The Influencer Code

There’s a lot of work that goes into finding the?right influencer?or key opinion leader (KOL) for your brand.?How do you better the odds of getting a “yes” from the ones you really want to work with?

There can be plenty of speculation, and I am sure you have run into tons of advice for B2C brand partnerships but I’m here to?get you the skinny for B2B collaboration bliss. So let’s dig into what makes a great B2B influencer brand partnership.?What spells success, what makes them cringe, what makes them intrigued, and what gets them to partake in a long-lasting relationship?

For B2B in particular, the pandemic accelerated influencer marketing programs. This is because so many B2B customer interactions have historically been done face-to-face. And with zero live events, something had to fill that awareness and lead generation (plus budget) gap. Influencer marketing definitely took up some of that slack.?

While there are still far fewer “influencers” in B2B vs. B2C, there are a lot more than there were just a couple of years ago. Thus, B2B companies have to pay more attention to who can actually drive desirable customer behavior, and how.

It’s even more true now that most companies have at least some interest in working with B2B influencers: treat it as a relationship, not a transaction. Doing one-off promotions for brands can work (a little). But it’s much more impactful when you can work with a brand over a period of months (or years), and really understand their products, their people, and their position in the market.?

What’s a turn off/ red flag when someone reaches out

When they instantly ask about how many webinar registrations you’ll guarantee, or how many clicks the Linkedin post will accrue. That’s viewing influencer marketing as straight-up traffic generation, and that sells short the potential.

Preferred channel of communication for brands use to reach out??

While I check seemingly a million “inboxes” of some sort every hour, email is still the easiest way for me to keep things organized.?

Defining success with your collaboration with a brand

For me, it’s not so much data as it is a demo. A lot of the brands I work with are in the software business in some fashion. For me with a brand in that category, I need to see what the software does, and firmly believe that it will help executives, marketers, and CX professionals (my core community). My general rule is that “If I wouldn’t pay for it, I won’t recommend others do”.?

The other sticky wicket is when brands want to take an approach to the title, description, content for a webinar (for example), and I know it won’t be super interesting to an audience, but they insist on their positioning. This can be very frustrating and needs a resolution. Agree?