PR Series
In this episode of the PR series, I interview Lindsey Gamble about the best ways for B2B companies to take advantage of influencer marketing to grow their business. Lindsey is an Associate Director of Influencer Innovation at Mavrck, a leading all-in-one influencer marketing platform. He has more than five years experience working with enterprise consumer brands on creator and influencer marketing campaigns and a deep understanding of the creator economy.
Some top tips …
LinkedIn and YouTube are great platforms to connect with and create influencer campaigns with B2B influencers. They can write a LinkedIn post about your company, have your company sponsor their newsletter, have a joint webinar, or consider working with them as a consultant to help generate more ideas and content about how to get your brand in front of your audience with your message. They can help you reverse engineer your target audience’s customer journey and offer another perspective of how and where you might build campaigns to achieve your goals.
Focus less on what’s popular in influencer marketing for the B2C market but more about what appeals to your target audience for your buying decision. It may be much less glamorous but much more effective.
B2B can leverage LinkedIn creators, podcasters, thought leaders, and build integrated campaigns that incorporate different channels and aspects from content creation to consulting.
In addition to reaching out to influencers, make it easy for them to find you and reach out to you on your website. It’s a two-way street.
If you want to pursue an influencer but don’t know the right way to price it for them, it’s better to reach out and have a conversation with them to share how you’re thinking about working with them and ask what their budget would be. That can help to avoid turning them off simply because you didn’t know their pricing.
Alternative ways to work with influencers include hiring to be customer service at a tradeshow to help draw more of your audience, hire them to host your podcast or YouTube channel, hire them to be a part-time member of your marketing team, and consider working with creatives to help you solve problems or be a part of the brainstorming aspect. They’re experts who know their industries but may think differently than an in-house marketing team or management.
Be as clear and specific as possible in the creative brief to avoid confusion or receiving content that doesn’t meet your expectations. At the same time, make sure that you give them enough room to create content that reflects them, their audience, and allows them to use their creativity.
This episode at glance …
>> (6:45-10:30) Strategy and tactics that often work well for B2B
>> (10:40-11:45) Where to begin, identifying goals and budget, consider bringing in an influencer as a consultant to help with that process
>> (11:45-12:45) Partner with an influencer platform like Mavrck or manually reach out to those you’re considering working with on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or email
>> (15:25-17) Best practices and what to avoid in working with influencers
>> (17:15-18:30) Alternative ways to work with influencers
>> (19:30-24:45) Where issues can pop up in the process and how to avoid them
>> (24:50-29:05) campaign results, expectations, and the realities of the current customer journey
>> (29:10-35:00) How AI is changing the influencer space
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Ways to reach Lindsey Gamble & Christie Bilbrey
www.lindseygamble.com/newsletter
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsey-gamble/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christiebilbrey/
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