Reach The Influencer When You Can't Reach The Customer

Marketing campaigns are developed to resonate with customers in alignment with goals - whether that’s a sale, increased market share, leads for the sales pipeline, or even brand awareness.

But sometimes unanticipated factors can present challenges. For instance, budget factors can limit the ability to implement the plan or reach all the intended audiences, or the timeline shifts, or additional key decision makers or influencers are identified. Any of these factors can impact a marketing campaign and how it evolves.

As marketers, we’re taught to reach out to the key decision maker, but in reality, there may be multiple people involved in the process in both B2C and B2B sales. Whether dealing with one or many, frequent engagement and interactions will be meaningful to the efforts. Doing so will support the goals of differentiating the brand, collecting product development requirements, and increasing the audience.

There are multiple avenues available these days to reach customers and target influencers. In choosing the best platforms to work with marketers should consider all of their various priorities, including maintaining the budget and aligning with their internal processes of working agile and lean.

Likewise, customers have many ways to conduct their own research via the internet and social media. Often, they’ll use a mix of these tools, but word-of-mouth reviews and recommendations remain the most powerful resources.

The idea of an influencer as a resource has become increasingly important to understanding the customer journey, and influencer marketing has evolved into its own unique strategy. Even for a B2B (business-to-business) company, influencers are highly legitimate sources of information for the decision maker. An influencer can also have their own audience that can spread the message to a completely new group of potential customers.

Influencers can be powerful, but without a plan, they can also be hard to reach. It’s important the marketing strategy and planning include specifics on when and how to engage influencers regarding the brand and products, both before and after the sale. Some recent research suggests that over 81 percent of social media users seek recommendations before making a purchase. The web and social media offer many options and forms of expression, like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.

In the past, traditional marketing relied on communication tools like advertising, PR, TV and company websites, but these tools did not necessarily take into account the customer journey. Understanding how the customer engages with your product and their buying behaviors can help you create content that speaks to these various touch points throughout the journey to the eventual sale. An ad, magazine article or website content may have been placed without considering whether it would resonate with customers, if the information responded to their needs, and was timely and relevant. And many times these more traditional forms of communications were difficult to measure how they impacted each step of the customer journey. Without that data, it was hard to adjust messaging at various points of a campaign.

Some marketers are removed from the customer or end-user experience and feel that it’s not necessary to include them in trying to reach the B2B decision makers. In reality, the customer journey process includes both the decision maker and influencer and impacts both the messaging and how VOC data is obtained.

In a B2B sale, there are often multiple decision makers in various departments, and they may be looking for information outside of the traditional marketing toolbox.

This was the case when I worked for a B2B company that sold hardware solutions to small and enterprise level businesses. The hardware interfaced with a company’s networking system which meant a potential decision maker would need to consult and coordinate with their IT team first. Up to that point marketing efforts had been focused on reaching the channel, the individual who would speak on our behalf and represent our products. The strategy also included the development of collateral materials, lead generation initiatives, and the placement of product and technical information on our website. Unfortunately this strategy overlooked the customer journey.

Once I realized this, understood its importance and considered how influencers could impact a decision, I immediately explored ways to reach out directly to the IT professionals.

I discovered the IT audience had their own online community. Within it they shared articles, blogs, surveys, lead generation, message testing, product ideas and recommendations. I discovered it included every possible way to gather VOC information and reach the influencer.

By reaching the influencer I could introduce or re-introduce my brand, creating followers who could influence others. I could also distribute my content and assess its relevancy along the way. And lastly I could possibly generate marketing and sales leads.

The results of reaching the influencer provided me with the ability to successfully expand my brand to even more influencers. I was able to test my content and messaging to an even larger audience gaining content that was more relevant. And I was able to uncover useful information for future product development.

And finally, I was able to generate leads, continuously nurture them and develop ads and campaigns to reach even more customers.

Today’s marketers understand just how important the buyer’s journey is, and why it’s so important to include it as they make decisions on which resources to tap into to address customer needs.

Smart marketers should research who key influencers are in their industry and how best to reach them. The use of digital marketing tools can be used together with more traditional marketing to reach customers and influencers alike. Influencer marketing needs to be part of any marketing plan today. Take time to build a relationship with influencers - they can have a significant impact on your business.

How are you using marketing to help your company achieve its goals?

Be BOLD, be BRAVE. Smart marketing can help lead you to success.

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