October 22, 2024 • 6 min read

Taking Healthcare Influencer Marketing to the Next Level

In an industry like healthcare, building trust with your audience is arguably the most essential goal. With something as critical as their health, your patients and customers need to trust your brand before they’ll put their well-being in your hands.

Influencers are exceptional assets for building and maintaining trust, especially among younger patients. About two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennial social media users engage with health influencers as of December 2023. But your strategy can go further than basic influencer endorsements – in fact, you can leverage influencers to truly connect with your patients on deep, emotional levels. Let’s explore how right now.

Leverage raw authenticity in healthcare influencer content

The most effective influencers are authentic; that is, they produce content that feels real to their audiences. In healthcare marketing, that often translates to honest discussions about experiences or medical solutions – say, how a given provider made the influencer feel or how they found a new medicine to be once they tried it for themselves.

However, some healthcare social influencers go above and beyond “regular” authenticity by sharing the real, raw fabric of their personal experiences with their audiences. For instance, they might:

Post pictures of themselves in hospital beds or otherwise in the middle of a healthcare treatment
Have frank, intimate discussions about their experiences or feelings – one example might be a woman describing her feelings and experiences postpartum
Be upfront about traditionally sensitive topics, such as mental health or the realities of physical recovery after a traumatic incident

People bond with each other over fun topics, but they also – perhaps even especially – do so over the serious business of life. Those influencers who recognize this can forge real, meaningful relationships with their viewers – so your healthcare brand should work with them whenever possible.

Doctor speaking with a patient in a hospital bed

Sharing the good with the bad

Audiences only trust healthcare providers or brands if they feel like those brands are being honest. Sharing the truth of medical experiences – even if that truth isn’t “clean” or easy to package into a social post – is an impactful way for your brand’s influencers to peel back the curtain and connect patients to your organization well before they sign up for an appointment.

Plus, when healthcare social influencers share the less-than-comfortable parts of treatments or experiences, it makes the positives – like recovery or the joy when a treatment works – that much more satisfying and poignant.

Let healthcare influencers be themselves

It’s tempting to impose rules on your influencers, dictating their styles, voices, and content. After all, the rest of your marketing tactics align with your brand guide or unified brand tone. But in this case, trying to lash all of your influencers together and minimize their individuality could hurt rather than help your patient outreach efforts.

Influencers do their best work when they can genuinely connect with their audiences. That only happens when they’re allowed to be their unique selves. While your influencers should still earnestly represent your brand and be a good fit for its values, you’ll find that they connect more readily with their audiences when their distinctive aspects are allowed to shine through their content.

Ideally, you should try to optimize for this during your influencer vetting process. Hire social influencers who align with your brand values and fit your brand’s needs, even if they don’t communicate with your audience exactly the same way you would. If you search with high attention to detail, you’ll cultivate a team of influencers who complement your brand’s messaging while retaining some diversity of voice from the start.

Diversity is vital for audience growth

There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all influencer in any industry, let alone something as personal as healthcare. If you let your influencers establish their own voices and speak to their niche audiences, the resulting content will be significantly different across the board.

That’s a good thing. You want your stable of influencers to connect to different groups of people, particularly if your healthcare brand is large and expanding to new markets. Audiences want to view content from people they can connect to. If a given influencer doesn’t resonate with one type of patient, another influencer might.

For instance, you might work with a younger TikTok influencer to reach out to younger patients but also contract an older healthcare influencer who resonates more with established adults or older patients via Facebook. Bottom line: lean into diverse influencer voices whenever possible.

Connect with healthcare staff with influencer video

It’s no secret that video content marketing is massively important. Healthcare brands like yours can leverage it for a variety of goals, like “meet your doctor” videos, clinic walkthroughs, and procedure explanations or educational videos.

Your healthcare influencers can also use video to excellent effect. Don’t stop at audience discussion videos or product showcases, though – have your influencers develop videos to connect with your healthcare organization’s staff, from head doctors to receptionists.

Imagine an influencer with a growing audience who has a sit-down interview with a dentist, surgeon, or other major healthcare provider. Just one video of a candid, friendly conversation could make major strides in terms of building audience trust and connection. Potential patients may come away from that video feeling better about giving your healthcare brand a call.

The sky is the limit when it comes to how your social influencers can bring your staff front and center. Interviews, office tours, and even raw, authentic “in the moment” videos with real-time procedures (low-risk ones, of course) might be wonderful tools to humanize your healthcare brand and make it feel familiar to audiences, including folks who aren’t yet your patients.

Tailor videos to specific audiences

Just like it’s wise to cultivate a diversity of influencer voices, it’s also smart to

Young adults might respond very well to handheld phone videos that are relaxed and casual. On the other hand, older patients – who may very well be dealing with more serious health concerns – will likely appreciate professional, sit-down-style videos where a doctor or treatment specialist answers questions and allays common concerns.

If you build a social influencer team with a set of diverse voices that cater to distinct groups, this kind of video differentiation should occur naturally. Successful healthcare influencers will already know how to reach their target audiences through well-crafted video content.

Elevate your healthcare influencer marketing with Infinity

Achieving all of these goals – deeper authenticity, influencer diversity, and top-notch video production – is a tall order. Fortunately, your healthcare brand doesn’t need to do it alone.

As an award-winning, fully integrated agency, Infinity is the perfect partner for healthcare brands like yours for influencer marketing, overarching strategy, and all other marketing needs. Give us a call today – let’s start a conversation and see where a new partnership can lead.