The Business of Influence - B2B Influencer Marketing eBook

The Business
of Influence
Formulas for Success
from Top B2B Brands

@topranktoprankmarketing.com
B2BForum 2018 Panel
The Confluence Equation
How Content & Influence Drive B2B Marketing Success
Dr. Konstanze Alex-Brown
Head of Corporate Influencer Relations
Dell
@Konstanze
Amisha Gandhi
Vice President Influencer Marketing
SAP Ariba
@AmishaGandhi
Luciana Moran
SVP Content & Digital
Dun & Bradstreet
@lucymoran

Moderator: Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing
Lee Odden
CEO, TopRank Marketing
lee@toprankmarketing.com
TopRankMarketing.com
TopRankBlog.com
Specialists in B2B Content &
Influencer Marketing

The State of B2B

50%
of B2B marketers say producing content
consistently is a top challenge.
CMI/MarketingProfs

Interest in Influence is High

65% of
multinational
brands will
increase IM
spending next
12 months
World Federation of Advertisers
$10
Billion
next 5 years
- up from $5
billion
Source: Mediakix

B2B is Still Behind with Influencer Marketing
24%
10%
B2B Brands
Experimenting
B2C Brands
Experimenting

Experiment
*Early testing
*Warm influencers
*Evaluate tech
*Developing skills
*One off projects
*Marketing focus
Process
* Tactical
* Recruit
influencers
* Tool investment
* Campaign based
* Transactional
* Reach metrics
* Maturing skills
* Output metrics
Relationships
* Strategic
* Influencer personas
* Developed
programs
* Relationship based
* Influencer
community
* Platform investment
* Paid and organic
* Multi-departmental
* Engagement metrics
Authority
* CXO sponsorship
* Always on
engagement
* Active brand
advocacy
* Platform maturity
* Advanced skills
* Cross functional
* Internal influencers
* Dominant SOV
* ROI metrics
Integration
* Marketing
integration
* Platform integration
* Process integration
* Influencer
ecosystem
* Employees engage
* Advanced skills
* End to end metrics
Source: TopRank Marketing
Organizational Maturity – B2B Influencer Marketing

What Makes a B2B Influencer?
What is B2B Influencer
Marketing?

Prolific
Proficient
Personable
Persuasive
Popular
The 5 P’s of Being a Great B2B Influencer
Influence is the ability to affect action.

“Influencer Marketing activates internal and
industry experts with engaged networks to
co-create content of mutual value and achieve
measurable business goals.”
B2B Influencer Marketing Defined

B2B Buyers Want Credible Content Sources
78% of B2B
buyers place a
higher emphasis
on trust-worthiness
of content source.
2018 Content Preferences Report – DGR
65% have
a higher
preference for
credible
content from
industry
influencers.
2018 Content Preferences Report

Influence Solves B2B Content Marketing Challenges
Attract Engage Convert Retain Advocate
Reach new
audiences
Inspire
advocacy
Retarget
influencer
followers
Creators
bring talent
Authenticity
& voice of
customer
Influencer &
audience
channel
match
Influencers
are trusted
Relevance
increases
action
Credibility
converts
Community
participation
Showcase
employee
influencers
Create
infotaining
utility
Showcase
customers &
success
Testimonials
Create
incentives for
referrals

Content & Influence Success Formula: Relationships
Activate
Understand customer
& influencer goals
Co-Create
Engage influencers
to collaborate
Amplify
Inspire
promotion

Luciana Moran
Senior Vice President
Digital Demand Generation
Dun & Bradstreet
@lucymoran

Amisha Gandhi
Vice President
SAP Ariba
@amishagandhi

Dr Konstanze Alex-Brown
Head of Corporate
Influencer Relations
Dell
@Konstanze

What brought you to the world
of Influencer Marketing?

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
I began to get more involved in Influencer Marketing as the
scope of my role at Dun & Bradstreet grew to include Content
Marketing.
I had been exposed to the great Influencer programs that
Konnie and others at Dell managed while I was working for
Dell, but did not have any direct involvement. However, once
I started working with our Content team, I saw Influencer
Marketing as an opportunity to expand the reach of our
perspectives outside of some of the more traditional tactics of
organic search, social & paid media.

Konstanze Alex
@konstanze
About 5 years ago I stepped into a new role in Social Media
Marketing and one of my first projects had me investigate
social selling experts for who understood the social media
from a social business and sales perspective, specifically for
a large global organization like Dell.
One important aspect for us at the time was to educate our
marketing leadership on social analytics and insights to help
build programs for our marketing teams that would in turn lay
the foundation for successful social selling programs and
campaigns.

How is influencer marketing
positioned within your
company?

Amisha Gandhi
@amishagandhi
Influencer marketing sits within global marketing at Ariba
under corporate marketing. Ours is somewhat of an
unconventional model with an influencer marketing team
comprised of analyst relations, third party communities,
external business influencers, and advocacy.
The advantage of this structure is that it allows us to bring
communities of influence together to help drive real business
outcomes across the entire customer journey.

Konstanze Alex
@konstanze
At Dell, relationship building and maintenance with influencers,
media, press and analysts is housed in corporate
communications. We firmly believe that relationships based on
trust, aligned values, independence of opinion and mutual
value creation are key to successful collaboration between
brands and influencers.

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
Influencer relationships are managed centrally thru our
Comms or Content & Social teams. We partner with our
individual lines of business to help guide our influencer
strategy, but the programs are managed centrally.
The benefit of this model is that those with the expertise in
influencer marketing are responsible for the programs, and
we are able to extend learnings across multiple LOBs rather
than have those learnings exist in a silo.

What tips can you share about
being more effective about
influencer identification,
qualification and recruitment?

Amisha Gandhi
@amishagandhi
Go beyond popularity metrics and social media following. Look at
who influencers are engaging with, how many comments they
receive and how long they’ve been engaging.
Look at the conversations influencers are driving and take a deep
dive across all their channels. Discover what they are writing about
and where and if it fits with what you are doing and the audience
you are trying to reach.
When recruiting influencers, make sure it’s clear you’ve spent
quality time getting to know what they care about and why they
should care about you. Make it really clear what’s in it for them, not
just what’s in it for you.

Konstanze Alex
@konstanze
You have to invest time and due diligence to the identification
process. A sophisticated influencer program doesn’t rely on a
single identification method or one-time vetting process of to
start and maintain a relationship with an influencer but rather
develops a scorecard that gets constantly reviewed and, most
importantly, evolves as this emerging field matures. At this
point, we review strategy, methods, tactics and measurement
on an ongoing basis.

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
If you are new to Influencer programs and don’t have deep
subject matter expertise in-house, consider bringing in an
agency to help. Once you have a program up & running, you
can then either bring the work inside your organization or
continue to partner with the agency.
Another way to be more effective at influencer identification,
qualification and recruitment is to ask your customers who
they follow/read. They are your target audience and you want
to be where they are.

What characteristics make for a
successful influencer / B2B
brand relationship?
@leeodden @konstanze @amishagandhi@lucymoran

Amisha Gandhi
@amishagandhi
Companies should approach influencers as partners, not just as
people that they can use for their marketing efforts and launches.
Characteristics for a successful B2B brand relationship include:
- Looking at creating value for both parties
- Creating a long term relationship that is a two way street
- Setting up influencers for success and arm them with knowledge
before they walk into any kind of engagement
- Arming your brand stakeholders with information so interactions
are high value between the company and the influencers
- Being clear with influencers on what you’re trying to achieve

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
The key here is a relationship - realize that in order to be
successful, the work has to be mutually beneficial to both
parties. For example, think about how your campaign or
program can benefit the influencer – what can you do to help
promote them, in addition to them promoting your brand?
Also, be very clear up front on the goals of your Influencer
program and what success looks like.

What types of influencer
marketing tools should be
considered?

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
One of my favorite technologies that we use related to
influencer marketing and increasing the exposure of our
content is LinkedIn Elevate. It allows a group of content
curators to share content relevant to different aspects of our
business, and then employees can easily share out to their
networks thru LinkedIn & Twitter.

Amisha Gandhi
@amishagandhi
Some of our favorite tools are Traackr, Marketo & Sprinklr.
•  Traackr is for influencer marketing
•  Sprinklr is for scheduling and putting content out on social media
networks
•  Marketo is what can help you analyze the journey.
These are all tools that can help you show the measurability of
influencer marketing and to quantify the program.

Please share a favorite B2B
influencer marketing campaign

Konstanze Alex
@konstanze
We developed an influencer hosted business podcast called
Luminaries – talking to the brightest minds in tech where we
focus on technology visionaries and the very human face of
innovation. Our hosts are phenomenal digital storytellers and
bring the outside-in view into every episode, every
conversation with every guest with a deep commitment to and
appreciation of our combined audiences.

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
We’ve done a series of videos with Michael Krigsman, host of
CXO Talk, and some of the leaders in our marketing
organization. Overall the content is super engaging – Michael
is a great host – and leveraging the video format really drove
a lot of strong success on our social channels.

What advice can you share about
measuring success with
influencer marketing?

Amisha Gandhi
@amishagandhi
When implementing an influencer marketing campaign understand
the business outcome you are helping to achieve. Then put the
metrics you want to track in a dashboard.
For example, with a campaign that involves an eBook, your metrics
might include social media shares, social impressions to see how it
was promoted by influencers, views or downloads.
With the right tagging you can see how much touch the asset had. If
you have Marketo you can see when people come to the asset and
where they go after, which helps inform your customer journey and
how the influencer marketing pieces are working within your entire
marketing landscape.

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
Establish your goals up-front. Don’t go into a campaign or
program looking to start an Influencer program because it
sounds interesting or it seems like something you “should” be
doing. Know what KPIs you want to impact, and what KPIs
you actually can impact.

How do you think influencer
marketing will have evolved in
the next year or two?

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
I think Influencer Marketing will grow in importance for brands
as they look to explore how to continue to round out their
strategies & tactics to meet their marketing goals. Especially
with the continued & growing concern around fake news &
content, as well as ad fraud & transparency, aligning your
brand with credible & trusted thought leaders will be more
and more important. I think we will see more technologies
that will allow brands to better find new influencer
relationships, which seems to be more prevalent for B2C
than B2B.

Konstanze Alex
@konstanze
We will leverage new technologies such as AI for increasingly
nuanced influencer identification, especially for micro targeting
of audiences. We will use intelligent tools to find new ways of
measuring results and new roles will have been defined within
an influencer marketing team. But successful programs will
continue to lead from a human perspective and understand
that technology remains only a tool for humans to achieve
progress.

Amisha Gandhi
@amishagandhi
I think influencer marketers will start to look beyond influencer
relations. Today you see a lot of influencers at events and I think in
the next few years you’ll see a lot more influencers during the
demand cycle and involved with more content and activities deeper
in the sales funnel.
There is also a growing importance around micro-influencers in
industries where macro influencers are covering wide ranging topics
like artificial intelligence. There will be more micro-influencers
involved with industry specific content (i.e. AI within manufacturing).
Influencer marketing will be seen more as a strategic function if you
can stretch it across the customer journey.

How is influencer marketing
different for B2B than B2C?

Konstanze Alex
@konstanze
B2C influencer marketing, in general, is focused on capturing
the attention of large online consumer audiences whereas B2B
influencer marketing is a long-term relationship business in
which trust and mutual value creation are built over time.
B2B influencer marketing focuses on both, online and offline
engagements with more targeted decision maker audiences.
In B2B influencer marketing it is not the audience size of an
influencer but the trust level an influencer has built with his/her
audience that matters, especially when it comes to high value
purchase decisions and long-term commitments a customer
makes with a brand.

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
Strong Influencer programs should be grounded in the same
core principles, regardless of audience.
On the B2B side, influencers have to be true subject matter
experts in their category. You want to ensure you align your
brand with someone with the right following, but also
someone who truly understands your business & can
education your audience on the value of your solutions.
On the B2C side, influencer marketing is largely based on
who is using a product and finding a celebrity to endorse you
can easily deliver success.

What are 2-3 of the main benefits
of collaborating with influencers
for B2B companies?

Lucy Moran
@lucymoran
1. Exposing your message to a new or different audience than
you are currently reaching today, especially thru your website
or other organic channels
2. Adding credibility to your message by partnering with a
trusted voice in the industry

Konstanze Alex
@konstanze
Working with B2B influencers allows our brand to have a
constant pulse check with purchase decision makers. Informed
influencers who share our vision of the future based on their
own experience and expertise provide for independent, third
party validation.
Strategic partnerships with influencers provide for an outside
in view when creating content for our customers. We need to
constantly ensure that, as a brand, we don’t start talking to
ourselves, but keep a keen focus on the evolving challenges
our customers have and on language they use to express
these challenges.

B2B Influencer Marketing Series
https://www.toprankblog.com

Tap into the power of industry experts with active
networks your brand wants to engage.
Collaborating with influencers on content builds
engagement with experts your customers trust
and creates useful information to attract, engage
and convert more leads and sales.
Contact TopRank Marketing about how an
influencer content program help your B2B
company improve content quality, reach and
effectiveness. influence@toprankmarketing.com
https://www.toprankmarketing.com

The Business of Influence - B2B Influencer Marketing eBook

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