A not so dated 2022 report once established that over 80% of B2B brands find success with influencer marketing campaigns. A well run influencer marketing campaign can also contribute to increased ROI and revenue: two important facets of any modern-day marketing measurement tactic.
Influencer marketing has evolved over the years, with the growth of different kinds of social networks, the core concepts have transitioned to change how both B2C and B2B marketing teams use it as a tool to drive online brand impact.
Customers today seek more meaningful brand interactions and this has bottled down into how marketers and advertisers are expected to use influencer marketing to further their online marketing and ad goals.
Understanding how to use Influencer Marketing in B2B
With customers wanting more authentic brand experiences in the modern day digital ecosystem, marketers and advertisers have to not only be more stringent about their marketing processes but they also need to identify how to boost ROI from any tool or channel they implement as part of their marketing mix.
For B2B marketers, influencer marketing models need to be planned out to capitalize on the influencing factor that top industry leaders can potentially wield over one’s target audience. Customers across both B2C and B2B are more attune to listening to recommendations from peers but they are also known to lean heavily on recommendations by industry leaders.
While B2B marketers can adapt a page or two from a typical B2C influencer marketing model, in order to deepen future impact and prove ROI from the cost, B2B marketers have to be more precise about how they run an influencer marketing campaign.
Here are a few starting points that can help:
Teaming the ‘’Right’’ Influencer with a Seasoned In-house Brand Executive
Choosing the ‘’right’’ influencer to suit your niche and audience is a starter step in any influencer marketing activity. For B2B tech marketers, identifying industry leaders that can speak to their niche audiences with the authenticity and authority that the market demands are integral.
While this acts as a foundation for building on the rest of the activity, B2B marketers should also keep in mind that it is important to pair their influencer of choice with a seasoned executive from the brand, preferably one who has been part of the brand growth story for years.
A CMO whose been with the brand for over 05 years or a CEO/Founder that has been influential in growing the brand will already command some kind of presence in the niche they are targeting. Using this to add value to the influencer strategy while also capitalizing on the influence an industry leader from outside can wield on your audience can enable a more potentially stronger output from your influencer efforts.
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Boosting Impact Through the Right Channels and Content Marketing Tricks
Your B2B audience is typically more active and accessible on certain channels. When a B2B marketing team is trying to drive marketing impact for a B2B tech product or service, the choice of channels will largely differ than what a B2C marketing team would prioritize.
Knowing where your target audience is most active is key to ensuring that the right influencer marketing plan is put in action using those channels. On another note, B2B marketers also need to identify what type of content their niche audience consumes more of (webinars/podcasts/eBooks/etc) so that they can drive better influencer impact by tying those content marketing tactics into the main model.
For an audience that is more actively consuming webinars or live events, using your designated influencer as a keynote speaker can be useful, for instance.
Figuring out the core content marketing types and channels and then using it to remarket or repurpose the content across other channels and mediums can help boost the longevity and value of the campaign in the long run.
Setting Goals and Measuring Success in Real-time
Every influencer marketing platform or marketing technology will have a real-time feature in their dashboard for teams to measure the value and result from every marketing effort (including influencer effort) in real-time.
Influencers can sometimes end up charging (a lot!) of funds to participate in a brand’s initiative. Understanding how well an influencer campaign is working and making corrective tweaks to the process in real-time can ensure that marketing teams optimize the marketing spend from this channel while maintain the targeted ROI. This will also help a brand understand whether to go with the same influencer in a future campaign or not.
For this activity to work well, marketers need to set a goal to the overall endeavor, by documenting what they hope to achieve using a quantitative target.
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