By Lee Odden

Last week I talked about where B2B Marketers are seeing the most impact from influencer marketing efforts based on the research done with hundreds of marketers for the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report. Three of those specific areas where influence can help B2B brands optimize for greater marketing impact include brand, growing the influence of key executives and driving leads / sales.

While just about everyone in B2B Marketing is aware of how working with influencers can add relevance, reach and engagement to content, not everyone makes the connection between their particular business problem and the influence solution. Here are three examples from many that can help you connect the dots.

Build Credible Awareness of Your Brand with Customers

Business Problem: The industry is not aware of your brand, solution or your category.

This is a situation many start-ups, new products or services, re-brands and challenger brands experience in the industry. These awareness issues are also especially present in situations where the target audience is not aware of the problem your company solves. Whether your company or solution is new, your business is in a crowded marketplace or your market isn’t aware of the problem you solve in the first place, credible awareness is essential for getting on the radar and even considered for modern B2B buyers.

B2B Influence Solution: Engage top category influencers to drive conversations about the need for solutions like yours.

There are multiple centers of influence for every business professional including industry publications, professional relationships with peers, industry experts, or special interest groups and associations. Building credible awareness of your solution and/or brand can be expedited in an authentic way by identifying trusted voices in your industry on the topic and finding ways to partner with them.

The outputs of those activations can include any format that matters to your customers from text (white papers, reports, blog posts, articles) to audio (podcasts, social audio), to video (recorded episodes of an ongoing “show”, livestream video, webinars, virtual events).

B2B Marketing Impact: With more credible awareness of the need for your type of solution and your brand, the warmer the market will be to your solutions. While the description of this impact is simple, execution and achievement of it is not.

Grow Thought Leadership of Your People and Brand

Business Problem: Customers value thought leadership from the brands they buy from but do not see your brand as a thought leader.

Even if buyers are aware of your brand and solution, they may not consider it seriously if you are not demonstrating leadership in the strategic direction of the category. Buyers want to know they are working with the best, not just today, but in the future. Thought Leadership for a brand means an active demonstration of strategy that is validated by credible third parties.

B2B Influence Solution: Identify and engage industry experts that already actively publish and promote thought leadership content in your category and partner with them. Find common ground and goals and use …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog

Author: Aaron