The Current State Of Business To Business Influencer Marketing
An influencer is someone (like myself!) that typically specializes in a particular field and who has an established audience that trusts their opinion and are typically seen as authorities within their respective niche. As their word/recommendations hold weight companies leverage an influencer's established audience to promote their products and/or services. This helps them reach super niche markets to drive better brand awareness and potential leads.
This has become such an effective marketing strategy for brands and businesses that most are starting to invest heavily in it. As a solo practitioner my own revenue has doubled in the past 18 months, for example. Brands across the globe and throughout different channels are investing heavily in their influencer marketing efforts and you will now find influencers across every social media platform that promote products and services across different industry verticals. It's become a mainstay of tech brand promotion in today's digital landscape.
This is true even with the uncertainty presented by the pandemic. Business to Business influencer marketing continues to remain a very popular marketing strategy and it's become an integral component of a highly effective digital marketing mix. By the end of 2022, the influencer industry as a whole is anticipated to grow to a whopping $16.4 billion. This exponential growth can be attributed to how popular short videos have become with TikTok, YouTube, Linkedin, and Facebook all getting countless views. More and more business professionals are using social media than ever before and a lot of people have established authorities they trust on different subjects and markets from CIOs to medical professionals.
What Does The Future Have In Store For B2B Influencer Marketing?
Video Will Continue To Be The Most Popular Format
Video has been and will continue to generate a lot more engagement than any sort of static advertising. Video, compared to images, retains more viewer engagement. They encourage the viewers to pay attention and engage much more than an image. They are more interesting and more information can be presented in video format which results in them being increasingly effective compared to standard images. This results in more clicks, more views, and more conversions. Mobile video formats have much better Click-Through-Rates (CTR) than standard images.
A lot of customers would rather learn about products and services through videos. A recent survey that found customers prefer video 72% of the time. As many as 84% of customers believe that seeing a product or service in video format convinced them to buy it.
Brands Are Only Going To Increase Budget To Influencer Marketing
The importance of influencer marketing is only increasing as marketers are quickly realizing how essential it is to find the right influencers to promote their products or service. In fact as many as 75% of brand marketers are looking to devote a specific amount of their budget to influencer marketing in 2022. Likewise, as many as 68% are looking to drastically increase the amount they spend on influencer marketing for their business.
The Rise Of Micro-Influencers
While the big influencers took the majority of the influencer market in the past, the rise of the "micro-influencer" is only expected to continue. Micro-influencers are expected to have even more of a significant impact in 2022. A lot of consumers don't like to feel as though they are being sold on something. However, they do love buying. This is where micro-influencers can fill the gap in the market. While they do have exceedingly fewer followers, they tend to have much more devoted and engaged followers and very specialist expertise. Thus, they have followers that have a lot of trust and personal relationships with them, resulting in better conversions. If you find micro-influencers that have a highly concentrated market that is well-aligned with your products or services, you can typically convert a higher percentage of their following as compared to a larger influencer.
Campaigns Will Be Transformed By Personalization
To create and run the most effective influencer marketing campaigns, you will need to personalize and customize each one so that the influencer can connect with their audience on a much deeper level than a brand could itself. Thus, you need to find influencers that closely align with the core values of your brand as a whole with the right professional background. It's essential to collaborate with influencers that share the same values, world view and personality to enhance the effectiveness of the partnership.
Cross-Channel Campaigns Will Continue To Grow
In 2015 the average person had around 4 different social media accounts. That number rose to a whopping 8.4 accounts in 2020. This growth isn't slowing down as people continue to embrace new social media platforms and as users continue to grow, it's more important than ever before for brands to develop an omnichannel marketing strategy across multiple, even niche platforms.
In one study, B2B brands can get an annual ROI with influencer marketing that's 11x the amount of traditional methods. Social media experts say that 94% of B2B marketers who've tried influencer marketing feel it's highly effective.
Every brand needs to do its research to identify its target demographic on each platform. They then need to deliver the content that the respective demographic wants on the right platform. They will need to collaborate closely with influencers on each platform to effectively engage their target audience and optimize content for the right platform.
One great solution is Onalytica, whose software enables brands to Identify, Activate and Manage influencers and then measure their impact against business outcomes. Their clients have seen up to 5X reach, engagement and demand gen with their target audience by integrating industry influencers into their content and event strategies. Onalytica have a unique relationship with influencer communities in industries such as Tech, Finance, Healthcare, Environment, Energy, Automotive and Education and actively promote the top influencers across hot topics such as AI, Climate Change, Fintech, Driverless Cars, HealthTech, and the Future of Work.
For me, B2B tech brands like Intel, 3M, AT&T Business, Amazon AWS, Dell, VMware, Qualcomm, HPE, Telefonica, Samsung, Citrix, Uipath, Dell and Ericsson hire me to help them to achieve massive visibility and scale, leveraging the power of social media in a variety of market segments including: mobile, blockchain, cloud, 5G, HealthTech, IoT, AI, Digital Health, Big Data, Cloud and CyberSecurity.
They seek out me and my audience given my 30 years of enterprise sales, alliances & marketing experience in the telecom and IT arena, and as I bring a unique perspective on opportunities in the Future of Work including Unified Communications, Collaboration and CX space, including extensive practical knowledge of mobile, voice/video/web collaboration and cloud technology.
I look forward to more collaboration!
