First-mover advantage is rare in marketing. But for brands in sectors like finance, healthcare, and B2B, influencer marketing presents an opportunity to claim it.
By building trust with audiences and delivering highly engaged, targeted reach, influencer marketing has reshaped how brands across sectors like beauty, travel, and fitness connect with consumers and drive business results. For marketers in industries that have yet to embrace the approach, early adopters can use creator partnerships to differentiate their brands, establish credibility with target audiences, and capture attention in new ways. However, success requires a thoughtful approach that considers measurement challenges, effective team management, and strategies for handling media complexity.
Influencer marketing has experienced explosive growth in recent years. In 2025, creator-generated revenue is expected to increase 20% year over year, and by 2030, the market is projected to more than double, reaching $376.6 billion.
This growth is driven, in part, by creator content’s ability to accelerate the customer journey, condensing awareness, interest, and consideration into a shorter path to action. Consumers are also significantly more likely to search for additional information and actively engage with creator content compared to studio-produced alternatives.
The impact of influencer marketing is significant, with 83% of industry leaders in categories like beauty, retail, food and beverage, and entertainment reporting that creator content generates higher ROI than traditional digital advertising. That edge is particularly valuable amidst today’s economic pressures, especially considering that creator production costs have stayed relatively steady while the price of traditional digital advertising continues to climb.
For brands in categories that haven't yet fully influencer marketing—such as B2B, finance, healthcare, and automotive—the tactic presents a significant opportunity to unlock a key relative advantage, giving early adopters a competitive edge via strategies their competitors have not prioritized.
Influencer marketing offers several key benefits. First, it provides a new way to create fresh, differentiated content that can be used across multiple touchpoints and platforms. B2B companies, for example, might partner with industry thought leaders to explain complex SaaS solutions, while automotive brands could collaborate with car reviewers to showcase new safety features or electric vehicle technology. Additionally, influencer marketing plays a crucial connector role between owned and earned media, enabling brands to craft a more seamless omnichannel experience for their audiences.
Perhaps most significantly, creator collaborations help brands build credibility with audiences—something that’s particularly hard to earn intoday’s environment of widespread consumer skepticism. Leveraged thoughtfully, influencer marketing can serve as a powerful trust builder for brands: When a financial advisor explains retirement planning or a healthcare professional discusses wellness trends, audiences receive information from sources they already trust and follow, creating a more credible pathway to brand consideration.
That being said, because trust is fragile, advertisers must carefully vet creators for audience fit and brand alignment, and require clear, visible disclosures on every paid post. Additionally, brands in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance must navigate additional compliance requirements when implementing influencer partnerships. Marketers in these sectors will need to ensure all creator content meets regulatory standards, which can require careful legal review and clear partnership agreements before launching campaigns.
While 83% of industry leaders in categories like beauty, retail, food and beverage, and entertainment believe that creator content drives more ROI than traditional advertising, measurement remains a significant hurdle. Currently, 28% of brand marketers in these industries struggle to capture ROI, highlighting the need for a more strategic approach to measurement and analytics.
To address this, advertisers must first establish a clear learning path for their teams by defining the right questions to understand the value of their investment. Is the goal sign-ups, sales, downloads, or lead collection? Clarifying what a brand seeks to achieve—and what it is reasonable to expect, especially in early tests—is crucial for setting appropriate learning expectations and building scalable programs.
Social listening can also be a critical component of measuring success. This includes tracking conversations about a brand, monitoring sentiment (positive or negative), and analyzing how content is shared and amplified. In practice, it functions as a measure of share of conversation: Within a given category, how much of the discussion is a brand capturing, and does that align with its share of investment?
Finally, advertisers should complement the reporting offered by influencer marketing platforms with media mix modeling (MMM) to understand how influencer marketing is performing in tandem with other channels. This provides a more holistic view of its contribution to business outcomes.
Brands are increasingly facing criticism from consumers for out of touch or poorly executed creator partnerships. Soda brand Poppi, for example, received backlash after sending full-size vending machines stocked with product to 32 influencers, with critics calling out both the extravagance of the stunt and the lack of diversity among recipients.
To avoid missteps such as these, creator partnerships and activations must be executed with intentionality. Campaign concepts must align not only with brand values and messaging, but also resonate positively within the current cultural context. Successful activations require careful planning with clear objectives and creator guidelines. Advertisers may also want to consider running small pilot tests to gauge audience resonance before making larger investments.
Successful influencer programs work best when they're fully integrated across the entire marketing team and often require close collaboration with PR. This integration ensures consistent messaging, aligned objectives, and coordinated execution across all brand touchpoints.
A full-fledged influencer program typically requires several full-time employees, but for those organizations that are dipping their toes in the water, team members who already manage social media investments can begin the testing and learning process.
Brands can also scale these programs by partnering with trusted partners who can serve as a bridge and help manage initial programs while building internal capabilities that can eventually scale. This approach allows brands to learn, optimize, and grow their influencer marketing capabilities systematically rather than jumping in without the necessary support systems.
When selecting partners for influencer marketing initiatives, marketers should carefully evaluate any influencer platforms under consideration. Key factors include measurement capabilities and ease of use, since adding influencer marketing to a media plan introduces operational complexities and another platform to manage.
If testing and learning evolves into larger investments, marketing leaders should assess whether their tech stacks enable teams to manage the complexity of an expanding mix of channels, platforms, and strategies. Investing in technology that streamlines manual processes and unifies disparate systems allows teams to handle the added complexity influencer marketing brings more effectively.
For marketers in sectors that have yet to embrace influencer marketing, there is a clear opportunity to capitalize. With a considered approach to measurement, intentional partnerships, and the organizational infrastructure that enables teams to manage rising media complexity, brands can tap into the full benefits of this rapidly growing tactic.
And for early adopters in non-traditional sectors, the reward extends beyond immediate campaign results. They'll build valuable creator relationships before competition drives up costs while positioning themselves as innovators, rather than followers. The window for gaining competitive advantage is open, but with the market’s rapid pace of growth, it likely won't stay that way for long.
