Influencer Marketing and Its Impact on B2B Marketing Norms

Let’s begin by knowing what influencer marketing means – The concept shares substantial similarities with word-of-mouth marketing. Brands engage in a partnership with social media influencers to promote the product or services of a particular brand through their social media handles. The campaign may involve posting a single video or image of the influencer using the brand’s product or a series of posts that detail their experience with your product or service.

Either way, the objective remains the same: to take your brand through influencers to put it in front of your target audience and to build trust with them. Now let’s come to B2B influencer marketing. A B2B influencer is different from a B2C influencer who works through channels like YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter. A B2B influencer is typically a prominent consumer, the company’s employee, a well-known journalist, or an industry insider. A B2B influencer is someone who exhibits a high level of authenticity, authority, or expertise in a particular niche.

How does influencer marketing work in the B2B domain?

Since the advent of the internet, the B2B buyer’s journey has transformed substantially, directly affecting marketing and B2B sales. The days when the sales teams of the company drove the purchase process forward and the impact of which information is presented at what time to the interested parties and in what manner are long gone. Now, the buyer himself exercises complete control over the knowledge level about services or products. The sales team’s responsibility is now switching over to the consultant; at its best, it is evolving into an influencer in its expertise area.

This renders B2B influencer marketing a great opportunity for companies, and hence, it is becoming highly crucial as interested parties are looking for expert content to assess their intention behind the purchase and the service or product behind it. Compared to product descriptions that customers can find on the company’s website, the content shared by insiders of the industry is more reliable and trustworthy. Without a doubt, large strata of buyers are providing content to the industry, as influencers help increase the credibility of the brand rather than the details offered by the classic sales team.

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Top examples of successful B2B influencer marketing

Here are some examples to show how global companies are capitalizing on B2B influencer marketing. Read on!

1. SAP

 Leading software in the domain of enterprise software, SAP is benefitting thousands of enterprises from its solutions. So, how does it use influencer marketing? SAP influencers are industry experts and top executives. The company is known to invite the influencers to events that facilitate them to increase brand awareness and social engagement. For instance, at an event, SAP invited five influencers to learn about subjects like data analysis, machine learning, and IoT. Its influencers got half the social media mentions about this event. The influencers approach about 80,000 to 1,00,000 folks online via live video streaming. The influencers also answered questions from the interested parties who could not come to the event. Later, SAP used this content in its social media profiles and blogs.

2. Landis+ Gyr

This is another example of the way employees of the company are used in B2B influencer marketing. Landis+ Gyr initiated a program to make employee advocates who are much more active on social media. The focus here was laid on the use of social media channels of these employees to convey the innovative spirit, customer orientation, and other principles and values of the enterprise.

 3. American Express

Another one of the top enterprises heavily relies on B2B and B2C marketing. From collaborating and working with micro-influencers and celebrities, American Express has spared no effort in making the most of influencer marketing. The company has implemented various influencer marketing campaigns to lure consumers and corporate clients. The B2B influencers used to support to win over companies and executives for premium services of American Express.

The benefits of B2B influencer marketing

When it comes to influencers, the images associated with the B2C world typically pop up in our minds, where beauty bloggers and young fashionistas promote famous brands’ products. And maybe that’s why B2B influencer marketing so far has made slow progress and is still taken with much skepticism. Successful B2B influencer marketing campaigns run by lesser-known and well-known companies and various studies indicate that B2B marketing can help your enterprise by connecting you with the audience that otherwise would have been difficult to approach. This is specifically trues for business, products, and brands still undiscovered and unknown to the world outside.

By collaborating with a social media influencer, you can utilize their existing network and mushroom your customer base. You can also touch base with those companies that were earlier inaccessible.

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