It has been predicted that influencer marketing spend will exceed $101 billion by 2020. And while most of us are very aware of B2C influencer marketing, it’s become clear that the use of online influencers can have huge impacts on B2B marketing strategies as well.

However, B2C influencer marketing and B2B influencer marketing are two different beasts. For consumer companies, influencers are hired to run paid campaigns to promote a product or service through social media posts, blog posts, video content or even in-person events. All a company needs is a campaign idea, a budget, an influencer (or multiple influencers), and the ability to analyze the campaign results and ultimate ROI.

For B2B brands, the process is quite different. First of all, most influencers, despite having a large follower base on social media, may not be relevant for a B2B product and service and therefore, their posts or opinions may not have any impact on B2B buyer. Also, it’s much more difficult for influencers to include or refer to B2B products or services in their social posts or videos in a promotional way. Finally, B2B buyers typically do not browse Instagram in order to make B2B purchases. They usually start by discussing with colleagues, perusing websites, downloading white papers, reading case studies or reviews, or signing up for a demo or trial access period.

So then how does influencer marketing work with B2B? Here are 4 key points to keep in mind when building your B2B influencer marketing strategy.

1. Finding the Right Influencer

There are a few thing to keep in mind when finding the right influencer to activate your B2B campaigns:

• Most importantly, influencer marketing is all about influencing people who will then influence your future customers. So in order to do this successfully, you need to know exactly who your potential customers are already following, reading and listening to. Once you know who your customers trust, you can trust them to run your campaigns as well.
• How large is an influencer’s social communities across all platforms? Their overall ‘reach’ is important so you can make sure their content (and, ultimately, your campaign) is reaching your right audiences.
• How relevant is an influencer’s feed? How often are they using keywords and speaking to topics which align to your business, products or services?

There are a number of tools available, such as Affinio or Onalytica which can help you get started by finding influencers relevant to your brand.

2. Build a Relationship

The best influencers resonate with their audiences because of their authenticity. If they are promoting products or services that they don’t truly believe in, their followers will know and lose trust in them.

When working with a B2B influencer for the first time, it will be important for you to build a relationship with them and ensure they understand and believe in your product or service before you ask them to promote it. A good approach would be to play to their thought leadership or industry knowledge and ask for a quote for a blog post you are writing, have them join a webinar or podcast you’re hosting, or ask them for their opinion on trends or predictions in the industry. This will help you break the ice and build what could be a lasting relationship with an influential partner.

3. Educate

Once you’ve found the best influencer(s) for your marketing programs, you need to educate them on your company, products and services. If they are true industry experts, they should already be aware of your brand and offerings, but in order to effectively promote your company, they need to be educated on all of the details. The more they learn, the more effective they will be in marketing your campaigns — as they’ll be an industry expert, and also an expert of your company, product or service.

The influencer will also need to understand exactly how to work with your business in order to forward leads, answer customer questions, provide more information, etc.

4. Partnership / Co-Creation

A unique aspect of influencer marketing is that they need to be as successful as you in any marketing campaign. Depending on the deliverables of their campaign with you, they may need to reach a certain number of impressions, shares, views, sales, etc. in order to earn their activation fees, but they need to also ensure they are still producing relevant and interesting content that will resonate with their followers. Losing followers will impact their bottom line as well.

Thus, you should be looking at any influencer marketing campaign as a partnership, or opportunity for co-creation. People follow a specific creator because they trust them and are influenced by their opinions: so it’s important that these influencers are still promoting products in their own words, in their own way, in order to remain honest and true to their own brand as well. The more trustworthy influencers are in promoting your product or service, the more impactful and effective the campaign will be.

When building a campaign, ask the influencer for their opinion or thoughts — they are the ‘creators’, they will probably have great ideas on how to create the right content, promote it, and engage with their followers (and your potential customers) throughout.

Is B2B influencer marketing right for your brand?

Now that we’ve covered a few of the basics to integrating influencer marketing into your overall B2B marketing strategy, you’ll need to determine if this type of marketing is right for your brand. From the results we’ve seen thus far, there is absolutely an opportunity to collaborate with relevant industry influencers and elevate and promote your brand in a different way.