Why You Just Failed at B2B Influencer Marketing

We have written about B2B influencer marketing several times, I’ve also written about it in my book “ Social Selling – Influencing Buyers and Changemakers ” available on Amazon. This article is about a recent fail we have seen in the Influencer Marketing arena. Please read on there are clear learnings for us all.

Now the reason why you employ influencers is that they will get you in front of a new audience.

For example as a marketer, there will be the people you talk to all the time, such as your email list, people who come to your website, your user group. The idea is that you “touch” them with newsletters and events etc and hopefully you move them along to a lead or meeting with which sales pick up and take along the sales funnel.

From a sales prospective, there will be the people they are talking to. A smaller list than the marketing one and they will walk this list through the steps hopefully to a close.

The problem most marketers have is getting people that don’t know you much into the hopper at the top so you can start “touching” them.

Traditionally people have attended events, run webinars, written blogs all “top of the funnel” stuff so you can get access to these new people. The problem for many marketers today is that people are too busy for events and webinars. In my experience you only ever get a 50% turnout, maybe I’m just rubbish are organising events and webinars?

One of the (many) reasons why people don’t turn up to these is that people sell / pitch and we don’t like that. Another reason is that you know a company will tell you how great they are, and, to be honest it’s a big yawn. Nobody likes corporate marketing anymore, we have better things to do than list to a talk about your products and a talk from somebody senior who has no idea what he or she is talking about.

Related: 10 Things That Sales People Tell Us About Social Selling

This is where influencer marketing comes in. Influencers have a following and that following probably don’t know about you. So what you do is “stand by” the influencer and hope the followers notice you. It’s sounds difficult, but actually a chinch. The Influencer can guide you, that is along as you have a brief, a set of objectives and the budget. Sorry to say but getting access to somebodies network, that they have spent time and effort to build up, will cost you money.

If the money point was a bombshell, then influencer marketing was never for you.

The critical point is that people are not interested in you, they are interested in the influencer and the win as a brand is that you get access to new people.

The moment you cross the line and start trying to put “corporate marketing” through the Influencer’s network, you have failed. Hopefully, the influencer will just say no, like we would, OR you have missed the point and you are wasting money.