Influencer marketing is growing in the B2B space, with 60% B2B brands already adding it to their marketing mix.
For good reason: B2B e-commerce represented $18 trillion in value in 2023 with a projected annual growth rate of 18.2% from 2024 to 2030.
Yet B2B influencer marketing is often less discussed than B2C campaigns.
But that doesn’t mean influencer marketing can’t be impactful for B2B brands – in fact, it might just be the secret to getting ahead of your competitors.
We already know buyers tend to trust influencers more than branded messages alone. There is room to grow with influencers in any business model.
The key to success with B2B influencer marketing is understanding how it differs from B2C influencer marketing, building campaigns the right way, and taking inspiration from success stories that you can apply to your unique product.
What Is B2B Influencer Marketing?
B2B influencer marketing is the practice of working with creators or influencers to promote your product or service.
This can look like:
A social media collaboration, as seen with Lucas O’Keefe’s collab with SEMRush below;
Leveraging an influencer’s audience via their newsletter;
Inviting them onto your podcast (or being a guest on theirs); or
Bringing an influencer in-house or hiring them as a freelancer to advise your marketing team.
How B2B Influencer Marketing Differs From B2C
B2C influencer marketing aims to connect brands with people who will buy their product or service, whether theat be for themselves, their friends, or their family.
Many B2C campaigns feature physical products, making it simple for influencers to show them off and demonstrate how they work.
Software or services are harder to capture visually, resulting in some brands writing off social-based strategies.
B2B influencer marketing focuses on the corporate buyer, who is looking for a solution for their organization as a whole.
This might mean that your campaigns need to speak to multiple potential users, from key decision makers like the C-Suite to the teams that will be using your product day to day.
What Are The Benefits Of B2B Influencer Marketing?
B2B influencer marketing can help drive any business goal. Here are some of the top benefits you can expect to see from working with creators.
It Helps You Reach New Audiences
Influencers have built trusting relationships with their audience.
Working with influencers means accessing their audience, and that trust, through your campaign, bringing in people who may not have heard of your brand before.
B2B products tend to have longer buying cycles, sometimes lasting months. Any extra component that builds trust with your audience will make it easier to take the leap from prospect to buyer.
It Helps With Market Research
If you want to know what a particular market segment thinks about your brand, consider working with an influencer who has an established relationship with that audience.
Let’s say you run a company that builds software to help manage law firms, and you want to know what lawyers like about your software.
You could launch a campaign with a B2B influencer in the legal space and have them run a sponsored poll asking their followers for perspectives, giving you first-party data from potential ideal customers.
It Helps Evangelize Your Marketing Perspective
To establish your company as an industry thought leader, B2B influencer marketing helps communicate your unique viewpoint.
This can even impact SEO; if you are coining phrases or popularizing them such that people look them up on Google or ChatGPT, you are more likely to see your content come up first in search results.
It Helps Educate Buyers
A study by WBResearch found that B2B buyers are between 57% to 70% done with their buying research before contacting sales.
That’s a long sales process!
When you work with influencers to put out educational and thought-provoking content, you are helping people move through the buying journey— they learn what they need to in order to feel comfortable reaching out to sales.
It can be fun, too. SAP collaborated with tennis player Leylah Fernandez to show how she uses their analytics to become a better player. Sporty and educational.
It Drives Sales
73% of buyers are willing to spend over $50,000 on a completely digital sales process, without speaking to a salesperson, according to McKinsey and Company. This is up from 59% in 2022.
Knowing this, you may have an opportunity for influencer-generated content to drive direct sales.
The key will be a cohesive campaign focused on a specific offering and covering the whole marketing funnel from awareness to consideration, and finally to purchase.
You don’t need to do it alone. Collaborate with the experts to launch best-in-class B2B influencer marketing campaigns. Book a call with Later’s Managed Services team today.
6 Tips For B2B Influencer Marketing
Here are some tips for B2B influencer marketing success.
Tip #1: Make The Most Of Social Media
There are so many effective social media platforms for B2B influencer marketing - try a few out and see what works for you!
According to LinkedIn, 71% of professionals use its platform to inform business decisions, meaning LinkedIn users may be primed to hear education-focused influencer messaging.
Of course, B2B social marketing isn’t just for LinkedIn.
According to a study from Databox, half of B2B marketing teams say Instagram is a trusted platform for reaching customers.
Plus, research from Brafton found that 61% of B2B marketers are using TikTok.
In 2021, creator Emily Zugay went viral for her cringe new logos for brands. Windows brought her on board to create a new logo… which led to 3.4M likes on TikTok.
Tip #2: Partner With Influencers for Expertise
When you partner with influencers, collaborate with them to create content that encapsulates your brand and resonates with their audience.
For example, ask influencers questions like:
Our message is “Do more with less”. How would you reframe that so it resonates with your audience?
What content does your audience tend to like the most, and how can we showcase our key messages and call to action in that format?
Our marketing team traditionally puts out content in ebooks, social posts, and quarterly research studies. Are you able to repurpose or use that for inspiration in this collaboration?
The key to success here is a strong influencer campaign brief. That way your influencer partner can be creative without going over any internal constraints.
Tip #3: Go Beyond Social Media
Strong B2B influencer campaigns can go beyond social media.
Examples include:
Webinars, talks, and workshops: For example, Later collaborated with 4 creators to discuss their experiences with social media and mental health. You can watch the webinar here.
Conference speaking: Put influencers with industry experience on the main stage and have them speak about topics like building an audience. B2B influencer marketing powerhouse SEMRush does this with their industry conference, Spotlight.
Coaching: Have influencers coach your team members on creating engaging content or building a following.
This is also where third-party partners can help, like Later Services, because the team can help you find influencers who are willing to go beyond social.
Tip #4: Consider Bringing Influencers In-House
Many influencers also do freelance or contract services for brands in-house.
If you like a certain influencer’s content style or expertise, consider bringing them in-house to help with other marketing campaigns. That way you get consistency across your marketing efforts and benefit from the influencer’s experience beyond their campaign.
Tip #5: Involve Your Sales Team
According to a study by Drip, 88% of buyers need to view their sales rep as a trusted advisor to make a purchase.
As you leverage influencers for their connections, expertise, and audience, bring your salespeople into the conversation.
For example:
Have sales reps moderate or host influencer webinars.
Tag sales reps in social media posts so they can comment and engage.
Have influencers share content either created by sales reps or ghostwritten for them.
This helps ensure the market sees reps as trusted partners who can help with sales decisions.
Tip #6: Explain The Buying Process
77% of B2B buyers told Gartner that their latest purchase was either “difficult” or “very complex,” two concepts you don’t want to be associated with asking someone to buy your product or service!
One way to navigate this complexity is to have your B2B influencer campaigns explain the buying process. That way buyers know what to expect and can navigate around difficulties like how to reach out to a sales rep or when to bring in your procurement team.
Examples of Impactful B2B Influencer Marketing
B2B influencer marketing can drive massive success for companies.
Here are a few examples to draw inspiration from.
SEMRush’s “Influencer Weekend”
SEMRush is one to watch when it comes to B2B influencer marketing.
Rather than launch a traditional influencer campaign, content marketing platform SEMRush invited a variety of creators to a retreat weekend in London, England.
The campaign brought creators together for a weekend of collaboration and content creation in a new setting.
The trip also had tours of the city and enabled the creators to meet and connect with one another; this lent itself to lifestyle content outside of brand promotions.
Campaigns like this highlight how you don’t need to strictly focus on promotion in your B2B influencer campaigns; you can have some fun with it and try new things.
The Content Studio’s “Cutting Room” YouTube Channel
Content agency The Content Studio (TCS) shows how smaller companies can take advantage of B2B influencer marketing.
TCS founder Tommy Walker interviews B2B marketing influencers—including the guy that Coca Cola turns to for content generation—to learn their secrets.
Published on YouTube, “The Cutting Room” is a great example of education-focused influencer content.
A business leader could watch a video, learn something new, and solve a problem for their business. Or they might realize they want true experts working on their content creation and hire TCS to do it instead of doing it alone.
Either way, TCS wins because their YouTube channel grows with every view, helping them both monetize on YouTube and increase their audience of potential customers.
Later’s Beyond Influence Podcast
That’s right, Later has our own podcast, Beyond Influence, that we use to connect with some of the best in the creator game.
Hosted by Kwame Appiah, our head of Influencer Engagement & Events who happens to be a creator himself, and Later’s CEO Scott Sutton, we chat every week with tastemakers and experts in the influencer world.
Not only does this podcast allow us to connect with creators with cutting-edge insights, but we also get to show off our brand to our guests’ audiences. Talk about a win-win!
I promise we’re not being biased here… Beyond Influence is really good. You can listen on all of your favorite streaming platforms, catch weekly episodes on YouTube, or click the link below to explore all of our episodes so far.
B2B Growth With Influencer Marketing
Done right, influencer marketing is a profitable, successful marketing strategy for B2B businesses.
The key is to understand the nuances of B2B influencer marketing and have the right tools to navigate campaigns and partnerships.
That’s where a tool like Later Influence comes in, giving you key features to find influencers, manage campaigns, and review in-depth analytics.
Book a demo of Later Influence to start your influencer marketing campaigns today.
