WHO ARE F-INFLUENCERS?
F-influencers are a certain type of social media influencer that provides information and opinions on personal finance, investing, markets, the economy, and investment products and services.
Their popularity has sharply risen with young people in recent years – seeming to fill a void left by the advice gap and lacking financial education in schools.
The FCA reports that 85% of 18-40 yr-olds find social media platforms ‘highly influential’ in their investment decisions. Many young people follow f-influencers.
ARE THEY CREDIBLE PARTNERS TO INVESTMENT / WEALTH MANAGERS?
Some are credible and others are very much not.
The ones that aren’t may have insufficient qualifications or experience, cause financial harm, commit fraud, and potentially promote financial services and products in a non-compliant or illegal way, as the FCA has identified.
But there are others that very much credible, offering engaged audiences useful financial education and guidance. For financial marketers, they represent two key opportunities.
1. DELIVERING ON MARKETING OBJECTIVES
Influencer marketing can be a powerful tactic for investment and wealth brands wishing to target the next generation of investors:
- F-influencers are able to distil complex financial topics into engaging and compelling stories.
- Audiences tend to be financially active and strongly motivated by f-influencers.
- Content formats and delivery are tailored to the channel, driving high quality engagement.
- Reach is extremely cost effective in comparison to traditional media channels, and comes with measurable performance and detailed insights into engagement.
- Campaigns can be activated at speed and optimised quickly.
2. PROMOTING THE RIGHT MESSAGE
Younger adults’ experience of investing needs to be a positive one – in the UK alone, they will be part of the cohort receiving £7 trillion in the great wealth transfer over the next 30 years.
Working with credible partners serves to promote communications that are fair, clear, and not misleading, and avoid causing financial harm by discussing the (albeit less sexy) benefits of long-term diversified investing as a means to building wealth.
Of course, choosing the right partner for your brand is paramount.
Whether this is via an agency or directly, here’s our checklist for evaluating f-influencers.
OUR CHECKLIST FOR WORKING WITH F-INFLUENCERS
A. Credibility
- Are they qualified to speak about investments? i.e. investment professionals, financial advisers, academics, or financial industry background.
- Do they have a strong reputation across the wider digital ecosystem? i.e, youtube or forums such as reddit
- How do they deal with comments and feedback?
B. Audience
- How well does the creator know their audience profile and are they willing to share details?
- Is it an appropriate segment? i.e. sophistication, demographics and behaviours.
- Is it a high-quality audience? i.e. audience engagement over follower numbers
C. Content
- Does scripting demonstrate high quality research and audience understanding?
- Does the style and values align with your brand?
- How do they approach sponsored content and does it perform well in comparison to non-sponsored content?
D. Compliance
- Does the creator demonstrate a clear understanding of FinProm rules / FCA’s social media guidance and requirements across all aspect of posting?
- Does scripting and content creation address compliance challenges in a natural way?
- Do they understand compliance processes for script sign-off and ongoing checks?
E. Performance
- Are they willing to discuss and share performance?
- What KPIs will be measured?
- Will these serve marketing benefit to your brand’s objectives / focus on the right part of the funnel?
Speak to us about f-influencers:
Influencer strategy
Campaign ideation
Discovery and evaluation