How to Build a B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy (And Why Should You Do That Right Now)

LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and other websites are not ordinary social media anymore. Being some of the most visited platforms, these services have already become essential channels for B2B products or services promotion and lead generation.

Is direct advertising on social media the first thing that comes to your mind? Well, PPCs do work, but banner blindness is a well-known challenge today. That’s why the impact of influencers on the audience is much more effective.

The great way to make your B2B social media marketing campaign successful and hit the jackpot is to build a high-quality B2B influencer marketing strategy.

Let’s discover useful tips on finding the right audience, generating leads, and making a bundle.

What Does B2B Influencer Marketing Mean?

In simple terms, B2B influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing when you promote B2B products and services via popular bloggers and opinion makers.

The blogger becomes an influencer only when their audience trusts them. It’s also important to have a significant number of subscribers (the larger the outreach, the better). However, “quality” of subscribers is as significant as their number, if not more.

What are the Benefits of Influencer Marketing for B2B?

In most cases, people associate this type of marketing with B2C sales (any direct-to-consumer goods, like cosmetics, clothing, food, etc.). In reality, influencer marketing works for B2B too, and SaaS companies have been successfully using it over the past years.

Influencer marketing is indeed an effective way to present your B2B product or services to your target audience. Among the benefits that influencer marketing brings to B2B companies, these are the two most obvious ones:

•‎ An Influencer Really Does Influence 

Influencers maintain a special kind of connection with their audiences, and their actions really do have an effect on subscribers’ decision-making. In most cases, their followers trust their favourite bloggers and want to be like them. The subscribers follow their advice and watch their advertisements more attentively.

•‎ Accurate Target Audience

If a few years ago there were a limited number of bloggers, now there are hundreds of thousands. Some of them discuss fashion, while others talk about investments or medicine. The list of topics is unlimited, so if you find an influencer with the appropriate audience, you’re likely to be a winner and attract highly relevant and high-quality leads.

How to Find the Appropriate B2B Influencer?

So, you have already decided you should build a B2B influencer marketing strategy, haven’t you? At first glance, it seems to be quite difficult to find an ideal influencer. However, the real situation gets easier if you use specific tools to help yourself out at some stages.

Let us explain. There are two possible ways to find influencers who ideally match your target audience.

•‎ Look for Them on Social Media (Manually…umgh…)

Many social media platforms have simple, comfortable search tools. You can also consider blogger ratings on specialized websites. However, this method is ineffective if you have sufficiently specific requirements for the blogger’s audience.

The is the second option, which we personally like the most. 🙂

•‎ Automate Influencer Prospecting 

Thanks to AI, building the list of right influencers is no longer a problem. You don’t need to spend plenty of time searching for the appropriate B2B influencers manually. Not in 2024. The market is filled with multiple software that can help you to find influencers fitting your criteria on any platform.

B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy: Key Tips

Here are key tips for building an effective B2B influencer marketing strategy:

•‎ Set Your Goals

Time flies and new marketing strategies replace old ones, but the necessity to set goals remains the same. If you want to find an influencer without an understanding of why you need it and what you’re aimed at – it’s likely to be worthless.

Do you want to drive more leads? Build a specific public image? Something else? For example, some companies decide to use B2B influencer marketing to find new industries that may be interested in their services.

In addition, influencer marketing is a great possibility to improve the company’s reputation. This type of marketing can help to distract the attention of clients from the recent scandal or other unpleasant situation. Building customer loyalty also matters; that’s why it could be an additional goal as well.

So, you got us. Set. Your. Goals.

•‎ Define KPIs

If you are using the services of influencers for the first time to promote your B2B company, you also need to define the KPI. Of course, if you want to improve your public image, it might be difficult to choose the appropriate metric, though it’s still possible (surveys might help).

If you’re looking for new followers or clients, you can take into account the return of investment (ROI) you are receiving from influencers’ ads.

•‎ Choose the Relevant Type of B2B Promotional Campaign

Now, when you have already set your goals and KPI, it’s time to choose the type of your B2B influencer marketing campaign. In other words, what exactly will you offer to your influencer?

There are numerous ways of getting cooperation. In fact, you can even create your ideal form of cooperation by mixing various activities. Here are the most well-known ones:

→ Giveaway. It’s possible to engage new clients with giveaways (run a competition and provide free services or products in exchange for a subscription, like or share).

→ Guest posting. Just ask the influencer to publish your post or mention your business or services to drive leads to your account or website.

→ Discounts. Create a unique discount code for influencers’ subscribers.

→ Affiliates. This type of ad campaign means that influencers get a reward for each sale that they generate.

→ Company’s ambassador. If you realize that some influencers recommend your services even after the ad campaign and they produce new loyal clients for your business, you can consider these bloggers as your company’s ambassadors. It’s one of the best way to increase the number of loyal customers. And it is pleasant for influencers themselves. 🙂

→ Mutually created content. You can also make your advertisement more useful for potential clients. It’s possible to write posts in collaboration with the influencer. It will make influencers’ followers more interested in your content.

There are a lot of B2B promotional campaign types that’s why you should choose the one that best matches your target audience (industry, state, number of employees, annual revenue, and so on).

•‎ Make A Schedule of Publications

It is important to choose your ideal advertising strategy. Some companies want to get results faster, so they publish ads as soon as possible and reach out to influencers 10 times per day. However, if you need long-term media activity, we recommend planning the days of these activities in advance.

Also, it is important to know your potential customers, i.e., influencers’ audience, while using these social media. Try to ask influencers for some statistics. For example, what time do managers or owners of the business you provide services to use social media most often, etc. So, be fully involved in the process.

•‎ Start the Campaign

All done? Go ahead! Agree on influencers’ terms, define the benefits they will get (that’s not necessarily money), and start the campaign.

Remember, it’s important to track your KPI from the very beginning because you may be forced to adjust your strategy in order to increase the effectiveness of your advertisement.

To sum up

B2B Influencer marketing does work. You just need to build a high-quality and effective strategy to boost your B2B sales. If you follow the above-mentioned recommendations and use the tools that will help you find the right influencers to collaborate with, you will hit the jackpot easily.

Good luck! 🙂

More useful content on our social media: