Array

The marketing universe tends to make complete sense to everyone who works in it, but sounds like jumble with too many acronyms to outsiders. When we all visit family for the holidays or go on a first date, we inevitably (and reluctantly) find ourselves having to explain SEO, how Google rankings work, or site metrics and analytics tracking.

Influencer marketing is another term that marketers throw around that generates questions from the outside world. To shine some clarity on this form of brand promotion, we tapped 18 experts to explain influencer marketing and how to do it successfully.

Influencer Marketing Taps Into Audience Trust

Audiences are more aware of advertising than ever — and they are also more suspicious of it. Influencer marketing has become an alternative to traditional advertising to earn back some of that lost trust.

“Research has found that consumers trust only 33% of ads they see, while they trust 90% of what influencers post,” says Hannah Rinaldi, a blogger at Eat, Drink, and Save. “This is because most influencers only post what they truly trust. Only work with brands that you would normally purchase yourself. This will help your audience trust you and in turn you’ll make more money.”

While smart influencers should turn down offers that aren’t relevant to their brand and audience, it’s up to the marketers to find strategic partnerships.

“We think the only reason a social media creator should be speaking about a product or service is because they believe in it,” says Eric Burgess at ION. “They may or may not work directly with a brand to create content and align the message but it should be clear that they actually love what they are recommending to their audience.”

This mutual relationship maintains the sense of trust that audiences have with influencers, which plays an important factor in the marketing process.

“[Influencer marketing] takes advantage (in a good way) of the trust influencers have earned from their constituency,” says digital marketing consultant Paul Chaney. “Trust is valuable currency in a world where peer influence reigns supreme and leveraging it to call attention to your brand, products and services is worth the investment.”

The investment goes both ways: Audiences trust influencers to be a source of news and expertise, while peers trust influencers to have an active and genuine audience instead of bought followers.

Influencer Marketing Requires Brands and Users to Listen

Often, marketers look for a one-stop solution, but influencer marketing is actually a process of listening and relationship-building.

“Most B2B marketers don’t know the top 10 to 20 people who influence their target buyers on social media,” says Carter Hostelley, CEO and founder of Leadtail. “This is a wasted opportunity. Marketers must research who these people are and invest in building relationships with them. These influencers can quickly create brand credibility, amplify brand content, and make introductions, all in a way that can be extremely impactful as compared to paid media programs.”

By simply highlighting your market’s top 20 influencers, you can strategically build relationships that make sense to your target audience.

“…44 percent of influencers decide to work with a brand because the opportunity is relevant to their audience,” says Mike O’Brien at ClickZ.

“Though you should aim to work with influencers who are fans of your brand, only 14 percent of them consider that their main motivation. When asked about working with a brand a second time … [more] than half also cited being shown the same respect as any other publisher.”

Influencer marketing isn’t a hard concept. Brands simply need to listen to their influencers and treat them with respect. Following those two steps will take any brand far.

“Pay attention to industry news, read other people’s posts, and think before replying,” says Will McInnes, CMO at Brandwatch.

“Careful attention to detail and the simple act of listening first, rather than just publishing a barrage of content, is a great way to escalate your social media presence to influential status. You will learn who the major players are in your area of interest, and you’ll be better equipped to speak to them in their own language.”

This is particularly true for marketers diving into an unfamiliar niche or industry.

Influencers Initiate Actions

While the term “influencer marketing” might be especially en vogue now, it’s not a new concept.

“What has made influencer marketing unique in the present is how social media communication has leveled the playing field and given anyone and everyone the opportunity to share their voice,” the team at Global Yodel says. “Anyone with internet access can share their opinion and content, and if they do it well enough become an influencer.”

While anyone can acquire thousands of followers, they’re not influencers until they’re able to use their power to move whole communities.

“Influencers typically initiate an action to affect the behavior and decision making of others, while those who are influential typically affect others by their very action and performance,” says Aileen Cole, corporate account executive at Marketo. “Others look to their actions and achievements to mirror their own behavior.”

An example for comparison’s sake: Kim Kardashian would be an influencer when she tries to sell something on Instagram, but three-year old Prince George is influential in that whatever he wears immediately sells out in stores across the UK.

“Brands and companies target individuals with influence to affect change in buying patterns or habits over other people,” says Lucy Rendler-Kaplan, founder of Arkay Marketing & PR.

“It’s not follower numbers that determine someone’s influence on a given social network, but rather [being] someone that people trust. Influencers are people that have strong feelings about something or an affinity to a certain company and a good relationship with others where people know this person knows their stuff.”

Once brands find influencers who are capable of changing behavior, they can use that power to generate word-of-mouth advertising and revenue.

“In today’s world, it is no longer about locking yourself up in a cave for weeks listing all of the offerings of your brand,” says storytelling specialist Dan Virgillito.

“[A study by McKinsey] found that online word-of-mouth advertising generates twice the sales as paid advertising and results in a 37% higher retention rate. This indicates that companies need to be smart with their marketing spend and invest in a way that generates online trust.”

Influencer Marketing is Hyper-Niche and Focused

This was briefly touched on in the last section, but it bears repeating: Influencers are based on the engagement they generate within the community, not necessarily their follower count.

“While [influencers] may have a lot of awareness, they aren’t always trusted as fellow consumers,” says Sujan Patel, co-founder of Web Profits. “A study from Nielsen found that 92% of consumers trust their peers, compared to only 18% that trust celebrities, bloggers or other influencers that they perceive as having an agenda. This doesn’t mean that other influencers aren’t also important, but satisfied customers should be the first place you turn.”

Yes, bloggers and celebrities are options for your influencer outreach, but are they the people your audience turns to for advice or information?

“Ever notice that the same people tend to crop up in a variety of industry publications as columnists and guest posters?” writes Dan Shewan, web content specialist at WordStream. “These individuals are probably influencers. What names do you hear over and over again in your field? Which articles are constantly being linked back to?”

This means brands that are hoping to connect with and join the influencer community need to hone their messages and form their own beliefs if they hope to change the opinions of others.

“To become an influencer, master a specific topic within your niche,” says Meaghan Edelstein, B2B digital marketing consultant. “If you cast your net too wide, it will be difficult to gain the level of knowledge necessary to be considered an expert.

“Start small and learn as much as you can about your desired niche through research and experimentation. That way, you’ll be able to discover the ins and outs of your specialty and form your own ideas, as opposed to simply restating others’ opinions.”

Influencers are Relatable and Easy to Connect With

One of the main ways influencer marketing sets itself apart from celebrity endorsements is by using relatable people whom audiences empathize with.

“The easiest way to identify influencers that you should partner with is to take a look at your buyer personas,” says outreach marketing consultant Kristen Matthews. “Think about the type of bloggers or influencers these buyer personas would seek out to ask questions about a product. Consider which type of influencers these consumers would follow on a regular basis.”

This practice has actually given rise to different tiers of influencer marketing, where the middle tier holds more power.

“Lower ranked influencers, also called tier 2 influencers or ‘the power middle,’ can be very effective for any campaign and it is often easier to engage with them,” says Joe Fields, digital marketing associate at Onalytica. “These tier 2 influencers are helpful in discovering rich sub communities and can allow rapid scaling of influencer marketing campaigns.”

For example, a local mommy-blogger who shares community events and organizes meet-ups is more relatable and approachable than a global blogger with millions of followers.

Influencer Marketing is Measurable and Targetable

Another reason why so many brands are exploring influencer marketing is its measurability. Influencer analytics started out strong and will only continue to grow in the next few years.

“For decades, the advertising industry was limited to shooting in the dark, having only access to traditional strategies that yielded murky information about audience reach, sales funnel influence, and branding impact,” says Misha Talavera, co-founder of SaaS platform NeoReach.

“The digital world is different. Every website visit, social like, and picture posted online can be stored and analyzed, yielding oceans of data that turns into valuable insights about your target market and your advertising performance.”

Finally, brands can make strategic marketing decisions regardless of their audience size or range.

“An increased focus on algorithms and historical data in 2016 will enable marketers to better predict what kind of and how many interactions followers will have with an individual influencer, allowing for marketers to offer guaranteed audience engagement before a campaign even begins,” predicts Holly Pavlika, SVP of marketing and content at Collective Bias. “The deeper the data analysis, the more marketers can fine-tune influencer campaigns.”

Analytics removes the frustration and nerves that come with marketing programs. The more teams have access to data, the more they will use influencer marketing.

“Brands will be willing to shell out more money on influencer programmes only if they are able to extract real value out of it — engagement as opposed to reach,” says Irfan Khan, CEO at Blogmint. “Key metrics they will look into will include number of users engaged (RT, shares), customer acquisition (website visits, lead conversion, churn reduction, amongst others) and earned media.”

Influencer marketing might be a little murky to define now, but understanding that engagement/reach distinction will put you ahead of the curve as it grows in popularity and grows as a tool in content marketing’s arsenal.

Images by:
geralt, Unsplash, ©citalliance/123RF Stock Photo, ©marysmn/123RF Stock Photo

There is a lot of bad social media marketing in the world, especially in the B2B sector.

In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, 93 percent of B2B marketers use social media as the main channel for their content marketing, but only 30 percent say their strategies are effective (and that figure is actually down from 38 percent the previous year).

This means that thousands of brands are regularly — or semi-regularly — sharing content that gets ignored, falls flat, or fails to interest anyone in their audiences. That’s not good content marketing, and that’s not good for content marketing.

Where are brands going wrong? Simply put, they’re failing to engage audiences and communicate with them in an interesting way. In many ways, they’re too worried about being professional to be funny.

We looked at why brands are so timid on social media and how they can successfully step out of their shells to become more personable.

Why Are B2B Companies So Conservative With Social Media?

Many marketers err on the side of impersonal in their social media content because they feel it’s not right for their brand — as if professional and personable are mutually exclusive.

“Marketers seem to think that because you’re approaching prospects in a professional capacity your marketing collateral needs to be devoid of personality and humour,” copywriter and content marketer Pete Boyle writes at FunnelEnvy.

“This doesn’t just create dull materials that fail to inspire but makes it difficult to stand out from the other boring marketing materials out there. When everything your prospect reads is similar, they’ll forget where the nugget of wisdom that had some impact came from.”

That’s problematic for brands that want to stand out, but are too nervous to try something edgy, lest they appear unprofessional or go viral for all the wrong reasons.

“For various reasons, being funny feels like a risky strategy,” says Nico Lutkins, Marketing Director at LinkedIn.

“Humor evokes a powerful wave of emotions, catches our attention and influences us in powerful ways. The best B2B marketers know this. They invest time and money in making people laugh on LinkedIn — and they get fantastic results in the process.”

Lutkins has seen brands completely shut down at the thought of posting something funny on the “professional” network — though a few brave souls sometimes nervously ask her if being funny is allowed.

There’s a Time and a Place for Serious Conversation

Naturally, there are certainly times when it is important to stick to a serious brand message. After all, B2B buyers are looking to buy something that solves a problem; they’re not buying personality.

Data back this up. According to a poll by G&S Business Communications, consumers prefer CEOs to stay focused on the company instead of using social media for personal expression. Respondents said they overwhelmingly expect a senior business leader’s social media presence to focus on a company’s business activities, not as a platform for sharing personal stories.

However, for every professional CEO that only retweets company press releases, there’s a Richard Branson sharing his bike injuries [warning: slightly gross].

The moral of the story is that there’s always an exception to the rule, and there’s room for humor in almost any industry.

How Important Are Social Media to B2B Companies?

Another issue that many B2B companies struggle with is understanding the value of social media altogether. They see platforms such as Facebook and Instagram as B2C games.

“B2B companies traditionally have a smaller target audience and a higher average price point,” says Blair Broussard, senior vice president at AR|PR. “Most [importantly], however, a B2B’s customer decision funnel is even more influenced by word of mouth and reputation than a B2C company’s.

“If you begin to take social media engagement seriously, it could help you not only gain more customers and build relationships with key industry influencers, but it could also ensure customer loyalty.”

Wendy Marx, president of Marx Communications, agrees. The B2B sector relies on the long-term game, she says, which makes social media the perfect channel.

“Even if you love Starburst candies, do you really want to build a relationship with them? Would you follow them on social media for weeks, months, and years before deciding to buy their newly-launched line of candy? Probably not.

“However, if you’re deciding which company to use to manufacture parts for your equipment, wouldn’t you want to know the company’s background?”

What Platforms Should B2B Companies Use? You Might Be Surprised

The team at TrackMaven analyzed 316 B2B brands in 17 industries across five social networks to learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to social media. Their analysis included 508,060 posts and 100 million social interactions. They found that Twitter fell flat what it came to engagement, but Instagram thrived.

“Across industries, B2B brands have an average engagement ratio on Twitter that is below two interactions per post per 1,000 followers. … With the exception of the biotech and financial services industries, B2B brands see the highest average engagement ratios on Instagram.”

Essentially, B2B brands shouldn’t be afraid to enter the typical B2C universe if that’s where their audiences are.

Bojana Dobran, director of content for Four Dots, created an infographic for cross-channel engagement on social media. She found that 47 percent of B2B content creators struggled to produce content that engages. Her theory is that brands are serving the wrong content on different channels, isolating audiences instead of engaging them.

“Marketers need to rethink their content strategies in order to engage their target audiences,” she says. “… They need to do some math before starting to produce different forms of content and make sure they understand how the audience uses specific online channels what types of content typically work best on each of them.”

Go where you think your audience is, but don’t be afraid to test new channels and see how they perform.

Why Does Humor Work in B2B Campaigns?

Humor works — regardless of the industry — because it taps into our sense of humanity.

“Even B2B relationships boil down to individual people,” the team at Quarry writes. “And the best way for a customer to relate to your brand is for it to be ‘human,’ as well. Brands that poke fun at themselves through humor are more relatable, and therefore, more approachable.”

With humor, B2B brands can make people want to get to know them, which can lead to more conversations at conferences and more answered sales calls.   

“It’s important to remember that the companies that your business sells to are made up of the individuals who work there,” says Mandy Movahhed of B2B Commerce Platform Handshake. “These individuals are the ones that make the decisions and ultimately determine what the relationship between your firm and theirs will look like.”

This advice goes both ways. It’s your job to make your brand personable and engaging while treating the audiences and people whom you sell to like human beings.

Angie Pascale, head of search & social at Interstellar, found the science behind embracing humor as a brand: “Positive feelings create memories. Research has shown that just 42 percent of positive experiences were forgotten, while 60 percent of negative experiences faded from memory. No one remembers a dull Facebook post or boring YouTube video, but we all remember Kmart’s ‘I Shipped My Pants’ commercials, even if we’d forgotten that Kmart was around.”

This is why humor works as a marketing tactic. “When consumers show up on social media, they want to be entertained — not sold to,” says digital marketing consultant Jordan Kasteler. “When a brand forgets this, they lose the attention of their audience. Engagement plummets, and people ignore their posts.”

How to Execute a Personable B2B Social Media Campaign

Here are four things to keep in mind when you organize a genuine, personable, even funny social campaign.

1. Make Sure You Have a Plan in Place

Go for authentically funny, not “stupid funny,” where your social media profile is flooded with irrelevant cat GIFs. Instead, assign a goal to each piece before your publish it.

“You must have a strategy in place and clearly set objectives of what you want this content to achieve,” says Veronika Baranovska, content marketing specialist at Sendible.com. “Is it brand awareness, or another way how to explain a complicated product or service? Maybe it’s to inspire the new generation to work in your industry or even for your own company.”

Carter Hostelley, CEO of Leadtail, agrees and has seen plenty of peers and clients struggle to achieve social media success because they don’t know what goals to set and how to track them.

“Understand which stage you’re at with social media, and then set your goals accordingly,” Hostelley says. “If you’re just getting (re)started, set goals that are about consistent activity. Next, it’s about building a high-quality audience chock full of prospects and influencers. Then it’s more about engaging your social audience with the right content.”

Your goals should be as much about you and your brand’s growth as the clicks and traffic you’re generating.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to Break the Rules

While there are certainly best practices to follow in the world of social media, it’s entirely possible that your audience or industry is the exception to the rule. “When is your audience online [and] looking for your content?” asks Jenn Deering Davis, co-founder of Union Metrics.

“It may be that they’re most attentive during the work day. If that’s true, then typical advice like ‘post more in the evenings’ may not help you. The best way to find out what works for your audience is to post during a variety of times and days and find out when you get the most engagement.”

3. Hire Funny People

Amy Elderkin, founder of Popcorn, says striking the right cord on social media can come down to the people you hire.

“Writing some funny Tweets seems like an easy job, especially when you see some of the simple copy from big brands, but coming up with content that is topical, onbrand, witty without being controversial and aimed at your audience is not an easy task.

“When choosing the people to build your social media team, it’s important to consider your brand’s voice and choose the right individuals for the job.”

4. Keep Testing and Experimenting

Tamara Weintraub at ReachLocal thinks social media are among the most flexible marketing platforms out there, which is a great opportunity for B2B brands to test what works.

“Because social media is so fluid, you have a lot of opportunities to try new strategies, test tactics, ask for feedback, and be more agile than you can with some other marketing methods. Even if you think you’re just selling boring software, social media can your chance to dedicate some of your most creative minds, time, and budget to your efforts.”

As with all marketing channels, social media requires long-term strategy and planning, and you probably won’t see immediate results in your attempts to be funny. However, if you stick to your goals and stand by your strategy, your tactics could pay off, and your marketing team will get the last laugh.

 

Images by:
Himanshu Singh Gurjar, Alexas_Fotos, geralt, LoboStudioHamburg