B2B influencer marketing helps build lasting relationships, improve brand reputation and awareness, and generate new leads.
The marketing-sales funnel turns 125 years young in 2023, and marketers still approach it with youthful zeal to try to squeeze every ounce of energy and advantage from it to benefit their bottom lines. A renewed focus on the last stage of the funnel, trust, has led to a new approach: influencer marketing.
Whom do you trust more about a product or service – a stranger posting on Twitter, a TV advertisement or a long-time, influential friend? While influencer marketing isn’t about enlisting your buddy to sell you on stuff, it does attempt to leverage influencers, whether creators, subject matter experts, industry experts or others, and the authenticity and trust they engender.
“B2B influencer marketing provides an ideal way to combat disintegrating brand trust,” writes Lane Ellis, a veteran social media and content marketing manager, adding that this type of influencer marketing is the “business-oriented cousin to the B2C Instagram entertainment and lifestyle influencer.”
The marketing move is definitely getting results, i.e., customers to proceed through the marketing-sales funnel and buy the product or service in question. The B2B influencer marketing vertical was projected to reach $11.7 billion in revenue at the end of 2022, with over 38% of B2B firms exploring influencer marketing for lead-generation and more, according to AdAge. Average brand boost could reach 16.6% with a sound influencer marketing strategy, according to an analysis by the Harvard Business Review, with influencer originality accounting for a 15.5% rise in return on investment.
U.S. organizations are expected to spend $6.16 billion on influencer marketing during 2023. Nearly six out of every 10 (59%) marketing leaders noted that they considered B2B influencer marketing a priority today, according to 2022 survey data from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).
Focus & Favor
The world of media messaging has never been more expansive while consumer attention spans have never been shorter. B2B influencer marketing helps counter that challenging landscape, building lasting relationships, improving brand reputation and awareness, and, of course, generating new leads. And given Hootsuite’s findings that 42% of organizations exceeding 1,000 employees work with influencers and creators and only 28% of smaller businesses (under 100 workers) do, your company could seize almost instant upside with a quality influencer marketing initiative.
The “influencer economy” is undeniable. Influencer recommendations have even surpassed those of friends and family among the most important factors in purchase decisions, according to one report. Ellis does offer a note of caution though: given that “crafting award-winning B2B marketing content that elevates, gives voice to talent and humanizes with authenticity takes considerable time and effort” it’s a good idea to partner with a leading digital marketing agency.
“We talk a lot about the need for brands to be authentic, responsive and create meaningful experiences for consumers,” said Marcia Homer, infinitee’s Director of Brand Management. “An effective influence marketing program definitely hits on the authentic and meaningful. People relate to and trust people more than companies so brands are smart to lead with that personal embodiment of expertise and reliability.”
