Leveraging B2B Influencers: A Strategic Approach

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that uses influencers to promote a brand to a larger market. Influencers are opinion leaders, specialist, subject matter experts in their respective domain and fields with a social following base. They appear as experts or trustworthy sources of information for customers; therefore, they also influence the buying decisions.

Influencer marketing?leverages the credibility of a popular content creator to promote brand via endorsements and recommendations.

Partnering with influencers provides a direct access to a segment of prospects that need and want to buy your product & services online.

Why Influencer Marketing

It has become increasingly difficult for brands to get attention on the Internet. This is mostly because every business, big or small, has invaded the online world creating an invincible amount of noise. This has made consumers extremely skeptical about brands that indulge in self-promotion.

• Influencer marketing can enable us to reach people we can't attain through traditional advertising.?Two-thirds?of consumers use ad blockers, but the same people willingly take advice from influencers.?80%?of users have purchased something based on an influencer’s recommendation.
• Brands that already employ influencer marketing have proven the effectiveness of this channel. 17% of companies spend over half their?marketing budget?on influencers in 2023
• #1 marketing trend in 2023
• B2B Influencer marketing will generate nearly $15 billion in revenue by the end of 2024
• More than 38% of B2B companies are now pursuing in?uencer marketing

Businesses Make $5.20 for Every $1 Spent on Influencer Marketing, on Average

Ref: https://influencermarketinghub.com/IM_Benchmark_Report_2019.pdf

Why B2B Influencer Marketing Getting Popular:

60% of B2B ad creative are ineffective and does not contribute to long-term growth. Digital advertising has become more competitive, and with the coming elimination of third-party cookies, targeted advertising will become even harder to execute. Influencer marketing will be a cost-effective alternative.

Ref https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/b2b-creative

51% of B2B marketers say it has become increasingly difficult to grab and keep audiences' attention. More brands are cranking out good-quality content, which means that your content must stand apart in some way. Influencer marketing can help you cut through the clutter and connect to your customers in an authentic way.

Ref. https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/B2B_2022_Research.pdf

87% of executives think customers highly trust their companies when only about 30% do. This trust perception gap is particularly acute in the B2B space, according to Forrester. For B2B buyers, trust is a critically important brand attribute. By partnering with an influencer that your audience trusts, you can build stronger long-term relationships.

Ref https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/library/consumer-intelligence-series/trust-new-business-currency.html

How to Find the Right Influencer

61% of marketers have a hard time finding the right influencers for campaigns. Identifying the right influencer is a challenge if you don't thoroughly research their audience demographics, engagement rates, past collaborations, and overall brand fit.

Types of Influencer's and Identifying the Right Influencer for your campaign:

• Nano Influencer: Small but mighty, nano-influencers usually only have a few thousand followers. But don’t overlook them because of that, as bigger isn’t always better. These influencers are able to offer access to quality audiences over quantity. Nano-influencers have closer relationships with their followers and typically produce higher engagement rates
• Micro Influencer: Having anywhere from 10,000-100,000 followers, micro-influencers often have more experience under their belt than nano-influencers and are typically experts of a specific industry or niche. With access to a large following, but still able to maintain close relationships, micro-influencers will be cheaper than macro-influencers, while still producing quality results.
• Macro Influencer: Macro-influencers are able to provide a happy medium between celebrity and micro-influencers, with anywhere from 100,000 to 1 million followers. These influencers are able to provide access to a large audience of a specific demographic, however, they usually have low engagement rates because of their size.
• Celebrity Influencers: will cost the most money to work with, however, they will have more reach than the other influencer types, usually having access to millions of followers all over the world. They also commonly use more than one type of social media, expanding their reach even further. Like macro-influencers, because of their size, they don’t provide high engagement rates

The Benefits of Influencers in to B2B Marketing

In B2B determining and targeting the right audience is an essential part of every marketing strategy. However, it is often a challenging process and requires a thorough understanding of your potential consumers. Influencer marketing just enables us to surpass this step because the hard work has already been handled by influencers.

We just need to make sure that the influencer is related to our niche and their public persona matches our brand’s image. Other than precise targeting they also provides:

• A unique point of view that has the power to resonate with target B2B audience.
• Give you access to invaluable networks and professional contacts you otherwise wouldn't be able to reach.
• Authentic professional credibility that can help provide answers to the pain points of your target audience.

How you can Leverage Influencers into marketing:

Implementing a focused B2B influencer engagement initiative on platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter can effectively amplify and enhance the whitespace opportunities inheriting existing content. Moreover, collaborating with influencers to develop compelling content tailored specifically for targeting IT decision-makers and business decision-makers can significantly augment engagement and bolster brand's influence within these crucial market segments.

Certainly! Here's a professional list of activities:

1. Distribute existing marketing assets to influencers for sharing, commenting, and engaging to optimize whitespace opportunities and boost engagement levels.
2. Engage influencers to host internal Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on podcast series or LinkedIn platforms, aiming to enhance brand consideration and drive website traffic among hard-to-reach audiences.
3. Collaborate with partner networks and influencers on an awareness campaign to create authentic, high-value assets that deeply resonate with our target audience, thereby amplifying brand visibility and credibility.
4. Incorporate organic quotes and commentary sourced from the influencer community into marketing assets such as e-books, whitepapers, research reports, and press releases, enriching content quality and enhancing audience engagement.

How you can use marketing & technology to develop and execute an effective B2B influencer marketing campaigns

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