Influencer marketing returns 600% on ROI
Image: https://psycatgames.com/magazine/conversation-starters/icebreaker-activities/
Everybody’s talking about influencer marketing.
Not surprisingly really. After all, with an apparently endless procession of articulate folk with eye-watering follower numbers willing to do a little word of mouth marketing to boost B2C sales and improve ROI, influencer marketing remains a hot ticket to marketing success.
WOM works in a B2C environment because people are likely to act in the wake of a recommendation from a trusted influencer. As it happens influencer marketing works in a B2B environment also.
First up, consider the essence of influencer marketing in B2B. Influencer marketing uses key opinion leaders to showcase a brand message to the larger market. The idea is to inspire or pay market influencers to endorse your brand offering.
Hold on though. Influencer marketing isn’t quite that straight forward. To work as a campaign, there is one essential ingredient in the tastiest influencer B2B marketing recipe – content.
That’s not surprising given in this modern highly online interactive world quality content is not just a nice idea but critical to finding success. That content helps you engage with the influencers that you are targeting.
Image by Trey Ratcliff
The B2B picture
Consider the data . Here are the highlights.
96% of B2B brands are confident about influencer marketing
90% of B2B companies expect their budget for influencer marketing to increase or stay the same in the next 12 months
77% of marketers say their prospective customers rely on advice from industry experts
84% of B2B marketers work with influencers to create brand awareness
69% of B2B marketers work with influencers to help generate new leads
78% of B2B marketers achieved increased social reach of brand content working with influencers
Influencer marketing returns 600%
A recent article in MediaPost reported that marketers working in B2B can see a very healthy ROI of around 600% - not bad.
The trick is, given the high competition in the content marketing space, staying ahead of the pack is imperative and difficult. Influence marketing is one key way of leading the pack
Plan carefully and it’s possible that your organic content will drive your brand engagement. And you won’t have had to create it yourself. According to MediaPost, “Businesses on average generate $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.
Essential to this strategy is to adopt an approach similar to that used by B2C marketers. That is to look for individuals that can influence corporate buyers, create and tap into business-to-business conversations.
Influencer benefits
A voice or number of voices that resonate with your target B2B audience.
Original thought leadership to illuminate existing content.
Open up invaluable networks and professional contacts that might otherwise have been hard to foster.
