Ever since influencer marketing as a practice took off, its primarily been dedicated to businesses or brands that cater to consumers directly. But what if a brand or a company wanted to give influencer marketing in the B2B space a try? While B2B might be slightly different than the B2C space, to make a B2B influencer marketing campaign successful, marketers should adopt an approach which is quite similar to B2C campaigns, albeit in a bit more innovative way. This is important because B2B influencer marketing campaigns target those with deep industry knowledge; the kind of individuals that can influence corporate buyers and seamlessly tap into key business-to-business conversations.

A research report claims that 48% of B2C companies are running ongoing influencer marketing programs vs. only 11% of B2B brands. Nearly half of B2B brands are still in the experimentation stage, according to the study, which was conducted by Traackr and TopRank Marketing.

Here below we list down a couple of things you need to keep in mind while strategising a B2B influencer marketing campaign.

1. Increase the duration of the campaign
   Considering a lot of factors go into B2B purchase decisions, including multiple decision-makers, bulk purchasing and much more, the impact of B2B influencer marketing campaigns takes longer to come to fruition. According to experts, marketers shouldn’t expect results from a B2B influencer marketing campaigns for at least 6 months.
   
2. Choosing the right influencers for your campaign 
   We cannot stress enough how important it is to choose the right influencers to work on your marketing campaign. It is of great importance to work with an influencer who is an expert in the particular field, so as to convince the thought leaders in your industry about your brand and/or products. Focusing just on an influencer’s social media footprint will hurt a brand in the longer run. Instead, partner with industry experts to co-create content.
   
3. Take a collaborative approach with your influencers
   While a brand wants to amplify its messaging and values to potential customers, the priority shouldn’t be having the influencer just parrot the brand messaging verbatim. Instead, collaborate with them to create more engaging content to identify new channels for reaching the target audience.
   
4. Invest in case studies
   Involving experts in case studies can help win more likes and shares—promoting the content is in influencers’ self-interest because they get to share their success stories. This also benefits the customers greatly, as they get a thoroughly researched report to finalise the purchasing, considering most companies allocate budgets for bulk purchases like this.

B2B influencer marketing can be a tremendous boon to any brand that positions itself for the B2B market, and many of the best practices are similar to how you’d handle B2C programs. But there are important differences you should keep in mind. The goal is to build on whatever success the brand already has. By deliberately creating a program that locates potential influencers, builds relationships with them, and capitalizes on the benefits of those relationships, B2B companies have the potential to create a new level of sales and loyalty for their products.