Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, discusses how B2B influencer marketing can be a highly effective force in driving leads and conversions for companies. Lee was interviewed by Tim Washer at the 2019 Content Marketing World Conference & Expo:

Influencer Marketing Is Powerful Because Of Influence Itself

Influencer marketing is powerful because of influence itself, not about the people. Influence has always been a factor in being persuasive and being effective as a communicator, as a marketer, and really being able to tap into the dynamics of that. The psychology and sociology of that is something that is everlasting, it’s evergreen. While there are trends in terms of tactics that come and go, there’s this consumerization of B2B. B2C influencers are misbehaving and have fake followers, etc. and some of that’s leaking over into B2B. But I think that’ll reconcile a little bit and kind of clean itself out. In the future brands are going to be looking at influence as a really key component of their holistic marketing strategy internally and externally.

A lot of people when they think of influencer marketing they think of a Kardashian or some people think of something like Baddiewinkle, a 90-year-old woman who wears hip-hop clothes and now has her own makeup line on Sephora versus someone like Tamara McCleary interviewing an executive at Dell about the right IT infrastructure for doing edge computing. That’s really what it’s about in B2B.

B2B Influencers Actually Have To Have The Main Expertise

One of the big differences between B2B and B2C influencers is that in B2B you actually have to have the main expertise. You actually have to be knowledgeable and have a depth of that expertise in what it is that you’re influential about. It’s also important to have a network for distribution and a place to publish your content. It’s great to have a personality and that’s less common in B2B, where you have charisma. Well, lack of personality is a form of personality I suppose. 

The good thing is that we’ve figured out ways to coach folks that have that domain expertise and an active following but they’re not necessarily used to being social. We are coaching them in how to activate themselves and to pull out the best of what they have to share in a way that’s very promotable. Many of them start to open up a little bit after we show them how to do it.

B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Conversion

In the planning stages (with a client looking to promote something) we’ll look at the topics that are important around the announcement and how it affects customers and how customers will think of that news and how it’ll affect or change their lives. Those topics are then what we want to be influential about. We’ll use those keywords or topics to search our network using influencer marketing software to find who is influential around those topics, who’s publishing content, who self-identifies around that topic, and whose audience is actually activated around that topic. We find those people who have trusted voices with an active community and we invite them to collaborate on content and give their opinion about the announcement. 

We co-create content with them in concert with brand messaging. So now instead of people just ignoring the press release we actually have storytelling happening with these different voices. You have this intersection of one or two or three or four influencers talking about this topic and those audiences intersect and cross. They intersect across channels too. Your customer is hearing this credible message not only from the brand but also from people that they trust in different channels. That all adds up to yes. That all adds up to nurture and ultimately conversion.

Numerous reports can be referenced highlighting the importance of authenticity within marketing as a whole. This advice is doubly true when attempting to appeal to demographics that may span numerous cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds. The only way to truly be authentic is to have representation within these diverse groups of people that can tell their story about your brand in a way that is unique to them and their coveted audience. 

The way for such brands to avoid failure is to adopt a UGC ad approach utilizing influencers. Influencer marketing, as you may recall, can be distilled in having someone else tell your brand story for you, which is precisely what UGC created ads are.

There are multiple methods that influencers can utilize in the Facebook ecosystem, including live streaming collaborations, fan page postings, and group advertisements. However, the method we have found particularly effective involves using Facebook’s internal brand collabs manager as a multi-step campaign process.

For this process to work, a brand will need to only have access to an account with Facebook Ads management credentials. However, in multiple tests, we have found it is faster and more efficient to prequalify influencers through an external network prior to engaging, rather than relying upon the Facebook marketplace alone for the selection process. The importance of this step is predicated on the importance of first calculating the probability of influence based on your predetermined campaign goals. The reasoning for external vetting prior to ad collaborations is as follows:

1. While approximate reach and engagement is discernable through the brand side of the Facebook collaboration marketplace, what isn’t obvious is relevance. By first vetting Facebook influencers, a brand will likely find the self-identified categorical selections and content focus is not always congruent with the information displayed in the collabs marketplace.

2. The next issue is cost. Once again, testing has determined that price is not as static as one might assume when simply utilizing the brand collabs marketplace. The reason for this is reflective of fit. As a thought exercise, imagine a digital marketer is being asked to set an hourly rate for her services. The ads collabs manager in this analogy represents the expected blended rate for all activities the aforementioned marketer would be asked to perform. The reality is her distaste for a service such as site infrastructure auditing may make other activities she enjoys more expensive on that blended rate. The same is true of influencers. A blended rate exists to satisfy the vast majority of collaboration pitches the influencer is expected to receive. Therefore, approaching an influencer external to the collabs marketplace can often result in a lower starting price point.

The only caveat to this approach is not every Facebook influencer in external networks is a member of the ads collabs marketplace. If time is of the essence, it is recommended to ask on the status of this membership when pitching. However, as Facebook is willing to let most applicants into the program, if a brand feels strongly about an influencer, it can be worth pursuing the relationship while urging the influencer also gain membership into the program.

Once an influencer has been selected based on campaign criteria of fit, economics, and expected outcome, the process for using this influencer in an ongoing ad is remarkably similar to that of a normal influencer campaign. The critical difference is centered on ad quality guidelines, as some industries are more heavily regulated from an ad copy perspective. Presumably, a brand will evaluate the true impact an influencer provides prior to elevating into an ad unit. Additionally, running a postmortem analysis  in the event expectations are not in line with reality helps for future transactions. After initial satisfaction has been reached the next steps are simple:

1. Approve the collaboration in the Facebook collabs manager interface

2. Create a new ad utilizing the influencer via the boost post ad type. Simply set a budget and you’re done.

To test this concept for yourself, simultaneously run this process against a fresh ad campaign on the same exact topic. You may find, as we and others have, that the UGC-elevated ads end up outperforming the conventional ad types. The often occurs without running into the pitfalls of a brand trying to target multiple demographics, which can often come off as inauthentic. All that was required was simply incorporating some influencers into the process. 

To learn more, take a self-guided demo of Intellifluence, which will help you understand how influencers can be applied to virtually any marketing use case in a simple campaign creation process. 

Susan Akbarpour, Mavatar CEO talks about how her company’s blockchain powered mCart platform is helping retailers track influencer driven sales forever in an interview on Fox Business:

Walmart is Using Blockchain to Automate Inventory Management

Walmart is using blockchain in different capacities, for inventory management systems and tracking many things. There are many parties involved when we are talking inventory management from point A to B to C to D. If you are using Excel sheets or a traditional inventory management system it’s not efficient and it’s not cheap. Every one of these movements needs to be tracked and need to be recorded.

Blockchain is helping to make everything automatic and very efficient and fast without back-office services that cost retailers. There are barcodes and many parties involved so you really need to track all of these systems together and blockchain makes it fast and very cheap.

Blockchain Technology Enabling Amazon-Like Marketplaces

We’re helping Walmart to partner with traditional media companies and actually power their product sales with the power of content. This is helping two traditional industries that are affected today. They are bringing content and Walmart and other brick and mortars are bringing products and we are creating Amazon-like marketplaces fueled by the content of the media. So we are licensing our software to media companies to lend their content to promote the product sales. We’re tracking through blockchain everyone who is influencing those product sales.

Blockchain Powered mCart Tracks Influencer Sales Impact Forever

I will give you a very nice example. Remember the JLo dress in Grammy’s 2000. It broke the internet. Eric Schmidt, the then CEO of Google, said that search inquiry is what made us think of doing image search. But no one, including JLo, CBS, Grammy’s, and the designer Versace, didn’t gain a penny out of that influence.

Even today, if you search that keyword in Google, you see that Google still shows an advertisement for the counterfeit and similar dresses online. Blockchain through our mCart technology is tracking that influence to every single influencer and distribute the value that they create and the commission that they could get from Versace between all of them forever.

And guess what, Fox and CBS and Disney and all of these guys are promoting millions of products every year. You guys don’t have to use push advertisement as a revenue model

While there’s no denying that influencer marketing works, it has a lot of issues that have resulted in brands having a general lack of trust for influencers.

4 Reasons Why Brands Don’t Trust Influencer Marketing

1. Hard to Measure ROI

The majority of brands find that choosing the right metrics to use and measuring return on investment are the main challenges they face when it comes to influencer marketing.

Every marketing campaign should be based on measurable objectives, like an increase in revenue, higher brand awareness, or more social media followers. You need to determine your objective first. Once that’s done, you can then identify how you will track your KPIs and evaluate how the content or an influencer has performed.

Luckily, most of the tools used in tracking conventional and digital marketing are also appropriate for influencer marketing. For instance, tools like Google Analytics, promo codes, giveaways, vanity URLs, and UTM parameters can all be used to measure the results of an influencer marketing campaign. Social media platforms like Pinterest are also taking steps in this direction by giving access to their APIs to ensure that influencers and marketers can work well together.

2. Fake Followers and Fake Accounts

Fake followers and fraudulent accounts are also behind the mistrust of influencers. According to a New York Times report, this practice is so rampant that about 15 percent of Twitter profiles are fakes and many celebrities and influencers buy followers to inflate their perceived social influence.

Too often, brands look for influencers with the largest number of followers and pay big money for access to them. So it’s not surprising that some influencers pad their numbers with fake accounts. Unfortunately, the practice messes up one crucial element of this marketing method—influencing another individual. After all, you can’t wield your influence over an imaginary person.

To combat this problem, brands should focus more on quality than quantity. Instead of looking at the numbers, they should concentrate on the kind of consumers that follow the influencer, and whether said influencer is suitable for the brand. Social media platforms should also put more effort into cracking down on dubious accounts. 

More importantly, the influencers should hold themselves accountable and check for fake followers, even if it means they have to scroll through their list of followers and vet each one.

3. A Million Followers Doesn’t Mean More Profit

A social media account might have tens of thousands of followers but not have much influence. There are people who are influential in one area but not in another. For instance, an account that specializes in memes might have a million followers but those followers are not there to buy anything. They just follow the account for its entertainment value.

Brands should first determine whether an influencer is considered trustworthy by their followers or just a digital performer. The former has an impact on a follower’s buying decision while the latter doesn’t. Companies can tell which is which by their posts. Consumers respond to honesty and passion, and a good influencer shows these in their posts.

4. Competition Between Influencers and Marketers

If your brand has a marketing team, they may view influencers as a direct threat. This implied threat is due to the fact that influencers work in direct competition with traditional marketing strategies. Moreover, a lot of marketers don’t totally trust social influencers with regards to content development.

To get past this problem, you’ll need to understand how influencer marketing actually works. Influencers have to be authentic and strive to show this in the tone and passion of their posts. In contrast, your marketers need to double check everything or have some say in the content creation process. You’ll need to find a good compromise between the two groups to prevent conflict.

Should Brands Still Trust Influencers?

Many consumers have relationships with influencers that are more like friendships. And according to Neilsen, 92 percent of consumers trust the recommendations of family and friends. For this reason, influencers still have the power to greatly impact a brand. However, the problems that come with influencer marketing have gone largely unresolved.

Part of the problem is that these issues have only recently come to the forefront, so best practices have not yet been established. Brands and influencers are still learning and adjusting. 

Moving foward, more influencers will need to audit their followers and check for fake accounts. Branded content should merge well with integrated content, and sponsored posts should be kept to a minimum. Meanwhile, it’s imperative for brands to thoroughly research their potential partners, making sure they only work with credible influencers and choose the right platforms to promote their products and services.

The company also said it would be adding a total of eight marketing platforms as part of its expanding Marketing Partners program. These include AspirelQ, HYPR, Influence.co, IZEA, Klear, Mavrck, Obvious.ly, and Open Influence.

The new development was announced on its blog post last Tuesday.

Starting today, we’re opening our content marketing API to third-party influencer marketing platforms to help brands and influencers collaborate more effectively and create exciting new things on Pinterest.”

David Temple, the head of Pinterest’s content and creator products, said that creators are vital to the company so they’re excited to be able to supply them with more tools and resources as they develop strong relationships with various businesses.

While influencer marketing on Pinterest isn’t new, opening up its API to third parties will give brands access to key metrics: https://t.co/rv35eDqEdc

— Marketing Dive (@marketingdive) September 19, 2018

Aside from connecting brands to influencers, the API will provide Pinterest’s partners with key performance metrics regarding influencer campaigns. It will also give insights into click-throughs, impressions, monthly views, and saves. More importantly, it will give companies a better chance at understanding how content developers can boost engagement and drive traffic to the app. This will go a long way in helping companies design their marketing campaigns for improved return on investment.

The lack of data has been a large stumbling block in working with influencers. While companies can get a baseline, it’s labor-intensive and time-consuming. By giving access to its API, Pinterest has given companies much-needed information. It’s also a strategic move on the company’s part as it opens them up to higher ad spending from marketers.

Eric Lam, AspirelQ CEO, revealed that it has also gotten very challenging for brands to attract consumer attention, making it imperative for them “to connect with consumers using the right message, at the right time, through the right channel.” Partnering with Pinterest gives brands another channel and more opportunities to engage clients in a personalized and meaningful manner.

Brands and content developers can find more information about Pinterest’s marketing API on the site’s Marketing Partners site or by emailing pmp-partnerships@pinterest.com

[Featured image via Pinterest]

The power of influence marketing stems from consumers’ eroding trust in brands. These days, the majority believe and rely on word-of-mouth reviews and recommendations. One Nielsen study revealed that this type of recommendation surpasses other types of advertising. As a matter of fact, 83% of Americans were found to trust endorsements from people they know while 66% believe in the opinions that fellow consumers posted online.

Graphic via Smart Insights

One of the main hurdles companies face when they decide to go with an influencer marketing campaign is how much to pay an influencer. Hiring the services of an influencer can range from several hundred dollars to millions. Plus, there are other factors to consider, like exclusivity, rate of engagement, and number of followers.

While there’s no rigid pricing structure behind influencer payments, there are some basic guidelines that companies can refer to.

Types of Influencers

There are several types of social media influencers, and their reputation and influence play a major role in how much they’re worth. Based on the numbers, there are five tiers or levels of social media influencers.

The first tier, or the icon tier, is typically composed of big name celebrities like pop singer Katy Perry or soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. These influencers usually have 5 million or more followers.

The next tier, the trailblazers, are populated by well-known people like chef Guy Fieri and motivational speaker Tony Robbins. Their followers likely range from 2 to 2.8 million.

The next three tiers are dubbed the Influencer (800K+ followers), the Micro Influencer (221K+ followers, and the Super Micro Influencer (50K+ followers).

Surprisingly, it would appear that celebrity endorsers are not always the best choice when it comes to influencer marketing. Despite their status and their millions of followers, posts shared by tier 1 influencers actually had less organic engagement. That means their followers were not as active to like, share, or comment on their posts.

Meanwhile, tier 2 and tier 3 influencers are shown to be more popular on social media and provide the highest rate of engagement. About 28% of people who see content from a Trailblazer will comment, like, or share the post, while tier 5, or super-micro influencers, have an engagement rate of only 10.25%.

Ballpark Figures Based on Platform

How much a social media influencer charges per post depends on several factors like number of views and impression and whether a post includes a product image or video. However, two key factors that also affect cost are the influencer’s average number of followers and the platform they will be using.

Bloggers: For bloggers, their rates would depend on the site traffic and the monthly impressions the blog gets. For instance:

• 10,000 to 50,000 monthly impressions: $175 to $250 per post

• 50,000 to 100,000 monthly impressions: $250 to $500 per post

The price goes up as the monthly impressions get higher. A blogger can charge as high as $1,000 to $5,000 per post if they can hit over 500,000 monthly impressions.

Instagram: Influencers using this platform usually charge based on the number of followers.

• Less than 10,000 followers: $93 to $137 per post

• 10,000 to 50,000 followers: $133 to $185 per post

Some social media agencies typical starting rate for Instagram influencers is $1,000 per 100,000 followers. The rate is then adjusted based on factors like the client’s budget, length of campaign, and engagement rate. Companies should also expect to pay more if they’re working with a talent agency instead of dealing directly with an influencer.

Snapchat: Rates here would depend on the amount of views the post accumulates during its 24-hour lifespan. Companies that use Snapchat campaigns the following rates:

• 1,000 to 5,000 views: $500 per campaign

• 5,000 to 10,000 views: $1,000 to $3,000 per campaign

For views 50,000 and higher, the company can expect to shell out anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000.

YouTube: Vloggers or influencers on this platform reportedly earn the highest. This is due to the content taking longer to create and demands the most technical prowess. The posts also have the highest reach, as they can be searchable permanently. Brands that are considering working with vloggers can expect the following rates:

• 50,000 to 100,000 subscribers: $500 to $1,000 per video

• 100,000 to 500,000 subscribers: $1,000 to $3,000 per video

• Over 500,000 subscribers: $3,000 to $5,000 or higher per video

Endorsement deals on YouTube also depend on several factors, like how many talking points the influencer would give or whether there’s an additional link in the video. The format, how many seconds the video will run, and the industry the clip is aimed at also affects the price.

Social media influencers can be an important part of your marketing campaign. The right influencer can do wonders for a brand. Luckily, the rates of social media influencers are pretty flexible, so it’s possible that you don’t have to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for an influencer campaign.

[Featured Image via robkardahian Instagram]

For those still confused about what influencer marketing is, it’s simply the act of promoting or selling products or services via influencers, or people who have the ability to affect a brand. Where the main influencers before were celebrities and industry leaders, today’s influencers are more varied. Nowadays, top brands are seeking out bloggers, food critics, makeup mavens and celebrities who rose to fame on platforms like YouTube and Instagram.

Brands that Benefited from Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing provides a lot of benefits. Brands can reach the relevant demographic and enjoy high levels of engagement. It’s also affordable and can help retain a brand’s authenticity. Numerous companies have already successfully leveraged these people to give their brand a boost.

Clinique for Men

Clinique is renowned for its hypoallergenic skincare for women. When the iconic cosmetic company launched a men’s line, they raised product awareness by partnering with a disparate group of male influencers from various professions. These influencers consisted of filmmakers, outdoorsmen, stylists, and lifestyle bloggers, each representing a group of men who would be interested in using Clinique for Men. Every post used in the campaign was unique and defined the influencer. For instance, surfer Mikey de Temple posted a photo of himself wearing his surf gear, with his surfboard in the background, along with a Clinique product.

Clinique’s campaign was golden for several reasons. One, the company’s choice of influencers were so diverse that it expanded the product’s reach. Also, the posts integrated the product smoothly into a setting that was so natural to the influencer. This helped create a more organic interest in Clinique’s men’s line.

Fashion Nova

One brand that has truly embraced influencer marketing is Fashion Nova. According to the company’s founder and CEO, Richard Saghian, Fashion Nova is a viral store that works with 3,000 to 5,000 influencers. Its aggressive marketing efforts rely on lots of model and celebrity influencers, like Kylie Jenner and beauty vlogger Blissful Brii. The former has 93.8 million followers on Instagram while the latter has 93 thousand subscribers on YouTube. These two influencers alone have garnered millions of engagements, likes, and comments for the company.

While other brands go for low-key but very relatable influencers, Fashion Nova went for the celebrities. While this will obviously net a company high-levels of engagement, it can also be costly. But as Fashion Nova has proven, it’s a worthwhile investment.

Lagavulin’s Whiskey Yule Log

This is a magnificent example of how an influencer marketing campaign made a product culturally relevant to a generation. Young people might not have a taste for single malt whiskey, but Lagavulin’s 2016 campaign featuring Nick Offerman changed that. Offerman’s iconic Parks and Rec character, Ron Swanson, is known for his love of whisky. Lagavulin’s 45-minute video took inspiration from YouTube’s yule log videos and simply showed Offerman quietly sipping and enjoying his whiskey next to a fireplace.

The campaign was a success because Lagavulin found the perfect influencer for its brand. Offerman’s character proved to be a critical match for the target audience. As a matter of fact, the campaign was so good that it won an award for Best Influencer & Celebrity Campaign.

Zafferano

Zafferano does not have the same name recall as Nobu or other famous restaurants. But this Singapore-based establishment is a prime example of how social media can be used to boost audience engagement. The company tapped 11 Instagram influencers who are popular in the lifestyle and food category. They invited them to the restaurant for a special meal and in turn, they shared photos of the dishes on Instagram. The influencers also described the dishes and their dining experience. Details like price and availability were also included.

Zafferano’s campaign is notable because of the experience it created for the influencers. This, in turn, helped them come up with authentic and sincere reviews. Since the campaign had such a genuine feel, it encouraged followers to interact and engage with the posts.

Zara

Clothing powerhouse Zara was one of the most profitable companies in 2015, and that’s partly because of its successful influencer marketing campaign. The company’s social media marketing campaign got some help from several top fashion-forward Instagrammers. The Instagram posts shared by these popular influencers showcased Zara’s clothing lines and their followers used these photos to get ideas on what’s currently trending as well as tips on how to work a particular style.

Zara’s campaign was a success because the company handed the control over to the fashion influencers, the people that customers looked to for fashion advice. The content that was used in the campaign was subtle and useful, which made it even more valuable to the influencers’ thousands of followers.

[Featured image via YouTube]

The site Relevance likened influencer marketing to “celebrity endorsement advertising,” when Nicole Kidman could plug Chanel #5 or Leonardo di Caprio could extol the virtues of just about any product in commercials and magazines. Influencer marketing is basically the same thing, except that these days, you use “influencers” and social media.

How Does Influencer Marketing Work?

Influencer marketing basically boils down to three things – get in touch with someone with influence, like a popular blogger, get that person to promote your company in some form, and boost your exposure on social media.

Let’s say there’s a lifestyle maven named Party Pat with about 5,000 people following her on her blog and Instagram. You were able to convince Pat to help promote your online bookstore among her followers. She first blogs about her favorite books and mentions your store as her go-to place for ordering books. She later tweets or posts a photo of the latest book that she acquired and mentions how she easily ordered it from your shop and that it arrived in just one day. Her casual mentioning of your store and her experience could prompt her followers to check out your site as well.

The example might sound simple but it’s actually not. It entails a lot of hard work and preparation. First, you have to find an influencer who’s a good fit for your brand, whether they’re bloggers, YouTubers, writers with regular contributions to popular online sites, or industry experts. Next, you have to reach out and build a rapport with said influencer. Some do this by following the influencer and interacting with him or her while others do it the relatively old-fashioned way and send an email.

If the influencer does respond, you still have to find a way to convince them to promote you. Maybe you can send a sample product or offer to be a guest blogger. Offer compensation is possible but could also be tricky. You have to convince and prove to the influencer that it’s good for them to help you out. This means that if you’re going to guest post, your content should be impeccable. If you’re going to send a sample product, it should be high quality.

3 Tips for Using Influencers

If you are convinced that influencer marketing will help you and your brand, consider the following tips:

1. Know that the relationship between the brand, the influencer, and the audience must be real.

Influencers have a strong following on social media because they capture their audience’s interest; they have established a relationship with them. Maybe they’re the same age as their audience, have the same interests, or have undergone the same life experiences. This strong relationship with their followers means influencers will only work with a company or brand that they and their audience believe in. For example, an influencer known for her quirky and affordable style of clothes won’t suddenly start campaigning for a high-end shoe brand.

2. Be ready to play long-term.

Don’t go into influencer marketing thinking that one sponsored post will shore up your business. While a one-time mention by a mega-influencer can make a big difference, it’s a rare, and very expensive, situation. Most of the time, influencer marketing should be looked at as a long-term approach, as you have to slowly build trust among the influencer’s followers.  Followers might have to see his favorite influencer trying or mentioning your product several times before they become curious enough to explore and give your brand a try.

3. Give creative control over to the influencer.

You might have complete control over your marketing strategy when it comes to traditional advertising, but influencer marketing is far from conventional. The goal is for your brand to have a quality engagement with the influencer’s audience. To achieve that, you have to relinquish creative control to the influencer, as they know their audience. They understand the best way to introduce your brand and make their followers receptive to it.

Does Influencer Marketing Work?

There’s some controversy on whether or not influencer marketing really works. Data from a 2016 marketing survey has shown that 94% of those who used this marketing strategy believed it works. However, what the ROI is of influencer marketing is still something of a challenge this year. But there’s no question that this strategy has wide reach, especially with Facebook and Instagram being key platforms for influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing might not be for every company, but there’s no doubting its influence on today’s social media savvy consumers.  

[Image via Pixabay]