How we leverage influencer marketing for your B2B business
Influencer marketing has become a hot commodity over the last few years. In fact, it’s now one of the fastest-growing marketing channels. Influencer marketing builds on the idea of celebrity endorsements rooted in the hands of everyday content creators.
These content creators have created a large following, typically within a specific niche. By collaborating with businesses and brands, influencers can get your product or service in front of a large and engaged audience.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing in which brands work with creators with a dedicated and niche following. These creators use their platform to endorse your services or products through branded content and sponsored posts.
Why does this work? Influencer endorsements are a powerful form of social proof that you can use to raise awareness for your brand and reach new potential customers.
How can influencer marketing help your B2B business?
In marketing, word-of-mouth is an important tool to leverage when you can. It builds trust and credibility. As consumers, we trust others’ opinions often more than we trust the brands who are trying to sell us something. Influencer marketing fits into this space because it, too, is a way to build trust and credibility amongst other potential consumers.
For example, American Express has become a model for influencer marketing success on Instagram over the past decade. They coined the #AmexAmbassadors and launched a campaign with Instagram influencers who travel frequently and live a luxurious lifestyle to demonstrate the exclusive perks of the American Express Platinum credit card. The campaign’s goal was to convert managers and business executives to use the card for their business travel and expenses. American Express saw a lot of success with this campaign and has since launched influencer marketing geared toward small businesses.
American Express isn’t the only B2B business taking on influencer marketing. 86% of B2B companies have launched successful influencer marketing campaigns, and 85% believe interest in working with influencers will increase in the next 12 months.
How to find the right influencer for your marketing campaign
What makes an influencer influential is their large following on social media. There are all types of influencers, for example, a finance expert on Instagram or a well-read tech YouTuber. Depending on your industry, you can find someone who shares a similar audience with your business.
There are different tiers of influencers as well. Usually dependent on the size of their following, there are Mega, Macro, Micro, and Nano influencers. This is important when it comes to your influencer campaign budget because the number of followers a Micro influencer will have will be substantially smaller than a Macro influencer. A larger budget will be needed for those who have a larger following.
Another factor you should consider when looking for an influencer is their engagement and reach rates. You want to ensure that their followers are engaged, showing that the influencer’s content is resonating with their audience. Reach is significant because it tells us their content is being pushed out by whatever social media platform they use. Another tip would be to look at the content they’re posting and make sure it resonates with you as the marketer and that you like what you see.
Lastly, there are now different influencer platforms to make life easier for agencies and brands when managing and working with influencers. These platforms provide influencer discovery tools for brands and agencies. Some also offer searchable databases of potential influencers using helpful algorithms. For example, at COHN Marketing, we use a platform called Klear for all our Denver and national influencer marketing campaigns. We find that this platform makes the discovery and organization of influencers helpful and efficient for our marketing clients.
Your influencer marketing next steps
If you’re ready to jump on the influencer marketing bandwagon, reach out to COHN Marketing. Besides all the other cool things we do, we’ve added influencer marketing to our repertoire and seeing great results for our clients.