When it comes to cost-effective B2B marketing, it’s hard to find a better way to promote your brand than by having an “influencer” do their magic. You may have seen the trend growing in the B2B world and wondered why you should look into finding your own brand influencer. Here are the top reasons why you need a social media influencer (or two!) to really drive your marketing campaign.
Influencers Have Authority and Influence
Almost 9 in 10 people decide to make a purchase after reading about a service or product on a blog — 84% of consumers! They also tend to trust their peers’ opinions more than brands themselves, so when you partner with an influencer to get your brand message communicated, that spells success. Instead of traditional forms of advertising, the trusted voice of your influencer will be what gets through to your target audience.
Influencers Build Brand Awareness
An influencer can be your company’s link between your brand and market awareness. You’re literally hitching your wagon to their star appeal. The type of brand awareness they bring to the field is unrivaled in traditional PR strategies such as boring old press releases. Because today’s retail and eCommerce space is so saturated, and exposure and brand awareness are so important, the more brand awareness you can build, the better.
Influencers Create Content
Influencers are essentially content creation machines. They pump out piece after piece (or video after video) of high-quality, engaging content. This is great news for your brand because first of all, it’s something they excel at, and secondly, they’ll create user-generated content about your product, service, or brand that you can turn around and use on your own social media platforms, with their approval.
Influencers Are Excellent Communicators
Because they live and breathe in the digital space, they have developed their skill in digital communication. They are excellent at communicating your vision and brand messaging in a way that will encourage their followers to engage and connect while serving as a “middle-man” that helps you build relationships between them, their followers, and your brand. Without that collaboration, it would be a lot harder to connect with the audience and start building that relationship.
Influencers are Engaged
There are millions of influencers across social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, SnapChat, Twitter, and more. Their whole job depends on much they can engage their followers and how far they can reach, so they are very engaged and like to encourage interaction on their platforms. This is important in the B2B world because the more an influencer has engaged followers (rather than a lot of unengaged followers on your own platforms) the more chances the content about your product or service that they promote will be shared and talked about.
Influencers are Creative and Know Their Audience
A good influencer knows who their audience is, and when you pair up with the right match, they’ll know who your audience is, too. With the right influencer you’ll know who your collaboration will reach. And, you can have several, so if you’re looking to reach multiple demographics, working with a collaborator who knows your wheelhouse is key. Whether it be fashion-forward teens, creative business folks, or stay-at-home-parents the influencer has insight into their followers and how to best engage with them. Additionally, in order to stand out from the crowd, an influencer needs to be creative in all stages of content development, and because they produce large volumes of unique content it is second nature to them.
Influencers Generate Sales
The bottom line is that influencers generate sales, so it’s a no-brainer that so many brands have been jumping into the social media influencer marketing game. The instant an influencer begins talking about your service or product, sales generation gets in motion. Depending on the type of channel the influencer has, how engaged their audience is, and the length of your marketing campaign, sales will likely not only be generated immediately but also in bursts over the following weeks.
Why Do I Need an Influencer?
When you compare the collaboration with social media influencers with traditional advertising and PR campaigns, they generate excellent value for money. If your aim is to connect with a target audience, for the most part, influencer collaborations will generate a return on your investment and you’ll be making a profit on your campaign pretty quickly.
