B2B Excellence - The Global Rise of B2B Influencer Marketing
B2B Excellence is a weekly newsletter that curates the best B2B marketing content from the brightest minds in our industry.
We include the perspectives from a variety of enterprise marketers, stories from fast-growth businesses challenging the conventional ways of working and thinking, and the top 1% of B2B marketers shaping modern-day practices.
For more content, you can follow me on LinkedIn.
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Article 1 - Influencing Business: The Global Rise of B2B Influencer Marketing
Last week Ogilvy delivered the most comprehensive report on B2B influencer marketing, you will not be able to find a richer source of intel in this space.
It unpacked the opinions of over 550 B2B senior decision makers, in 11 countries via 1-2-1 interview styles. You will not find a more reliable source of intel on the future of B2B influencer marketing.
I’m still unpacking this report myself, but here are the key stats that I have already taken away.
There is so much to unpack in this report.
Article 2 - The most horrifying number in B2B is...16%.
Marketing & Sales, one team, one dream.
Apparently not, LinkedIn has dropped yet another industry-shaking piece of research showing the internal misalignment of marketing & sales.
To maximise this dream team duo, both departments should be aligned on who they’re going after, and how, but yet, the overlap in your buyers who are targeted by both departments is just 16%.
The optimal target should be 100%, their research, along with many other papers reinforces the impact of alignment and uplift.
Recommended by LinkedIn
The good news, when there is overlap, it delivers much better performance.
But it often looks like this.
The bigger problem is that even marketing teams are not aligned.
This is a fascinating read, one of which could take up this entire column today.
Conversations, posts or articles I liked this week
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For me, it’s no surprise that 75% of B2B marketers are already leveraging influencers, with 93% planning to increase their investment. Why? Influencer marketing isn't new. It's been working well for for decades. Those of us with roots in PR know that we’ve been influencing the influencers (e.g. media and analysts) since, well….FOREVER. We've also been creating influencers (speaker placements, exec profiles and quotes in trends stories in the media, inclusion in analyst reports, unique POVs, etc). And, we've been collaborating with other influencers to raise profiles -- even paid influencers. For years we’ve been saying this type of program is key for building trust and credibility in the market. I, personally, am glad others are beginning to understand and embrace the importance of influencer marketing. In my opinion, influencer marketing must be very tightly integrated with PR.
Winner of Miss Best Personality 2021, Fashion blogger, Influencer, Make up educator and creator| Featured in Myntra and Republic News
1yHey, Thanks for sharing this insightful article. As a fashion and lifestyle influencer,I really felt proud of myself reading this article. I am happy to know that brands are appreciating influencers and their hard work , yes B2B is surely the future. Nevertheless, one must not underestimate the trust factor that we influencers have built with our audience over the years. So, before implementing any influencer marketing strategy such factors must be taken into consideration. Thank you once again for this insightful article. It was a pleasure reading it . Cheers Dipty Prakash
The Startup Marketer | Head of Marketing @ Captivate Talent | Founder at SummarAIze
1yInfluencer marketing in B2B is definitely the future wave but there are still so many that don't know how to do it right. Too many requirements. Over looking micro creators. Trying to tie the product in too much. But I'm still excited because there is so much opportunity here!
Chief Marketing Officer | CMO | VP Growth | Launching innovative products & brands | Digital marketing | SaaS | e-commerce |
1yThanks for sharing. Some great insights. The trend shows that B2B businesses are starting to understand the need to get their messages across. And drive demand. As opposed to just churning out leads. Which is encouraging.