Influencer Marketing

According to a report from Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing industry was on track to reach a valuation of approximately $16.4 billion in 2022, rising sharply and consistently since 2016 when the total market was valued at $1.7 billion. In such a short period of time, influencers have solidified themselves as bona fide marketing avenues. 

In fact, 75% of brand marketers intend to dedicate a budget to influencer marketing in 2021, and 68% of marketers planned to increase their influencer marketing spend in 2021, according to that same report. 

Why? The reason is simple: they deliver results. 

Working with an influencer can have a profound effect on your entire digital marketing program, but most notably, influencers have huge impacts on four main categories: 

1. Content production
2. Brand awareness
3. Brand equity
4. Conversions

In Section 2 of this guide, we will explore the positive impact of those four avenues in more detail, and in Section 7, we will tell you how you can measure and determine success in those spaces as well.

A simple definition of an influencer is anyone who uses their following on social media or other platforms to advertise or promote another business for profit. But knowing the simple definition of an influencer does not mean you understand what they are or how to use them, so in Sections 3 and 4, we will take you through a detailed understanding of influencer types and important concepts to know as you begin working with influencers in your campaigns and, in Section 6, we will lay out all of the different places that influencers can be used. 

But first and foremost, before you invest any time into influencer marketing, you need to ask yourself the most important question: is influencer marketing right for me?

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter 1

Candidates for Influencer Marketing

As a medical aesthetic professional, you and your patients are often thinking about treatments and procedures in terms of candidates. Does a potential patient present severe tissue sagging after pregnancy and nursing? They might be a candidate for a breast lift or augmentation. Does a patient present moderate wrinkles in several points around the face? They may be a candidate for dermal fillers.

Think of influencer marketing in the same way — if you have found yourself in need of a digital marketing tool that can help you improve how many people know about your practice, how much patients and potential patients value your practice over alternatives, how much content you have to push on your native platforms, and how many patients you are bringing in overall, then you might be candidate for influencer marketing. 

Of course, this means that some preexisting conditions might exclude you from candidacy as well, just like real patients who are considering surgery or skin treatment. If you are not willing to invest some time from either you or a staff member, then the treatment — or influencer marketing — might not be right for your program. 

Another consideration is that influencer marketing laws vary largely by country — sometimes even by state or province. So you should always consult with a trusted source on the legality of your efforts prior to conducting them. This is particularly true for Australian practices, where legislation that would remove influencer marketing entirely is being developed. 

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter 2

Benefits of Influencers

Gone are the days when the efficacy of influencer marketing was riddled with uncertainty and doubt. It may have taken a few years for influences to earn some credibility in the eyes of the general public, but as the population becomes increasingly more investing in digital platforms, the public’s need for trusted figures to help them navigate that space will only continue to grow alongside it. 

Influencers spend a lot of time and effort building trust between themselves and their audiences, and, if they are a good influencer, spend even more time safeguarding that trust so that their business efficacy, or how much their following trusts their opinions, remains as powerful as possible. That trust can bring many different benefits to your practice, including:

Brand Exposure

Brand exposure is the raw number of people who are seeing, hearing, or otherwise being exposed to your practice, brand, or services. Influencers are rated very highly on how many followers they have on their channels since this is a direct indicator to a potential partner how many people will see the content of their partnership simply by virtue of working together. 

Exposure is not the end-all-be-all metric for influencer value, but it is one of the most critically important in early stages. After all, if your main issue is having a steady stream of content for your digital channels, but you are doing well enough on your own in terms of exposure and reach, then you might only need an influencer with a small (and much more affordable) following. 

On the other hand, if you are struggling to gain traction increasing your organic followers or post reach, then an influencer with a larger following might be what you need to break the stagnation. 

Increased Audience Pools

It can be easy to confuse exposure and audience, but there are some distinct differences between the two. As previously mentioned, exposure is the raw number of people who were presented with your practice or brand on their devices. Audience, however, is a little more specific. You have your own native audience on your channels. People who follow you are interested in content from you specifically.

But the influencer you work with will have a different type of audience, potentially in circles that might be difficult for you to penetrate. After all, to find your content, there needs to be some kind of indicator that, at the very least, they were interested in aesthetic medicine. But influencers are presenting your practice and services to an entirely different audience, many of which may never have considered aesthetic treatment until the partnership with the influencer. It is also possible that your own organic audience will grow based on access to these new pools of potential patients. 

Brand Equity

Brand equity is the value that patients and potential patients place on your practice simply because they trust your results and practice over other options. Think about any of your favorite brands; if their products stopped offering cutting-edge features, would you still buy them? Many would say yes because the reliability is still there. People stick to brands because of that and because they trust them to give them the best service or product possible.

Potential patients don’t necessarily want to understand the ins and outs of their procedure, they just want to feel safe with who is performing it and confident that it wouldn’t be happening if results weren’t probable. If you can build that trust in your own practice and brand, by potentially through working with influencers that people already trust, then you will find yourself with a patient base who is willing to come to you over other options on the market.

Conversions

A select few followers of the influencer will notice that you are in their area and sign up with services with you based strictly on the influencer endorsement. They are rare, but they do exist. More impactful, though, are the potential patients who will come across the content that is created from the partnership.

The impact on your content program could provide countless conversions down the line — on a timeframe that will long outlast the exchange agreement between you and an influencer.  How do you do this? Instead of focusing on trying to get as many sign ups directly from your influencer as possible, use the partnership to create good evergreen content that will help push people down the funnel for months, even years, to come. 

This is where using an influencer can go wrong; by not understanding that much of the paid value they are getting is not simply from stardom or follower count alone, it is the ability of the influencer to tell great stories about your practice and help you create masterful content that converts in the long-term. 

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter 3

Influencer Size & Cost

As previously mentioned, follower count is one of the most common metrics by which influencers are valued. It is by no means always the most important or relevant, but it is a good way to conduct a quick litmus test on what kind of reach, exposure, and even brand equity you will be getting.

Influencer size will largely dictate the cost of your partnership. Here is an easy to reference graphic you can lean on in a pinch:

Nano Influencer - 1K - 10K Followers - $2 - $100 per post

Micro Influencers - 10K - 100K Followers - $100 - $500 per post

Mid Tier Influencers - 50K - 500K - $500 - $5,000 per post

Macro Influencers - 500K - 1M Followers - $5000 - $10,000 per post

Mega Influencers - 1M+ Followers - $10,000+ per post

Figuring out which of these options is best for your practice depends on a few different factors, such as:

• Social media positioning
• Allocated budget
• Targeted demographics
• Brand voice
• Content preference

In Section 4, we dive deeper into the more personal traits and characteristics that determine whether an influencer is a good fit for your practice. 

Value of Follower Counts Across Platforms

As you can see in the cost sheet above, not all followers on social media platforms are created equal. Notably, TikTok and Twitter are two of the cheapest platforms, but interestingly, in terms of current popularity, these two are opposite sides of the spectrum. So why are their prices so different?

There are two primary schools of thought on this: the first is that Twitter has never really been particularly ad friendly and TikTok is still a relatively new platform with fewer established players. This notion is largely shifting as TikTok continues to cement itself as the leading social media platform with a growing talent pool, but it does mean that influencers in places like Instagram and Facebook, more established identities and more ingrained users, can charge more per post to stand above the rest of the noise on the platforms.

The second idea is that places like Twitter and TikTok don’t do a great job at keeping attention on a single topic for very long, whereas something like YouTube can completely occupy a viewer’s attention without being able to immediately swipe away at an impulse. Facebook and Instagram are kind of a halfway point, where people are likely to spend a fair amount of time digesting a post, but Twitter and TikTok are known for their rapid swiping and scrolling. The reality of the situation is that it is probably a combination of these two and other factors. 

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter 4

Influencer Personalities

Many medical practices are quick to pull the trigger on an influencer partnership without looking into the specifics of the influencer and the intricacies of their branding and audience. Remember that different influencers tend to prioritize different things, so you should be finding influencers not only with large followings and good content, but influencers who are also going to be able to make your services resonate with their audiences.

Your Brand vs. Their Brand

Branding is a big deal, and if you are in the digital marketing ecosystem, you should have a strong brand with a clear identity and set of guidelines. If the influencer is worth the partnership, they will also have a clear identity and brand carved out as well. It is absolutely imperative to ensure that those two brands are able to complement each other well. 

If your brand is focused on keeping a realistic and healthy view on aesthetic medicine and the improvement of someone’s appearance, the last thing you want to do is bring on an influencer who does not share those views or otherwise goes against that tenet of your brand. It will be seen to both audiences as disingenuous and harm your reputation.

But the approach to aesthetic medicine is just one factor, other components like their usual industries, tone of voice, values, and politics need to be considered as well if you hope to create an effective and genuine long-term relationship that will be received well by your audiences.

Your Niche vs. Their Niche

If you are a facial plastic surgeon in Phoenix, your niche can be broken down in the following way:

These categories are mostly narrowed down from “largest,” or relevant to the largest number of people, to “smallest,” or the least universally relevant. Within your final category, people interested in facial plastic surgery in Phoenix, you will have several other smaller niches, such as people who can afford treatment or care enough about their appearance to go through surgery. 

Influencers are the same, although they generally have more than one niche they cover; their breakdown might look something like this:

Their final category, Arizona, can also be broken down into even further categories that are very similar to your practices: people who can afford treatment and people who care enough about their appearance to go through surgery.

The goal when choosing an influencer is to make sure there is as much overlap between these niches as possible. The more overlap, the more likely the partnership is to be successful. Spend some time looking at their content, what performs well, and what performs poorly to get an idea of how content similar to yours might play out with your influencer’s audience.

Understanding Their Community

In today’s digital ecosystem, online communities are held very sacred in the hearts of those who are a part of them. When someone becomes attached to a community created by an influencer, they are privy to inside jokes and the continuity of the image being portrayed by the influencer themselves. After all, they have grown to trust that person and look forward to the content they put out. Otherwise, they would just unfollow.

So when looking to partner and create content with an influencer, it is important that you understand the temperament of that community. Will they fall in love with your practice if you can show that your brand and practice has a history of body positivity? Or will they crucify you when the influencer posts a picture of you doing a treatment some might consider unnecessary or unhealthy?

Understanding the community of your influencer helps prepare you for the kind of content you will need to create during your partnership. Ideally, the influencer can help you navigate these waters, but you should always do your own audit and research to make sure you do not damage your own reputation in the process. 

Understanding Their Demographics

Even if the community the influencer has built is interested in aesthetic medicine — surgical or nonsurgical — they still might not be a good fit. Consider a new medspa that is looking to build a patient list full of people on the young-ish side of the industry. If the influencer primarily speaks to their middle-aged audience on Facebook, you might not find a ton of people or interest in the services you are offering. That audience might instead be better suited to a plastic surgeon, who, typically, serves an older demographic at their practice. 

Demographics are becoming increasingly easier to focus on since most social media platforms provide a breakdown of your following’s metrics by age, gender, locations, etc. This information alone is enough to empower you a great deal when it comes to targeting the correct demographic in your marketing. 

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter 5

Finding an Influencer

There are four ways in which you will typically come by an influencer you want to work with: you can search for them organically on social media via hashtags, you can use an influencer platform to find someone who suits your needs, you can use a social media manager — in-house or agency — or you can wait til they find you.

All of these methods are valid, but it is important to keep in mind that influencer marketing requires a lot of communication and relationship building, so if you are someone who already has a packed schedule and has to fight for meeting times, you should set yourself up for success by finding a method that does not rely on your direct input.

Organic Search

The organic search method is the one that most medical professionals will default to because it is the one they are most inherently familiar with. Browsing hashtags and geotags is easy enough when you already have some sort of understanding of the platform you are searching on. While this may not be the most efficient method, it is a good way to get a read on the ecosystem and see what kind of content and influencers are performing well. 

Alternatively, you might also look to other medical aesthetic pages, where other practices may have already done partnerships with influencers. It may not always be a good idea to use an influencer who is closely tied to someone in your area of focus already, but you may be able to find someone who produces content you enjoy that does not have such a developed relationship already. Maybe aesthetic medicine was not their primary focus or maybe they went in for a one-off procedure whereas you are looking to develop something much more long term. 

In terms of strategizing for your influencer marketing program, the organic method does a great job at providing you with a chance to perform social listening, or the practice of looking analytically at the landscape of what people are saying not only about your practice and brand but what they are saying about the industry at large, what is resonating, and what is not being received well.  

Influencer Platforms

If you are looking for a more concentrated, focused method of seeking out an influencer to work with, you may want to consider looking at an influencer platform. There are many out there that exist, such as Ainfluencer or Influencity.

Many of these platforms also include partner management software, which could ease the management burden on whoever is maintaining your marketing program. Others are as simple as connecting you directly to a marketplace of influencers to partner with. There are a lot of these options on the market, so you should spend some time looking at which ones suit you and your practice’s needs the best.

If you are set on managing the influencers yourself, then these platforms are a very valuable tool to stay organized and on a clear path. The downside is that you will need to check regularly on an additional platform and have another project management tool to deal with — some physicians consider this cumbersome, especially when they already are dealing with many other work systems. 

Social Media Managers

There are two routes you can take when deciding to have a social media manager take over and handle your influencer marketing efforts: in-house marketer and agency management. Both options have pros and cons, so figuring out which is the right move for you can be difficult to determine. 

Generally, practices that go with an in-house marketing solution do so because they want to keep a clear focus on their marketing and business goals. These team members are easy to access and communicate with and can even be present during visits from the influencers, allowing a clear and recognizable point of contact.

The downside is that in-house marketers, at least those with experience and knowledge, can be an expensive labor cost for a medical practice. Plus, the extent of your marketing will only be as good as your employee’s knowledge base, which naturally limits your ability to be as diverse and flexible as possible. In-house marketers are also often over encumbered by the sheer amount of tasks that need to be performed to keep a marketing program running, so bandwidth issues are also a concern. (Although many practices rectify this by allowing for additional budgeting to go to freelancers for copywriting, photography, and videography to lessen the load on the employee.)

A marketing agency is a huge resource for a medical practice simply by virtue of gaining access to a diversified talent pool. An agency has SEO specialists, social media professionals, copywriters, photographers, videographers, editors, designers, coders, brand developers, and many other specialized skill sets in their organizations — signing up with an agency grants access to them all. 

And unlike in-house marketing solutions, time can be allocated efficiently to someone on your agency team who can perform the task much more quickly than someone who is not an expert in that area. Most agencies have different price and tier options, often coming out to be less than the salary of a dedicated marketing employee. 

Unfortunately, though, many people worry about agency work feeling generic and not personalized to their practices. It is a fair criticism considering that many agencies simply do not do a great job at creating content tailored for each client specifically. So it will take some research and vetting on your part to find an agency that will treat your content as uniquely and as personably as you would.

Also unlike in-house marketers, agencies are not stationed at your office or within your normal communication or project management systems, so you will be required to communicate externally with your agency at regular intervals. 

In-House Marketer Pros

• Direct access
• Easy communication
• Present during influencer visits

In-House Marketer Cons

• High labor costs
• Limited expertise
• Limited time

Marketing Agency Pros

• Diversified expertise
• Affordable
• Flexible time allocation

Marketing Agency Cons

• Third-party communication
• Not present at office
• May feel generic

Influencers Seek You Out

When you start getting into the influencer marketing ecosystem, it is very likely that some influencers will start to reach out to you for the chance at a partnership. For many influencers, working with an aesthetic practice is also good for their own content and marketing, so to see that you are doing partnerships well and creating interesting content is a big draw. As your own audience grows and your content marketing develops, it will become increasingly more commonplace. It is a good idea at this point to develop your standard partnership offers so that you are not scrambling to put something together each time it happens. 

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter 6

How to Use Influencer Marketing 

Once a partnership has been solidified, the next step is for both parties to go about creating content and posting it to all digital platforms. There are two considerations to be made here: what kind of content should you create, and what content should the influencer be creating. Generally, you want to be diverse with your content, covering everything from social media to emails. Your influencer partner will likely be more focused on social media specifically.

Your Content: Implementing the “1 - 5 Rule”

A single influencer partnership can yield a lot of content for your channels, but it is easy to get overwhelmed and become immobilized by the sheer volume of opportunity. Plus, on the day of and afterward, it can be hard to organize everything that was gathered on the day of filming. (If you want a guide to content gathering, jump forward to Section 8’s “Content Creation Checklist.”)

To avoid missing out on content, we recommend following the 1 - 5 Rule, which states that from every partnership you should get 1 email blast, 2 blog posts, 3 Patient Journey parts, 4 social media posts, and 5 social media stories.

We recommend this because we believe that this spread of content benefits all of your marketing channels while avoiding becoming redundant. Generally, your email blast should cover the entire experience — what it was like, how fun the day was, the results that came from it, etc. This is great content for your email marketing program, but you don’t want to inundate your email lists with too much of the same content. So sticking to just one email is a good practice. (Although you can always add into newsletters or summary campaigns later on.)

Blog posts are critically important to a healthy website, so plan ahead and schedule some topics that revolve around what your influencer will be having performed. A simple FAQ blog or trendy listicle is a great way to ease readers into the content, but you can also work in quotes, images, video, or links from your influencer partnership to bolster the blogs. 

The same is true for Patient Journeys. If you don’t know what a Patient Journey is, here is a simple definition: A patient journey is a long-form narrative that tells the story of what a real patient went through. In short, it is their experience through their aesthetic process at your practice.

Your influencer might be a little different from a typical patient, but they are still a patient. Get their story, the impact your treatment has, why it matters to them, and you will have some killer content that you can put not only on your website but on all of your channels. 

If you want to go above and beyond, here is some extra credit:
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Of course, social media platforms are ground zero for influencer marketing, so at a minimum, you should plan to have about four posts total from the partnerships. These do not have to be consecutive — in fact, it is better if you space them out in intervals to avoid audience fatigue. This can be as simple as posting a group photo with the influencer on the day of, waiting a week to post the procedure shots, waiting two weeks to see result progress, and then waiting another week or two to post final results or even a second treatment. 

Social media stories, however, are a little more flexible. You can bombard your stories with much more content since it will expire after 24 hours. Do not overdo it too much, but posting as many as five stories on the day of (and then sporadically as result photos roll in) is a completely fine and effective strategy. 

Their Content: Paid Influencer Channels

When discussing terms with your influencer, you should ask for a clear sheet of their audience numbers for each individual channel. This will help you figure out which of their channels you are interested in participating in and what makes the most sense for your practice and marketing program. 

Generally, there are 10 total channels to keep an eye on in today’s social media sphere:

1. Facebook
2. Instagram
3. LinkedIn
4. TikTok
5. Twitter
6. Snapchat
7. YouTube
8. Blogs
9. Podcast
10. Celebrity Channels (Radio or TV hosts)

But there are other strategies to implement as well, such as:

• Testimonials. Having a highly impactful quote from a recognizable face in the space can do wonders for your credibility and trustworthiness. 
• Takeovers. Only use these when an influencer is very well known because it is better to have access to the influencer’s own platform in most cases. But when done right, it can be an interesting event to focus attention on your practice.

Depending on where your focus and following is, you will want to be flexible and strategic about what channels you are paying to have access to. 

Optimize Your Linking Strategy 

Moving from one platform to another is only possible because of hyperlinking, so it is critically important that the links you and the influencer are providing are sending potential patients to the best possible locations in the easiest way possible. Provide direct links to relevant web pages and microsites whenever possible, and make sure the links are easily accessible in both your and the influencer social media biography sections. 

If internal linking is allowed on the platform, take full advantage of it. Particularly on platforms like YouTube, which allow long descriptions on the videos, effective linking can be the difference between converting and not converting potential patients into signing up. Make sure that all your links are trackable so that you can accurately measure the results of a partnership. If an influencer has their own website or blog, make sure to ask to set up a backlink whenever possible. (If you don’t know what these mean, your agency or in-house marketing team should be able to help you.)

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter 7

Measuring Influencer Success

It can be discouraging to feel like a ton of work is going into influencer marketing and having zero idea whether your efforts are yielding a good return. We understand that frustration, so we wanted to give you four realistic and meaningful impacts to measure when it comes to your influencer marketing: content production, brand awareness, brand equity, and conversions.

Impact on Content Production

The sheer volume of content you can create from a single influencer visit and partnership can be a game changer for your practice. But really getting an idea of what you can produce and to what degree can be a challenge if you are new to the influencer marketing game. If you are hitting your 1 -5 Rule quotas, then you can confidently feel like you are getting a good return on your influencer investment.

Impact on Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is one of the other big benefits to using influencer marketing. The more people who are aware that your practice exists, the more likely it is they will think of you when considering some kind of aesthetic treatment. Measuring your brand awareness can be broken down into four main metrics: new follower count, impressions, engagement and campaign hashtag popularity.

New Follower Count

The number of new followers that were generated from your partnership. These new followers usually fall into one of two buckets:

1. Followers from your influencers direct following list and audience
2. Followers who discovered your practice from associated hashtags or discovery pages on posts from the influencer.

Total Impressions

The total number of people who had your influencers content put on their screens. This doesn’t mean they interacted or watched, it only means it was presented to people that number of times. 

Total Engagement

Engagement is the number of comments, likes, saves or sends that a social media post gathers once it is posted. Engagement is good because most social media platforms use it as a metric to determine if it will be shown to more people. The more engagement, the more conversation is happening around your practice.

Campaign Hashtag Popularity

When you run a campaign, you should always make sure you are using a unique hashtag. By doing this, you allow the communities you are reaching to also participate in the conversation, spreading the messaging and word even further. Not to mention, if someone you see with good content is using your hashtag, you can always reach out to them and ask if you can cross-post to your own page or somehow feature them as well.

Luckily, each of these metrics are easily trackable on the social media platforms you are working on. Your influencer’s contract should include some kind of reporting clause so that you know the exact value you are extracting from the partnership. Unfortunately, what is good for one practice might not be good for another, so you will need to work internally or with your agency partner to figure out what exactly good numbers for these metrics are.

Impact on Brand Equity

Brand equity is a little more complicated to quantify because there is no quantifiable component behind it, unless you were to do a sample group or study. It is a term used to describe the amount of money that someone would pay to have your services over another practice. Basically, how much is the trust and reputation you develop with your audiences worth? 

Raw metrics may not be the best tool when it comes to figuring out how well we are building brand equity, but we can still find some reasonable information to work with. 

1. Identifying the message that was conveyed. What was the general consensus of the influencer’s messaging? Did they rave about your service? Results? Your humor? Reliability? Comforting nature? Your stellar staff? Your no-pressure environment? Was your decor cool? Find the themes that made their way into all of the content that was produced and note how heavy those themes were. 
2. Count the number of times that messaging was conveyed. Did your influencer mention how dope your office was every time she posted? Nice, that will be something their audience will remember then. Did she only mention how much she liked the results once? Maybe that needed to be strategized or emphasized in the planning meetings. 

Impact on Conversions

Most things you do in your digital marketing program, even if they don’t directly convert, may help you directly convert down the line. By providing some assurance to future prospects via testimonials, blogs, posts, stories, etc. from your influencer partnership, you are indefinitely presenting a more trustworthy and expert image. This isn’t to say that you won’t enjoy some immediate conversions directly from your influencer efforts — those should roll in at some point during the initial campaign. But the idea here is that there is somewhat of an immeasurable benefit to the long-term conversion rate that should not be tossed aside. If you have produced some evergreen content on your website or social media that is accessible in perpetuity, then you can be confident that there was a net positive on your conversion rate.

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter 8

How to Do Influencer Marketing

Influencer Partnership Checklist

• Connect with influencers. Take whatever path you prefer from the option mentioned in Section 5. The first step to influencer marketing is to get in touch with an influencer to work with. Make sure you are professional in your communications to establish a trusting business partnership early on.
• Discuss contract terms. Once both parties have agreed to work with one another, you need to get all of the deliverables, timelines, payment, and other terms in writing for both parties to sign. This will help mitigate any confusion moving forward and will serve as protection for both parties as well.
• Communicate goals early. During the contract terms negotiations, it is a good idea to make clear and put in writing what the metrics for success will be or what efforts should be made to hit those goals. If your influencer does not know you are focused on direct conversions or content creation, they cannot make that a priority during their own processes. 
• Use a legal agreement template. You can use this template as a baseline for your influencer contract. While this is a general template, you should always consult with legal counsel to ensure everything that is unique to your situation is covered thoroughly in the verbiage. Make sure there is also an exit process included as well in the event that your influencer is not a candidate for the initially planned treatment. 
• Set up an office visit. The next step in the process is to find a day when your influencer can come visit your office. Influencers have busy schedules in many cases, so you should always give them ample time to plan and put something on the calendar as early on as possible. As a general rule of thumb, a month in advance is a good, workable time frame.
• Do consult and treatment together. When the day comes for the influencer to receive treatment, you should conduct both the consult and the treatment on the same day to avoid any scheduling conflicts from postponing or halting the content creation process. Make sure you are following the content capturing tips below to get the most out of your partnership. 
• Provide your best staff. You want to put your best foot forward when doing a treatment so public. This does not mean just the most technically skilled, you want to surround the influencer with people who make them feel comfortable and give off an impression you want associated with your practice. It might also be helpful to have someone in the office act as a lead with the influencer as well, to make sure the entire process goes smoothly and all the assets are attained.
• Arrange asset delivery. Once the treatment is done, you will need to keep an eye on the deliverable schedule you created and speak regularly with the influencer about maintaining it. This way, none of the content you negotiated gets left behind and you can fully capitalize on the partnership you created.
• Create a treatment plan. Your partnership does not have to end at one treatment. Ideally, you can create an entire treatment plan to document and update to bolster your before and after photo catalog or social media highlights. 
• Post creative assets. Once you have all the material, create and maintain a posting schedule for your influencer partnership. Remember the 1 - 5 Rule for Influencers: you should be getting 1 email blast, 2 blog posts, 3 Patient Journey parts, 4 social media posts, and 5 social media stories from a single influencer partnership.

Content Creation Checklist

• Plan out your shoots in advance.
• Ready your equipment well ahead of time.
• Consider having supplementary lighting.
• Get amateur and professional footage.
• Film everything: the arrival, sign in, explanation, consultation, treatment and departure.
• Film multiple angles — close ups, mid distance, far away.
• Film in horizontal and vertical orientation, simultaneously if possible.
• Film the reaction to the treatment to highlight lack of pain.
• Document the progress and results
• Document the recovery of surgical procedures — timelines are gold for audience attention
• Make sure the treatment plan and follow-up appointments are crystal clear
• Have a team member follow up regularly with influencer to confirm appointments

Interesting and Unique Content Ideas

1. “Influencer” Journey — documenting the story and narrative of the experience
2. Interviews in video, audio and written formats
3. Q/A sessions and content
4. Endorsements/testimonials

‍Conclusion

Influencers are an incredible tool to leverage for your digital marketing. While they can require a lot of time investment in all stages of the process, the benefits they provide to your business can largely outweigh those costs when done correctly. Of course, doing it correctly can be difficult, but if you follow this guide, we are confident that you can make it work. But if you ever need help, even if it is just for pep-talk to get started, give us a call. We are always here to help.