When we talk about businesses, one thing that we need to maintain is “progress”. As this is a world of numerous companies, you need proper competitive intelligence to tap into your true potential and reach higher targets. One can ensure such progress if they have real and extended connections across the business network. The networking of a company portrays its business intelligence; if the network is good, the business has a sure shot at progress, but the opposite shows a retarding trajectory of a business.
Nowadays, a B2B buyer keeps adequate information and is clever enough to decide concerning a business. The Forrester research states that around 74% of the B2B buyers gather adequate information through some online research, even before they meet the vendor.
Moreover, as the B2B companies have a long tenure of working, the buyers research social media and other internet research services to gather relevant information about the firm from three to nine months. Therefore B2B lead generation is not as easy as it seems.
Recommendations via word of mouth play a huge role in a business generation- about 91% of the customers decide to buy under the influence of genuine recommendations and referring by close ones. You can make this a possibility by using influencer marketing through sites like http://bizprospex.com/, which can help you with such issues.
WHAT IS INFLUENCER MARKETING?
Influencer marketing refers to a strategy used by businesses to promote their goods and services by collaborating with individual social media influencers and bloggers. Famous influencers generally have a large fan following; through such influencers, the company can reach out to the population and get some probable customers. The influencers will promote your product among his/her following on social media. Influencer marketing for B2B companies works wonders as they start gaining numerous prospects and customers.
WAYS IN WHICH B2B INFLUENCER MARKETING WILL ENHANCE YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY:
B2B influencer marketing will propel your marketing automation through the following ways;
Creating a larger impact:
Older marketing methods through advertisements and other conventional ideas have a long-lasting impact on people. People tend to ignore such passing ads without even checking their relevance of them. Influencer marketing will help you in this case; when an influencer makes a statement promoting your company and its products, people pay more attention to it.
Will portray you as an industry expert:
When the influencers promote your company and its products, the audience will consider your company one of the leading brands and you as an industry expert. You and your company will gain immense credibility and support from the customers.
Provides greater rate of investment:
Influencer marketing for B2B companies as well as b2c companies provides a higher rate of return. Your investment will remain the same, but your returns will increase by leaps and bounds.
Finding a larger audience:
When you collaborate with an influencer, your brand simultaneously promotes various social media sites. It will help you reach out to millions of people and interact with them at the same time.
Squeezing out the target groups:
Use your business intelligence to employ various marketing strategies to determine your target audience. Promote your products through those internet research services that exhibit the goods your company deals in. It will help you find out the population interested in your products without any extra hassles.
Enhance your customer retention:
When some influencer promotes your product and appreciates its quality and services, it etches the audience’s mind. Promoting your product by yourself will not be as helpful as influencer marketing. Thus it will help you to retain a vast majority of customers.
TYPES OF B2B INFLUENCER MARKETING:
There are various ways of marketing automation that you can use to launch an efficient B2B influencer marketing campaign;
Social media posting:
The most prevalent influencer marketing technique for b2b companies is social media posts. Social media posts carrying the advertisements of your products through texts and graphics can directly or indirectly promote your company and brand.
Videos:
Videos are another popular way of promoting your product via influencers. You can collaborate with some Youtube influencers who can post videos explaining the positives of your product with their own hands. Such videos will attract the attention of the viewers due to their informative nature. You can also request your client brands to upload videos reviewing your product. However, use an online video editor to improve your videos before posting them. Positive reviews can have a positive impact leading to greater sales.
Gifts and giveaways:
This is a creative way you can ask your influencer to try out. The influencer with whom you have a deal can ask questions about your product on his social media site. The people who answer the questions correctly get a gift hamper or some discount coupon. Making use of this strategy can help you get a lot of enthusiastic customers.
Taking over your accounts:
You can ask your B2B influencer to take over your social media accounts for a day or two. Let them post what they feel is relevant for the promotion of your product. You can give this responsibility to one of your employees and result in employee branding and be a safer option.
Making brand ambassadors:
Another way of influencer marketing for b2b companies is to create a famous influencer as your brand ambassador. As we got to know that around 91% of the buyers come via influence through word of mouth, having a brand ambassador can be a real boon. Launch your products via trade conferences where your brand ambassador can work his way to generate leads and bring credibility to your business.
Affiliation marketing:
You can collaborate with other famous brands to promote your products through their brand and sites. To make them promote for you, strike a deal for a particular commission or compensation that you will pay them. Moreover, when you make your influencer and affiliation work together, they bring better results.
Articles and blogs:
Various leadership articles and guest blogging can enhance your B2B influencer marketing by leaps and bounds. Appeal to an industry expert to write a blog on trends in your industry sector and share it on their websites.
FINDING THE APPROPRIATE B2B INFLUENCER:
You have to get hold of an influencer depending on your goal requirements; if you want to promote your business or brand, collaborate with an influencer who has a connection with other brands and companies. An influencer with a lot of connections can add to increasing your business horizons. Who do you think can act as an effective B2B influencer?
- Your channel partners, distributors, and other companies you collaborate with.
- Experts of the industry from your field, who have a huge mass base due to important opinions.
- Your company’s employees have a good base on social media and can interact with the masses.
- Your customers have a good following on social media sites and interact with a large number of people.
- Various fan groups and community pages whose content matches the interest of your goods and services.
- Using multiple internet research services to find out good influencers.
TIPS TO CREATE AN INFLUENCER-DRIVEN CAMPAIGN THAT WILL GIVE YOU GOOD RESULTS:
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Focusing on the content and the medium of transmission:
Just finding a good influencer will not give you success. You need to extract interesting content that will allure your customers. If you and your influencer do not find it interesting while developing content, there are high chances of failure. Creating good content requires you to keep the following aspects in mind;
- Always be clear about the values your company carries.
- Tell the audience something new; old information will bore them.
- Attach an emotional quotient to your content.
- Propagate the transparency of your brand with the help of previous stories.
- Provide tips and tutorials concerned with their everyday life problems.
- Engage people to talk and discuss your brand and products.
- Make the content a fun piece of information to read.
- Focus on the trends and create your content accordingly.
- Hold giveaway campaigns based on occasions.
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Formulate your campaigns meeting the customary requirements:
Having more than one influencer is a better option considering the diversity of your customers. However, following the same strategy for all the influencers works against your marketing intelligence. You should tailor your content so that distinctive content appeals to the distinctive population of diverse cultural backgrounds.
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Put your campaigns to test:
After you have an influencer on board to promote your products, figure out which type of content, styles, posts, and time of posting impact the population. Try out all the angles of your content- its funny side, informative side, and emotional side, to find out which works the best. Depending on the results, you can combine the performing aspects and make our campaigns better.
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Create a sheet to judge the influencers:
Prepare a sheet of influencers with all their good qualities, strength, and weaknesses. Collaborate with the list of influencers to find out which has a better influence and works the best in giving you adequate returns. Compare their expertise, brand awareness, following, etc., and decide which to continue with and terminate the deal.
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Having a continuous campaign:
Do not make your customers wait for a campaign to decide on. Such acts reflect that your business intelligence is low, and you are going to lose customers. Make sure that your campaigns are continuous and you keep investing in them for a longer run. The longer a campaign stretches, the better the chances are of a more significant impact on your customers.
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Identify your influencers wisely:
Identifying an influencer is not as easy as it seems; manual identification is a long and tiring process to deal with. Proper list-building services like that of Bizprospex can help you deal with such situations. It will be beneficial for you and your customers to find out about your influencers with the help of adequate information and software.
The CEO, and founder of TopRank Marketing, Lee Odden, says, “Influencer identification is one of the top challenges for B2B marketers—most use subjective sources like their own networks or recommendations from others without data validation. Only 35 percent are using the software.”
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Look for productivity rather than a mere transaction:
Make sure that you look at your influencers as humans and not as resources to generate money. They should love your brand and products, propel them to promote your products with utmost enthusiasm and zeal. In its fashion week of 2016, Maybelline collaborated with 15 beauty experts hailing from 15 different countries and made a business of 13.9 million by making videos of tips and tutorials.
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Social media should be a small part of your presence:
You should not depend solely on social media influencers and their social media websites to implement your marketing genius. Explore the area outside social media and increase your presence in the real world. Engage with researchers, orators, scholars, and celebrities so that they can represent you and promote your brand in conferences and interviews.
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Educate and interact with your influencers:
You have a good understanding of your influencer to make your B2B influencer marketing business a successful venture. Tell them everything about your brand and products as every bit of information will help them market your product in the best ways. If they have a half-hearted piece of information, your customers will get that out of your influencer. It will not be a good thing for your business.
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Collaboration is the key:
You cannot just dump the responsibilities on your influencer and run away. Sitting down and brainstorming together will lead to better results. Share your respective ideas, and it will help you in bringing out the best strategies.
CHECKING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE MARKETING CAMPAIGN:
Running a campaign won’t suffice; you need to ensure that your campaign is effective and works the way you want. Consider a few parameters to judge the results;
- Run multiple trials and gather shreds of evidence about its working.
- Set some desired goals you want to achieve.
- Check the return on investment you are getting.
- Check your influencer’s following base.
- Create a different account and interact with your influencer to check his response to customers.
- Find out how many people are engaging with your business.
After reading through the above information, you might understand the intricacies of B2B influencer marketing. Only 15% of B2B brands have an ongoing influencer marketing campaign. You need to hire a good influencer marketer or some good data mining companies like bizprospex, who will help you in better collaboration and engagement. If you can meet all the aspects, your business will increase.