" />While in years gone by you’d be forgiven for putting influencers mostly into a box of fashion and beauty, DIY and mummy influencing, B2B influencers are now taking centre stage. Indeed, 58% of B2B marketing teams use an always-on influencer marketing approach.
Plus, just last week LinkedIn put its money behind B2B influencers, announcing its investment into creator-led content and how it’s set to redefine B2B marketing. You can read the full story with Matt Derella, LinkedIn’s VP of Marketing Solutions here, but in the meantime we wanted to give our view on this area and provide B2B brands with our top tips for working with influencers.
Know your objectives from the off
We’re not going to spend too much time on this area but we couldn’t start without reiterating the importance of planning before you jump in. It can be tempting to work with an influencer based on their current prominence and stories of how they’ve helped other brands, however, starting without goals or a proper strategy is a recipe for disaster.
First, think about your primary goal. Is it to build brand awareness or increase credibility and trust? Or maybe to generate leads and feed into your pipeline? It could even be to breakdown complex topics to potential customers – particularly important when it comes to technical and highly regulated B2B sectors such as tech or construction.
Then, tie these goals to measurable KPIs that you can measure and report on an ongoing basis. This could be reach, engagement, sentiment, downloads, MQLs/SQLs etc.
Find the right influencers
Influencers in the B2B space often consist of subject matter experts, influencers or thought leaders in a certain field. They could also be employee advocates who have built their own followings and can provide an authentic and authoritative view of the company. Don’t underestimate the power of engaged employees as influencers, particularly if company culture is something you’re trying to get across as a key message. Some businesses with extremely loyal customers may also want to use them as brand champions to add an element of social proof.
When considering follower numbers, remember that quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality. In fact, in the B2B space, it’s much more about relevance, authoritativeness and relatability. We often find that nano and micro influencers work better in this space as they have smaller audiences of high-relevant and engaged audiences.
It’s also crucial to do your due-diligence. The last thing you want is to sign an influencer and then find out there’s questionable content and views in their back catalogue. You’ll want to consider whether they are working with competitors or clashing products and services an then, if so, whether this matters. While this part does take time, it is extremely important from a brand reputation and perception point of view. Doing this via an expert such as an agency can save time and resource as they often have tools to do this quickly, as well as identifying markers such as sentiment towards different influencers etc.
Select the right platforms
Platform choice can make or break a B2B influencer campaign. Getting this right starts with really knowing your audience and the places they are. Conducting in-depth audience research and channel analysis is the place to start here. Where do they spend time, what type of content do they consume, where do they go to for trusted insights, what does the typical sales cycle look like? The platforms where the influencers you’ve selected naturally have the most reach and engagement will also come into this.
While minds may jump automatically to LinkedIn or YouTube as the best place to roll out B2B influencer content, it absolutely has a place outside of the traditional social media platforms, so don’t limit yourself to these. Consider how you can use influencers across other channels such as for paired webinars via your business’ owned channel or with a media publisher to add authority and reach, co-authored articles in trade media, or other formats such as webinars, panels and podcasts and even in-person events.
Define your content strategy
Whether you’re partnering with an influencer for a one-off, short campaign or a longer term relationships, a content strategy is crucial. Bring this directly back to your objectives. Whare are you trying to achieve with the content? What channel is it for and what type of content resonates best on those? What key messages do you want the influencer to get across? Always remember here to position influencers as educators and voice of authority, rather than simply advertisers and product mouthpieces.
Regardless of your objectives for the campaign, a core goal should always to be increase trust via content, which in particularly crucial the B2B area where purchases tend to be more considered. With this in mind, businesses should consider splitting their content into awareness, consideration, decision stages. The awareness stage consisting of educational, trends based though leadership such as paired webinars, industry panels etc; the consideration stage problem solving content such as deep dive reports, analysis or story led case studies; and the decision stage moving more towards direct influencer testimonials or product demos.
It’s also important not to view influencer activity solely as a one-off or short burst of activity. Plan always on content cycles with long-term partners. After all, consistency builds trust and influencers that stay with a brand for a long time rather than doing one off campaigns for multiple brands constantly demonstrates far more trust and loyalty.
In terms of content formats, it depends on the platform, however with 73% of consumers preferring short-form videos to learn about products and services and over a quarter of marketers planning to invest more in short-form video, this is one of the most popular routes. Always consider repurposing content across multiple platforms and formats.
A few top line ideas of how you might want to work with B2B influencers
Advice can often feel abstract without tangible examples, so here we’ve provided some ideas of how brands could potentially work with B2B influencers:
- Launch a video series demystifying areas of your industry and explaining exactly how products work: works well for emerging, sometimes misunderstood tech such as heat pumps
- Partner with an expert to co-host a webinar on complying with new industry legislation and policy and then turn this into other content formats
- Joint-author a report on a topic both parties are experts in and then co-launch a campaign / call out to the sector off the back of this
- Secure a joint speaker slot at a prominent industry event to talk about an issues-led case study where your product was used by the customer influencer to solve a unique challenge
Impactful B2B influencer campaigns
We’ve used influencers in many of our B2B campaigns, including heating installers for this campaign with Polypipe Building Products and architect influencers for this campaign with Accoya.
Contact us for an informal chat about how influencers could help your B2B brand.
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