Earn 5x with $1? It's time for B2B influencer marketing
According to the latest report published by Top Rank Marketing:
-- 71% of B2B marketers surveyed believe that influencer marketing is crucial;
-- And 74% said they are using influencer marketing to make major adjustments to their marketing strategies.
It can be said that influencer marketing is an important means to promote the digital transformation of B2B marketing.
For overseas brands, how to smoothly enter unfamiliar markets? How to build trust in the hearts of overseas buyers? Choosing influencers in the B2B vertical is a shortcut.
In the same vein as word-of-mouth marketing, which is often used in B2B marketing, the influencer marketing of B2B brands directly invokes the credibility and word-of-mouth accumulated by influencers in the vertical field through cooperation to endorse their own brands. According to one report, businesses earn an average of $5.78 in potential publicity for every dollar spent on influencer marketing, rising to $18 in some good cases.
How to do it?
From "find the right platform" to "find the right person" to "find the right topic".
Find the right platform
Influencers in the B2B industry all have accounts on various social media platforms, but most of them choose to conduct professional topic discussions and "plant grass" on LinkedIn.
This is because LinkedIn has more complete professional and professional features than other platforms (such as showing work history and affiliated companies on a personal homepage, or speaking in a brand's LinkedIn community, etc.).
And because key information such as occupation and position is located very accurately, if you want to find influential celebrities in this industry, you only need to search for the keywords of the industry in LinkedIn's search engine.
find the right person
LinkedIn can provide brands with search results based on professional information, but for B2B brands, how to find the "right people" from the search results for influencer marketing?
The advice we give is, don't choose people based on the number of fans.
Because of the vertical and closed audience circles, the influencers in the B2B industry are not necessarily those with a large number of fans, but those with the "correct" fans. That said, brands should choose thought leaders who have fans who overlap with their target customer base.
You can check the articles written on their LinkedIn homepage, as well as the related hashtags they use on a daily basis, and see the level of user engagement on these articles and content to determine whether they are influencers in the industry the brand belongs to.
find the right topic
After establishing contact and cooperation with influencers, the important question comes, what kind of influencer cooperation content to create?
- Invite influencers to participate in the experience in person
If your brand is planning some invitation trial or offline experience activities, you might as well invite the target influencers to participate in the event in person, and write your own thoughts and feelings after the experience.
Nissan has invited pickup truck owners, brand ambassadors and influencers to participate in a four-day experience that includes a variety of fun outdoor activities with Nissan pickup trucks. After the event, these invited celebrities also shared their rich event experience on social media. From their happy and safe experience, it also reflects the characteristics of the new pickup trucks launched by Nissan, which are suitable for outdoor, travel, snow removal, rescue and other scenarios.
- Conduct interviews with influencers
Influencers are eager to export their views to the outside world. How to naturally combine their views with branded content? Try bringing these influencers together and asking them questions in the name of the brand, and creating video content to spread.
It should be noted, however, that although the interview is published in the name of the brand, the questions related to the interview should not be limited to the brand itself, but should be extended to the entire industry. Such content is more disseminated and influential.
- User education through influencers
User education has always been an essential part of B2B brands. Due to the high threshold of understanding and long purchasing decision-making in the B2B industry, it is essential to stimulate the relevant needs of users in the long-term user education.
However, if B2B brands often post relevant content on their social media homepages, it is easy for target users to feel content fatigue. Especially from the perspective of the brand itself, user education content tends to fall into the inertia of thinking and stereotypes, and is not accepted by users.
Communicate the user education content you want with the influencers, let the influencers create around these educational content according to their own style, and publish them on their own social media homepages, which are more easily recognized by their fans and your goals User accepts.
Personalized language + professional background endorsement of celebrities, such user education content will make it easier to achieve goals.
Epilogue
According to Nielsen’s 2022 Global Marketing Report data, influencer marketing can drive more than 70% of brand recall after ad exposure, compared to traditional marketing content.
For B2B brands, if they can find the right influencers on the right platform, and co-create the right topics, they will be able to stimulate the power of influencer marketing and bring a higher return on investment to the brand.
As the core agent of LinkedIn advertising and marketing business, he has more resources and experience in serving B2B brands going overseas and using LinkedIn marketing.
If your brand is looking for a breakthrough in B2B business, or wants to get more B2B social media marketing support, please leave your contact information, and we will have someone contact you.