Among digital promotion channels, influencer marketing stands apart. It is one of the few channels that has not lost but only increased its relevance in recent years. And attract more and more advertisers. We have collected everything you need to know about this way of promoting both goods and services and the brand.
How to Find B2B Influencers?
Today, the influencer marketing sphere consists of advertisers, bloggers, and audiences. In addition, a layer of intermediaries and services has formed that make it easier for advertisers to find and interact with opinion leaders. Among such intermediaries, can be distinguished:
- Email finders. You can simply find someone’s email in Google Sheets with special exchanges and apps.
- Agencies. Many top bloggers work through agencies. Agencies enter into exclusive contracts with bloggers, so you can hardly negotiate placement directly. Agencies are suitable for brands that benefit from completely outsourcing the development and implementation of the campaign to the contractor.
- Blogger exchange. These are online platforms for working with bloggers. As a rule, there is a catalog with search and filters, analytics on the accounts of each blogger together with influencer categories, the ability to conduct secure transactions, and other functionality to facilitate search and cooperation. This type of cooperation is helpful for small and medium-sized companies that plan to work with several bloggers at once and other customers who want to make working with bloggers as easy as possible without overpaying the agency.
- Blogger directories. Just lists of bloggers, sometimes with filters, but no other functionality to work with. As a rule, they are free and suitable for cases when you need to find just a couple of bloggers for one-time posting without comparing and analyzing them.
If the question of how to find B2B influencers is still unsolved for you, it is a wise decision to try https://getprospect.com/b2b-contact-database or other similar databases and save your time.
B2B Influencer Content
We propose a straightforward definition. Influencer marketing is a way to promote products and services through b2b influencers. Any person trusted by the target audience can be an opinion leader. Famous bloggers or media personalities are most often considered opinion leaders in influencer marketing, but it can be any authoritative person whose opinion is listened to. For example, a frequenter of a thematic forum is respected for his competence and helpful advice.
In addition to opinion leaders, there are also “agents of influence.” An influencer is not necessarily an opinion leader. It is the name of people who can influence other people’s opinions through their actions and authoritative comments. Agents of influence form the attitude towards a particular brand. Their task is to direct the discussion in the direction necessary for the customer and set the “correct” tone from this point of view. It can even be small discussions, and correspondence within various forums, thematic platforms, commentary feeds on social networks, and other resources where the target audience can hang out. Such posts attract the attention of regular users and even companies who get involved in the threads – for this reason, their posts are called the B2B influencer content.
Another person often takes part in the process of forming loyalty – the brand ambassador (the “face” of the brand or the “ambassador” of the brand). It is a well-known, famous person who is invited to represent the values and ideals of the company. Most often, with b2b influencer marketing, the target audience associates with the company’s visual image.
Who is Influencer Marketing For?
Best of all, such marketing works in projects with vast geography – online stores, financial services, cinema, and cellular communications. Also, good results are shown by projects aimed at sales in metropolitan cities. Emotional or situational goods that can be ordered immediately or are easy to subscribe to are not wrong – food delivery, games, mobile applications, and so on. If you target a specific region, pay attention to how many subscribers the blogger has from your city or region.
Helpful Tips for Working With Bloggers
To work with an influencer, you should prepare in advance. Speak out your requirements and the desired result. If you work directly, then agree on the provision of advertising services. Here are some tips for working with influencers that always work:
- Respond to comments, even negative ones. Ignoring negative comments under the post nullified all efforts. There is no need to ask the blogger to delete them – show professionalism and write worthy and adequate answers on the merits. And if the commentators are right, admit it publicly and promise to get better. Often this works better than the most positive review.
- Ask the Youtube blogger not to remove the promotional video or link you. Such videos continue to be indexed in Google and video hosting itself. And this means that by placing a link under a popular video, you provide yourself with traffic and leads for months and even years in advance.
- Come up with promo codes related to the blogger’s name. Unique promotional codes are used to receive a discount, additional service, or other bonuses. On the one hand, this will increase the audience’s interest in your product. On the other hand, it will demonstrate the blogger’s concern for his subscribers. And you will get another tool for marking and evaluating the effectiveness of the channel.
Influencer Marketing Examples
It’s time to look at examples of b2b and understand what type of influencer marketing is right for you. There are lots of influence marketing examples on the Internet, let’s review one of them.
Business Case. Natural cosmetic
The company produces and distributes a youth brand of facial care cosmetics, mainly through a network of offline distributors. The competition is high. You have to fight for the client’s attention to your brand and the best places on the shelves of pharmacies and stores.
Goals: Create an association with the brand, expand the audience by increasing the reach, and show the product’s benefits.
Audience: girls from 17 to 26 years old. The most relevant audience is the so-called “beauty bloggers,” girls who keep video blogs about self-care and beauty.
Criteria for choosing a blogger: From 100,000 subscribers, the channel’s topic is personal care and beauty, the age of the bulk of the audience is 17 years old.
The blogger is tasked with making a detailed review of several brand cosmetics to achieve these goals. In one of his videos, the blogger talks about the existence of the brand and demonstrates some cosmetics. This approach increases subscribers’ interest in the brand and builds trust in its products.