The rise of TikTok and YouTube has seen an explosion of growth for the influencer industry. However, using an influencer in your marketing strategy is more complicated than many people think.
On today’s episode of Marketing Matters, Morgan and Sarah will be discussing influencer marketing. We’ll focus on what makes influencer marketing so effective, as well as tips on how to get started. Tune in to learn how to leverage influencers to boost all the stages of your marketing funnel.
Highlights:
- What is influencer marketing?
- How does B2B influencer marketing differ from your typical B2C influencer marketing?
- Why are influencers effective in the B2B market space?
- How do you get started in influencer marketing?
- How do you pick an influencer for your brand?
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Sarah Roberts
We’re excited to be bringing you this podcast produced by our company, ADV Marketing. ADV Marketing develops high quality and cost-effective marketing materials for a wide range of businesses. Our relationship driven business model and customized marketing solutions makes us the perfect partner for small businesses looking to grow. I’m Sarah, creative director at ADV Marketing. Join me here with the rest of my team on Marketing Matters every other Monday to discuss business to business marketing topics. Now let’s get into the episode. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Marketing Matters, a podcast where we discuss all things marketing related and how it applies to your business. I’m Sarah Roberts, creative director at ADV Marketing
Morgan Hutcherson
I’m Morgan Hutcherson an account manager at ADV Marketing.
Sarah Roberts
And today we are talking about influencer marketing, which is very fun. You’re very excited for this episode.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yes. Okay. I feel like I just like have an obsession with influencers and it’s like, I don’t think I’m influenced I just think the whole concept of somebody like promoting a product and getting paid for it, like promoting a brand is just crazy. And I think that if I hadn’t fallen in love with my job at ADV Marketing, like I would do like influencer marketing because it’s just so interesting.
Sarah Roberts
That’s super funny. And also, I think it’s funny about influencers because if you ask like any eight- or nine-year-olds what they want to be when they grow up, they say influencer.
Morgan Hutcherson
I still want to be an influencer. Like I want to be able to just like Tik Tok and promote things and get things sent to me for free. Like who wouldn’t?
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. And there’s also this like new wave of influencers being like, this is what a job as an influencer is like. And honestly, I kind of get like, we are content creators too. It’s very time consuming and it’s a lot of planning involved and there’s a lot of ways that audiences can take content for granted. If it looks a certain way and they don’t realize the work that goes into it. So, I can see it being a really draining thing.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. And I think like now that’s evolved so much because back in the day, like influencers were just celebrities and they had massive followings and I think we’ll get into it later in the episode. But like you don’t have to have a huge following to be an influencer.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, this is true. So, let’s get into it. Mogan So first for the audience, what is influencer marketing in the conventional sense?
Morgan Hutcherson
When you think of influencers? I feel like the first thing that comes to mind is like paid partnerships, some brands paying you or sending you their product for free for you to promote. A really good example is the Stanley Cups, right? So, like a lot of moms in Utah and just moms all over the U.S. were promoting these Stanley Cups, whether they had them for free or sent to them for free, or they just really like the cup. And then that kind of like started the whole trend of everyone having a Stanley Cup. And you see that a lot with products these days. And it’s that’s what an influencer does. It just promotes some good service ideas something and gets people to like buy into it.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, the rise and fall of Water bottle trends is a real testament to the power of marketing, in my opinion. Okay, so another part of influencer marketing is that they have to have content first, like they have a content library built up and they’ve built up their audience. So, their value is their audience and their connection to their audience. So that’s a big part of being an influencer and a requirement for that. But what does that mean in the B2B space?
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, so B2B is different because you’re not really like having brands reach out to you and go like, here’s a free sample of a pipeline repair kit, promote it. It’s more like the exchange of ideas and subject matter experts and being like an industry leader. And so, for a lot of businesses, that’s, you know, a CEO, like reposting LinkedIn content and sharing their ideas, it’s going to conventions and giving a speech like that’s a B2B influencer and a really good example of one.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, and that’s thought leadership too. So, like in a lot of ways that thought leadership has been a specific part of B2B marketing. It is acting as influencer. Basically, if you have built yourself up as a thought leader enough, you have the power to influence your audience because you have a certain stature in the industry. So exactly. Cool. Well, then let’s talk more about B2B influencer marketing or thought leadership or whatever you want to call it. Why is something like that effective for B2B companies?
Morgan Hutcherson
I think it really gives the company more credibility and reputability?
Sarah Roberts
Reputability.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yes, words are hard today and it’s just because, like you think about it, like it’s kind of like a review, right? Like you go to Yelp, you look at reviews for whatever restaurant you’re going to go to eat at and you’re like, well, if it doesn’t have good reviews. I’m not going to eat there. Think about if you see somebody that is interacting with a brand a lot or a company, you’re like more inclined to, you know, look at them and like, follow them all that, especially if it’s somebody that, you know, has a lot of connections in the industry or is a big name in the industry.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Like has the reputation and the respect in that. With any influencer marketing, there always comes the, the paid promotion stipulations and the sponsored messaging rules and what you have to say or not say and all that stuff with the ads that you have, like you have to reveal that it’s paid partnership and all that, but that’s really protecting consumers from being falsely led. So that’s something you have to do. But also, the other parties, like not all influencer influencers, will say yes to a paid partnership just because you ask it has to fit their audience. If they’re an influencer worth their money because they care about the connection that they’ve built with the audience. And if you’re talking about the thought leader, I guess analogy in the B2B space, they care about their reputation. So, they’re not going to stake their reputation on a bad product. So, you have to make sure you have a good product first. The influencer doesn’t come before that.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, when influencer marketing first started becoming a big thing with like the rise of YouTube and then it really took off with TikTok, I think that we saw a lot of influencers just accept any brand deal and that ended up really harming them in the long run because then like some of these like small businesses that like ended up having like products that weren’t good for you or like lawsuits, all that started to reflect on the influencer. And so, they had a backtrack and peddle and be like, actually, like, no, I was just paid. I don’t really use their product and like, try and save face.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, and that’s not good for their audience. And then they lose all the credibility that they’ve built that they worked so hard for and that they get paid for and then they’re no longer useful. So, as the brand looking to facilitate an influencer relationship or thought leadership relationship in the industry, you first have to make sure that you’re offering a product worth promoting. And that should be easy to do if you have a good product. That’s a big part of marketing as well is making sure you have something worth promoting, it makes everything else fall in line. The rest is making sure you have the right network and that you’re reaching out and facilitating those conversations and not waiting for them to come to you. And that can look like collaboration posts, that can look like collaborative articles. What else can that look like?
Morgan Hutcherson
Podcasts are a really easy way.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, that is true because you can bring on guests and they can preserve reputation and credibility because they’re speaking to their own experience.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, or even you can go be a guest on somebody else’s podcast to promote your company. Like, there’s just so many ways to exchange
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, information, product promotion, trade conferences are also a big way to influence people. If you have a presentation or a report and you worked with someone on it or you’re promoting yourself as a thought leader and you’re establishing yourself as an influential thought leader in the industry, that’s a good way to do that. So B2B is all about influence. It’s just how the conventions of influencer marketing in other industries kind of play into best practices in B2B.
Morgan Hutcherson
And I feel like in B2B, you don’t call it I’m an influencer. It really is like I’m a SME (subject matter expert).
Morgan Hutcherson
And you are influencing those around you if you are an SME and it’d be great if you had an internal SME that could add to your business’s credibility to find the right influencer for you or thought leader for you, you have to make sure that it also speaks to the audience that you want. Like you can probably get a wide range of experts that are accessible to bring on to a podcast or into a presentation, but you have to make sure it matches with your strategy and your audience first.
Morgan Hutcherson
I also think that if you’re starting to where you want to get started in the influencer space, there’s probably somebody at your company that is already deemed an influencer by their network, by their accomplishments, their achievements, something usually they’ll probably be higher up too. And you can just like get them to start reposting things on LinkedIn and adding their thoughts, commenting and putting you in contact with like other connections they have and build up those relationships. You don’t have to immediately be like, I want to find an influencer for my company, like Let me go. DM A whole bunch of people that might be a good fit. Like you can start internal.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, yeah. And you should probably give your internal people the opportunity to build up their expertise because that benefits a lot of your marketing and your company in the long run. So having the opportunity is great. Also, influencer marketing or influencing people with your expertise is also helpful for recruiting, which recruiting is a marketing function, right? Bringing in and attracting talent is a big part and if you build up the people who work at your company, then that’s a big recruiting plus for sure. Anything you want to add before we go into our next segment about getting started, anything that our audience should know about influencer marketing?
Morgan Hutcherson
I guess just speaking from what I’ve seen the last few months, we’ve been really focusing on lead generation. And I think having an influencer really helps your lead generation. Like, yeah, they help build your brand awareness to your network and all this stuff. And I think that it helps guide people in the sales funnel and really follows that marketing qualified lead that we talked about. I think we’ve done the episode pretty recently about lead generation.
Sarah Roberts
It has to be right. Check that out. Yeah. Look that up. That has to be somewhere.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, but we talked about like having that company advocate help guide people into the sales funnel, and that’s really what an influencer is doing.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Another word for this is word of mouth, which I’m pretty sure even if you’re not a marketer, you know the power of word of mouth. So that is something to think about. And in the next segment of this podcast, we’re going to talk about getting started because influencer marketing is a newer concept, but thought leadership and subject matter expertise is not. So how do you work the two in B2B? We will talk about that next up.
Sarah Roberts
Welcome back, everyone. So, we are coming back from our musical interlude, our fun little musical break, about getting started with B2B, influencer marketing. And even if you’re not in the B2B space, influencer marketing does take a lot of effort and intention to get started with because you really have to pick the right partners. So, it is relationship building in a way.
Morgan Hutcherson
I would say it’s picking the right partners and then knowing your niche. And we kind of talked about that in the last episode with podcasting. Like anything you do like, you can’t just expect to like, cover everything and be like the most popular, like you’re going to have most success if it’s your little niche. If you’re like, I’m really good at like integrity in the pipeline sphere, then like that’s your niche and that’s what you’re going to like influence, which is like integrity companies.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Because then you can speak to well and your audience engages with it and it matches your brand and all the good things. Yeah. So first let’s step back and just think about whether or not influencer marketing is right for a brand. What are what are the criteria we have to think about when we’re deciding whether or not to engage in influencer marketing?
Morgan Hutcherson
I think brand awareness is one of the big things that come to mind, like are you wanting to have more people know about your brand? And will an influencer help you reach that goal? Do they have a network that it’s worth sharing to, and is that network going to match your ideal consumer profile?
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Or if you have a rather complex product or one that requires a lot of engagement from the client to implement, it is nice and reassuring to your prospective clients. When there’s someone else is like, this is worth it, there is value in this, this is how I use it, like kind of illustrate how it can be implemented, which a lot of times B2B products are just more complicated in general. Yeah. So having that second voice in that expertise kind of interlaced in there is really helpful, especially if it’s a third-party voice.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. Or like and some companies will have like an internal spokesperson that will share short term videos on them. Educate that way. But yeah, a third party is even better.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. So, you’ve decided that you want to do influencer marketing in the B2B space and you want to engage that tactic in your strategy? How do you start and how do you find the right one?
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, I really just say start with the company. And just going back to idea, like there’s probably somebody internally that can at least start sharing and adding those thoughts.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, employee advocacy.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and we always see that help people’s LinkedIn so well and like grow followers growing engagement rate all that so that’s a good way to start. And then for like external I would say like think about your own network and who already is supporting your company and maybe just isn’t as vocal about it in other forms of media.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Who do you just need to put on a platform? Who do you give a megaphone to say what they’re already saying, but in a really effective way. Also, you mentioned the employees. All you have to do is go to like an industry networking event and find out that employees do not operate in a micro chasm of the company that they work for. They have previous companies that they work for. They have networks from past coworker relationships. They have other experience that they can leverage and be the advocate That’s not just in your company. They have a reputation outside of where they’re working now that they can leverage. So those are easy, low hanging fruits. Then the next level up I think is looking for the other thought leaders that have a bigger reputation and a bigger following, if that’s right, for what you want to do. And that’s building relationships like you build relationships and business development. That’s a part of business development, making sure you have that relationship of trust established so that you can say, like you can even ask them for feedback on the product. And that’s an opportunity for honest feedback from the market. And then if they like your product and they end up using it, then that customer relationship can become an influencer relationship.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. And you can get like testimonials and all sorts of content from that. Doesn’t have to just be somebody resharing something.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, and that’s leveraging your current existing partnerships and that’s building out the advocacy part of the consumer funnel, which we actually don’t talk about all that much, but this definitely fits into that. Yeah, the funnel doesn’t end with the sale, it actually is kind of a circle because it goes back because once they become an advocate for your brand, they’re educating other customers. Yeah, so it’s just constantly feeding in.
Morgan Hutcherson
A funnel, just more pleasing to illustrate.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, it’s easier to put on paper.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah.
Sarah Roberts
But we always say like no customer journey is actually linear. It actually bounces around a lot and actually never ends. Like there’s no end points to the B2B relationship side. So, stuff to think about, if you’re looking into influencer marketing, it’s not easy or an immediate know how. It’s definitely leveraging the relationships that you have and finding out what works for you is and is most authentic to your brand. It has to be authentic to you and your chosen influencer slash thought leader.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, I just like I feel like as humans were so good at like picking out when somebody is being inauthentic and like if on TikTok, if you can if you see somebody promoting something, and you know they don’t actually use it. Like the comments are filled with, people say like, you don’t actually use this, like stop lying. Yeah. So just be authentic.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. And how fast you scroll past the little paid promotion. So that’s also like an immediate flag that it’s not authentic, but if you leverage influencers the right way, it can boost adoption, education, all the good things when you promote your product or your service.
Morgan Hutcherson
And I would also say that like the companies that do build up that influencer network and have people promoting their brand, I feel like they’re more known in the spirit and they just like give off a more successful, trusted look that makes you kind of like even if you’re like, I don’t fully know, like I need their services, but I’m going to keep them in my mind more than like a smaller company that doesn’t have that presence of influencers.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, it’s that trust and credibility, which is so often we talked about this total backbone of B2B marketing and sales. So, an essential topic for sure, especially nowadays. And as ubiquitous as digital media, media is nowadays, there’s always going to be influencers associated with that and how much content we’re producing. There’s you can leverage other third-party content or other thought leadership content for your brand. Okay. Morgan That was a good episode. Everyone out there. Be sure to subscribe and rate our podcast and we will see you again in the next two weeks with our next topic, which I can’t remember what our next topic is.
Morgan Hutcherson
I thought this was the last episode of the season.
Sarah Roberts
No, I think there’s one more, stay tuned maybe we have one more episode. We’ll see y’all later
Morgan Hutcherson
A surprise episode, bye y’all.
We’re excited to be bringing you this podcast produced by our company, ADV Marketing. ADV Marketing develops high quality and cost-effective marketing materials for a wide range of businesses. Our relationship driven business model and customized marketing solutions makes us the perfect partner for small businesses looking to grow. I’m Sarah, creative director at ADV Marketing. Join me here with the rest of my team on Marketing Matters every other Monday to discuss business to business marketing topics. Now let’s get into the episode. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Marketing Matters, a podcast where we discuss all things marketing related and how it applies to your business. I’m Sarah Roberts, creative director at ADV Marketing
Morgan Hutcherson
I’m Morgan Hutcherson an account manager at ADV Marketing.
Sarah Roberts
And today we are talking about influencer marketing, which is very fun. You’re very excited for this episode.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yes. Okay. I feel like I just like have an obsession with influencers and it’s like, I don’t think I’m influenced I just think the whole concept of somebody like promoting a product and getting paid for it, like promoting a brand is just crazy. And I think that if I hadn’t fallen in love with my job at ADV Marketing, like I would do like influencer marketing because it’s just so interesting.
Sarah Roberts
That’s super funny. And also, I think it’s funny about influencers because if you ask like any eight- or nine-year-olds what they want to be when they grow up, they say influencer.
Morgan Hutcherson
I still want to be an influencer. Like I want to be able to just like Tik Tok and promote things and get things sent to me for free. Like who wouldn’t?
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. And there’s also this like new wave of influencers being like, this is what a job as an influencer is like. And honestly, I kind of get like, we are content creators too. It’s very time consuming and it’s a lot of planning involved and there’s a lot of ways that audiences can take content for granted. If it looks a certain way and they don’t realize the work that goes into it. So, I can see it being a really draining thing.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. And I think like now that’s evolved so much because back in the day, like influencers were just celebrities and they had massive followings and I think we’ll get into it later in the episode. But like you don’t have to have a huge following to be an influencer.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, this is true. So, let’s get into it. Mogan So first for the audience, what is influencer marketing in the conventional sense?
Morgan Hutcherson
When you think of influencers? I feel like the first thing that comes to mind is like paid partnerships, some brands paying you or sending you their product for free for you to promote. A really good example is the Stanley Cups, right? So, like a lot of moms in Utah and just moms all over the U.S. were promoting these Stanley Cups, whether they had them for free or sent to them for free, or they just really like the cup. And then that kind of like started the whole trend of everyone having a Stanley Cup. And you see that a lot with products these days. And it’s that’s what an influencer does. It just promotes some good service ideas something and gets people to like buy into it.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, the rise and fall of Water bottle trends is a real testament to the power of marketing, in my opinion. Okay, so another part of influencer marketing is that they have to have content first, like they have a content library built up and they’ve built up their audience. So, their value is their audience and their connection to their audience. So that’s a big part of being an influencer and a requirement for that. But what does that mean in the B2B space?
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, so B2B is different because you’re not really like having brands reach out to you and go like, here’s a free sample of a pipeline repair kit, promote it. It’s more like the exchange of ideas and subject matter experts and being like an industry leader. And so, for a lot of businesses, that’s, you know, a CEO, like reposting LinkedIn content and sharing their ideas, it’s going to conventions and giving a speech like that’s a B2B influencer and a really good example of one.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, and that’s thought leadership too. So, like in a lot of ways that thought leadership has been a specific part of B2B marketing. It is acting as influencer. Basically, if you have built yourself up as a thought leader enough, you have the power to influence your audience because you have a certain stature in the industry. So exactly. Cool. Well, then let’s talk more about B2B influencer marketing or thought leadership or whatever you want to call it. Why is something like that effective for B2B companies?
Morgan Hutcherson
I think it really gives the company more credibility and reputability?
Sarah Roberts
Reputability.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yes, words are hard today and it’s just because, like you think about it, like it’s kind of like a review, right? Like you go to Yelp, you look at reviews for whatever restaurant you’re going to go to eat at and you’re like, well, if it doesn’t have good reviews. I’m not going to eat there. Think about if you see somebody that is interacting with a brand a lot or a company, you’re like more inclined to, you know, look at them and like, follow them all that, especially if it’s somebody that, you know, has a lot of connections in the industry or is a big name in the industry.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Like has the reputation and the respect in that. With any influencer marketing, there always comes the, the paid promotion stipulations and the sponsored messaging rules and what you have to say or not say and all that stuff with the ads that you have, like you have to reveal that it’s paid partnership and all that, but that’s really protecting consumers from being falsely led. So that’s something you have to do. But also, the other parties, like not all influencer influencers, will say yes to a paid partnership just because you ask it has to fit their audience. If they’re an influencer worth their money because they care about the connection that they’ve built with the audience. And if you’re talking about the thought leader, I guess analogy in the B2B space, they care about their reputation. So, they’re not going to stake their reputation on a bad product. So, you have to make sure you have a good product first. The influencer doesn’t come before that.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, when influencer marketing first started becoming a big thing with like the rise of YouTube and then it really took off with TikTok, I think that we saw a lot of influencers just accept any brand deal and that ended up really harming them in the long run because then like some of these like small businesses that like ended up having like products that weren’t good for you or like lawsuits, all that started to reflect on the influencer. And so, they had a backtrack and peddle and be like, actually, like, no, I was just paid. I don’t really use their product and like, try and save face.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, and that’s not good for their audience. And then they lose all the credibility that they’ve built that they worked so hard for and that they get paid for and then they’re no longer useful. So, as the brand looking to facilitate an influencer relationship or thought leadership relationship in the industry, you first have to make sure that you’re offering a product worth promoting. And that should be easy to do if you have a good product. That’s a big part of marketing as well is making sure you have something worth promoting, it makes everything else fall in line. The rest is making sure you have the right network and that you’re reaching out and facilitating those conversations and not waiting for them to come to you. And that can look like collaboration posts, that can look like collaborative articles. What else can that look like?
Morgan Hutcherson
Podcasts are a really easy way.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, that is true because you can bring on guests and they can preserve reputation and credibility because they’re speaking to their own experience.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, or even you can go be a guest on somebody else’s podcast to promote your company. Like, there’s just so many ways to exchange
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, information, product promotion, trade conferences are also a big way to influence people. If you have a presentation or a report and you worked with someone on it or you’re promoting yourself as a thought leader and you’re establishing yourself as an influential thought leader in the industry, that’s a good way to do that. So B2B is all about influence. It’s just how the conventions of influencer marketing in other industries kind of play into best practices in B2B.
Morgan Hutcherson
And I feel like in B2B, you don’t call it I’m an influencer. It really is like I’m a SME (subject matter expert).
Morgan Hutcherson
And you are influencing those around you if you are an SME and it’d be great if you had an internal SME that could add to your business’s credibility to find the right influencer for you or thought leader for you, you have to make sure that it also speaks to the audience that you want. Like you can probably get a wide range of experts that are accessible to bring on to a podcast or into a presentation, but you have to make sure it matches with your strategy and your audience first.
Morgan Hutcherson
I also think that if you’re starting to where you want to get started in the influencer space, there’s probably somebody at your company that is already deemed an influencer by their network, by their accomplishments, their achievements, something usually they’ll probably be higher up too. And you can just like get them to start reposting things on LinkedIn and adding their thoughts, commenting and putting you in contact with like other connections they have and build up those relationships. You don’t have to immediately be like, I want to find an influencer for my company, like Let me go. DM A whole bunch of people that might be a good fit. Like you can start internal.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, yeah. And you should probably give your internal people the opportunity to build up their expertise because that benefits a lot of your marketing and your company in the long run. So having the opportunity is great. Also, influencer marketing or influencing people with your expertise is also helpful for recruiting, which recruiting is a marketing function, right? Bringing in and attracting talent is a big part and if you build up the people who work at your company, then that’s a big recruiting plus for sure. Anything you want to add before we go into our next segment about getting started, anything that our audience should know about influencer marketing?
Morgan Hutcherson
I guess just speaking from what I’ve seen the last few months, we’ve been really focusing on lead generation. And I think having an influencer really helps your lead generation. Like, yeah, they help build your brand awareness to your network and all this stuff. And I think that it helps guide people in the sales funnel and really follows that marketing qualified lead that we talked about. I think we’ve done the episode pretty recently about lead generation.
Sarah Roberts
It has to be right. Check that out. Yeah. Look that up. That has to be somewhere.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, but we talked about like having that company advocate help guide people into the sales funnel, and that’s really what an influencer is doing.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Another word for this is word of mouth, which I’m pretty sure even if you’re not a marketer, you know the power of word of mouth. So that is something to think about. And in the next segment of this podcast, we’re going to talk about getting started because influencer marketing is a newer concept, but thought leadership and subject matter expertise is not. So how do you work the two in B2B? We will talk about that next up.
Sarah Roberts
Welcome back, everyone. So, we are coming back from our musical interlude, our fun little musical break, about getting started with B2B, influencer marketing. And even if you’re not in the B2B space, influencer marketing does take a lot of effort and intention to get started with because you really have to pick the right partners. So, it is relationship building in a way.
Morgan Hutcherson
I would say it’s picking the right partners and then knowing your niche. And we kind of talked about that in the last episode with podcasting. Like anything you do like, you can’t just expect to like, cover everything and be like the most popular, like you’re going to have most success if it’s your little niche. If you’re like, I’m really good at like integrity in the pipeline sphere, then like that’s your niche and that’s what you’re going to like influence, which is like integrity companies.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Because then you can speak to well and your audience engages with it and it matches your brand and all the good things. Yeah. So first let’s step back and just think about whether or not influencer marketing is right for a brand. What are what are the criteria we have to think about when we’re deciding whether or not to engage in influencer marketing?
Morgan Hutcherson
I think brand awareness is one of the big things that come to mind, like are you wanting to have more people know about your brand? And will an influencer help you reach that goal? Do they have a network that it’s worth sharing to, and is that network going to match your ideal consumer profile?
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Or if you have a rather complex product or one that requires a lot of engagement from the client to implement, it is nice and reassuring to your prospective clients. When there’s someone else is like, this is worth it, there is value in this, this is how I use it, like kind of illustrate how it can be implemented, which a lot of times B2B products are just more complicated in general. Yeah. So having that second voice in that expertise kind of interlaced in there is really helpful, especially if it’s a third-party voice.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. Or like and some companies will have like an internal spokesperson that will share short term videos on them. Educate that way. But yeah, a third party is even better.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. So, you’ve decided that you want to do influencer marketing in the B2B space and you want to engage that tactic in your strategy? How do you start and how do you find the right one?
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, I really just say start with the company. And just going back to idea, like there’s probably somebody internally that can at least start sharing and adding those thoughts.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, employee advocacy.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and we always see that help people’s LinkedIn so well and like grow followers growing engagement rate all that so that’s a good way to start. And then for like external I would say like think about your own network and who already is supporting your company and maybe just isn’t as vocal about it in other forms of media.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Who do you just need to put on a platform? Who do you give a megaphone to say what they’re already saying, but in a really effective way. Also, you mentioned the employees. All you have to do is go to like an industry networking event and find out that employees do not operate in a micro chasm of the company that they work for. They have previous companies that they work for. They have networks from past coworker relationships. They have other experience that they can leverage and be the advocate That’s not just in your company. They have a reputation outside of where they’re working now that they can leverage. So those are easy, low hanging fruits. Then the next level up I think is looking for the other thought leaders that have a bigger reputation and a bigger following, if that’s right, for what you want to do. And that’s building relationships like you build relationships and business development. That’s a part of business development, making sure you have that relationship of trust established so that you can say, like you can even ask them for feedback on the product. And that’s an opportunity for honest feedback from the market. And then if they like your product and they end up using it, then that customer relationship can become an influencer relationship.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. And you can get like testimonials and all sorts of content from that. Doesn’t have to just be somebody resharing something.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, and that’s leveraging your current existing partnerships and that’s building out the advocacy part of the consumer funnel, which we actually don’t talk about all that much, but this definitely fits into that. Yeah, the funnel doesn’t end with the sale, it actually is kind of a circle because it goes back because once they become an advocate for your brand, they’re educating other customers. Yeah, so it’s just constantly feeding in.
Morgan Hutcherson
A funnel, just more pleasing to illustrate.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, it’s easier to put on paper.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah.
Sarah Roberts
But we always say like no customer journey is actually linear. It actually bounces around a lot and actually never ends. Like there’s no end points to the B2B relationship side. So, stuff to think about, if you’re looking into influencer marketing, it’s not easy or an immediate know how. It’s definitely leveraging the relationships that you have and finding out what works for you is and is most authentic to your brand. It has to be authentic to you and your chosen influencer slash thought leader.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, I just like I feel like as humans were so good at like picking out when somebody is being inauthentic and like if on TikTok, if you can if you see somebody promoting something, and you know they don’t actually use it. Like the comments are filled with, people say like, you don’t actually use this, like stop lying. Yeah. So just be authentic.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. And how fast you scroll past the little paid promotion. So that’s also like an immediate flag that it’s not authentic, but if you leverage influencers the right way, it can boost adoption, education, all the good things when you promote your product or your service.
Morgan Hutcherson
And I would also say that like the companies that do build up that influencer network and have people promoting their brand, I feel like they’re more known in the spirit and they just like give off a more successful, trusted look that makes you kind of like even if you’re like, I don’t fully know, like I need their services, but I’m going to keep them in my mind more than like a smaller company that doesn’t have that presence of influencers.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, it’s that trust and credibility, which is so often we talked about this total backbone of B2B marketing and sales. So, an essential topic for sure, especially nowadays. And as ubiquitous as digital media, media is nowadays, there’s always going to be influencers associated with that and how much content we’re producing. There’s you can leverage other third-party content or other thought leadership content for your brand. Okay. Morgan That was a good episode. Everyone out there. Be sure to subscribe and rate our podcast and we will see you again in the next two weeks with our next topic, which I can’t remember what our next topic is.
Morgan Hutcherson
I thought this was the last episode of the season.
Sarah Roberts
No, I think there’s one more, stay tuned maybe we have one more episode. We’ll see y’all later
Morgan Hutcherson
A surprise episode, bye y’all.
