with financial influencers in the personal finance, lifestyle, and budgeting spaces to create motivating and informative content for Instagram and Facebook that drove its target customer to their ‘Get That Raise’ tool. Their inspirational campaign achieved phenomenal results. Here are just few of them:

Nearly 50,000 link clicks to the SoFi 'Get That Raise' tool
7% engagement rate (2X the industry benchmark mark of 1.5%)

Go SoFi!

@gregnatetvThe only banking service powered by love! 🌈 Download the BELLA App to open an account - Link in bio! #bellalovesme #bellasurprises #sponsored ♬ original sound - GREGTube

Bella Loves Me

For another great example of influencer marketing in action, look no further than to the mobile payment service, look to the conversational banking app, Bella Loves Me. We helped them collaborate with comedic financial influencers to create funny, scroll-stopping content for their Instagram and TikTok that encouraged their target audience to sign up for a Karma account. The genius blend of humor and banking was very successful, luring in a young, tech savvy crowd.

Tips, Tricks, and Tools For Wildly Successful Influencer Marketing in Financial Services

Begin with the customer in mind

Many see influencer marketing as yet another avenue to drive more leads and sales, but nothing more. Yet, the companies that win big in influencer marketing understand that consumers trust and gravitate towards companies that prioritize a user-first digital experience, invest in product innovation, and lead with transparency. So, to have next-level influencer marketing success, you must change your mindset to coordinate your campaign to assist, inspire, and inform your customers.

This means leaving the drawn-out sales pitches at the door and diving into your audience's true wants and needs so you can create content that resonates. Then work towards solving their issues with digital tools and content. Make sure you're honest about what your brand can and can't do for them; it'll save you from landing in legal hot water later down the line. The more customer-centric you become, the better your conversions and lead quality will be. Finally, go mobile! Whether it's checking their bank balance or downloading statements, consumers have become accustomed to using their mobile for finance-related tasks. So, there are few better places to reach them than on their mobiles. Optimize your content, ads, and landing pages for mobile viewing, and watch your conversions spike! For example, SoFi turned to influencer marketing to drive awareness and conversions to its membership plan via a multi-phased follower count campaign. We worked with SoFi to find ambitious, business-minded micro and mid tier financial influencers in the lifestyle niche. They created Image and Story content to highlight SoFi's enticing member benefits that would help users master their finances. They also hosted an instagram giveaway to boost engagement.

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Set a goal for each campaign

As the popular saying goes, 'fail to plan, plan to fail'. The same is true for influencer marketing. So, before you spend a dime on collaborations, map out the touchpoints in your customer journey as well as the influencer content you'd like to create. Then assign a goal to each campaign. This goal could be to:

Raise awareness of a particular offering.
Drive traffic to your website.
Get customers to sign-up to your newsletter.
Close sales on your flagship product.

Keep this document close by as you embark on your influencer marketing journey to ensure you stay on track and optimize each funnel stage. At Open Influence we used influencer marketing to help Vanguard lessen their gender gap in their customer base and encourage females to enroll in their Vanguard PAS program. We worked with ambitious female financial influencers from all walks of life to share their personal finance stories and demonstrate that investing is beneficial to all regardless of their earnings. It was a success! Not only did the campaign achieve engagement rates in line with industry benchmarks, but female followers expressed their interest in sharpening their financial literacy and learning more about educational opportunities.

Select the right influencer and platform for the job

The most crucial aspect of your influencer campaign is the influencer you choose. This decision is so critical it can make or break your project. Take time to understand your customer, research who they admire, and whether they assess whether the financial influencers they like match your brand values. Also, ensure they are trustworthy, and their credentials are legitimate. Due to the strict rules and regulations on the financial services industry, there are huge legal and monetary consequences for finance-related companies who lead consumers astray even if it was unintentional. So, don't rush your research. Ensure you're 100% certain of their reputation and background before taking the plunge into partnerships.

Also, remember influencer marketing is in its infancy in financial services compared to other niches, so you must widen who falls under the category of influencer and utilize relevant financial influencers in related niches. They don't have to have glossy pictures or a massive following. Sometimes their expertise on a topic is what gets them attention. So long as they are active in posting content, discussing topics related to your niche, and have a growing and engaged audience, you're free to explore working with them further. But it's not just about finding the right influencer; you must ensure you’re on the right social channels simultaneously.. For example, if your products serve Gen Z and millenials, while you should maintain a LinkedIn presence, it's also a good idea to be active on TikTok and Instagram. This multi-platform approach improves your odds of connecting with your target audience whether they’re in work or play mode, driving more leads and sales.

Observe the markets to inform your influencer marketing strategy

To win in financial services influencer marketing, you need a keen eye for trending topics and consumer shifts. Things change rapidly in the financial market, which could render your influencer content plan redundant. Social listening should be a mainstay in your strategy, so your influencer campaigns reflect your target customers' current challenges.

Experiment with audiences and mediums

No audiences are made equal. Some are your company's bread and butter, while others provide a small top-up to your bottom line. It's critical you identify who's who and allocate your influencer budget accordingly to ensure you get the most return from your investment. But you won't know for sure until you get out there and experiment! Also, when you work in financial services there is a tendency to want to stick to social sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, but this approach is restrictive. Feel free to mix and match social media platforms to see what it does to your traffic and conversions. For example, you could use Instagram ads to promote an expert panel for your upcoming event on Clubhouse to expand its reach.

Keep your content quality sky-high and your creativity even higher

Not only should your influencer content inform your target audience to help them meet their long-term objectives at each stage of their customer journey, but it should entertain and inspire them. The financial services industry has got a bad wrap over the years for the stuffy jargoned-fill content some brands pump out. These result in swades of snooze-inducing noise fooding social channels and turning off prospective customers. But this situation gives your brand the chance to shine. Be deliberate about your content’s position and only release content that’ll spark an emotion in your customer like happiness and motivation. To stay on track when creating content, stop and look at your content ideas and ask whether someone on a scroll session they’ve snuck into their work day or a person who’s just finished a long shift would want to stop and see what you’ve got to say. If not, head back to the drawing to rustle up some showstopping content ideas. Also, resist the urge to churn out influencer collaboration for the sake of just being seen or your feeds appearing busy. For long-term results, consider how each post can inform your target customer and inch them closer and closer to the sale. For example, your consideration stage collaboration can engage your audience to create an open dialogue about your products. Your decision stage pieces should position your product as the most feasible solution.

The game plan for insanely profitable influencer marketing campaigns in the Financial Services industry

Influencer marketing in the financial services industry is an underdog on the rise. Brands are waking up to influencer marketing's path-altering power for financial services and signing their brand up for the ride. You can use it to forge new relationships, strengthen existing ones, build brand notoriety, and explode sales, just to name a few fantastic benefits. However, because regulations and laws strictly guard the financial services industry, you must carefully tow the transparency and honesty line to avoid harsh penalties. It's always a good idea to seek help from influencer marketing professionals who can guide you through the entire influencer marketing process to create campaigns that get you brag-worthy results while staying out of regulators' bad books. Ready to bring your financial service company into the future with influencer marketing? Explore how Open Influence can help.

Stats you should know about Influencer marketing

72% of social media followers look for entertainment in a brand and 60% seek honesty (Mintel).
87% of people admit to buying something because an influencer encouraged them to.
73% of marketers say influencer marketing is 'somewhat effective' or 'very effective for their brand.
3 million users joined social media daily in 2020.
Facebook is the most widely used social media network with 2.74 billion users, followed by YouTube with 2.29 billion users.
The daily average social media usage is 2 hours and 25 minutes.
71% of brands who have a good experience with a brand on social media say they're likely to recommend the brand to friends and relatives.
Men and women have been using YouTube at near equal amounts since Q3 2020
The typical US Instagrammers uses the platform for 29.6 minutes each day.
Facebook and Facebook have the highest running time by US users at 34.6 and 32.8 minutes, respectively.

Want To Know How Influencer Marketing For Financial Services Can Work For You? Contact Open Influence.

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Financial Services Influencer Marketing

The growth of Influencer Marketing in the Financial Services industry

Why Influencer Marketing in Financial Services is Now More Important Than Ever

Financial Services Influencer Marketing

The Untold Benefits of Influencer Marketing in Financial Services

Attention! Opportunity overload

Stay on the pulse of consumer wants and needs

Humanize your brand

What types of financial information do consumers want?

Gen Z

Millennials

Gen X

Baby boomers

How Influencer Marketing Fortifies Each Stage of Your Customer Journey in Financial Services

Awareness Stage

Consideration Stage

Decision Stage

Loyalty Stage

Creative Brand Storytelling : 3 Financial Services companies that have nailed their Influencer Campaigns

Fidelity

SoFi

Bella Loves Me

Tips, Tricks, and Tools For Wildly Successful Influencer Marketing in Financial Services

Begin with the customer in mind

Set a goal for each campaign

Select the right influencer and platform for the job

Observe the markets to inform your influencer marketing strategy

Experiment with audiences and mediums

Keep your content quality sky-high and your creativity even higher

The game plan for insanely profitable influencer marketing campaigns in the Financial Services industry

Stats you should know about Influencer marketing

Want To Know How Influencer Marketing For Financial Services Can Work For You? Contact Open Influence.

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