B2B influencer marketing is growing in popularity and reshaping how B2B marketing teams network and connect with potential clients. While B2B influencer campaigns have the potential to deliver impressive results, they also face unique challenges. Through strategic planning, B2B brands can successfully leverage influencers to boost awareness, build trust and generate leads.
The marketing teams of business-to-businesses (B2B) have traditionally relied on direct sales tactics, cold calls, LinkedIn connections, and industry events to generate awareness and reach new customers. With the growth of digital marketing and social media in today’s market, B2B businesses have shifted how they network and interact with potential customers, opening the door for B2B influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing is a proven marketing approach that, when executed effectively, can help achieve marketing objectives, including boosting awareness and brand trust, producing leads, and increasing revenue. B2B influencer marketing has been gaining significant attention within the industry recently as an effective and innovative way for businesses to gain traction and increase exposure.
The B2B influencer marketing industry surpassed $22 billion in revenue at the end of 2022, and a Nielsen study in conjunction with TapInfluence confirmed that B2B influencer marketing yields 11x ROI compared to traditional advertising. According to a poll conducted by InvespCro, 94% of marketers believe influencer marketing is a successful strategy for B2B businesses.
The numbers present a compelling case for implementing B2B influencer marketing. Yet, only 24% of B2B businesses have tapped into influencer marketing and are implementing it in their overall marketing strategy. Compared to traditional influencer marketing, B2B companies can encounter far more challenges, particularly given the diverse range of industries and products within the B2B market. Let’s explore some of the challenges B2B businesses face and strategies business owners can consider when implementing influencer marketing to best support their business purpose.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing for B2B
Boosting Brand Visibility and Building Credibility
Influencer marketing can provide B2B brands with the ability to reach an already engaged and targeted audience via influencers. Influencers often have a niche target audience who are interested in a specific industry or topic, which allows B2B businesses to reach consumers who would most likely be interested in their products or services. Additionally, many consumers trust and value influencers’ opinions, which can often extend to the B2B business they promote.
Influencer Generated or User Generated Content
Influencer content is a fantastic way to enhance a brand’s content strategy by creating compelling, value-adding content that can be amplified across the influencer’s and brand’s networks. It can also be used for paid media.
User-generated content humanizes a brand, making it more relatable and trustworthy. People naturally trust others, and influencer content can serve as a powerful endorsement, boosting credibility and trust.
B2B brands can take advantage of several content styles when leveraging influencer partnerships. Some content styles are more traditional or more prevalent, such as influencer guest blog posts, podcast interviews, co-hosting webinars, attending industry events as an ambassador, and endorsements or testimonial-style posts.
Another opportunity to leverage influencer partnerships includes having the influencer engage with or share a brand’s social media posts or content to increase reach and engagement with the influencer’s followers.
B2B Influencer Marketing Challenges
The B2B sector consists of various businesses and industries encompassing different target markets and product usages, requiring highly tailored influencer strategies for each to achieve results. Identifying and implementing an effective influencer strategy can be far more challenging for some businesses than others, especially those with a highly targeted market or specialized product.
As influencer marketing has grown, evolved, and has been more deeply explored, the opinion has emerged that any business, regardless of its nature, can take advantage of influencer marketing and achieve results when an appropriate strategy is implemented. However, there can be specific challenges B2B businesses may face when considering an influencer strategy.
Resource-heavy onboarding
Some software and services may require longer-term, resource-heavy onboarding, making influencer reviews challenging as they may not be able to physically try the product or service before posting, unlike traditional influencer marketing. These products or services may require complete adoption by the influencer to provide an authentic and detailed review.
Rather than influencer posts focusing on product reviews, posts can focus on subject matter experts and thought leaders sharing industry insights and how your product or service can benefit businesses in the industry. Additionally, these businesses can work with actual customers who have seen positive results from the product or service and who may also have quality social accounts to share actual user reviews and case studies.
Niche Audience or Narrow Usage
Some B2B businesses offer products or services that can be used by numerous industries and a range of users, while others may operate in very specific industries and be used by very specific types of employees. When there is a very narrow usage or niche audience businesses have a limited pool of potential influencers, and credibility is often far more important than reach. That doesn’t mean influencer marketing isn’t possible or effective for these industries; when there is a closer-knit community, there is the potential for influencer marketing to have a more significant impact when done correctly.
Complex Products and Services
B2B business products and services are often complex and require detailed explanations in order to communicate their features, benefits, and value. Unlike consumer products, where influencers can share personal experiences, communicating the value of complex software, products, and services via influencer posts is far more challenging and influencers will require the expertise and ability to do so, typically through longer content formats such as webinars and case studies.
Longer Sales Cycles
B2B sales cycles are generally longer, more complex, and involve multiple decision-makers, which can make it more difficult to measure the impact of and attribute sales to influencer campaigns. B2B purchases are often higher stakes and may require significant investment or resources from the purchasing business. This results in a more complex buyer journey with a longer evaluation and consideration period, making it far more difficult to measure the direct impact of an influencer campaign than D2C campaigns.
B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy
The ideal influencer strategy is different for every brand and business. The best strategy for a business depends on a number of considerations, including the business’s marketing objectives and goals, available budget, and target audience.
Before planning a strategy, you should know what you want to achieve, the messages you want to communicate, and how success will be measured. Whether you want to boost brand awareness, generate leads, or build trust in the brand, knowing all of this and defining what the end goal looks like can help create a strategy by defining ideal influencers, the best social media platforms, and what posts will look like to best achieve objectives.
It’s also important to have a specific and realistic budget, as it will determine the influencers you will work with and how many you can bring on. Influencer rates will vary, often quite significantly, but it’s important to realize that influencers who are out of budget are just not a good fit for campaign goals.
You also want to know who your target audience is, what social media platforms they are on, and what topics about your product or services resonate best with them. This will help you determine who you should consider as potential influencers, on what platforms, and what type of content should be produced.
Look for examples of influencer marketing in your industry or with similar products to get an idea of what is being done, what is working or not working, and where there may be gaps you can take advantage of.
Also, stay on top of industry trends and how they can be used to your advantage in an influencer campaign.
Ongoing optimization is also key when implementing B2B influencer campaigns. Analyzing results will determine what works best for your business and what your target audience responds to, allowing you to optimize future partnerships, post styles, and campaigns.
Social Media Platforms
With the increasing prevalence of social media and content creators in a wide range of topics and industries, it is more likely than ever that you will be able to find influencers who could be ideal for your influencer campaign.
The ideal platform for your B2B influencer marketing campaign can depend on several factors. You should consider who your customers are, where they are, and the style or type of content best for achieving your goals. Having a clear picture of your target audience and what you want to achieve can lead you to your ideal influencers and the ideal platform.
LinkedIn is the social media platform that most likely comes to mind when thinking about B2B influencer marketing; with 81.1% of B2B influencer marketing campaigns taking place on LinkedIn alone, it is definitely a top contender. LinkedIn is a powerhouse platform and provides a big opportunity for influencer marketing in the B2B world. Influencer marketing on LinkedIn is still relatively new and, for the most part, untapped, but the consensus is that it can offer a significant impact when used effectively.
Because the platform is professionally focused, those following the influencers you’ve selected are likely doing so to stay on top of industry trends and solutions to common problems or challenges, making their audience highly qualified.
Content strategies on LinkedIn can include having individuals in your industry make posts about your business or product, much like what you would see on other platforms, partnering with influencers to produce webinars, blogs, or articles, and even asking influencers to promote and share brand webinars and blogs.
X (formerly Twitter)
Although it offers significant opportunities, LinkedIn is not the only social media platform for B2B influencer campaigns. X also has a highly professional audience with the opportunity to engage industry and thought leads as influencers and access their trusting audiences.
Although X doesn’t offer the same reach potential as other social platforms, it does offer real-time engagement and conversations. Business decision-makers are on X looking for insights and advice from industry leaders. This platform is a space for thought leadership, industry news, and even relationship building, which can make it ideal for B2B industry influencer campaigns. In fact, according to X, 67% of users have made a purchase that was influenced by a post.
Influencer marketing on X is quite common and can include influencers posting or re-posting about your brand, account takeovers (where an influencer shares content from the brand account for a period of time), and more traditional product reviews and sponsored posts.
TikTok
With niche communities, such as WorkTok and eCommerce, and a community for almost anything you can think of with countless business accounts and business owners, TikTok offers a unique opportunity for B2B influencer marketing. No matter your industry, you’ll likely find someone talking about it on TikTok.
TikTok allows for more entertaining and engaging content compared to other social media platforms. B2B businesses can activate influencers to boost awareness, communicate features and benefits, and share success stories via demonstrations, tutorials, and testimonials. Due to the popularity of TikTok, you may also be able to find accounts that are already loyal customers to your business who have significant, good-quality followings.
YouTube
Thanks to its long-form video capabilities, YouTube is ideal for providing in-depth reviews and educational content on business-related topics. The comprehensive and detailed nature of the content resonates well with B2B audiences, who often need to consider detailed information before making a purchase. Therefore, YouTube is an ideal platform for influencer content focused on individuals in the consideration stage of the marketing funnel. However, due to its longer, more detailed format, YouTube often comes along with a higher cost due to the amount of work that is required.
YouTube also has several advantages in terms of search engine optimization. Collaborating with influencers with YouTube content can allow B2B companies to generate quality backlinks and keyword-optimized video descriptions, driving organic traffic and potentially improving search rankings.
Facebook has 3.049 billion monthly active users, making it the most popular social media platform. Facebook may not be the first platform that is considered when planning a B2B influencer campaign, but plenty of businesses and business professionals have built engaged audiences by sharing business-related content. There are also several approval-based Facebook groups geared to career development and specific topics that have engaged audiences, opening the door for influencers to share content.
Additional Opportunities
Influencer Newsletters
Many thought leaders and industry experts cultivate highly engaged, niche audiences through newsletters, with Substack being the leading platform in this space. B2B brands can capitalize on these newsletters with sponsored content, expert insights, product recommendations, and case studies for a targeted and engaged audience. By leveraging the influencer’s voice, brands can deliver valuable information directly to potential clients while simultaneously building brand awareness and trust. Additionally, influencer newsletters can drive traffic to the brand’s website, promote upcoming events, and support lead generation efforts, making them a powerful tool in a B2B influencer marketing strategy.
Tradeshows or Events
B2B brands can leverage influencers at trade shows or events by including them in product demos, panel discussions, and through live or post broadcasting to boost the visibility and credibility of the business. Influencers can provide behind-the-scenes content and facilitate networking, helping the brand reach a broader audience. Brands can also leverage influencers by hosting private events, driving social media engagement, and creating post-event content, such as recaps or interviews, to extend the event’s impact. Collaborations like this can allow brands to build trust, showcase expertise, and build industry connections.
Podcasts
Podcasting has rapidly become a popular and effective medium across various industries and niches, gaining significant traction in the influencer marketing space. Listeners often have a deep trust in podcast hosts, seeing them as friends or trusted advisors. For B2B businesses, podcasters provide a powerful platform to share expert opinions through interviews, discussions, industry insights, and even podcast ads. Brands can leverage collaborations with influencers, either as hosts or guests on popular podcasts, to reach and engage with niche audiences effectively.
Influencer marketing is opening the door for B2B brands to reach and engage highly targeted and niche audiences in new and relevant ways. While traditional methods still play an important part in B2B networks and sales, influencer marketing offers an effective way to build trust, boost visibility, and drive results through influencer partnerships. By strategically navigating the unique challenges in B2B marketing, companies can harness the power of influencer marketing to achieve marketing objectives. As the industry continues to grow and evolve, staying on top of trends and opportunities, as well as continued optimization, will be key for B2B brands to build effective influencer marketing strategies.
