Many marketers in the pharmaceutical space may be wary of partnering with an influencer to promote their brand, but as we mentioned in an earlier article on the do’s and don’ts of pharmaceutical social media, don’t forget about influencer marketing.
We certainly didn’t! At the 2023 AVA Digital Awards, our team’s digital marketing efforts promoting a birth control product took home the Gold award in the “Social Media: Use of Influencer” category.
Keep reading to learn our expert tips on influencer marketing in the pharmaceutical industry.
Tip #1: Know Your Pharma Brand’s Audience
One benefit of influencer marketing for a pharmaceutical company is the ability to promote your brand messaging in an authentic way. It’s not a replacement for your existing traditional and/or digital marketing program, but rather a strong complementary piece of the overall picture.
Before contacting potential influencers to partner with, it’s important to understand your pharma brand’s audience.
What type of messaging have they responded well to? What type of social media accounts does your average customer use? It helps to build a buyer persona as a way to better understand your target audience.
If your audience tends to be older and values educational content, it doesn’t make sense to partner with a Gen Z-focused influencer on TikTok, for example.
Tip #2: Partner With the Right Social Media Influencer
What’s one of the biggest mistakes when it comes to influencer marketing?
Partnering with the wrong social media influencer.
Influencer marketing in the pharma space is about more than just leveraging someone with millions of followers. It’s about finding the right person to deliver the right message at the right time. Spending your entire marketing budget on getting a single influencer with 10 million followers is certainly an option, but is it the right one?
When choosing influencers, think about who’s the right fit, not just in terms of how many people you want to reach, but also consider the influencer’s values, other products they promote, and so on. After all, the last thing you want for your pharmaceutical brand is controversy!
Here’s another tip: don’t forget about “micro-influencers” who can help your pharmaceutical brand reach a smaller but more targeted audience or niche.
These influencers often only have thousands of followers, but they tend to have more engagement with their smaller audience who are likely to comment and react to the content they see. Another advantage of using these micro-influencers is that they can be quite cost-effective, delivering you ROI without going over the marketing budget.
Tip #3: Establish a Strategy Aligned With Your Business Objectives — and Brand Positioning
Your influencer marketing strategy depends on what your business objectives are. Are you trying to increase brand awareness? Are you more focused on lead generation? All of these questions, and more, help shape your strategy.
That being said, don’t forget about brand positioning. It doesn’t make sense for a company offering prenatal vitamins to partner with an influencer who was publicly adamant in the past about not having kids — even if they do have millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok. You want an influencer to be an extension of your brand, so their positioning should align with yours.
This is the route our team took with our client, Exeltis, when developing an influencer marketing strategy for their first-of-its-kind birth control product. We partnered with several OB-GYN influencers, working with them to create authentic videos that delivered key brand messaging to their audiences who are interested in women’s health. Because of the type of product, it was important for us to highlight women’s voices as we learned that our audience wants to hear from people they relate to.
Could Influencer Marketing Work For Your Pharmaceutical Brand?
Influencer marketing can help you reach your audience in an authentic way. It’s important to know your audience, partner with the right influencer, and establish a strategy that’s aligned with your business objectives.
If you’re interested in learning more about our work with pharma companies or you want to chat about influencer marketing strategies that could support your pharma company, click the button below!
Let’s chat about influencer marketing for your pharma brand!