What is b2b influencer marketing?
B2B influencer marketing uses partnerships between b2b brands and business thought leaders to reach niche online communities, drive awareness and consideration of products and services and increase share of voice through:
Authentic voices
Brand positioning via trusted, modern sources with a reputable authentic point of view.
Professional Networks
Quality and engaged traffic, listens and views leveraged from industry groups and audiences
Accurate Measurement
Cost-effective and ROI positive with platform-specific metrics for b2b that include engagements, reach, views, streams and downloads.
What does an influencer program look like in practice?
B2b Influencer marketing sponsorships can be very light-touch, as in a simple brand mention or reposted content such as a whitepaper. As with b2c these can be paid or unpaid. More content heavy collabs such as guest-blogging, thought-leadership pieces or producing a podcast or filming a product demo on behalf of a company are becoming the norm.
Longer term, strategic partnerships over 3-12 months may combine a series of posts, blogs, vlogs or event speaking opportunities that are further sliced, diced and repurposed with social promotion. There’s no one size fits all approach, but Custom Influence will consult with both brand and influencer decide what activity will have the most impact.
The Custom Influence Process
Custom Influence approaches b2b influencer marketing partnerships with a bespoke mindset, tailoring every strategy to a brand’s unique narrative and goals. One thing that we’ve learned is that the best partnerships align a brand’s content strategy to a creator’s content, whether that’s written, spoken or filmed.Â
We start by understanding your campaign or program brief, then provide a list of creators whose voice resonates authentically with your audience. Part of our approach is to suggest the number of influencers and type of collaboration that is most appropriate, the number and timing of posts and, if there is new content to be created, what format and social channels that should take place on. We understand the space is new, and clearly stating what brands ‘get’ with each partnership is key.
Our partners and clients have the chance to review initial creator and program recommendations with us and provide feedback before we move ahead with final influencer outreach and planning.Â
Once a program is finalised, our team takes care of the partnership terms and agreements, influencer payments, project management as well as reporting. There can be many moving parts in an influencer marketing collaboration – Custom Influence streamlines the process to make sure draft content is received before go-live, content approvals are timely, and manual reporting tasks happen as if by magic.Â