The value of influencer marketing worldwide has more than doubled to reach $21.1 billion as of 2023. This represents a huge shift in how consumers are being engaged by brands, including insurance providers. 

Influencers’ connection to their audiences is an increasingly important form of social currency, and businesses of all types have embraced this. Here, we’ll share the benefits influencers offer as well as some examples from the world of insurance. 

Benefits of using influencers for insurance marketing 

From increased engagement and brand credibility to showcasing social proof, influencer content done well provides a variety of benefits that usually require multiple other tactics. 

Broader reach, especially for younger demographics 

Influencers help insurance companies reach a broader audience of younger consumers with short-form video on social media. These people may not follow traditional media or browse for information in the same way as older demographics. 

You might be asking yourself, don’t younger consumers typically ignore content around topics like insurance? On the contrary, 48% of Gen Z and millennials feel insurance is more important following the pandemic, and that number is likely to grow. 

Meeting younger generations where they browse online with content that (truly) speaks to them can help foster that curiosity. 

Improved trust and credibility 

Influencers have established credibility with their audiences, and they can pass that trust along to your brand. After all, it’s easier to accept recommendations from someone similar to you. 

This makes it easier for influencers—especially those who have genuine experience with your business—to share it with their audience in a meaningful way. This is supported by the fact that 70% of millennials prefer recommendations from peers over traditional advertising. 

Effective in simplifying complex concepts like insurance 

Insurance can be a difficult topic to understand for many consumers. To put it in perspective, 54% of employed Americans don’t know the full scope of their current insurance. If that’s true of insurance someone already has, then navigating unfamiliar products is even harder. 

This can lead to misinterpretation, underutilization, and decreased satisfaction—either as a current customer or a prospective one. Influencers combat this by breaking down these complex topics into bite-sized chunks that can be shared in easy-to-understand ways.  

For example, knowing that short term disability insurance is “a type of insurance that replaces a portion of an employee’s income for a temporary period of time due to illness or injury” is one thing. An influencer conveying that, “I got hurt but didn’t have to worry about income while I recovered” is much clearer. 

Showcases social proof and humanizes your brand 

Social proof means that people make decisions based on the actions of others. According to Matter Communications, 69% of consumers trust influencers, friends, and family over information coming directly from a brand. 

Harness influencers in your target niche to build awareness and educate consumers about your products. New people will discover you, existing prospects will build affinity for your brand on their way to conversion, and they’ll be educated about your product’s benefits from someone they trust.

Successful examples of using influencer marketing in insurance

Allstate and larger influencers

Allstate partners with lifestyle influencer and Penn State Student Katie Feeney to showcase college sporting events across the country. She already creates content around sports and college life, so the connection with her audience is strong.  

This partnership reaches college-aged consumers, humanizes the brand, and improves trust amongst her audience of over 13 million people. 

Progressive and micro influencers

Instead of targeting one larger influencer, Progressive has taken the approach of enlisting micro influencers (those with smaller yet still-dedicated followings) to produce slice-of-life content around pet ownership and saving money on auto insurance. This post is a great example of simplifying complex topics.

Progressive also uses humor to highlight the importance of insurance to protect loved ones with a lighthearted touch. Notice that the first example is a young single woman highlighting pet insurance whereas this example features a couple highlighting auto insurance.  

This post successfully engages the target audience in the comments and helps humanize the brand. 

State Farm and celebrity influencers

State Farm follows a different strategy by enlisting the help of rising basketball star JuJu Watkins. As a celebrity, Watkins has the potential for a much larger reach than typical influencer content (with a price tag to match). 

This level of partnership may not be practical for most insurance companies, but it does provide an excellent example of reaching a much larger swath of consumers with one key figure. 

Here State Farm throttles down on the star power to feature esports personality and YouTuber Clix. Esports is a fertile ground for brands to connect with younger audiences. This post is part of a larger campaign that engages younger gamers to build awareness for State Farm with consumers who don’t follow the brand. 

Other tactics

Demand for influencer content is only growing, which paves the way for new tactics like AI influencers. This tactic is still in its infancy, but brands have begun experimenting with it to achieve an always-on presence that is ideally more cost effective to maintain. 

Miquela is an AI influencer who has already begun partnering with organizations like Clean It Up to harness the power of AI for conservation. It remains to be seen how ubiquitous these AI influencers become, but it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.

Measuring the success of influencer marketing

Measuring the success of influencer content all comes down to your goals. Let’s look at some of the most common goals and what metrics to consider: 

• Engagement: If you’re trying to nurture leads or build loyalty, monitor KPIs like comments, likes, shares, and views of video content. 

• Conversions: If you’re trying to convert new consumers or earn more sales, track conversions that originate from influencer content. This can be accomplished with UTM links that are connected to your campaign content. 

• Link clicks: If you simply want to get more eyes on a promotion or your site, tracking link clicks from influencer content—again, with UTM links—is ideal. They allow you to see the source of traffic, the channel, and any other identifiers you attach to them. 

• Brand sentiment: You can also track the effect influencer content has on perceptions of your brand. Spend time monitoring content to determine if people are reacting positively to it. Search your brand on social media for mentions and do the math to determine the share of community sentiment that is positive, neutral, and negative.

Should your company use influencer marketing? 

You’re probably wondering if you should be using influencers in your own marketing, and the answer is it depends.

Assess your resources, goals, and current marketing capabilities to determine if, when, and how you get involved. For smaller organizations, partnering with micro influencers in key niches can be a huge boon to increasing the reach and awareness of your brand.

How we can help

If you’re ready to explore influencer content (or already have), contact us today so we can help you use direct marketing to showcase your partnership to the fullest.