What is Influencer Marketing?
Before jumping on how B2B businesses can leverage influencer marketing, let us first discuss what influencer marketing is?
Influencer marketing is just a modern take on the old affiliate marketing. The difference is that in influencer marketing, specific people who have a large audience are targeted to make advertisements. In this, big companies and brands leverage the relationship that the influencers have with their followers and the influencers get a certain amount of money in exchange for the advertisement they make on their social platform. Traditionally, affiliate marketing was different.
The success of affiliate marketing was depended on the cost that a company is ready to pay to a publisher to display the advertisements.
According to surveys, influencer marketing is working better than traditional affiliate marketing because people trust influencers as they are in their social media handle for a long time instead of trusting on a publisher or unknown face.
How Influencer Marketing is Important?
As you know paid searches have become a crucial part of B2B marketing and B2B marketing is becoming more saturated with a lot of available tools used for project management, CRM, influencer marketing platforms, and so on. Because of a lot of available tools, it becomes even more difficult to stand out from the crowd. Yes, with the help of B2B marketing, your brand can stand different from the others.
But the thing is that most of the companies or brands use the wrong B2B influencer marketing. Misreading the label is one of the biggest mistakes that market influencers make. Of course in B2B, you can’t send the product to users to review it. B2B marketing should be a part of the content-making strategy because it is the content that attracts users to the product. A brand should have consumer-focused influencer marketing. As people no longer want to believe in the fake promises that have been done by the publishers and unknown faces, they love to trust real people who know their stuff. This is what makes influencer marketing strategies more successful. To create successful influencer marketing campaigns, you can use one of the platforms recommended by Shane Barker
But The Question is Who is an Influencer And How He Can Generate Leads to Your B2B Business?
As you know B2B influencer marketing plays an important role in the success of any business. But many people have a question is that who an influencer is?
An influencer is a person who has a wide audience and who plays a key role in their industry. He/she is the person who had gained a huge respect for social media and millions of people are following the person because of his/her work and loyalty in their industry. In the end, the one who has a great social network is an influencer who has been used by the big brands and companies to advertise their product on social media to target a wider audience.
Apart from offering a company the benefit of a huge social network, there are also some other benefits that an influencer provides. Have a look at:
- An influencer can make your brand more visible so more and more people will recognize your brand. He/she can add own content to shine upon the product and its use.
- Influencers help companies to reach out to their contacts and invaluable market to which you are not able to reach on your own.
- An influencer can resonate with your product from others with their viewpoint.
- Of course, your target audience wants information regarding your products and services and an influencer is a channel that can pass the information to your potential customers.
This is how B2B influencer marketing works.
How to Leverage B2B Influencer Marketing?
Grow your brand team and seek big personalities of their area to advertise your message regarding the products and services of your business. When it comes to selecting the influencers, quality over quantity should be kept in mind. One of the most popular influencer marketing is to focus on what your potential customers want. Certain practices can be used to leverage B2B influencer marketing. Have a look at these:
1. Know Your Potential Customers
Knowing your audience before selecting a B2B influencer is important. If you work on consumer-focused influencer marketing then higher are the chances that you will get good results. Know on what platform your potential customers are like older people tend to be busy on Facebook while at the same time, younger people spend most of their time in photo-sharing applications. Knowing your audience will help you on what channel you should advertise your product as well as which influencer will be a good option to promote your product.
2. Sometimes Going With the Flow is the Best Option
One of the most popular influencer marketing strategies includes the organic way of promoting products. An influencer should promote products in an organic way that looks natural. People do not believe in the sponsored content and they just ignore such content. So, make sure that your influencer naturally adds the message in content that does not seems sponsored naturally.
3. Measure ROI
To win the market for B2B companies, it is important to measure the success of the B2B marketing campaigns. This can be done by examining the engagement across your channels, emails, and other social media platform. Also, analyze the market for B2B companies and check out the trends of sales present in the market. These things will help you to create a strategy that makes you stand out from others so your brand can become different from others and can be recognized by a wider audience.
4. Start With The Small
It is not necessary to five your head at the first attempt, starting with the small things that can help you to leverage B2B influencer marketing with ease. First of all, analyze the market that which trends are working and which are not before jumping into any decision. As well as remember that B2B brands get influencer marketing as an effort or a supplement, it is not the replacement of the advertisements and promotions that you usually make.
How B2B Businesses Can Leverage Influencer Marketing?
When it comes to influencer marketing, the very first thing that comes to mind is B2B marketing. Right? As you generally see, big names of industries posts on social media handle such as Instagram about products like hair oils, beauty products, and other products. Do you know the content they use and the post they make is sponsored but because youngsters follow them and are ready to spend their money on the products they refer to? This is what makes influencer marketing for B2B a better option than any other kind of marketing.
How to Get Started With the Influencer Marketing for B2B?
So, do you want to give a try to influencer marketing to enhance your brand recognition? If yes, then this is the right place for you. Here you will get to know that how to start influencer marketing for B2B.
1. Set a Goal
If you don’t even know whether your business brand or company requires influencer marketing then it will become difficult later. So, the very first thing that you have to do is to set a goal. Decide what you want to achieve by choosing influencer marketing for your business. If you are the one who is hoping to increase sales and boosting leads then yes, it can be a good option but if you do not set a goal in your mind then it can become a problem later.
2. Choose Influencer
When it comes to choosing influencers, it is important to pay attention to every little detail. Focusing on quality is important here. This is the most crucial step of the overall influencer marketing so make sure you are making every decision with great care and after analyzing each and everything. You should connect with an influencer who believes in your products and services and who knows what you have to offer. This is the best way to find influencers who will work for you.
3. It is Time to Work With Them
Once you choose the influencers, the next step is to work with them. You can expect to negotiate while connecting them to promote your product. You should also decide the right marketing platform to promote your product and not just that, it is also your responsibility to streamline the entire process of connecting with the influencers.
4. Put a Story
It is time to tell whether you want them to put a blog post or the promotion will be dependent on social media properly. What do you exactly want to let people see about your product? This is what will decide your story.
5. Track Results
Once the campaign has been done, it is time to track results that how influencer marketing is working. To track the performance, you should go live. Check whether the customers are looking for the content or not? If they are checking the content then yes, you have got success.
This is the step-by-step procedure of influence marketing done for B2B businesses. If you are an owner of a business and considering influencer marketing an ideal option for your business then start with this procedure. Soon, you will get desirable results.
Dilip Tiwari
Dilip Tiwari is Digital Marketing Expert at USS LLC he likes to share Tips on Digital Marketing Services, Google ads management, Amazon ads management, and other blogs ideas.