If you are using any form of social media, you might have come across multiple reels of influencers showing up the snacks they eat, skin care products, and clothes they are using. Do you think they are showing off their luxurious life? Don’t be wrong. They are reviewing popular brands on their social media accounts. But, why are they doing it? If you want to know the underlying causes, you need to know about influencer marketing. This is one of the marketing strategy techniques used by brands to engage with popular influencers and promote their products on multiple social media channels. Let’s dive deep into B2B influencer marketing and see some popular examples of brands that have excelled by implementing influencer marketing strategies.
What is B2B Influencer Marketing?
B2b Influencer Marketing is a marketing strategy where brands partner with social media influencers with significant social media followers within a specific niche to promote their products/services. Unlike celebrities, anyone can be an influencer and you can find them in any sector. Influencers are the people who have built a loyal follower base on their website or social media over a long time.
In every industry, there are B2B influencers, it’s just that you have to find them. Depending on their area of expertise, they are the people who make the most engaging social posts related to their specific niche. When followers learn about the products their favorite people are using, they are more likely to trust their recommendations and make purchases. Thus, influencer marketing B2B is practiced by brands to improve brand awareness, increase website traffic and drive messages to target audiences.
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How Does Influencer Marketing Help In ROI?
Statistics have their data to reveal the contribution of influencer marketing in improving ROI:
- According to the stats, businesses make $5.2 ROI on each $1 spent on influencer marketing
- Since 2016, there has been a 465% increase in searches for the phrase “influencer marketing” on Google.
- Influencer marketing has reached over $16.4B in 2022.
- 93% of marketers have agreed that they have used influencer marketing.
How Does Influencer Marketing Work?
Enough of the numbers! Let’s have a detailed look at how influencer marketing works:
In simple words, a person with a large follower base will promote a product or brand in exchange for a commission, reward, or any other monetary benefit. Here are the steps in the process of influencer marketing:
- Brand partners with an influencer.
- The influencer promotes the brand’s product/service on their social media channel.
- When a follower purchases from the brand, the influencer receives a small number of sales as a commission.
- Thus, the brand gets more web traffic and thus more followers as a result of influencer marketing.
Tips To Create A Good Influencer Marketing B2B Campaign Strategy In 2023
Keep scrolling down to learn about how to create a robust influencer marketing strategy step-by-step in 2023:
1.Identify your goals clearly
Create realistic and measurable goals to find out what you want from the influencer marketing campaigns. The KPI metrics allow you to effectively track the progress of B2B influencer marketing. Once your goals are clear, you can include all other elements that progress toward achieving your influencer marketing goals. Analyze the reports, identify the improvement areas, and make necessary changes in your strategy.
2.Know who your customers are following
Perform thorough research about who your customers are, where they are hanging out online, what content interests them, and whom they are following. Once you know about these influencers, they become the voice for your business. There are many types of influencers with different numbers of followers.
What’s important is follower engagement. Micro-influencers with 1000 highly engaged followers will be more effective than mega-influencer who has millions of followers with lower engagement rates. You can find influencers on every social channel. Exploring different social media channels, online communities, and business news, you can find B2B experts who may be interested in your products/services.
3. Build B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy
Once you are done with finding one or more best-fit B2B influencers for your business, the immediate step is to figure out how the influencer content suits your overall marketing strategy and how you can leverage social media and other channels to publish the influencer content and obtain more brand reach. Create a solid B2B influencer marketing strategy that includes all these necessary elements to enhance your brand reach and make better sales through the influencers.
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4.Type of Content
What kind of content do you want from the B2B influencer? Is it a guest post, video content, or a reel? Mention all your requirements clearly at the beginning of the campaign itself. If you want content in multiple formats, mention exactly how they need to deliver the content and what is the frequency of posting.
5.Track progress
It is important to know if you are on the right track to get the desired output. Otherwise, you will be wasting your time and money on the wrong strategies. There are a number of ways to track your B2B influencer marketing campaign. The key metrics include the number of likes, comments, shares, engagement rates, click-through rates, etc.
6.Virtual Events
Though virtual events and webinars have been in use for a long time, it is after the pandemic that they really began to take off in the workplace. Virtual events can offer key benefits of reducing carbon footprint and pollution by companies. While you may feel tempted to conduct in-person events, remember that virtual events are environmentally sustainable and are going to stay in high demand in the coming years.
7.Use Testimonials from influencers
Why does anyone want to trust whatever you say? You need social proof to build trust and credibility among your customers. When you work with an influencer, you can receive their testimonial and also their story. By inserting their testimonial on your website, you can provide more social proof and help your potential customers feel more confident purchasing them.
Top Examples of B2B Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Here are some popular examples of brands that used influencer marketing to bomb their sales and brand reach:
1.Microsoft collaboration with National Geographic
In a campaign to encourage women and encourage young girls in STEM careers, Microsoft has partnered with National Geographic photographers. These photographers took pictures of women scientists across the world and shared them on National Geographic’s Instagram. With the combined audience of Microsoft and National Geographic, the photos have reached more than 91 million people.
2.American Express
American Express opted for influencer marketing on Instagram to promote its platinum card using its branded hashtag, #AmexAmbassadors. The company has targeted high-income groups and business-class people. They selected influencers who lead luxurious lives, travel frequently, and can enjoy the privileges that come with the American Express Platinum Card.
Once the post has gone live, many other influencers have commented on their experience and benefits offered by the American Express platinum card. The post highlighted the exclusive places that influencers can get access to because of the American Express Platinum Card. for this campaign, American Express has actually worked with hundreds of mega and micro-influencers from a wide range of sectors and with under 100,000 Instagram followers.
3.Eos
Eos is a shaving cream manufacturing company. It partners with TikTok content creators, and influencers for its sponsored posts, new product lines, and other ad content. The results are a 2,500% increase in orders, and a 45,000% increase in website traffic, 32.3 million views on the branded hashtag. Tiktok influencer Carly Joy posted a shaving tutorial explaining how she uses Eos shaving cream for a bump-free shave. The video went viral and gained over 19 million views and 5 million likes to date. Since then Eos collaborated with Carly Joy to launch new product lines and saw a whopping 2,500% increase in orders and a 45,000% increase in site traffic.
4.SAP
The tech giant SAP conducts a famous event ‘Sapphire’ every year that attracts more than 20,000 attendees every year. The company has worked with around 11 influencers to create official creative video content for the conference. It reached out to over 80,000 people who could not reach the summit. The company shared the material via Facebook.
5.Mountain Rose Herbs
Mountain Rose Herbs have built loyal customers by serving them the highest quality organic herbs, spices, teas, and other herbal products. They have made customers, professional herbal educators, and real brand fans into affiliates, offering them a 10% commission for each sale they have driven. As a result, they saw $330k+ in revenue, 900+ conversions, and 95k+ clicks.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is a great way to reach out to your target audience. If you are already using influencers, this article will be of interest to you. This article would also be useful for those who want to start their influencer marketing campaign. We appreciate your valuable time in reading our article on how b2b influencer marketing is done. We hope that you have the best experience using influencers for your business or brand!