Strategies for using influencer marketing to expand engagement for financial institutions
Influencer marketing is big business. According to Sprout Social, 86% of US marketers used influencer partnerships to generate brand awareness in 2025. That translates to a projected reach of $32.6 billion last year. The right influencer partner can bring your brand to life, build authentic connections, and deliver measurable sales impact. For banks and credit unions, this strategy can help financial institutions reach people through channels and content that their target audiences already engage with. Instead of a bank speaking directly to consumers through owned channels and consumer ads, the brand message travels through someone that the audience knows, follows, and trusts.
Today’s influencer marketing has evolved beyond celebrity endorsements and consumer brands. In banking, the right influencer campaign doesn’t necessarily mean partnering with a “finfluencer” who has built their audience around budgeting, investing, financial independence, or other money matters. The right content creator could be someone who focuses on lifestyle, entrepreneurship, homeownership, parenting, travel, sports, or even the local community. What matters is having alignment between the bank or credit union’s goals, the audience it wants to reach, the creator’s audience, and the content the brand wants to prioritize.
Influencer marketing can be deployed across a range of bank priorities, from building awareness in new markets to reaching younger customers or other target demographics. And while influencer marketing relies on authenticity and relevance, any successful campaign starts with strategy. Banks and credit unions should stay focused on who the financial institution wants to reach and why. Because while the right influencer can help generate awareness and consideration, trust is earned through an institution’s own reputation, experience, products, people, and the ability to deliver on its promise.
The ideal influencer for a campaign might be a mega-celebrity. But it also might be someone local – and even, perhaps, a content creator who already banks with a local credit union or community bank. Influencers can run the gamut from macro-level creators with 100,000-plus reach to micro-influencers with niche communities and highly engaged followers. More eyeballs doesn’t necessarily mean more results. Audience, geography, engagement, and relevance matter more than raw follower counts. For community and regional institutions, a local creator with a highly focused following in a target market may deliver more value than a national personality with a geographically dispersed audience.
For any influencer campaign, it’s essential to understand where the target audience spends their time, then identify creators who naturally reach that audience. The “Hilton For the Stay” campaign, for example, featured Paris Hilton, along with GirlBossTown, Chris Olson, Boman Martinez-Reid, and others who created their own Hilton hotel content – which was then woven into a 10-minute Tik-Tok video. The campaign is a great example of a company selecting creators for their audience engagement and cultural fit rather than subject-matter expertise. To date, the campaign has generated over 13 million organic views and a click-through rate 145%, above the platform’s normal benchmarks.
For financial institutions both big and small, partnering with the right influencer can make the brand visible with content that consumers have already actively chosen to consume – rather than relying on a bank or credit union’s own social following or paid media to generate interest. In designing an influencer campaign, authenticity is what matters most. While banks should establish a strong strategy, core content requirements, and brand and compliance guardrails, it’s also important to allow creators to communicate in their own way.
Filene’s Finfluencer program put this approach to the test with “13 credit unions launching influencer-driven social media campaigns to measure whether authentic creator partnerships could move the needle on awareness, engagement, and early indicators of member conversion.” The campaigns generated significant increases in impressions and engagement, demonstrating the potential for influencer marketing to expand reach and drive consumers to take the next step. Redwood Credit Union in San Francisco, for example, recorded a measurable increase in site traffic as a result of their influencer campaign.
Another successful influencer campaign is FMS Bank + Date Night Denver, which features a young couple whose content focus is relationships, lifestyle, and things to do in Denver. Targeted to younger consumers across Northern Colorado, the campaign spotlighted real, relatable financial moments in a young couple’s life. During the height of the campaign, “FMS Bank saw monthly increases in account openings ranging from 34% to 75% above the previous year’s benchmarks.”
For all the value as a marketing strategy, partnering with influencers introduces a different kind of third-party relationship. As a result, due diligence is critical to protect the brand’s hard-earned trust. Banks and credit unions must understand who they are putting alongside their brand. This means evaluating a creator’s old content, reputation, audience authenticity, other brand partnerships, and any controversies that could create reputational risk. Bringing compliance into the conversation up front is also vital to establish clear boundaries, rather than trying to retrofit requirements into messaging after content has been created.
It’s important to understand FTC disclosure requirements and other regulations addressing financial services advertising, and it’s on both parties to understand the rules. Ultimately, protecting the brand means that financial institutions should train and monitor the paid influencers to ensure that the partnership and the content are in compliance with all banking regulations. Finally, don’t forget to measure success based on a campaign’s objectives. Measurement for awareness means looking at reach, impressions, and video views. For consideration, engagement and follower increases are what matters. Lastly, click-throughs, site traffic, and account leads should connect to conversion rates.
As influencer marketing for financial institutions grows, successful campaigns will be less about chasing viral moments and more about matching the right audience, creator, content, and objective. As this type of partnership matures, there’s more opportunity today for banks and credit unions to approach their own influencer campaigns with intentionality. Marketing performs better when it’s measurable, trustworthy, and easy for audiences to take action on. This means evaluating a campaign’s ROI against financial institutions’ real business objectives.
Adrenaline is an end-to-end brand experience company serving the financial industry. We move brands and businesses ahead by delivering on every aspect of their experience across digital and physical channels, from strategy through implementation. Our multi-disciplinary team works with leadership to advise on purpose, position, culture, and retail growth strategies. We create brands people love and engage audiences from employees to customers with story-led design and insights-driven marketing; and we design and build transformative brand experiences across branch networks, leading the construction and implementation of physical spaces that drive business advantage and make the brand experience real.
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