3 mins
Ask Alex
Q: WHAT DO I NEED TO BE AWARE OF IF I START TO WORK WITH INFLUENCERS?
A: Congratulations on engaging with a new marketing tactic! First, it’s incredibly important to choose the right influencer. Ask yourself the following questions: do their values match yours? Do they have a similar audience to your target patients (and are they geographically feasible)? Can they back up their engagement rates? Do they have testimonials from past successful campaigns?
When you’re ready to start working together, get contracts in place. Decide if this is to be a one-off treatment or a course if they need more than one, or an ongoing working relationship. Are you going to offer their followers a deal too, and what do you expect from them content-wise? Get these expectations and deliverables set out early on so that you can be secure going forward, as you would with any other contractor.
An influencer doesn’t need to have a million followers to bring success to your clinic in terms of brand awareness and enquiries. With this in mind, make sure that when the content your influencer posts goes live, that you’re prepared – especially on social media – to engage with comments, reply to questions and take on an uplift in enquiries you may receive.
It’s tricky to attribute all of the success of an influencer marketing campaign to the work itself, as it can take a while for bookings to trickle through from the brand awareness it generates, so you’ll need to analyse your traffic and social stats and monitor your new enquiries. With ecommerce it’s much easier to give influencers a code and track the spend they generate, but in an industry where consultation is key and not all treatments are suitable for everyone, ask new patients where they heard of you in conversation or via a new enquiry survey.
If you have paid the influencer or offered a discount in exchange for treatment and have asked them to use a specific term in the captions, then the post is subject to Section 2 of the CAP Code, which is one of the Advertising Standards Authority’s codes relating to non-broadcast advertising. This states that it should be clear with a denotation that the influencer has been paid to create/ promote the content by using #ad, with or without the hashtag. Terms such as “sp”, “spon” and “gifted” are not as clear to the public and should be avoided.
The ASA is currently cracking down on influencers who don’t tag their content; if you and your influencer break these rules (the onus is on you both to ensure compliance) then not only will the content be removed, but sanctions may be taken against both parties. It was announced in January that some big influencers – mostly of Love Island fame – are being threatened with their profiles being removed from Instagram for consistently flouting these rules.
Our industry is also governed by guidance on the marketing of surgical and non-surgical procedures, which you can find on the ASA website. This applies not only to influencer marketing, but all social media marketing and any other marketing platforms (online or physical) that you use.The GMC, NMC and GDC also have their own responsible social media usage guides; I suggest everyone updates themselves on these, not only if you’re starting up with influencer marketing, but if you use any social media at all.
Finally, good luck with your campaign and enjoy the process.
ALEX BUGG
Alex Bugg works for Web Marketing Clinic, a familyrun digital agency, which specialises in medical aesthetics. They build websites and deliver marketing campaigns for doctors, nurses, dentists, distributors and brands. Contact her: alex@ webmarketingclinic. co.uk or follow her on Instagram: @webmarketingclinic