Influencer Marketing Platforms: Pros and Cons for B2B

Understanding Influencer Marketing Platforms.

Influencer marketing has become an increasingly popular strategy for businesses to reach their target audience. One key component of influencer marketing is the use of influencer marketing platforms (IMP’s). These software platforms can provide a centralised hub for businesses to connect with influencers, collaborate on campaigns, and track the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

An influencer marketing platform is software that helps brands and agencies find influencers while managing and measuring the overall campaign. Platforms have a database of influencers from across different social platforms, and by using multiple filters like demographics, interests, and audience, the aim is to find and evaluate the right social media talent for your brand. These filters also allow you to spot fake followers and detect suspicious activities.

Influencer marketing platforms can use automation, data science and machine learning to efficiently manage things like payments, real-time tracking of posts and product gifting by selected influencers. To quantify the individual and aggregated performance, some can calculate shares, clicks, impressions, reactions, referrals, direct sales, etc.

Notably, not all platforms will give you the same features. Some restrict themselves to finding the influencers and do not support activities like end-to-end campaign management, in-app product shipment, or more. Some examples of influencer marketing platforms big and small are CreatorIQ, Grin, Captiv8, Onalytica, Upfluence, Gifta and Tailify.

Because influencer marketing originated for a b2c audience, there are some important points to address and explain when understanding influencer marketing platforms’ value for b2b.

What are the benefits of using Influencer Marketing Platforms for B2B?

The biggest benefit of using influencer marketing platforms for agencies and brands is the ability to save time and effort. Speaking from experience, any software that can eliminate the manual work of searching and sourcing influencers is hugely beneficial.

Efficient Influencer Discovery: Automated platforms streamline the process of finding suitable influencers for B2B brands. These software solutions utilise advanced algorithms to analyse influencers’ profiles, audience demographics, engagement data, and content quality, allowing brands and agencies to identify the most relevant influencers efficiently. In b2b, this capability is most useful for Youtube and Twitter/X.

Comprehensive Campaign Management: Managing influencer campaigns can be challenging, especially for B2B companies with multiple influencers and diverse content formats. Automated influencer marketing platforms provide centralised dashboards that allow efficient campaign management. They can enable brands and agencies to communicate with influencers, review & approve content, and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) from one place.

Insights & Measurement: Measuring the success and return on investment (ROI) of influencer campaigns is crucial for B2B companies. Some platforms provide comprehensive analytics and reporting features to track campaign performance. These tools offer insights on reach, engagement, website traffic, brand mentions/SOV, and other relevant metrics. Everyone wants to be as data-driven as possible, so having options is always a plus.

Streamlined Payment and Legal Processes: Collaborating with influencers often involves various legal and financial considerations. And there are different rules in different parts of the world. By choosing an influencer marketing platform that facilitates streamlined payment processes you can ensure timely and transparent compensation for influencer partnerships. Additionally, these platforms often include contract templates to standardize agreements between brands and influencers, ensuring legal compliance and minimizing potential disputes.

What are the drawbacks of using Influencer Marketing Platforms for B2B?

Lack of integration with key social media platforms: The biggest drawback (by far) of relying on an influencer marketing platform as a one-stop-shop in b2b is the fact that key social media channels like LinkedIn and Substack are not integrated with influencer marketing platforms. The data is not made openly available by the likes of LinkedIn for the IMP’s to access via an API, and so it is currently a technical limitation that cannot easily be solved or put on a product roadmap for development. Whether you personally use LinkedIn or not, it’s undeniable that this factor leaves a gap in a user’s ability to source influencers, manage programs or measure success using creators active on LinkedIn and similar b2b platforms. Those in the b2c space don’t usually face this challenge, as most b2c social platforms are accessible through influencer marketing platforms. The practical implications of this mean that, yes – there will still be manual work involved in running most influencer marketing activity in b2b.

Limited Customisation: Automation can simplify processes, but it also limits the degree of personalisation that can be achieved in influencer campaigns. Automated platforms may overlook the unique requirements and nuances of individual brands or campaigns. For example, the search function or algorithm used in an IMP may lack the ‘human’ touch and personal judgment that still drives so much decision making. There is a chance that valuable creators and influencers are being filtered out for the wrong reasons without a brand knowing. There also may be product-specific limitations that prevent businesses searching in the most optimal way. This is something we have experienced at Custom Influence. Lastly, influencer marketing platforms may develop their own metrics and/or ‘scores’ that have calculations that aren’t clearly understood or which change often. A one-size-fits-all approach will not always deliver the desired results for b2b companies that require customisation.
Data Availability and Accuracy: As mentioned above, data availability is a key factor in evaluating influencer marketing platforms’ value.

If valuable data sources aren’t there in the first place, then that prevents the ability to automate analytics and reporting. And as with any software solution that relies on data for insights, there are features which require a certain amount of data in order to work. For instance, an SMB brand wouldn’t normally be able to measure changes in their share of voice over the course of a month, simply because there is not enough social data available on their brand to do so. Perhaps for a large subset of b2b brands this is possible, but it is the exception rather than the rule. Data accuracy is also something to be aware of. Many influencer marketing platforms input or update data sets and information manually. B2b marketers should exercise caution and supplement platform data with their own research to ensure success. Data can and sometimes is out of date, missing or wrong.

Cost Considerations: While having an influencer marketing platform can certainly be helpful when planning and running campaigns, they often come with a financial cost. Consider the platform fees and any additional charges associated with using these software solutions. Budget-conscious buyers may find it challenging to justify the investment, especially if they are just starting out using creator marketing as part of their strategy.

Tips on investing in an Influencer Marketing Platform.

Influencer marketing platforms have become an essential tool for many brands that want to promote their products and services using partnerships. Before investing, here’s a few tips and questions to consider for your business or client:

Do you have an influencer marketing strategy already? If you’ve not yet defined your goals or objectives with working influencers, then you’re probably too early for an influencer marketing platform! Technology is not always the answer.

If you have a strategy in place, have you run a pilot program yet? – If so, what problems might an influencer marketing platform solve for the next wave of activity?
Do you have the people to understand, own and use an influencer marketing platform?

The classic downfall of any great SaaS platform is the human or (lack thereof) sitting behind it. If your organisation does not have the human resources to put behind an influencer marketing platform, wait to invest until you do.
Try before you buy. Most influencer marketing platforms have a free or heavily discounted demo period. Make use of this, and make sure you have some evaluation criteria going into the trial period, rather than at the end, or else you risk your evaluation criteria being biased toward the platform you are demo’ing.

Understand Pricing Structure Influencer marketing platforms have varying pricing models, with some charging a monthly subscription fee, while others charge a percentage of campaign spend. Many charge extra for service or support hours. Understand different platform’s pricing structures and consider how they fit into your budget. Some platforms may also charge additional fees for access to premium features such as advanced analytics.

In conclusion, the right influencer marketing platform can help marketers execute successful campaigns that reach their target audience. Striking the right balance between automation and human judgment is critical to maximising influencer marketing impact for B2B brands.

Take the time to evaluate options, don’t invest too early (or needlessly!), and remember that working with a b2b influencer marketing partner such as Custom Influence means a direct or immediate investment may not be necessary at all.