Influencer marketing is undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with in the B2C space, but what about for B2B businesses? As you may be aware, influencers can really help B2C businesses by driving sales, whether it’s purchasing online or visiting a local store – word of mouth marketing and B2C go hand in hand.
But then you start looking at the longer sales cycle B2B businesses must go through. How can you effectively create a B2B influencer campaign that drives results? Well, the answer to this question is: it takes more work, but it’s certainly worth the effort.
Because of how difficult it is to capture qualified leads for B2B businesses, influencer marketing can be a critical step to a successful digital marketing campaign. But how do you set up a successul campaign?
Well, for starters, you must recognize that you will not see results right away. Many times it can take several months for you to see any ROI whatsoever from your influencer campaigns. Whereas an eCommerce business might generate sales right away, as a B2B company, your product or services may be significantly higher priced, and you also have a ton of competition.
So, once you recognize the need for influencer marketing as part of your B2B marketing strategy, it’s time you set out to identify potential influencers and start capturing leads.
Setting Out to Find the Right B2B Influencers
Start by conducting market research, understand your ideal buyer persona by researching platforms where they occasionally visit, and gather as much data as possible about them.
Once you know who and where these people are, it’s time you look at who they follow. This process is no different from a B2C approach, but for B2B in particular, you need to understand that sometimes you’ll need to work with much more qualified influencers, and as a result, they may be more expensive.
The influencers you consider need to be for a long-term relationships. B2B leads do not happen overnight, so you need to think long-term to succeed with your campaign.
For example, suppose you find someone on YouTube who is a Micro influencer with around 100,000 subscribers and decent engagement levels. You can set to work with this person to post a video advertising your product or services weekly, where potential B2B clients will be exposed to them.
You can then have them link to your website and target these same visitors with remarketing campaigns through Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Getting these visitors to sign up for your email is a great strategy to continue working your way to prospective clients. B2B Leads are costly, so you might as well make the most of your influencer campaigns.
Consider Remarketing Campaigns
Once you have established successful relationships with various influencers in your industry, consider running remarketing campaigns. Just take note that you’ll need a large number of potential B2B customer data for remarketing to be successful.
If you have the influencers link to your website, you can run remarketing campaigns to website visitors such as display ads, video ads, Facebook advertising, and so on. Again, keep in mind that you will need a lot of visits to your site for it to be effective with this approach.
For example, some remarketing campaigns on Google Ads require that you have at least 1000 active visitors within the last month before you can run remarketing campaigns.
You can even run your video ads on the channels for the influencers you work with. So not only is the influencer vouching for you, you’ll even have ads on their videos to increase the chances that they’ll click on it.
Capture Your Leads Whenever Possible
As I mentioned before, you must work to capture potential leads. If you can capture their email, you’ll have a much better chance of converting them down the road than if you simply use remarketing campaigns like display or video ads and hope that they’ll fill out your contact form at some point.
To increase your chances of success, you may need to have a strong lead magnet on your landing pages. And your landing pages must convert well. We recently published an article that includes three lead gen tactics for growing your email list, so check it out.
