You likely associate influencer marketing with well-known B2C tactics. Engaging social media personalities to co-create content and promote products to their massive follower base is a proven way to drive awareness for consumer-friendly products and services.
The technique is playing just as big a role on the B2B side. A 2023 Ogilvy report finds that 75% of B2B businesses use influencer marketing, and more than half of the remaining 25% plan to do so.
However, business audiences may be less likely to turn to Instagram or TikTok for trustworthy product advice. And because B2B sales cycles are longer and more complex, campaigns targeting lower-funnel informational needs could drive a more significant impact.
B2B marketers need to follow a different game plan when working with influencers. It starts with making informed decisions about who to partner with and how to position your efforts for optimal success. Use these expert recommendations to guide you.
Choose your influencers wisely
B2B influencers come in two flavors: internal and external. Often, B2B marketers will use a mix, but each has a role to play, says Pam Didner, a B2B marketer, author, and speaker.
“Internal influencers should be subject matter experts,” Pam says. “An external influencer is a thought leader in your space — someone you want to collaborate with.”
Collaborations with thought leaders can be tricky, though, because thought leaders have their own business needs to consider. That’s why B2B marketers need to put a lot of care into screening and preparing the influencer for their campaigns.
“With [external] thought leaders, you really want to understand their expertise, where they shine, and how your brand can leverage their expertise to amplify your message,” Pam says. “You need to have a very in-depth conversation.”
Audience size matters – but not how you might think
Working with an influencer with millions of followers may not be essential for effective B2B engagement. According to Tim Davidson, a B2B content creator and the founder and vice president of marketing at B2B Rizz, the size of an influencer’s audience should correlate to the size of the total addressable market.
Wendy Covey, CEO and co-founder of TREW Marketing, concurs. Wendy points out that it’s much more important to have the right audience — likely those who inform or drive purchase decisions later in the buying cycle.
Tim also notes that a massive audience could be a big red flag: “It’s quite easy to game the algorithms with broad content, engagement pods, and buying followers.”
That means you may not get the reach you expect from your chosen influencer partner(s) — a compelling reason to consider building your strategy on internal expertise.
Support the success of your internal evangelists
At the other end of the spectrum, developing influencers internally makes it easier to scale campaign cadence and align their efforts with your brand’s goals. However, companies must inspire and support employees who agree to be influencers.
“People care more about [how being an influencer] impacts their career than the business,” Tim says. “[You have to] show how being known as an expert impacts them and their opportunities.”
Even if content creation and external-facing roles come naturally to in-house influencers, it helps to invest in education and training. That can mean hiring a ghostwriter to level up the copy in their articles and op-eds and provide technical specialists to help in-house influencers produce professional-quality podcasts and videos. Just as important, leaders should recognize that influencing is work.
“Give people time to post and create,” Tim says. “If you expect them to do it on top of everything else, they simply won’t have enough time, and it’ll always get de-prioritized.”
Weigh your compensation options
It’s impossible to talk about influencer selection without discussing compensation — financial or otherwise.
While employee influencers typically aren’t paid extra, be prepared to incentivize their brand advocacy in other ways. Discuss how the opportunity can help advance their career or personal goals. Offer media training or pair them with specialists to help refine their content’s quality. Tim also recommends adjusting their workloads so their influencer tasks don’t end up on the back burner.
On the other hand, if you are paying external influencers, don’t expect a standard rate. “It’s the Wild West right now in B2B,” Tim says. “It’s all negotiable so that payment will differ from one influencer to the next.”
Remember: There’s a big difference between paying an influencer and treating it as a transaction. Payment, after all, is a normal part of any business. However, transactional engagements probably won’t feel organic or authentic to the audience.
“Many [B2B influencers] are motivated by benefits from your company that help grow their business rather than a generic transactional relationship,” Wendy says. “These benefits may include early access to products, behind-the-scenes tours, a trade show demo in your booth, or elevated support. Ask lots of questions to uncover points of synergy and then think out of the box when it comes to how they will support your brand, and vice versa.”
Align influencer efforts with top-priority goals
While intelligent personnel and payment decisions are critical, influencer success often hinges on the strategic alignment of your efforts with your marketing goals.
One school of thought holds that B2B influencer campaigns should focus on driving awareness at the top of the funnel.
For example, Wendy Covey says the ultimate goal of the B2B influencer is to make sure their brand is top-of-mind when a prospect is ready to talk to sales rather than to drive a transaction at the moment. “B2B influencers are thought leaders — buyers look to them for information about the history and trajectory of their industry, answers to challenging problems, and insight on how to stay ahead of the trends.”
Yet, Tim Davidson argues that B2B influencers can do more than raise brand awareness. “Think of influencers [as a value-add] at every stage of the funnel. What changes is how you use the influencer.”
For example, in the middle of the funnel, Tim sees customers talking about their experience with the brand’s product as an influencer play that helps pull prospects into higher-level conversations.
Tim also notes a viable approach for fueling bottom-funnel goals: “Assuming the person you’re working with is a subject matter expert [and they’re open to it], try and have them on sales calls, or make introductions to help move potential deals along.”
Activate on actionable B2B channels
B2B influencer marketing isn’t necessarily as dependent on social media as its B2C counterpart. However, LinkedIn is a notable exception, as it’s the preferred social platform for developing professional relationships.
To tap into relevant conversations on LinkedIn, Allison Champion, former senior director and head of marketing communications at e-commerce fulfillment platform Flowspace, treats influential industry voices like traditional media by inviting them to briefings and pitching story ideas. “B2B influencers are more approachable than press because they’re eager to build their networks,” Allison says.
Pam Didner has a name for this tactic — influencing the influencer — and suggests providing them with early scoops, inside information, research, and access to your thought leaders: “This will help them position themselves as an industry-forward pundit and bring your brand along for the ride.”
Diversify your engagement destinations
While influencing the influencer often involves LinkedIn, the reality is that the platform doesn’t capture the entire audience. Part of the reason for that is media fragmentation. Another factor is how B2B spaces are changing, thanks to digital tools, new platforms, and remote work.
Allison recently began hosting a Flowspace podcast, Stories from the Shelf, to reach customer personas that might not show up in traditional spaces.
“We want to be a forum for conversations in the fulfillment space,” Allison says. “Our guests are the influencers, and we invite logistics and operations leaders to tell stories about how brands grow, scale, and move the needle.”
Allison’s experience isn’t unique. Wendy Covey notes that, in an episode of her Content Marketing, Engineered podcast, the marketing team at Heatcraft Refrigeration Products told her their YouTube influencer has helped them troubleshoot quality issues, improve products, and close the loop between product, manufacturing, and customers.
Let influential voices speak to your brand experience
Even if your influencer relationships don’t directly impact your products, they can improve the value of your content. Cultivate beneficial partnerships and properly position their expertise, and you both stand to make a meaningful impact on your content goals.
A version of this article originally appeared in the May/June 2024 edition of Chief Content Officer.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute