By now, most of us in Marketing or Sales are all to familiar with the massive growth of “Influencer Marketing”. People (often kids) with a knack for snapping catchy photos and sniping whitty phrases have found fortunes beyond their dreams in promoting products and services to their “friends”. If you are like me, it all seems… well… pretty inauthentic. And yet, entire brands launch solely on the buzz generated by such programs.

You might be thinking…

“Yeah, yeah… but that is B2C lifestyle stuff… I have a serious B2B business to grow and influencer marketing doesn’t work in B2B!”

I AGREE. Influencer Marketing Does Not Work for B2B

Inauthentic sales tactics don’t work in B2B. The people who choose your product over another have major pressure. Sometimes their job security depends on the choices they make! They can smell that fake buzz from a mile away and are not motivated by anything more than their need and if they TRUST the company offering it.

BUT, I also DISAGREE.

Let me explain..

B2B influencer marketing can work when you engage the right influencers… Your sales team!

Have you taken a look at their Professional Networks lately? Most have LinkedIn accounts… some with “500+ contacts”, and others are strong on Twitter. And depending on what your business offers, even Facebook or Pinterest can contain prospects.

Let’s take a deeper look at LinkedIn. Here, their contacts are often a well-curated mix of prior college friends, previous co-workers, professional contacts… ALL POTENTIAL PROSPECTS.

Through this lens, I’ve noticed that these high-value channels are almost never nurtured. At best there will be a “John likes this” post every once and a while. Rarely is there anything unique that presents the key-value offered by the Company whose product or service they actually seek to sell.

So, how does your activity feed look  ;-)?

This typically happens for 2 reasons:

  1. They are very busy pursuing sales leads, networking, and supporting existing customers.
  2. They are generally not creative people and get stuck trying create posts that are interesting and on point.

What if you could make it super simple for these team members to really engage and nurture the connections in their B2B social networks?

Imagine the possibilities when you enable your team to share smart campaign messaging on a daily / weekly basis. And, the value of being in the right place at the right time when your prospect is ready to become a customer!