By Lee Odden

Click play on the video above for a highlight of the 2022 B2B Influencer Marketing Report.

With 2022 in full swing, the team and I at TopRank Marketing are happy to share our second report on the B2B Influencer Marketing. As the business world has overcome challenges, pivoted, adjusted and innovated we’ve had a similar experience getting this research completed, analyzed and visualized for the B2B marketing world.

Without question, the pandemic has impacted all aspects of business including B2B marketing, with 74% of respondents in our survey saying they made adjustments to their go- to market strategies.

The good news is that many B2B marketers have emerged from the pandemic as confident: Nearly half of the marketers we surveyed consider their marketing very or extremely successful.

A lot of that confidence comes from a focus on what works, and 96% of marketers plan to keep some or most changes made in the past 2 years, including working with influencers. In fact, 71% indicated influencer marketing became more important during the pandemic.

In times like these, the importance of Influence is critical for B2B brands that need to connect authentically with their buyers and create meaningful experiences. @leeodden #B2BIMReport

So what’s next when it comes to B2B marketing? What do digital-first B2B influencers look like? What are the best practices and technologies for influencer marketing? How important is it for B2B brands to build influence with their employees and senior executives?

This report answers all of those questions and more including insights from some of the top B2B brands in the world including AT&T Business, Salesforce, Dell, IBM, SAP, Oracle, LinkedIn, SAS, Demandbase, Treasure Data, MarketingProfs and of course, our team at TopRank Marketing.

Here is a preview of some of our findings featuring statistics from each section of the report:

B2B Influence Elevated

• 70%+ B2B marketers say influencer marketing become more important due to the pandemic
• 72% of B2B marketers say influencer marketing improves brand reputation
• 33% of B2B marketers say influencer marketing directly impacted revenue growth

Growing Influence from Within

• 76% of B2B marketers make executive influence a priority to build credibility with customers
• 63% of B2B marketers prioritize executive influence to improve executive sales conversations
• 66% of B2B marketers working with executives say their program has been very or extremely successful at increasing brand influence

Profile of a B2B Influencer

• 77% of influencers that B2B marketers work with are industry experts and analysts
• 56% of influencers that B2B marketers work with are internal executives
• 12% of influencers that B2B marketers work with are prospective customers

B2B Influencer Marketing in Action

• 19% of B2B marketers running periodic influencer campaigns are very successful
• 31% of B2B marketers running always-on influencer programs are very successful
• 81% of B2B marketers engage influencers …read more

  Source:: Top Rank Blog

        

  

  Author: Aaron