Category: Influencer Marketing

The buyer’s journey is often classified into 3 stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. These can be visualized as a funnel or flow chart, progressing from one stage to the next. However, according to Gartner’s B2B Buying Journey, “Buying jobs don’t happen sequentially but more or less simultaneously. And if we were to map out a real B2B buying journey, it would look a lot less like a step-by-step linear process and a lot more like a big bowl of spaghetti.”

HubSpot describes a “flywheel” cycle in which customers become advocates and promoters who feed growth as they move through the phases of attract, engage, and delight.No matter how you visualize it, navigating this spaghetti wheel is challenging for buyers. B2B influencer marketing adds value, supporting buyers throughout this complex process.

Working with Influencers Solves B2B Sales & Marketing Challenges

Influencer marketing is often viewed as a way to get in front of an audience, similar to traditional television advertising. In reality, IM can deliver a much broader scope of benefits for all types of brands. (We’ll cover this and other myths in our upcoming article, “Top 5 B2B Influencer Marketing Myths BUSTED.”) For B2B brands in particular, IM can solve many pressing, current challenges.

Gartner identified six B2B buying “jobs” that customers must complete in order to finalize a complex purchase. Buyers, “use both digital and in-person channels with near equal frequency to complete each of the six B2B buying jobs more or less simultaneously.” “Every one of these moments is a potential driver of looping, revisiting or re-evaluation. As a result, customers are trapped repeating each job over and over until all six are locked in simultaneously.”

• Problem identification
• Solution exploration
• Requirements building
• Supplier selection
• Validation
• Consensus creation

In Winning The New B2B Buyer, Forrester writes, “Your job is no longer to convince customers to buy, but rather, to help them buy.” 

To help buyers throughout their journeys, B2B brands must deliver:

1. Frictionless experiences with immediacy
2. Open access to information
3. The support of information connectors
4. Peer validation
5. Technical and industry knowledge

1. Frictionless Experience with Immediacy

Assisting buyers includes making the entire journey as frictionless as possible. Particularly once your prospects have begun evaluating vendors and are aware of your brand, they should be able to access the information needed both quickly and easily. 

Some ways you reduce friction and provide immediacy are with helpful chatbots, virtual assistants, and third-party marketplaces. Influencers can also serve to provide this vital assistance, even directly enabling transactions.

2. Open Access to Information

Forbes Business Council writes about the impacts of buyers conducting more independent research online. “This transition [between marketing and sales] has become fuzzier as more buyers are reliant on self-serve, online research. This often results in pressure placed on a company’s online presence to do the heavy lifting for both the marketing and sales teams.”

With this added pressure on your online presence, partnering with influencers provides additional ways to educate your audience on the value of your solution.

• 70-90% of the B2B buyers’ journey is complete before engaging a vendor
• Consumers engage with an average of 11.4 pieces of content prior to making a purchase

In Winning The New B2B Buyer, Forrester writes that B2B buyers “expect to be treated as equal partners, through experiences that are increasingly open, connected, intuitive, and immediate.” Empowering buyers with open access to information displays a respect for their preference for a self-guided experience… and a recognition of their ability to understand that info.Working with influencers to share information further demonstrates how your brand is open and transparent. Influencers who are well-informed about your solution can connect with your target audience, helping facilitate and develop connections to your brand.

3. The Support of Information Connectors

“Helping B2B buyers buy isn’t a sales problem, it’s an information problem,” as Gartner states.

It might appear that the solution to such a problem might simply be… more information! Not so fast.

Simply dumping yet even more information on buyers isn’t the solution. Rather, Gartner research shows that successful sales reps focus on “helping customers sort through information already available — acting as a kind of ‘information connector’ to provide the frameworks and tools customers desperately need to efficiently organize and align their thinking.”

To succeed, brands must drive purchase ease, which requires curating information.As subject matter experts, influencers can bring this crucial support to your buyers by curating information and providing their unique perspectives on your industry. In the, “B2B Buying Journey,” AIMultiple writes, “Customers desire adjustments that address the complexity of B2B buying, like obtaining a personalized account with modified catalogs and exclusive pricing along with consideration to product availability.”

4. Peer Validation

The reviews and insights of peers are vital components of the buying process, B2B included. “To demonstrate their empathy with and commitment to customers, organizations will need to ‘enable’ buyers, just as they currently enable their sellers, with new perspectives and tools, such as facilitating more peer-to-peer conversations.” 

Active online communities exist for every type of enthusiast – including buyers making purchase decisions. People can connect with peers to compare notes and gain insights. Forrester notes, “As the B2B buying ecosystem expands, third parties, not vendors, are becoming the buyer’s preferred sources of information.” The role of millennials in B2B buying continues to expand, and they also prefer peer insights and validation over vendor claims.

5. Technical and Industry Knowledge

Marketers of all kinds are accustomed to the challenge of capturing our audience’s attention. B2B brands are faced with additional complexities, including shortcomings in the capacity of sales staff. 

In, “Future of B2B sales: The big reframe,” McKinsey notes, “Talent needs to be reassessed as businesses face both the attrition brought on by the pandemic and hyper-informed customers expecting more.”While your employees should be the best subject matter experts on your product’s specifications, leveraging thought leaders outside of your company can help fill industry knowledge gaps. In particular, influencers can show how your solution fits in your customers’ organization within a broader solution scope.

Build Digital Influence to Support Your Buyers’ Journeys with Kingfluencers’ Full-Service Approach

To learn more B2B IM, check out our 2-part series, “4 Reasons Why You Should Do B2B Influencer Marketing (Part 1)” and “How.” Contact us if you’d like to explore how we can help you build your brand voice with B2B Influencer Marketing and beyond. Kingfluencers pulls it all together in a way that’s impactful for your brand.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

In Part 1, we examined the reasons digital influence is a powerful tool for B2B brands, including the measurable impact of B2B influencer marketing, how it addresses difficult business challenges, and integrates with your existing marketing initiatives. B2B audiences are highly engaged and working with influencers can bring your brand’s core messages to life and create stronger connections with your communities.

The reasons why B2B brands should do influencer marketing are clear – but how to do it successfully requires knowledge and skill. We’ll dive into the key components of successful B2B influencer marketing campaigns to give your brand a personality and voice and generate digital influence to positively impact your business. Just as influencer marketing continues to grow and rise, so will B2B influencer marketing experience its growth. Globally, spending in the influencer advertising segment is estimated at around €24.59 billion in 2022. Experts suggest B2B influencer marketing could account for 40-50% of the influencer marketing sector revenue over the next 3 years.

The Potential Power of Your Digital Influence

Establishing digital influence means communicating information, ideas, and viewpoints to target audiences with the potential to impact their views and preferences. Digital influence can benefit not only your brand but ultimately your audience – by helping them in their information searches and decision-making.

The Demand Gen 2022 B2B Buyer Behavior Survey describes how, “Buyers are taking the responsibility into their own hands by conducting independent, anonymous research, reaching out to peers for advice, and keeping an eye on social media.” Gartner reports that B2B buying groups spend 27% of their time conducting independent online research.

Developing your true potential digital influence requires building on every element that defines the true impact of your brand and message.

• Discover your brand’s voice
• Establish trust and a closer connection with customers and prospects
• Create a cornerstone for your organizational and commercial success

So now we’ll dive into the “how” part.

The Building Blocks of B2B Influencer Marketing

Progressively build your brand’s digital influence with a well-structured process from preparation, through execution and optimization, starting with the following building blocks:

• Purpose & Values
  Define your brand’s purpose, the foundation for your brand’s voice and influence
  
• Clear Goals
  A key component of successful influencer marketing campaigns is to first of all set clear objectives and overarching goals
  
• Credible Advocates
  Identify your internal and external brand advocates and storytellers who can effectively communicate and credibly amplify your messages and boost your credibility
  
• Storylines
  Build purpose-centric storylines that allow your audiences to gain insight into your brand, become informed, and feel part of your brand’s journey
  
• Message
  Craft the different messages you want to convey to your target audiences 
  
• Digital Presence
  Map the right channels and formats to reach your audiences and establish digital influence
  
• Verify
  Conduct due diligence to verify that potential ambassadors reach the right audience
  
• Consistency & Continuity
  Establish continuous learning and improvement, generating ever more benefits and growing positive outcomes for your brand
  
• Analyze & Optimize
  Measure outcomes and track KPIs

Support Complex Purchase Decisions with Knowledgeable, Credible Advocates

Let knowledgeable people speak for your brand in an authentic and credible way, boosting awareness and visibility and generating tangible returns.

B2B buyers are increasingly relying on guidance from peers throughout decision-making processes that are growing longer. The Demand Gen 2022 B2B Buyer Behavior Survey respondents indicated that the newly added processes to their buyers’ journeys include:

• Using more sources to research and evaluate purchases (32%)
• Spending more time using social media to research vendors and solutions (31%)
• Relying more on peer recommendations/review websites (29%)

Partnering with B2B influencers who can provide guidance to your prospects can alleviate some of the burdens of the purchase process. 

Having the right partner is even more crucial when credibility is the key to success. Kingfluencers’ well-structured process delivers B2B Influencer Marketing in a synchronized way. 

• Strong In-house B2B Community
  With our extensive creators’ network, we can help you find and onboard your right influencers

• Exclusive Collaboration with Kcore Analytics
  We use AI and social network structures to identify influencers from massive real-time online data

• Quality and Performance-Driven Outcomes
  We assure great outcomes with rock-solid procedures and a proprietary campaign management platform with innovative AI forecasting

• Distinct Storytelling & Narrative Tracks
  Working with various advocates, we can build multiple storylines and establish different storytelling tracks

• Use of Direct & Indirect Channels
  Our B2B services leverage both direct (corporate channels) and indirect (via employees and others) networks on social media channels like LinkedIn and Twitter.

Selecting Ideal Brand Ambassadors

B2B influencers deliver authority, focus, and purpose. Multiplying these key attributes delivers real impact for your business. B2B Influencer Marketing campaigns must combine ambassador categories, with platforms and formats.

Making perfect influencer matches is vital. Influencer choice must align with your brand’s message and values, as well as your campaign objectives. Consider working with numerous brand ambassadors from the following categories:

Internal

• Brand leaders (C-level)
• Internal voices (your employees)
• Partners (suppliers and tech partners)
• Clients/ customers

With comprehensive training, you can turn your potential advocates and ambassadors into brand power voices.

External

• Credible category professionals
• Topic specialists
• Thought leaders with affinity
• Content creators with specific focus

It’s also crucial to work with credible influencers who are respected experts in their field. There must be a clear link between your brand and the person in order to keep your influencer marketing campaigns real. Trust and authenticity cannot be compromised upon. People connect with people and trust stories, not logos.

Target those with deep industry knowledge, individuals who can influence corporate buyers and tap into business-to-business conversations. Be sure to conduct due diligence, and consider which influencers are the right match with your platforms of choice.

B2B Influencer Marketing Success Cases

Financial service provider American Express hired a design industry blogger and a lifestyle presenter to promote acceptance of Amex credit cards to small businesses. Global technology company the Voith Group provides equipment for hydroelectric power plants. The company traveled with several energy experts to power plants in Europe and documented the tour to share on four different social networks. Würth featured carpentry on YouTube with Manni Dirsch. The tone appealed to the craftsmen and women who work with the tools and materials from Künzelsau.

Turn Presence into Digital Influence with Kingfluencers’ Full-Service Approach

Building digital influence is achieved by developing a credible narrative and activating powerful brand advocates and supporters who help amplify your message and give it additional impact. Kingfluencers delivers a hassle-free approach, with a standard process to generate the best outcomes for your brand. Our team provides you with a full service including every aspect of social media.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

While there are distinctions between the B2B and B2C decision-making processes, digital influence remains a powerful tool for both. Influencers can bring your brand’s values and core messages to life and create stronger connections with your audience, moving your brand from supplier to ‘friend.’ 

B2B Versus B2C Influencer Marketing

Although the core principles of influencer marketing are almost the same for B2C and B2B, there are some differences that warrant a distinct B2B approach.

• B2B sales processes are often more complex and require more information on both sides
• The sales funnel consists of multiple, distinguished stages
• Numerous people are typically involved in the decision-making process
  • The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision-makers
• Building a trusting relationship with the vendor’s representative is much more important

1. B2B Influencer Marketing is Impactful for Business and Will Move the Needle

B2B influencers deliver credibility, focus, and purpose. Multiplying these key attributes delivers real impact for your business, making it an important addition to your toolkit.

• Credibility: B2B content creators and thought leaders have recognized expertise in their field. Their opinions are highly valued by their peers.
  
• Relevance: When a professional decides to follow a B2B influencer, there is usually a very high interest in that influencer’s content and opinions, so followers are attentive (often higher than B2C).
• Focus: Their content is often very focused on a specific topic, with the aim of providing guidance to fellow professionals.
• Reach: B2B influencers can connect with your target audience, particularly at crucial times when they’re actively seeking info about the solutions you offer.

Understanding the important role of content creators, the Amazon Web Services Heroes Program “recognizes a vibrant, worldwide group of AWS experts whose enthusiasm for knowledge-sharing has a real impact within the community.” As the Marketing Director at a serverless security startup, Kingfluencers’ writer Megan Bozman reached out to several Heroes, including Yan Cui and Forrest Brazeal, who participated in our podcast.

Named a LinkedIn Top Voice in 2020 and 2022, Zurich-based Selma Kuyas also works as a resume coach and LinkedIn learning instructor. Also based in Zurich, Bertrand Blancheton, currently works as Head of Marketing at Braavos Crypto Asset Management, and writes about the metaverse, Web 3.0, crypto, decentralized finance (DeFi), and NFTs, including participating in LinkedIn Audio.

B2B brand ambassadors bring a lot to the table, including a unique point of view that can resonate strongly with your target audience. Original thought leadership makes your brand more visible and more desirable, positively impacting your target customers’ decision-making process.

94% of B2B marketers who’ve tried influencer marketing feel it’s highly effective. Swiss B2B marketers indicate that B2B IM is higher on the agenda for 2023 than webinars (55%).

2. B2B Influencer Marketing Audiences are Highly Engaged

Marketers need to not only reach their target audience but engage so their messages are received and understood. 

Professionals decide to follow a B2B influencer due to an interest in that person’s opinions, making followers very attentive. This increases the impact of B2B IM content, making it particularly effective. This is especially the case when the thought leader’s content is sought after as part of the research phase in a decision-making process. You can overcome even more difficulties by working with an agency. 9 out of 10 B2B companies prefer to let an agency manage their B2B IM efforts with a main focus being on content creation (55%).

3. B2B Influencer Marketing Integrates Very Well With Your Existing Marketing Initiatives

62% of Swiss B2B marketers say IM is high on the agenda for coming years, higher than webinars for example. 57% of marketers plan to fully integrate influencer relations into their activities by 2023.

B2B influencers are also relatively more likely to have in-person contact with their communities by speaking at conferences, trade shows, and local business and networking events. Their authentic professional credibility can help provide answers to your audience’s pain points and boost consideration and conversion.

B2B IM can even result in synergies, boosting other marketing initiatives such as SEO. You can repurpose content you’ve already created with various storytellers to amplify outcomes. For example, the content generated by influencers from IM campaigns can provide additional value with secondary or tertiary goals, such as increasing awareness. 

IM content can enrich traditional content across various channels, such as owned communities or other advertising platforms such as webinars. Repurposing existing content enables you to achieve your goals while also saving money. 74% of B2B marketers agree that influencer marketing improves customer and prospect experience with the brand. Kingfluencers can help you tie it all together with a holistic approach.

4. B2B Influencer Marketing Can Generate Competitive Advantages

B2B IM may be on your agenda as a hypothetical future possibility, but now is a great time to start. As the leading full-service social influence agency in Switzerland, Kingfluencers has established the tools, processes, and resources to do B2B IM efficiently.

Partnering with influencers is a marketing tactic many of your competitors may not be leveraging yet. Getting started now can generate unique competitive advantages for early movers. Most B2B organizations (85% of respondents to a study with TopRank Marketing) are planning influencer marketing campaigns. Additionally, the professionals, platforms, tools, and processes for IM are already well-established, lowering barriers to entry for B2B brands. B2B brands should capitalize on this opportunity and take a page from the well-established B2C playbooks in order to achieve similar successes.

Kingfluencers Delivers a Hassle-Free, Full-Service Approach

Our services guide B2B IM in a synchronized way, from strategy to ongoing community management. We help you develop your true potential social influence, building on every element that defines the true impact of your brand and message. Contact us and we’ll take a holistic approach to develop your brand voice and give that voice a positive impact, generating digital influence that goes beyond (B2B) influencer marketing.

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing