Influencer marketing tends to be thought of as something that only really apples to consumer facing businesses, health, fashion and beauty brands engaging with high profile instagrammers. However, many of the most effective influencer strategies actually exist within the B2B; and professional services world.
In every sector there are people who hold significant influence over their peers. Consider that IT guy who is at every major event talking on panels, and constantly being quoted by industry magazines. Or how about that lady within the energy sector who’s considered an expert on innovation. If these are target markets for you, then these are the kind of people you want associated with your brand, and it’s easier than you think.
As long as your primary goal is to capture amazing content and your brand has a clear purpose, then most people, no matter how busy and high profile, will make time for you. By interviewing these people for insight, whether by video, article or podcast, you can achieve a number of things:
The key is to ensure that the content framework is first well defined and that the objective of each social platform is agreed. For example, Facebook is fantastic at developing communities, while instagram is perfect for initiating new relationships via inspirational style content, and twitter and LinkedIn and Twitter are better for developing personal relationships and driving people back to the website.
The other key is to ensure a sensible media budget is made available. Facebook, in particular, now has such a minimal organic reach that without any budget for content promotion there is little point being on there in the first place.
Like social media, the most important thing for email is that you’re clear on your objective and how you will measure success. Emailing cold lists or running aggressive promotional campaigns is unlikely to achieve the desired results, but for many professional service firms it is an absolutely key channel for nurturing existing relationships and ensuring you are at the the front of their mind when they reach their next purchase cycle.
Email also plays an important role for distributing your content via social media. That may sound odd but a lot of people are not comfortable being seen to reshare content that’s sent to them directly from a brand, but if you can email the content to your most engaged nucleus, they will then share the content on your behalf, and their networks will then be far more inclined to engage with it themselves.
Email also plays an important role for distributing your content via social media. That may sound odd but a lot of people are not comfortable being seen to reshare content that’s sent to them directly from a brand, but if you can email the content to your most engaged nucleus, they will then share the content on your behalf, and their networks will then be far more inclined to engage with it themselves.
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