Influencer marketing has revolutionised the way that brands engage consumers over the past decade. Once viewed as a threat to to the industry, influencing has provided a way to raise awareness and promote purchasing to larger and more targeted audiences. 

But business-to-business (B2B) companies have only recently recognised the value of the creator economy – and their involvement with influencers is just beginning to grow. 

There is no doubt that B2B influencers are rapidly rising in popularity, and the influencers themselves are multiplying by the day. 

Why are they gaining traction? HypeAuditor is a platform that helps marketers discover and analyse influencers on YouTube and Instagram. Its CEO and co-founder Alex Frolov takes us through what the future holds for this nascent field, including some of the challenges of implementing B2B influencer campaigns.

Tapping into the success seen in B2C

The use of influencer marketing in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space has skyrocketed largely due to the high level of consumer trust that creators are able to establish with their audiences. Because creators often share products that align with their personal brand, their promotions can feel more genuine compared with what a brand has to say about itself. This same effect is seen for B2B influencers. 

Just as it is in the B2C space, building strong, long-term relationships with their audiences is the main priority for B2B businesses. Typically, these targets include key decision-making executives at prospective companies. 

Unlike consumers, businesses are likely going to take their time considering business purchases, so maintaining conversations over a longer period of time is key to generating sales in the future. And because businesses often select industry experts or thought leaders as part of their influencer campaigns, their target audiences are usually confident that the product or service being marketed to them is of value and are more likely to follow through with a purchase

Additionally, similar to the rise of nano- and micro-influencers in the consumer space, smaller, more niche B2B audiences can be preferable to a business than a vast audience with less relevance. In fact, TopRank found that 87 percent of B2B brands consider a relevant audience as a must-have when identifying influencers.

As B2B influencers tend to focus on specific verticals, whether it be marketing, fintech, or IT, to name a few, they bring with them this selective social media following that businesses are looking for. 

Challenges of B2B influencer marketing 

Leveraging influencers as part of B2B marketing strategies can yield seriously good results, but there are challenges that come with doing B2B influencer marketing right. 

As mentioned, B2B influencers often specialise in a certain field. Conducting diligent research to ensure influencers not only align with a brand’s mission and have the same target audience but actually understand the product or service they will be promoting, can take up valuable time and company resources. On top of this, evaluating an influencer’s followings to validate that their audiences are legitimate is another onerous task. On every social media platform, accounts can be inactive or even fraudulent (bots, fake profiles, etc.), so it is imperative that influencers are vetted for having genuine followers. 

Adequately communicating with B2B influencers can also prove to be difficult for businesses. Finding the right balance between personalised messages and transparency when it comes to paying, timelines, and content expectations are crucial to the success of securing an influencer partnership.

Many of these challenges can, however, be addressed by leveraging influencer marketing technology to help manage influencer marketing campaigns. Several artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) platforms exist that can allow businesses to streamline the outreach process, analyse influencer accounts (including engagement rates, post impressions, growth metrics, and audience insights), and monitor campaign progress.

The future of the B2B creator economy

Even with the accelerated growth of B2B influencers since the start of the pandemic, B2B influencer campaigns still only account for a fraction of total influencer marketing spending. The number of B2B brands tapping into the creator economy will only continue to increase over the next few years. With this, we will also see the number of those self-identifying as B2B influencers soar, creating an overcrowded pool of B2B influencers that we currently see in the B2C space. 

Employee influencers, that is, employees who promote the products or services for their own company, will be another trend that consistently gains popularity. Employees acting as influencers are trusted sources of information for target audiences and also create positive brand images, potentially even aiding in recruiting initiatives.

Lastly, B2B influencer marketing has the potential to become less formal and more relatable moving forward. Many may think of long, structured LinkedIn posts detailing the benefits of software or professional service when they think of B2B influencing. But soon, more and more businesses will use humour, short-form content like TikTok or Instagram Reels, and memes to make more of an impact on target audiences, engaging with them on a more personal level.

The B2B influencer space is still fairly new and there is a lot that is still uncertain in terms of how it will evolve. However, the one sure thing is that it is here to stay.

Alex Frolov is the co-founder & CEO of HypeAuditor, a company providing influencer analytics and discovery for global brands and agencies. Alex is one of the Top 50 Influential Industry Players according to Talking Influence and is leading the way in improving transparency within the industry. He created the most advanced AI-based fraud-detection system to set the standard for making influencer marketing fair, transparent and effective.