The Growing Trend of B2B Influencer Marketing: 9 Brands Doing it Right

B2B companies are appreciating the value of influencer marketing. Today, businesses can easily access and measure influencer marketing. Many marketers attest to the effectiveness of this approach in meeting their marketing goals.

Brands are hiring influencers but they don’t understand the best practices to make this strategy more effective. To demonstrate how B2B brands benefit from influencer marketing, we look at nine brands that are doing it right.

SAP App Center: Increased performance

The SAP App center integrates SAP solutions with third-party applications. SAP identified an opportunity to attract and engage the audience better, especially those looking for applications as solutions. This can be compared to what happens when building an e-commerce app where the focus on achieving search visibility and enabling customers to be connected to the brand.

The SAP guide to Employee experience, SAP guide to Talent acquisition, and the SAP guide to Employee well-being were created, incorporating SAP domain expertise, SEO keyword search, and influencer contributions.

As per Nerdy Writers, the attraction objectives were realized through search visibility on areas connected to influencer expertise, link optimization, and social promotions by influencers and brands. Engagement objectives were also realized with the content being optimized for credibility.

Introhive: Improved quality of prospects

It has been challenging for the legal industry to use customer relationship management systems. Introhive wanted to change this trend altogether. It embarked on an educational campaign to engage its target audience. The company used industry information and surveys to meet its marketing goals.

Through the survey, Introhive was able to identify its key challenges. To address the challenges, the company designed a playbook. It combined speaker expertise and brand knowledge during the Legal Marketing Association conference.

During the conference, the playbook was shared by various contributors. Introhive used the event hashtag to promote the book. The company also used a content mix including influencer social shares, blog posts, and email promotions. These efforts led to improved quality of leads for marketing and playbook downloads. It has so far led to increased blog content views and more followers on Twitter.

Dell Technologies: Increased brand leadership

Dell technologies wanted to engage influencers to create content for their clients and boost their external experts’ influence. Dell started to build relationships with key influencers such as Doug Karr and Mark Schaefer. These influencers host the Dell Luminaries podcast.

The company discussed with the influencers focusing on technological innovation. The Dell Luminaries initiative created an effective platform to integrate the voices of various companies under the Dell brand.

According to a training and development writer from the best essay writing service uk, Dell was keen to have a strong vetting process for the influencers they wanted to bring on board. According to this brand, influencer marketing is not all about paying people to deliver their opinions. Dell developed a policy that they will compensate influencers for their service and time and not for the complimentary press.

Prophix: Using interactive video to pass a message of innovation

According to Prophix, finance leaders can shape the future of businesses and become prominent leaders. The company believes that artificial intelligence and machine learning are crucial to financial innovation. Prophix wanted to understand the role of artificial intelligence in financial evolution.

Experts in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning collaborated to develop the finance industry resource to create thought leadership. Prophix wanted its audience to have a great content experience by adding tech-savvy flavor. Penny, an AI personality, was created to support users in navigating the microsite site titled “Adapt & Innovate.”

Content such as email promotions, videos, landing pages, social content, and blog content was used to supplement the microsite. This resulted in a new relationship with key influencers, increase in engagement and conversions among the target audience. The Prophix brand became popular and attained significant growth.

Content Marketing Institute: Themed content

Content Marketing Institute proposed to create brand awareness by presenting speakers in their planned conference in a way to help them become influential. Before the conference, the company identified content marketing speech users who were required to share their knowledge on certain content marketing topics.

The contributions of influential marketing speakers led to the compilation of a 48-page e-book. Each section of the book was supported by a video game theme coupled with a game character for each influencer.

The content also included promotional blog posts, interviews, email marketing, social promotion, and graphics for influencers and the brand to share. The main element of the e-book received increased views and so were the video game promotional interviews.

Oracle Dyn: Using relevant influencers

Oracle Dyn wanted to gain authority and create awareness for its security solutions by adopting mitigation services. To create credibility and awareness for its cybersecurity capability, Oracle Dyn engaged Kevin Jackson and Eric Vanderburg as their relevant influencers. They collaborated on the Bot Management and Mitigation campaigns to achieve the brand goals.

The influencer shares were used together with Oracle Dyn’s promotional strategy to reach the target audiences. In the first two months of the campaign, the company exceeded its expectations. Oracle Dyn reached its objectives in an area they were not initially known for. The engaged influencers promoted the bot management and mitigation services and promoted awareness for security solutions.

3M: Excellence in science

The goal of 3M is to make science accessible to all. The company launched a State of Science Index research report to reach this goal. This report was connected to the Science Champions podcast that was hosted by the company’s Chief Science Advocate.

The first season of the podcast series featured twenty-one influencers discussing various science-related topics from basics to advanced. The number of podcast downloads exceeded expectations.

3M was able to take the expected report and humanize the science topics by engaging people with expertise. 3M facilitated natural discussions on science-related topics and was able to make science accessible to non-experts while honoring the brand expertise. Publishing the report in a podcast format effectively supported engagement and distribution goals.

DivvyHQ: Multi-campaign program to create thought leadership

DivvyHQ is a leading marketing software company. The company wanted to boost its reputation and actively engage its potential buyers. A survey was conducted to get some insights regarding content planning and marketing. A multi-campaign program including thirty marketing influencers was launched.

Each campaign focused on influencers and relevant topics and led to the development of a strategy ebook and video interviews on content planning. Each campaign led to more than 300 research report downloads, realizing key performance indicators (KPI) goals within a few days of publishing. The campaigns also led to new relationships with top influencers and increased video views.

Cherwell Software: Influence optimization for thought leadership

Cherwell Software had a goal to achieve rapid growth through brand awareness. The company wanted to be a leader in ITSM software and create a network of influencers in IT. Cherwell used insights from target accounts’ research to identify and engage influencers and technology experts to create content around the emerging IT service management.

The content would resonate with the needs of the audience and included ebook, landing pages, blog posts, and paid and organic social content. This created a multiplier effect for engagement and reach that increased the company’s performance. The e-book received massive views and shares and sales leads increased tremendously.
Conclusion

The future of B2B influencer marketing is bright as companies are seeking to promote their brand and increase sales. The key to successful B2B influencer marketing is to use a collaborative approach involving internal and external influencers. Working with influencers represents a great opportunity for businesses to create credible and relevant content that can influence the target audience. Many of the brands mentioned above started by researching customers’ needs and later incorporated relevant third-party expertise.

Author’s Bio:

Tiffany Harper is a training expert and motivational coach working in the corporate sector for a decade now. She is a management graduate and her other love is writing. She’s currently working for several academic writing websites.