How is wellness influencer marketing changing the face of the wellness and fitness industry? It’s no secret that the wellness industry has dramatically shifted since the COVID-19 pandemic. While wellness brands had to quickly pivot to accommodate changes in consumer behavior, those changes continue to shift post-pandemic. More in tune with their mental and physical health than ever before, wellness consumers want to champion brands that align with their principles, can help them achieve their goals, and are working to make the world a better place. While all of this is great news, the saturated wellness market can make it challenging for wellness brands to stand out from the crowd, and ensure their messaging resonates with target audiences. That’s where health and wellness influencer marketing comes in — the secret sauce needed to cut through the noise, produce authentic storytelling and achieve your organization’s business goals.
What is Wellness Influencer Marketing?
Health and wellness influencer marketing is a strategy that harnesses the power of influencers to promote a brand, product and/or message to a larger market. Opinion leaders with robust social following bases, wellness influencers offer expertise or trustworthy information that can amplify your brand to your target audiences.
Who Is a Wellness Influencer?
From yoga teachers and self-care enthusiasts to mental health advocates and experts in the fitness industry, wellness influencers are people with engaged and/or large social media and/or blog followings that promote products, showcase experiences and build deeper connections with target audiences. In other words, people with niche expertise in the wellness space who are influencing an engaged audience.
Why the Wellness Industry Will Thrive in 2023
A billion-dollar industry — and growing, the wellness space is expected to continue expanding at a rapid pace in 2023. New health and wellness companies are forming to help people achieve their new health goals that developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Investing more time and money into their physical and mental health, wellness customers have more consumer awareness and higher expectations than ever. They value authenticity, personalization, expertise, convenience and flexibility. That’s why the need for effective wellness marketing strategies, like leveraging the power of influencers, has never been more important — to stand out in a saturated market and effectively share your message with the right people.
The Tangible Benefits of Influencer Marketing in Wellness
What makes wellness influencer marketing so effective? In an increasingly complex world, digital recommendations from trusted and inspiring sources hold more clout than many other traditional advertising avenues. The wellness space especially has experienced some consumer mistrust and advertising fatigue, and wellness influencers provide the real-life testimonials that consumers want when making purchasing decisions.
Tap into Real People’s Perspectives
Influencers are trusted by their followers far more than advertisements, plain and simple. They share their real lives, and their recommendations and partnerships come with built-in audience trust.
From Selling to Inspiring
Influencers built their followings in part because they offer inspiration in some way — healthy lifestyles, raw advice, cooking habits, etc. Aligning your brand with the right influencer can tap into that inspiration.
Offer Content Diversity
Health and wellness influencers provide a spectrum of perspectives, backgrounds and experiences to their content, which also allows brands to diversify their content value.
7 Effective Influencer Marketing Ideas For Your Wellness Business
With the rise of wellness influencers and new social media platforms popping up every day, the ways to partner with influencers are truly limitless. Here are some of the most effective ideas to reach your target wellness audience through the creative expertise of influencers:
1. Haul videos
Partner with an influencer to provide products for a haul video, in which they open and try on/test/use your range of products while giving honest, in-the-moment feedback.
2. How-to Tutorials
Team up with influencers to create a video explaining how to use your brand or product, detailing the benefits and their personal experience with it.
3. Instagram Reels
Work with Instagram and/or TikTok wellness influencers to create short, snappy 15-second reel videos that showcase how your brand enhances their lives.
4. Influencer-Generated Content
Boost brand awareness by partnering with multiple micro-influencers to create a catalog of influencer-generated content, or real-life testimonials that provide social proof for months to come.
5. Giveaways or Contests
Introduce your brand or new product to an influencer’s follower base through a fun giveaway or contest.
6. Ambassadorships
Create an ambassador program in which influencers receive free products and a discount code to extend to followers in exchange for a fee and/or percentage of sales generated.
7. Reviews
Align with a wellness influencer who reviews products or services in your niche to showcase how your brand stacks up to its competition.
How to Find the Right Influencer For Your Wellness Brand?
Identifying the right influencers with an engaged community of your target audience is key to a successful wellness influencer marketing campaign. With a sea of endless influencers, it’s critical that wellness brands do their research. Keep these tips in mind:
Consider Your Target Audience
Who are you trying to reach? That’s the first question you need to answer before crafting an effective wellness influencer marketing strategy. Be as specific as possible when describing your ideal customer, including age, profession, hobbies and interests, likes/dislikes, main concerns, etc.
Understand What Media Your Customers Consume
Next, research which media sources and social media platforms your target audience is using to consumer information. This understanding will inform which wellness influencers will provide the greatest return on investment for your goals.
Learn the Reach of Different Kinds of Wellness Influencers
The wellness influencer world is vast — how should wellness brands go about partnering with influencers? The first step is understanding the different tiers of influencers, according to their followings, and how they can each support your overall strategy. Start here:
Nano Wellness Influencers
Boasting anywhere from 1,000-10,000 social media followers, nano wellness influencers offer a blend of current and new customers who are typically considered “brand fans.” In other words, they might be open to trade collaborations to increase their following and work with a brand they love. These influencers are natural brand advocates who most likely already love and use your products, creating a harmonious and authentic partnership.
Micro Wellness Influencers
With 10,000-100,000 followers, micro-influencers are the goldilocks tier of wellness influencer marketing — not too big, not too small. These personas captivate a niche category and generate impressive engagement rates.
Mid-Tier Wellness Influencers
Influencing 100,000-500,000 followers, mid-tier wellness influencers are experts in their platforms of choice and likely have strong, established personal brands. These influencers have built significant trust with their followers and can provide incredible influencer marketing potential to the right partners.
Macro Wellness Influencers
Harnessing 500,000+ followers, macro wellness influencers have the ability to offer significant brand exposure and product awareness. Collaborating with influencers in this tier is the largest investment, but can also have the biggest payoff.
Choose an Influencer with a Similar Audience
Once you understand your brand’s target audience, identifying influencers with the same audience becomes a lot easier. Who are your prospective customers following and looking up to in the health and wellness space? That’s where your list begins.
Partner with an Influencer Who Aligns with Your Brand’s Core Message
Next, narrow down your list by identifying those influencers who share the same core values as your brand. Consumers can spot an inauthentic influencer marketing campaign a mile away, so it’s important to align with influencers that make sense — those who are already using your product, embodying your mission or leading in your wellness niche.
Beware of Fake Followers and Poor Engagement
Fake followers are an issue in the influencer marketing space, but fortunately, they are easier to avoid and catch these days. Larger accounts are more prone to bots and fake accounts, which can inflate engagement rates both directly and indirectly. Micro-influencers, on the other hand, tend to have fewer fake followers and generate higher — and real — engagement.
Get Help from A Health and Wellness Marketing Agency
Influencer marketing can take your brand to the next level — but it does require ample time, research and consideration. Leverage the expertise of a health and wellness marketing agency to fast-track your campaign, access a database of vetted influencers and secure results. Communications Strategy Group (CSG®) has the relationships, experience and digital marketing strategy to design and execute a personalized influencer marketing campaign for your brand that resonates with your target audience.
FAQs About Wellness Influencer Marketing
How Much Do Fitness Influencers Charge Per Post?
The amount fitness influencers charge varies greatly by their metrics — the number of followers and more importantly, their audience engagement rate. Remember, more followers don’t necessarily mean more engagement.
What is a Good ROI for Influencer Marketing?
While there is no universal standard or key industry number for measuring the ROI on an influencer marketing campaign, Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2020 report indicates that you can earn up to $18 in earned media value for every dollar spent on influencer marketing. As a point of comparison, the report found an average ROI equated to $5.78 per dollar spent.
How Effective is Influencer Marketing?
If you’re wondering if influencer marketing actually works, the answer is YES. A whopping 92% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers (the generations with the most spending power) cite influencer recommendations as more authentic than ads. And a recent report revealed 58% of consumers purchased a product because of an influencer recommendation in the past six months.
Is Influencer Marketing Unethical?
No. In fact, one of the main perks of influencer marketing is to boost brand authenticity and trust by promoting products, showcasing experiencing and building deeper connections with target audiences.
How is Influencer Marketing Effective in Increasing Organic Engagement?
Tapping into a built-in niche category that already deeply trusts an influencer is key to organic engagement. Vegan? Gluten-intolerant? Mental health? Fitness or training? Whatever category your brand operates in, there are influencer experts who speak to the exact audience you need to reach.
How Will You Make Wellness Influencer Marketing Work For You in 2023?
Wellness influencer marketing is the new “word of mouth” for health and wellness brands and its potential is expected to continue rising in the coming years. The future of influencer marketing is creating quality, lasting relationships that result in more trust, engagement boosts and lasting brand recognition.
Partner with a wellness marketing agency equipped with a spectrum of successful health and wellness influencer marketing case studies to create a personalized strategy for your brand that achieves your business goals and cultivates lasting brand awareness in core audiences. As an award-winning content marketing and public relations agency, CSG has the insights and experience to make wellness influencer marketing work for you this year.
Contact us today to discover how the CSG team can create an integrated influencer marketing approach for your brand that harnesses authenticity, generates powerful engagement and taps into your community niche.
