3 Best Practices For Influencer Marketing In The Pharma Industry

Cooper Munroe is CEO of The Motherhood Inc. For two decades, The Motherhood has connected regulated brands with influencers in every niche.

When influencer marketing first rose to prominence, the notion that it would be a viable strategy for brands in the most regulated of industries was nearly unimaginable. During the period in which consumer brands began dabbling in using bloggers to share their stories, pharmaceutical, healthcare and financial organizations primarily operated in the world of more controlled tactics. We were just getting comfortable with influencer marketing, so the thought of bringing it to industries with the strictest of protocols was light-years away.

Two decades later, however, using influencers for pharmaceutical marketing, financial education and bringing awareness to disease states is moving into its mainstream era (just check out #finance on TikTok and its 14.5 billion views).

As the leader of an agency that specializes in influencer marketing for regulated industries with thousands of campaigns under our belts, I’ve seen a set of best practices emerge consistently as nonnegotiables to proactively mitigate risk and contribute to campaign success: a thoughtful balance of people and technology, an understanding of intricate review processes, and airtight compliance protocols.

Let’s dive deeper into what makes a successful influencer pharma marketing campaign, as well as for other regulated clients.

People Driven, Technology Enhanced

Investing in a well-chosen tech stack is essential to scaling influencer marketing. There are myriad AI-driven tools, dashboards and platforms making varying degrees of promises in terms of access to talent and campaign communication. The options are enticing with their promises of efficiency of influencer vetting, onboarding and engagement.

Regardless of the technology assets you choose, even the most turnkey of solutions requires a human in the driver’s seat. After the AI-powered analysis and reviews are completed, don’t consider that creator fully vetted just yet.

Any specialized influencer marketing agency that’s skilled in the regulatory space will run through an additional checklist to make sure all of the “t’s” are crossed and “i’s” are dotted for every potential influencer partner. While the specific items on those lists often are part of an agency’s proprietary process, there should be, at a minimum, human-driven safeguards in place to ensure the brand/influencer collaboration is fully authentic, truthful, credible and not in conflict with other past, present or future partnerships.

Following that vetting, onboarding is another critical step to positioning the campaign for success. To elevate influencer partners to true ambassadors for your brand, think carefully about the most effective ways to bring them into the fold. Concept reviews, clear and detailed project briefs, virtual training and coaching sessions help to ensure creators have all of the resources they need to be trustworthy sources of information on behalf of your brand and for their followers.

Process Proficiency

There is a delicate balance between content that feels fully authentic to the creator and also meets all of the requirements for regulated industry campaigns, some of which can be exceptionally stringent. Part of the intrinsic value of a skilled agency is that they make it make sense.

Take a pharmaceutical campaign, for example. In addition to brand and marketing review, legal, medical and regulatory teams must also weigh in on influencer-created content to ensure everything is accurate, fair and balanced, appropriately disclosed, and depicted according to approved indications, among other items. With a review process that in-depth, there are numerous opportunities for the campaign to veer off course. The spirit of an influencer’s content can be lost, the timeline can be blown, and the budget can creep due to content reshoots that could have been prevented.

To avoid as many potential obstacles as possible, it’s important for all parties—from the influencer to the agency to the in-house team—to be crystal clear on the review process, expectations and contingencies.

Ideally, the influencer agency should act as a lynchpin, using their experience to move content through development and approval as seamlessly and efficiently as possible. It takes a deep level of expertise to be both prescriptive and flexible, to have an uncompromising attention to detail but never lose sight of the big picture. These things must coexist every step of the way.

Content Compliance For Brand Confidence

Some of the best content creators out there go the extra mile—typically in the form of an extra Instagram story or two—to make sure their content is as visible as possible. In the regulated space, however, even the simplest story frame can get you into hot water if published without undergoing the appropriate review process. What was intended as a value-added extra becomes a liability.

The moral of the story is that once content is approved, the heaviest lift is (usually) complete, but you can’t take your eye off the ball. There are many additional boxes you have to know to check to make sure the campaign is in full compliance.

Content also must be published exactly as approved—even a slight change from the original opens the sponsor up to penalty. If follower comments are left open, the agency must keep an eagle eye trained on the submissions to flag anything problematic or necessitating a response, and report any adverse events.

A detailed content compliance protocol and comment escalation process designed to give undeniable clarity to content creators and assurance to the brand are some of the hallmarks of a skilled influencer marketing agency trained in highly regulated campaigns.

When It All Comes Together

Highly regulated industry campaigns require intricate choreography and specialized knowledge, honed over time. The payoff is the power and the privilege to share important public health messages and to spread the word about vital, often life-saving information.

In spite of—or perhaps because of—the delicate dance these kinds of campaigns demand, healthcare and pharma marketing campaigns can be some of the most rewarding to execute.

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