Capitalising on the four opportunities of B2B influencer marketing

Many B2B marketers are still trying to establish the right strategies and business cases for engagement with non-traditional digital influencers. It’s not surprising if you consider that just 11% of B2B influencer programmes are ongoing, compared to 48% of B2C – for many, influencers are still seen as primarily a consumer marketing activity.

That said, there’s a great deal of experimentation going on – which is great.

In our experience, the four key areas which we find challenging are common across sectors. Those are strategy (how), influencer identification and validation (who), engagement strategy (what) and shifting our thinking from transactional engagement to the long-term by being always on.

These four challenges face all B2B comms and marketing teams seeking to work with influencers to drive business impact. Yet within the obstacles lie opportunities, which we wanted to highlight.

This blog will be relatively high level, so if you want a deeper dive, go here to read an interactive eBook on influencer marketing (mobile friendly, no registration required).

Opportunity one: thinking about real outcomes

Every organisation will think about what an influencer is in different ways.

In this context, we’re talking primarily around digital influence; someone that can either directly influence the buying committee to a decision or brand perception, for good or for ill, through their online discussions.

Unlike in the consumer realm, the art of identifying these influencers isn’t simply a matter of looking for who’s talking about your brand. Plus, the people engaged in conversations in your key topic areas aren’t likely to represent a cohesive or coherent community.

The first opportunity for marketers in developing their influencer marketing programmes lies in listening in such a way that you can determine a strategy. Who’s talking about the things you want to talk about? Are the conversations ones you’d want to be a part of? What channels are they happening on? What are the ‘tribes’ within which the conversations are happening – are they ones you want to influence?

Opportunity two: find real influencers

Too many of the metrics associated with ‘influence’ have been gamed. Fake followers, low engagement, people with limited authority, people with interests that undermine their credibility. These are all challenges that your influencer search and validation process needs to punch through.

Once you determine the conversations you want to be a part of, you need to find the real, authentic, influential influencer or micro-influencers driving them. Don’t be taken in by vast follower numbers; look for engagement levels, look at frequency and relevancy of content, assess authenticity and beyond. This is key to our process and is the central IP we’ve built to help brands find and validate the influencers they choose to work with.

Opportunity three: be more effective with the work we do

Knowing who the influencers are one thing. Knowing what you might try to work on with them, is another thing entirely.

In B2B, we’re generally not talking about YouTubers or Instagram lifestyle gurus for whom their lives revolve around the work they do on the platform. We’re talking about people who generally use the channel to support or even go beyond their day job. As an outlet, or as a key mechanism for interacting with peers and friends (vs their ‘audience’). The original and enduring purpose of social media.

Therefore, the opportunities to be creative in the work we do with them are manifold, and contingent on their motivating factors. Will a co-creation project teach them something? Will the opportunity to speak on a Twitter chat build their reputation as an expert with their peers? Will they really enjoy an exclusive track at an event or a preview of a new product or feature? Would they take up a competitive challenge against one of their peers?

Plus, the critical logistical questions of how – to incentivise, remunerate, contract, amplify the work you’re doing and otherwise manage your influencers – need to be tackled. We can’t just treat them as an extension of our media target pool.

Opportunity four: move from transactional engagement to ongoing relationships

One of the great challenges in B2B influencer marketing is the tendency to try to experiment for the short term. The notion that we should “engage influencers for that campaign” is very common. And there may be tactics and influencers for whom that approach is valid, but they’re likely to be in the minority.

The long-term benefits of B2B influencer marketing lie, as with all good relationships, when you plan for an ongoing relationship. Considering the long-term benefits, tracking the long-term network effect, considering the long-term mutual gain you could get from association and ongoing engagement.

Finding the best way to deliver these, through activities like joint content series, a drumbeat of influencer events, a community discussion forum or some other mechanism can be the difference between a quick hit and sustainable success.

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These four opportunities represent tangible ways in which B2B brands can overhaul their approach to building influencer relationships. As businesses strive to compete in crowded and complex marketplaces, having clear strategies on how you reach audiences is vital – as is unlocking new ways to achieve cut through. Influencer marketing may still be a relatively new concept in a B2B context, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be addressed with the same evidenced rigour and knowledge other approaches receive.

That’s why we’ve launched a new proposition – Punch Pro – designed to support marketers targeting business decision makers to capitalise on these key opportunities. It combines our experts in influencer marketing with artificial intelligence to help clients engage B2B influencers to drive real business impact. It’s the companion service to Punch, which is aimed at consumer brands – you can read more about that here, and read PR Week's take here.