Influencer marketing has seen rapid growth in today’s digital-first world. While typically seen as a B2C marketing strategy, it can be hugely beneficial for B2B brands too – with many B2B businesses seeing it deliver transformative results at every step of their sales cycle. Influencers can position a brand as a thought leader, boost overall brand engagement, and distribute content to a highly targeted, engaged audience.
To help you on your way to influencer marketing success, we’ve compiled four top tips:
Do define deliverables
As with any marketing campaign, it’s vital that businesses define objectives and key performance indicators that will help them to evaluate success. Although measuring influencer marketing isn’t perhaps as clear cut as traditional marketing campaigns, there are still ways of keeping track of your progress: for example, through engagement rates, audience reach, site visits and conversions. By also arming yourself with benchmarks, you will be able to accurately measure the impact of the campaign – and justify future influencer marketing activities.
Don’t focus on the numbers
Before embarking on an influencer marketing journey, it’s vital to find the right influencers to be affiliated with your brand. These are typically people who share the business’ passion and expertise in your particular industry. However, it’s not always necessary to seek out the influencers with the most followers – instead, many brands prefer to use ‘micro-influencers’. Typically, micro-influencers are people with a following of less than 30,000 people and who focus on a specific niche market or industry sector. They offer advantages to B2B businesses such as their highly targeted audience, a closer relationship with their followers, and a 60% higher engagement rate than influencers with a larger following.
Do nurture the relationship
In order to get the maximum out of your brand’s relationship with an influencer, take the time to inform them about the business’ values, culture, services, customers and competitors. It’s also worth collaborating with the influencer on content creation, as it is more likely to resonate well with the audience and deliver great results for the brand. For the influencers themselves, a close, collaborative partnership is beneficial as it allows them to feel clued up on the content they are sharing, and more comfortable in passing on the brand’s messages in their own words.
Don’t rush
B2B businesses looking for a quick win in ROI with influencer marketing might need to rethink their marketing strategy. The B2B buying process is much longer than B2C due the number of decision makers involved and the fact that purchasing decisions are not taken lightly or spontaneously. A blogger or thought leader recommending a product won’t lead to an immediate peak in sales. However, continuous and engaging content posted over several months, targeted to the right audience, can really make a difference to a B2B business’ overall selling process.
Would you like to discover more actionable advice and tips on influencer marketing? Download our guide today to discover more about influencers, and how they can help revolutionise your sales and marketing functions.