What works and what doesn’t in microinfluencer marketing.
If you think about B2B influencers at all, you might think of large-scale accounts with crossover appeal like Corporate Natalie. But in the emerging world of content creators who specialize in appealing to white collar professionals, small accounts can pay big dividends – especially for those just getting involved in the space.
“I find that (microinfluencers have) been a really good entryway to brands to test and trial and then go and get budget for other expansions of that work,” said Annie Gudorf, EVP of strategic communications at Walker Sands. But they also offer other advantages, such as reaching audiences on a more personal, intimate level and gaining a level of service you might not get with a megainfluencer.
“If you are working with more of a microinfluencer, it’s like working a little bit with a reporter,” said Gudorf. “We can get their email and work with them more directly, and then we have a relationship with them that we can then use and tap into and build that relationship over time.”
Gudorf gave PR Daily a peek behind the curtain at a recent B2B influencer campaign. Here’s what she and her team learned from the experience – and how you can apply it.
Identifying influencers and measuring success
Walker Sands worked with a client who wanted to appeal to small-business owners. Research revealed these conversations weren’t happening just on LinkedIn, but also on Instagram and on TikTok. So the agency and the client partnered with a variety of B2B influencers to discuss how the client’s product helped them run their small businesses .
When it came to identifying influencers and topics of discussion, the team turned to LinkedIn to examine what kinds of creators their target audience were already engaging with.
“Who are they leaving comments on? When you’re in industry Slack groups, whose content is getting reshared? That can be a really good starting point to just help identify, where do you even start? Who is someone you might even partner with?” Gudorf said. “That’s the most important thing, is there that brand connection to whoever you’re engaging with so that it feels very authentic.”
The influencer component was one part of a traditional PR campaign, and the goals were aligned with overall awareness metrics.
“We were really just trying to get started to drive brand recognition of our client with that audience,” Gudorf said of this first B2B influencer outing. “And so we didn’t have a hard call to action, buy this product, or it’s tied to a new launch. We were really looking at more kind of traditional awareness metrics.”
Those metrics included:
- Engagement rates
- Clickthrough rates
- Comments
- Increase in client followers
- Increase in website traffic
“We got really strong engagement, and then it provided the client with really powerful, interesting content that they could then promote elsewhere,” Gudorf said.
But along the way, Walker Sands learned some important lessons about influencer relations, especially at the beginning of the campaign.
Their briefs were too long. Despite the strength of their client and competitive rates, they weren’t getting interest in their outreach.
“I think what we were finding was, influencers were just kind of glossing over and not interested,” Gudorf said. “And so our takeaway was, we need a tighter brief. We need to almost think about this more like a creative brief, rather than like a contract, to make it more enticing for an influencer to see the opportunity to be associated with this well-known brand. Once we were able to make that change, saw a lot more appetite in the partnership.”
Organic influencer lift
But another surprise for Walker Sands was when influencers began finding the brand’s reports and media hits on their own and incorporating them into content without any partnerships or prompting.
In one case, the client released a report with HR tech stats that were written up in traditional media. An influencer used those stats to create a TikTok, which then migrated to LinkedIn, where the team saw it and used it as an opportunity for outreach to the content creator.
“Our team loved it because we’re like, this is why earned media is great,” Gudorf said. “It’s influencing our target audiences, and we need to remember that these content creators are potentially another target audience that we want to influence and be on their radar.”
Members of Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council have exclusive access to additional resources on how to use YouTube as a B2B influencer platform.
Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.
The post What to know before you start your B2B influencer campaign appeared first on PR Daily.
