INFLUENCER MARKETING

B2B Influencer Marketing: What It Is, Why Use It, And Our Influencers’ Awesome Tactics [Real Case Study + FREE Tools]

According to a recent Ogilvy study, 75% of surveyed B2B marketers already use B2B influencers.

And 93% of CMOs plan to expand their influencer marketing budget.

The problem is you may have difficulties leveraging B2B influencer marketing.

For example, Ogilvy notes that none of their respondents tap into B2B influencers’ potential for after-sales, thus missing a tremendous opportunity.

Luckily, you’re on the right page to do better.

We’ll:

• Show you key factors to consider before starting your influencer marketing campaign
• Explain the best B2B influencer marketing strategies
• Share our experience as an influencer marketing platform with inside B2B influencer marketing examples and tools.

Let’s start.

What Is B2B Influencer Marketing, And How Does It Work?

B2B influencer marketing is a strategic approach that leverages the power of influential figures within a specific industry to promote products and services to professional audiences.

B2B influencer marketing focuses on building meaningful connections with industry experts and subject matter experts.

These content creators have deep industry knowledge and a strong following among B2B buyers and potential customers.

More importantly, these industry influencers share valuable insights that align with your B2B brand’s business goals.

Basically, B2B influencer marketing aims to:

• Establish your brand as a thought leader in a competitive market
• Increase trust in your products
• Create more sales

Miro Case Study: The Pain Point

The digital collaboration platform Miro used inBeat’s influencers to grow their user base on Miroverse, their template library.

As such, they needed LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok creators who were relevant opinion leaders in Agile, Product Management, and Diagramming.

And yes, our sister agency, inBeat, helped them reach their goals – but you’ll find out more about how they did that in the following sections.

For now, let’s answer this question:

Why Use B2B Influencer Marketing?

As an influencer platform, we’ve seen first-hand that B2B influencer marketing is highly effective.

This strategy is successful, particularly for businesses looking to enhance targeting, build trust, and achieve a significant return on investment (ROI).

Here are the main advantages we noticed for our platform’s users and agency clients:

1. Targeting Precision

The precision in targeting that B2B influencer marketing offers is unparalleled.

By partnering with influencers who are subject matter experts, B2B marketers can ensure that their marketing efforts are reaching the right target market, meaning B2B buyers and potential customers actively seeking industry insights and solutions.

This targeted approach ensures that the content resonates with the relevant audience, leading to higher engagement rates and more informed decisions by potential buyers.

Insider tip: That’s why Miro used thought leaders in Agile, Product Management, and Diagramming like Shyvee Shi:

2. Increased Reach

The brand reach achieved through influencer partnerships extends beyond traditional marketing channels.

Social channels are a powerful medium where influencers share compelling content that amplifies a brand's message to a broader yet highly relevant audience.

This expanded reach allows you to establish a presence in a competitive market and engage with professional audiences.

Pro tip: Use inBeat’s free ROI calculator to evaluate your reach and ROI for each influencer.

For example, one of the micro-influencers in our Miro campaign is David Pereira, with over 67,000 followers at the time of this writing.

But even one post from one nano-influencer could bring you an impressive reach of 4,000-90,000 impressions, depending on the social media platform you choose and the influencer’s audience engagement rate.

3. Build Trust in Your Products

Trust plays a pivotal role in B2B purchases, which require more consideration.

Influencer marketing capitalizes on this by fostering genuine relationships with B2B influencers who have already earned the trust of their followers.

When these influencers share content, their endorsement is a powerful testament to your brand's credibility and value.

As such, B2B buyers can start to trust your brand and consider its offerings for their business needs.

4. Increased ROI

The ROI associated with B2B influencer marketing is compelling.

Companies engaging in influencer campaigns are seeing remarkable returns, with InfluencerHub reporting that businesses are making $5.78 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.

Besides, a Nielsen study with TapInfluence revealed that influencer marketing yields 11x the ROI of traditional advertising methods.

However, the Ogilvy study we initially cited shows that half of CMOs use B2B influencers for upper-funnel audience relationships and the other half to accelerate sales.

Remember: No brands use after-sales influence to its fullest. This strategy can help you build a loyal community and, therefore, facilitate upselling and cross-selling.

Miro Case Study: The Idea

Miro chose influential people within the B2B space to build trust with their audience.

But more importantly, they wanted to build trust in their products – the Miroverse templates.

That’s why creators built and designed their complex template for the Miroverse to promote it in their posts.

Here’s one such post, with 52462 impressions over a 30-day period at the time of this writing:

Notice that Shyvee Shi explains very clearly how this template helps so more people can download it.

And indeed, Miro noticed an increase in app downloads and active users after starting this campaign using inBeat’s influencers.

Key Issues Before Beginning Your B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign

1. B2B vs B2C Influencer Marketing

A B2B influencer marketing campaign is different than a B2C one because:

• B2B transactions have longer sales cycles.
• The decisions are made by business owners, key figures, or committees rather than individual consumers.

As a result, B2B influencer campaigns hinge on fostering relationships with influencers who:

• Are experienced professionals, academics, content creators, analysts, subject matter experts, or even your employees
• Can produce authoritative content, such as detailed white papers and insightful blog posts that cater to the informed nature of B2B audiences
• Have an engaged audience who respects them as industry experts and heeds their leadership content.

By contrast, B2C influencer marketing relies on trendsetters and tastemakers to create desire.

2. Tailoring Strategies to Your Professional Audience

At inBeat, we emphasize that a deep understanding of your target audience is essential before launching a B2B influencer marketing strategy.

Insider tip: In B2B, you can’t simply rely on identifying the demographics of your potential buyers.

That’s because each CMO, COO, CEO, or business owner you target has different demographics.

Instead, you must craft a buyer persona based on their

• Business challenges
• Industry-specific needs
• The type of content they find most valuable

Miro Case Study: Why Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing was the best way for Miro to:

• Address their professional audience through a neat offer, meaning relevant templates that can facilitate their work.
• Showcase their platform’s relevance, thus shortening the sales cycle.

This way, we could ensure that the audience reached would:

• Be highly receptive and interested
• Use the templates that Miro influencers constructed

For example, Instagram micro - influencer Alec Fullmer built this template:

Source

How to Find B2B Influencers

Leveraging Professional Networks for Influencer Discovery

Professional networks help you find solid potential influencers.

However, the manual work can soon add up, so this isn’t a great method if you organize larger campaigns.

Besides, you must know where to get started, so here are a few tips:

• LinkedIn: Being a hub for industry professionals, LinkedIn offers a fertile ground for identifying subject matter experts and influential figures who consistently share valuable insights and have a robust following among B2B audiences.
• Specialized communities on social media: Groups on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) and even the emerging WorkTok community on TikTok are solid hubs where industry experts share their knowledge, engage with followers, and discuss the latest trends. So, these groups help you spot potential influencer partners.

Don’t just focus on individuals with significant followings.

Analyze their engagement rates to ensure they have an active and involved community.

Pro tip: This free engagement rate calculator will show you all the stats you need and allow you to find similar creators.

Opting for an Influencer Platform for Comprehensive Campaigns

An influencer marketing platform is the best tool for influencer discovery if:

• You have a larger-scale B2B influencer marketing campaigns
• You’re not exactly sure where to start.

Pro tip: inBeat offers advanced tools and analytics to match your campaign with the most suitable influencers.

Plus, we focus on micro-influencers and industry-specific influencers.

That means we offer a curated selection that can provide more targeted and authentic engagement for B2B companies.

For example, this platform was able to find 318 influencers in tech in 40 milliseconds after inputting a few keywords:

And you can easily compare their stats to pick the best content creators for your needs.

Best Tactics for B2B Influencer Campaigns

After finding the right influencers, it’s time to pick the right tactics.

Here are five types of content that work extremely well in B2B based on our internal findings:

1. Video Content

Video content is a powerful medium to convey complex ideas in an engaging and digestible format.

Leveraging video content on social media platforms allows influencers to showcase their deep industry knowledge and share industry insights in a manner that resonates with B2B buyers and professional audiences.

B2B influencers can consider:

• Detailed product demonstrations
• Insightful interviews with industry experts
• Behind-the-scenes looks at industry events

2. Value-Driven Content

This approach focuses on creating content that offers tangible benefits to the target market, such as:

• Solving specific industry challenges
• Providing actionable strategies
• Sharing influential figures' unique perspectives
• Driving meaningful conversations around your brand

That’s why your content strategy should include a mix of compelling content like blog posts, white papers, and social media posts.

These pieces of content are designed to engage the relevant audience, offering leadership content that addresses their needs and helps them make informed decisions.

3. Long-Term Brand Ambassadors

Transitioning from one-off influencer partnerships to nurturing long-term relationships with brand ambassadors can significantly amplify your B2B influencer marketing efforts.

Long-term brand ambassadors become deeply familiar with your values, offerings, and strategic goals, enabling you to create more authentic and consistent content that aligns with the brand's messaging.

This sustained collaboration:

• Fosters trust among the audience.
• Builds a narrative that supports your brand's long-term vision.
• Enhances campaign performance and audience engagement over time.

4. The Power of Micro and Nano Influencers

During our years of working in the influencer marketing space, we found that micro and nano influencers may have smaller audiences but are highly engaged.

As such, they possess a closer, more personal relationship with their followers.

Plus, they offer a level of authenticity and niche expertise unmatched by larger influencers.

Therefore, partnering with micro and nano influencers respected within specific industry segments can lead to more genuine connections and a higher conversion rate.

5. Influencer Ads

Influencer ads can extend your campaign’s reach and reinforce the messages your influencer partners share.

By transforming influencer-generated content into sponsored ads on platforms where your target audience is most active, you can enhance visibility and reach a broader segment of potential customers.

Miro Case Study: Types of Content

The Miro campaign with inBeat’s influencers included different content pieces on various platforms.

This combination allowed Miro to enhance its reach and keep Miro on top of its potential clients’ minds.

Here’s Instagram mid-tier influencer and UI/UX designer Ruben Cespedes connecting with his audience by offering his free Miro template:

Shyvee Shi contributed to a LinkedIn newsletter:

And David Pereira created a LinkedIn post about his free product roadmap template:

As you can see, all these content types are value-packed and highly visual to:

• Raise the audience’s interest.
• Explain their points better.

Ultimately, the point is to generate more conversions and ROI.

That brings us to the following point:

How Do You Measure the ROI of B2B Influencer Marketing?

B2B influencer marketing can be used to increase your return on investment, targeting your B2B customers at the bottom of the sales funnel

But to maximize your ROI, you must track your efforts, zeroing in on the strategies that work and doubling down on them.

Then, you can scale your campaign with other strategies.

Here’s how you do that:

1. Track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The first essential step is establishing key performance indicators aligning with your business goals and marketing efforts.

These KPIs might include metrics such as:

• Lead generation rates
• The traffic volume directed to your website from influencer content
• The number of high-quality engagements (e.g., comments and inquiries) that indicate genuine interest from potential buyers.

By setting these specific metrics before the campaign launch, you can effectively gauge the campaign's impact on your target market and make informed decisions moving forward.

2. Analyze Engagement and Conversion Metrics

Engagement rates are a critical measure of how effectively the influencer content resonates with the target audience.

High levels of interaction, such as likes, shares, and thoughtful comments, suggest that the content sparks interest and conversation.

Additionally, conversion rates provide a direct insight into how well the influencer marketing efforts translate into desired actions, such as:

• Filling out contact forms
• Downloading white papers
• Completing purchases

3. Assess Qualitative Metrics

Beyond quantitative metrics, the ROI of B2B influencer marketing also encompasses qualitative aspects such as:

• The strength of relationships with B2B influencers
• The brand’s overall perception within the industry

Positive shifts in brand sentiment, increased brand mentions in industry discussions, and stronger collaborative ties with influential figures indicate a successful influencer marketing program.

While harder to measure, these qualitative outcomes are invaluable in establishing a brand's authority and credibility in the B2B space.

Starting Your B2B Influencer Program

After reading so far, you now understand why B2B influencers can boost your brand’s visibility, trust, and sales.

You also have all the tactics and free tools you need to kickstart your campaign.

Just remember you need to find the right influencers first.

And for that, inBeat’s influencer platform is just one click away.

So, try it today – it’s free, fast, and flexible.

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