The word “influencer” is not a magical cure-all for all marketing needs. And it’s impossible to speak in generic terms about where influencers might support specific marketing objectives. For example, a top-of-funnel awareness objective might not instinctively feel like something a B2B influencer programme might deliver… but if you work with the right influencer, across multiple channels (social, earned, paid and owned) – you may well precisely manage that. There’s huge potential for creativity to texture how the tactical approach of working with influencers can determine a positive outcome against almost any marketing objectives.
So, first up in strategic terms is thinking about your target audiences. Who are they, what they talk about, who they interact with, and what topics could you meaningfully and credibly engage them in? For example, an enterprise software firm might have different influencer sets – a technical one that talks about products and features, for example, identified through tracking those that talk about the firm, its products and its rivals. They could also have an alternative set built from following the conversations around the benefits its solutions enable, such as productivity, business growth and scale. These might be very different groups indeed, and you need to validate that their followers share overlap or presence in your target segments.
In general, a critical difference between B2B and B2C influencer engagement is that FAR fewer influencers tend to be talking about B2B brands. So, those discussing themes relating to your proposition or purpose will likely be more valuable, if you can define them adequately – and if they exist. Unfortunately, the fact you can imagine that people should be talking about this doesn’t mean they necessarily are.
Critically you have to decide how best to work with them. This is a big component of the creative challenge. Anything you consider needs to sit within the context of trying to build a mutually beneficial arrangement.
See the table in this section for some of the factors you can play off.
At a macro level, any influencer engagement programme you run in B2B will inevitably involve building a network or community of people.
With an engaged community as your aspiration, you need to feed it with content, experiences and activities to keep it engaged. These might lend themselves to specific tactical approaches for campaign activations, including everything from exclusive access to experiences and events, to content co-creation opportunities or creative or technical challenges.
There are countless variations that would need to be developed specific to the influencer and strategy you’ve established. You may even find that the people discussing your themes and issues predominantly exist offline, in which case your engagement may work differently – looking to run influencer academy programmes, or working with advocates to become influencers, instead of influencers becoming advocates.
As part of your strategy, thinking through how your chosen influencer activity gets amplified is vital. Even though influencers will have better, more authentic reach than brands do, the average engagement levels for individual postings are still low. You need to ensure you boost your activation across earned, paid and owned channels wherever possible to amplify the impact of your efforts. Plus, you need to consider how work with online influencers drives engagement in offline contexts too, from events to 1:1 meetings and beyond.