In B2B land, influencer marketing is still a bit of a head-scratcher for most folks. Just like always, we’re kinda slow to jump on the cool stuff we see happening in the D2C world. We come up with excuses like our sales cycles are longer, it’s hard to measure, it doesn’t vibe with our brand, or some other random resistance to change. But guess what? There are some B2B brands out there totally killing it by teaming up with influencers and making killer content that actually drives revenue. This week, we’ve got Brianna Doe hanging out with us to spill the beans on how these B2B brands are making it big with influencers and how you can dip your toes into the game. Don’t miss out!
Podcast Transcript
You’re listening to the Digital Banter Podcast, the show where we tackle the challenges of B2B marketing head on and aren’t afraid to tell it like it is. Join us weekly as we talk to industry leaders, explore opportunities that impact the bottom line, and rev your company’s marketing engine with actionable insights and tips.
It’s time to burn the old B2B playbook and build something that makes an impact. Here are your hosts, Andy and James.
What’s up everybody? We are back for another episode of Digital Banter Live. Joining us today is Brianna Doe, co-founder and CMO of Verbatim. Brianna, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I’m really excited. Okay, so verbatim, tell us a little bit about it, just because like the name itself is a little.
You know, obscure, but I think it’s important that we [00:01:00] get some, some understanding about what you do as an agency and consultancy, but also the background of it. Definitely. Yeah. So we chose an obscure, but hip name on purpose because we’re really cool. And the goal of verbatim is to help mission driven brands and entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, um, move the needle and start building their businesses in a way that makes the most sense to them.
So we specialize in growth, marketing, content, marketing. Personal branding. So all things LinkedIn and influencer marketing primarily on LinkedIn. And that’s broad because at least right now we’re customizing the way we work with each client specifically. Um, we can come in as just like a strategy and thought partner.
Or literally become your in house team or an extension of your existing team and manage all the day to day execution and implementation. So when Alexis and I launched my business partner, we thought a lot about who we wanted to work with and what kind of brands you want to work with. And it was really important for us to focus less on the industry.
We don’t really care if you’re B2B or B2C or [00:02:00] like health and wellness or a SAS product. It’s more about what your goals are, what your mission is, and if we’re aligned on values. Very cool. And I know, you know, the angle of today’s conversation is around influencer marketing. And I think James and I would consider you an Influencer on your own, which is a good background and jumping off point for today’s conversation too.
Now I will argue with James’s description of today’s event that he wrote up about, you know, being slow to jump on the bandwagon and things like that. Uh, so let’s talk a little bit about, uh, you know, discussing the takeoff of influencer marketing, especially in the realm of B2B. Yeah, I think it’s, it’s interesting to watch, right.
Because we’ve always seen it for as long as I can remember with D2C. You’ve got. primarily where my background has been to, at least for the past seven or eight years, was DTC mark, DTC influence marketing. You see it on Instagram. You saw it on Twitter. Not so much anymore. You see it on YouTube and there’s so much resource.
There’s so many resources about it. There’s so [00:03:00] many ways for brands to engage with influencers and content creators to find them to. Like build partnerships and long term relationships. I feel like for a while, the idea of B2B influencer marketing was weird. People just didn’t really associate the two.
Um, but it’s, to me, there aren’t that many differences, right? Like business to business, sure. But you’re still selling to people and people like to connect with other people. And so if you can build trust and credibility with your target audience, through people that they trust. I think it’s a really, really effective tool.
That’s very similar to what we talked about with Jared Fuller last week during Nearbound, you know, how do you surround yourselves by those that are closest to your customers and kind of take it from there as a conversation point. Sorry, James. I know we jumped over it. No, it’s interesting. Cause the, I think one of the things that I wanted to get into is like what some of the differences are between what you’ve seen on the DTC side and what works on.
Right. Like, you know, I think that we’ve all seen on [00:04:00] LinkedIn at this point, some posts put out by a creator that is to me, obviously, uh, promoted, right. And like, there’s, I mean, there’s rules around that too, that you have to abide by as far as like making sure there’s something that’s promoted versus something that is like a true.
Partnership with a creator, co creating content. And, you know, basically there’s like different levels of it. Um, I guess like my question to you is like, what are some of the differences that you see that more so like make a difference in B2B that. You know, maybe the play doesn’t work as well on the DTC side or maybe vice versa.
Well, on one hand, so it’s really taken off, I would say this year and maybe a few years before this too, it’s been slowly growing and I’ve seen it so much more this year. Um, but that being said, it still feels new to a lot of people, both to the audiences who are being. Targeted, but the sponsored content and the influencers that are working in this [00:05:00] space.
And so when I think about DTC, I feel like it’s easier for it to feel natural. Brands work with influencers for sponsored posts, of course, but like you mentioned, like co creating content, um, having them speak at events for them or record content for them, like whatever it looks like, it’s really broad and brands are really open to partnering different ways.
The feeling around B2B influencer marketing is like, we’re still figuring it out. Right. And so you just start with sponsor posts. It’s just the simplest way. It makes the most sense. You are paying an influencer basically for their audience for posts and that’s it, and it’s a great way to dive in and test the waters without fully committing to a program.
Um, but it’s like you mentioned, it’s also really obvious if it’s inauthentic, like if influencers literally never used the product before or doesn’t care about it or, you know, just doesn’t actually. Resonate with the company or align with the company. So that’s one thing that we as marketers really needs to be cognizant of is not [00:06:00] just doing it because we can, because we see it working for other companies, but building out campaigns and programs really intentionally and with the right influencers in the right space.
I think it was a good point though, that you kind of allude to is. The fact that B2B, you just need to be more creative in, in how you do everything. You can’t be boring. Number one, you have to resonate with your customers. And it’s a lot more difficult to do that when you don’t necessarily have like a physical product or a well known service, which great.
You sit ship somebody, something you unbox it. Great. There’s your influencer play on, on D to C, but on B2B, you know, yes, I will blanket statement. What I’m about to say here, but there’s so many boring marketers out there that can’t be creative in how they go to market and distribute their message. And I think that’s one hang up that they really have of with influencers is, okay, well, how am I going to do this effectively?
But how do I creatively do this? Because it’s not as easy as it is on the D to C side of things. [00:07:00] That’s a really good point. And it’s, it reminds me of the video James just posted talking about this event, which made me laugh out loud. You can’t just have somebody. Like unbox their Salesforce subscription and make this fun little video.
It’s just not the same. It’s a different type of product. And I think, I mean, we’ve all seen it this year, right? Like budgets are being slashed, have been slashed. Teams are bare bones. Like marketers might want to take risks and be creative, but they have a leadership team to answer to who might just not be open to it.
You know, we don’t have the money for it, or we just need to do what’s been working, like just stick to our playbook, but you need that creativity and influence marketing otherwise. Honestly, you might as well just stick to your blog or what’s already been working. It’s only worth it if you’re willing to really, really get creative.
So I wanted to dive into, you mentioned like pairing, finding the right people being like super important. I think that that is probably what B2B [00:08:00] marketers struggle with the most. Like, how do you find the right creator who has The reach in your niche that you want and kind of how do you validate their following in their audience to make sure that that’s the right fit before you even reach out?
Yeah, that is a million dollar question. Um, I will do a shameless plug. You can work with verbatim and we will find them for you. But more importantly, I think regardless of whether you work with an agency or you’re doing it on your own before anything else, you need to define. You need to define who you’re trying to target, and I’m sure most marketers will say, we already know, we know who our ICP is, but think about it in terms of how that target audience shows up on LinkedIn and who they’re following, who they trust, um, really, really define who you want to target and how.
And in what ways you can do that effectively before you even talk to a single influencer from there. The interesting [00:09:00] thing is that when I think about like, Instagram or tick tock, you have so many platforms that source these kind of partnerships for you. Um, when my business partner and I were getting ready to launch, we did a lot of research to see like who our competitors were and nobody had a LinkedIn option.
It was Instagram, tick tock, YouTube, Twitter, and like maybe Pinterest, but there’s no, there’s really no easy way. Like to find content creators in one place, you have to search for them through hashtags or just by just being on LinkedIn and scrolling. Um, so what I would recommend is by starting with defining your target audience and who you want to reach, start looking at your decision makers and who they’re following.
Um, what content are they engaging with if they create content, who’s commenting on their posts, like, see who they’re building relationships with and then see how they have engagement. Like, how are they doing? Do they have an audience? Um, have they built trust? I would also say, once you have 1 influencer, you can get referrals, [00:10:00] especially with B2B.
It’s such a small. Industry when it comes to influencer marketing. So they will know content creators in a similar niche or industry, and they’ll connect you to them. It’s really easy to form partnerships that way. And if all else fails, just post about it. Like say that you’re trying to start doing influencer marketing and you’re interested in working with content creators who are passionate about your product and align with your values.
Those are really easy grassroots ways.
So I think like one thing that is obviously trending right now is AI, which creates questionable authenticity when it comes to any, honestly, like any form of content and creators and the content that’s put out by creators, like, how has that changed how you think Has it changed how you validate and look at creators?
Yeah. Cause you have AI and then you also have a lot more [00:11:00] engagement pods lately. And so people are able to manufacture engagement and make it look like they built trust. And it’s really easy to do that now. Um, which is frustrating and it makes it difficult because you can think that you’re partnering with the right people and you’re not.
So. What I’d recommend is not just looking, when you go to look at an influencer, don’t just look at like their last few posts, see what their trends have been over the past 30 to 60 days. Do you see consistent engagement? Um, do you see engaging and interesting content? And also just how does it feel? Does it feel robotic?
Because if it does, you don’t really want to work with them either. You want to work with somebody who has an authentic voice, whatever it looks like for them, and who feels really comfortable creating content. Um, I would also say. When you do start working with influencers have you should have contracts in place and I strongly recommend having a clause in there regarding pods and AI generated content we do so for verbatim.
We have the influencer [00:12:00] creator network that you can join and there is a contract associated with it, even though we’re not exclusive and it very clearly states that if you sign this and you join the program, you are agreeing that you will never Stafford Like join an engagement pod in any form. And if you do, it’s the reason for us to remove you from the program.
So having that safeguard in place also just makes it a lot safer for brands. Um, cause we are seeing an uptick in pods and AI. So define engagement pods, James. I mean, all three of us know what that means, but true. Define it. So an engagement pod is. Short answer, an engagement pod is something that you join as a content creator that you typically pay for access to and you’re trading likes and comments.
So it works in one of two ways. You’re in a pod with, let’s say, 50, 75 people, other content creators, and every time one of you posts, you, like, post the link, and everybody else, like, comes and engages with it. So it’s like. Great post, or thanks for sharing, things like that. The other way is when it’s not really [00:13:00] trading it.
You just pay, and once you have a post, the pod basically sends like an army of just hundreds, maybe thousands of fake like bots and comments, to really beef up the engagement on your post. Which is also a good way to see how authentic somebody’s engagement is. Just look at the comments. Like if you’re not actually seeing real conversations.
And there, if you’re seeing a lot of the same messaging, it’s a sign, it’s not a definite sign, but it’s a red flag. I feel like there’s another, it’s not really a flag, but with the proliferation and launch of like thought leader ads on LinkedIn, you know, you wonder how you talk about buying vanity metrics, right?
Well, how many of the posts that I might come across when I’m. Trying to research influencers are boosted up by them running their own thought leader ads or on behalf of another Organization and just getting that pay to play piece of things that boosts up, you know, likes and vanity metrics It probably has comments associated with it, too Don’t get me wrong, but like how it comes back to [00:14:00] that authentic versus inauthentic approach to driving and engaging the market, too I think right?
Yeah, it’s there’s so many Obstacles lately, as people are trying to like, boost that engagement and position themselves in certain ways online, the thought leadership ads are an interesting one because when you look at like a company page. It’s really transparent. You can go to the ad section and see what ads they’re running.
As far as I know, unless I don’t have the functionality at LinkedIn does not have that same functionality for personal profiles. So it’s a bit of a gray area in terms of how you check it. And right now I don’t think you can actually see, cause we run some thought leader ads through like myself and Andy on behalf of the company.
I do not think that those posts show in the ad section for the brand. No, they don’t. Really interesting. I’m surprised they don’t. Yeah. Honestly. So I know we’ve been talking about LinkedIn influencers as kind of the primary angle here, but I’m curious to get your thoughts, Brianna. Like there’s so many industries that exist out there [00:15:00] where their target audiences do not frequent LinkedIn enough to justify that being the primary channel.
Does that mean that influencer marketing doesn’t work or isn’t a play for them? I mean, I think like For example, let’s think about like lawyers as a target audience or CPAs or anybody in that finance perspective, right? They don’t, they don’t go on LinkedIn to read content most likely, um, or they frequent enough to justify it being the primary.
So I’m just curious to, to hear your thoughts on does that mean influencers dead or is it just a different way of looking at it then? That’s a really good question. Short answer. No, that doesn’t mean influence marketing is not a good. That’s why it’s so important to get creative on how you do it. It doesn’t have to be, and it shouldn’t be, just, a batch of sponsored posts, um, on LinkedIn.
Typically what you see and what you’re starting to see more of, people that create content on LinkedIn specifically are also diversifying their reach. So they have newsletters, they might have a blog, they are on [00:16:00] TikTok or YouTube or other channels. Um, they’re also engaging online in other ways. And so if you have a lawyer, Who does create content on LinkedIn?
Actually, I follow one and he’s really funny. He also has a newsletter and he has other tools to create and distribute content. Um, so what’s most important is when you take that first step of identifying how you want to reach your target audience. Keep that in mind, like LinkedIn posts might not be the best fit, but the influencer or the EC on LinkedIn.
See what his engagement is and open rates on his newsletter. Do you want to co create content with him? Should you do like blog content or video content with them? So be open to finding influencers and content creators through different platforms and then seeing how you can diversify how you work with them.
Yeah. It goes back to everything that James, you and I talk about all the time. It’s like, where does your market hang out online and what do they consume? If you don’t do that baseline. Research like you’re talking about Brianna, like forget about LinkedIn, forget about influencers. Like you have to [00:17:00] know your market and your audience.
First and foremost, if you don’t know that, then you’re just tossing shit out there and hoping it sticks. Exactly. And that’s why it’s also important to think about, think about the platform that you’re trying to reach them on. So I’m in marketing. However, when I’m on Instagram, I don’t really want to be hit with ads about marketing products because I’m trying to just vibe, you know, like I’m not in work mode.
So keeping that in mind where I hang out and what I’m, what my goals or objectives are with each platform is really important. James buys all his fishing supplies off of Instagram and YouTube. I mean, it’s so true. I have like, you know, I have. Designed my feeds to based on each platform to fit a certain thing.
Right? Like I use Facebook for family engagement and stuff like that. Instagram, I literally use for like shopping for fishing stuff and other hobbies and LinkedIn is all the work stuff, right? And I don’t touch any of the other platforms. But TikTok is all the funny stuff that you just share with TikTok.
I don’t have, I’ve never posted to though. [00:18:00] So it’s like not, Oh, okay. So what your posts. Okay. I see what you’re saying. Well, it’s no, it is also like curating my feed. Like you can like, and engage with certain things. And then the algorithm serves you more things that you want to see. Right. So like, I have it geared that way.
I was perfectly curated. So I feel, yeah. Yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s, it’s, there’s work that goes into that, right? Yeah. It takes time and effort. I want to circle back to something you mentioned before, Brianna, about contracts, right? When you’re about to engage an influencer. And I think one thing that we talked about when we were kind of prepping for this episode is how do you know what to pay an influencer?
Like what is their compensation model or how do you even start that conversation and start to plan for it from a budgeting perspective? Yeah. Yeah. So. What I like to tell brands and creators is a great baseline to start with is one to two percent of their follower count as a baseline. Now there’s a lot that goes into that.
There are a lot of variables. Do you want a text only post? Do you want them to record and edit [00:19:00] video content? Um, are they right? Are they co creating, let’s say like a blog post with you? So they’re doing research and then writing and You know, editing. Um, is it a bundle of posts? There are a lot of things to consider, but it’s great to just start with that as a baseline.
And then from there, you can get creative and work with them on how that compensation. It’s actually delivered. Some brands that I’ve worked with and that we’re working with do a flat rate and then pair that with a cost per impressions. So let’s say it’s to be specific. Let’s say it’s like 500 for the flat rate.
And then for every 1000 impressions, it’s like 5. So it’s a great way for brands to kind of have a baseline, um, but still be open to like engaging the creator more to make sure that they’re also invested in. You know, the post performing you can do flat rates. There are also brands that do like affiliate marketing too.
Whatever you do, what I would keep in mind is. Make sure you’re asking [00:20:00] yourself, even after this content creator publishes the post or releases the video, how do I incentivize them to actually be interested in the post’s performance or in the content’s performance? Um, doesn’t necessarily have to be monetary, but it’s just important to keep that in mind.
In my opinion. It’s interesting because it’s almost like a hybrid between What you would pay somebody to create content versus like what their reach is. Right. So you’re basically paying them for the reach. And then there’s a whole separate piece that’s based on the actual content production itself.
Right. Like you could hire a ghostwriter to do 1, 500 for a blog post, right? Like there’s that level of effort that has to go into creating whatever that piece of content is plus the reach that you’re getting out of it. Yeah. Which is, you bring up a really good point because I mean, you’re not just paying for.
It’s not like you’re paying for like a billboard, right? You’re paying this person specifically because you value their voice and the trust that they built with their audience. [00:21:00] So whether it’s ghostwriting a blog or whatever it is, like making sure that you’re allowing their natural voice to come through is great when it comes to building long term partnerships.
And I feel like that’s, that’s like a hurdle that in the B2B space, like you just kind of need to blow through because there’s so much emphasis out there on maintaining brand consistency, brand voice, uh, owning the narrative and deciding what that narrative is. And I think when you are ready to step into the influencer game, you got to remove that, like you have to, it goes again, I don’t want to kill the horse here of authenticity, but like.
It does come back to that because you can’t, you can’t do that and still expect an authentic voice. That’s going to resonate with that influencers audience. Exactly. And they, to be blunt, like they don’t work for you. They’re not your employee. They’re not your marketer. So I, [00:22:00] and also to be more blunt, I’ve in the past spoken to brands who want us to do a brand partnership.
But wanted to basically just give me content to posts. And it’s just like, well, first of all, no. Also, if you’re just going to pay me like I’m a billboard, that’s not the point. You can just run an ad. So it’s the whole point is to let the content creator do their thing. Um, and write the way that they, or write or record a video the way that they know is best for their audience.
Yeah. There’s a reason they’re called content creators because they are creating. You’re influencer until you have influence. That should be on a t shirt. I think I stole it from somewhere. I’m not taking credit for that. I stole it from somewhere. I’ll have it on my website. I got one more. I mean, one thing I want to encourage anybody who has any questions, feel free to like turn this into an AMA in the comments.
I know Brianna had one of those before and absolutely crushed it. I’m going to ask like one more question that I think is like really important for the B2B side. Because what in B2B we have to measure everything. We don’t really [00:23:00] Brands don’t really come to us and say like, Oh, we want to grow awareness, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like that’s usually never the goal. Usually you’re, uh, you know, slapped with a question from your CFO of like, how many leads did we get from this? How much revenue did it drive, et cetera. Right. So I guess my high level question is like, how do you go about measuring all of this? Yeah. Cause that’s a good point.
If you don’t have a strong understanding of how you’re going to define success. It still is pretty pointless. You’re not, you’re going to end the campaign and not know if it actually worked or not, or know what you’re looking for. So even if you’re running your first influence marketing campaign as a test, you should still define success at the beginning.
Um, there are a lot of ways you can measure it. It’s funny. There are some B2B brands that I have talked to and worked with who were focused solely on awareness, um, or like increased interest. And even with that, that’s great, but we still need to define that. So is it, I’ll just list off some ways. It could be, [00:24:00] Increase website traffic.
So make sure you’re giving each content creator campaign URL with UTM tracking so that you can actually attribute traffic in the right place. So increase website traffic, increase demos or signups, um, direct revenue and sales depending on Like what your sales cycle is, is it a product that people can just go purchase?
Um, you can also look at general engagement. So if you’re running it on LinkedIn, are you seeing more traffic to your LinkedIn page? Are you seeing more engagement with a small company like your CEO or your founder? Those are all really great ways. Honestly, I Prefer to do a hybrid where direct sales and revenue are great, but like demos, like demo signups and anything you can relate to a waitlist, I think is a really great way to track it because.
It’s interesting being on the content creation side and the marketing side, like, as a marketer, I want to [00:25:00] say, well, I ran this campaign and I drove, we drove 50K in revenue. That’s the goal, right? Or more, obviously, it’s the goal, but I still kind of put that on the marketer, right? Is your website optimized for this traffic?
Is your website optimized for, like, the leads that are coming in? Um, Sorry, I just thought comment come through. So, yeah, it’s really important to make sure that you have everything in place for when that engagement and web traffic starts coming through and be open.
I think another, just to add on top of that, I mean, this has been watered down, but any kind of like company level demographic insights to, from the creator is important, especially when we think about B2B and that ABM mentality, you know, if we’re seeing an account, Show engagement and, and why and viewing the content that a creator is putting out there.
And then all of a sudden that account spikes in the [00:26:00] CRM or enters the CRM. I mean, I think there’s that indirect relationship that you can at least anecdotally apply to measurement too. Exactly. Yes. And for those who don’t know, you can get that information. From the influencer, I would recommend seven days after their, if it’s a post after the post has gone live, have them go into their post analytics and pull everything like locations, job titles, seniority, all of that.
It’s really helpful context. Yeah. And working that into the contract too, to make sure that you don’t get burned on the brands. Yes. I am always a fan of comprehensive, thorough contracts. So I want to throw a question out there, uh, that just came through from Gabriel. Uh, Alvarez, um, would you recommend running a full funnel campaign with an influencer?
And I think if you can just kind of expound upon that of how that would work too. I would not, not recommend it. I think, okay, short answer is the longer a partnership is with an influencer. One, the [00:27:00] more times their audience will see your brand, see the name, start to recognize it. Two, the more trust you’ll build because they keep seeing that name.
So the longer the partnership can be, the more interest and engagement you’re going to see if it’s the right fit. If you’ve chosen the right influencer or group of influencers to work with, I think that’s a great, great play. Um, so I would recommend it and I would be open to defining that with the influencer, like give them.
Your goals and what you see, if they don’t understand funnels, for example, like what you want to accomplish with each stage of the funnel and work with them to create that content. Um, it also goes back to what I said at the beginning. And I think in the middle, like be open to expanding it outside of just sponsored posts, like let them become a part of the actual marketing process and the marketing campaign.
And then another question that just came through is on the flip side of this, on the influencer side. So how do you think personality wraps into. Growing [00:28:00] your initial audience base.
It’s a good question. I mean, I, I mean, I think you have to be likeable. Nobody really wants to tell somebody that they don’t like and just don’t connect to right. People, I would not follow somebody that I didn’t connect to on some level. Um, and so I think it makes sense that personality plays a factor.
I’m laughing because I also, I think with my content specifically, when I think about like my experience on LinkedIn. A friend of mine actually pointed this out. I don’t talk a lot about my personal life. You don’t know a lot about me. You don’t know if I have kids, if I’m married, um, like anything like that, but you know a lot about my career journey.
So when we think about personality, I think that’s also something to consider. You don’t have to share everything about yourself in order to seem like transparent or to seem [00:29:00] likeable. You can share whatever you’re comfortable with. But yeah, I, I just, I think you have to be somebody that people can connect to.
And that being said, your communities. On the platform, it’s just a matter of them finding you and you finding them. Yeah, I think that connect. I’m curious what you two think. Well, I was gonna say, I think that connection piece that you just mentioned at the end is huge. Yeah. Because if I can, I wanna get value out of whoever I follow.
I want to make sure that it’s curated right. I don’t accept everybody that reaches out to me on LinkedIn. Like if I know a pitch slap is coming, I can smell it a mile away. I’m not accepting you. Sorry. Yeah, . But that being said, like most of the people I follow and connect with, I’ve never met in person. I, I have no idea.
What their true personality is, but I feel something as a connection when I read their content. Maybe I agree with it. Maybe I disagree with it, but I respect it. And I think that’s the biggest thing is that connection piece of letting a personality really grow into what is the connection that you’re trying to make [00:30:00] with your market and your audience following.
I think a personality can make or break a person. Honestly. Um, I I’m actually a firm believer that like People who host podcasts, like the reason that you follow, there’s two reasons you listen to a podcast, right? You’re interested in the topic or you actually follow the person who is running the podcast.
Like I have 10 podcasts that I listened to. I listened to, I just check to see if there’s something that is actually relevant to me. And then I have two or three that are people who I respect in the industry. And, uh, you know, almost like follow at a personal level too. I mean, you mentioned like. Talking about like, you kind of keep your personal life out of it.
Sometimes I like that because it makes it relatable and being relate, especially. I think in our space, like it’s, I want something that’s relatable, right? Like I want somebody who has gone through the stuff that I’m going through now [00:31:00] as work their way through it and want to be, and like, you almost feel that level with it, even though like you have no idea who the person is, I’m like, we talk about certain people that we follow on LinkedIn by their first name.
And I’m like, these people have no idea who we are, but it also says like you have like, There is like a, you have created almost like a personal connection with these people because of. Who they are, how they carry themselves and what their personality is. That’s a really good point. And it’s an interesting line to walk to, right?
Like some people see transparency, like being transparent online, being authentic as sharing a lot about both their personal and professional lives. Some are deeply. Private. Some, you could argue, might overshare, whatever that looks like. So it’s, it’s interesting, but I think you can, like I said before, you can find your community, and community can find you.
Like Andy said, [00:32:00] it’s just about how you want to connect, and what you want to connect on. All right. So last question is we have our magic wand and if you can wave it, what’s the biggest problem in B2B marketing right now that you would fix?
I’m sorry. Was that a wand? Like an actual wand? Yeah. It’s my son’s. It’s not one of the Harry Potter. It is a Harry Potter wand. I swear to God. I don’t know if you guys have been bombarded with these ads. Sorry. I’m going to go off on a small tangent. Then you can answer your question. They make like the Harry Potter wands now that you can actually like shoot.
Explosives out of, I don’t know if they’re really explosives, but they’re like burning pieces of. Paper and he wants me to do that and like shoot across the room at my, yeah, I do. I don’t see a problem. I think it’d be fine. The couch right underneath it might have a problem. I mean, in all the ads, they’re using it in the house.
So I think it’s gotta be like relatively safe. It’s like pop rocks. Remember pop rocks? Like you go to the County fair and those scare me to this day. So now that you bring those up, I don’t know if I’m [00:33:00] sold. All right. Sorry. Anyways. Biggest problem. Sorry. Yeah, that was it. Yes. So biggest problem would be to be, I think we’ve all seen it this year and last year to really since COVID.
Budgets keep getting slashed. Like people are just, like I said earlier, just working with bare bones, budgets, teams, resources. And the first thing to go is creativity. In my opinion, you just need to do what you know is going to work. Even if it’s outdated, you’re just going to do it and just focus on that.
But we hear it all the time. I don’t know if I fully agree with the sentence, like B2B is boring. I think we just need to inject unique creativity into it. But in order to do that, you have to be willing to, and have the buy in from your leadership team. To make, like, strategic calculated risks, I think influencer marketing in the B2B space is still a considered one.
But you can still define success. Like you can still have goals attached to it, but you have to get creative. You have to think outside the [00:34:00] box and it’s not like you have to reinvent the wheel, but make your own wheel, you know, and just be open to seeing what creativity looks like for your brand and for your audience.
All set. All right. So bring us on home with three actual takeaways for today’s listeners. Three takeaways. One, even if you’re running experiments with influencer marketing, define success upfront. Don’t try and define it halfway through the campaign. Or at the end, you’re gonna have a hard time getting buy in from your leadership team if you don’t, if you don’t align at the beginning, and you’re gonna have a hard time defining success for yourself and for the influences that you work with to get really clear on what you’re trying to achieve and what your goals are, um, to do as much research as you can on the influencers that you want to work with.
So, like I said, at the beginning, or near the beginning, understand your audiences, what kind of content they engage with, who they trust, and then make sure that the influences that you want to work with. Don’t just have manufacturing engagement [00:35:00] or just haven’t actually built trust. Like see how their engagement is, see how you vibe with their content, how your brand aligns with their values and make sure it’s a good fit.
It can still be a test, but there should be initial criteria to define that. And three, I would say get creative on what influence marketing looks like. It does not have to look like just sponsored posts. Um, just today I released a, like a template of a company personal branding policy that I worked with.
I worked with on, I worked on with a company, um, that focuses on like business development. And that was really fun. And it’s a great way to engage with influencers and, um, build trust with their audience outside of just a one time post. All right. Well, Brianna, thank you so much for joining us today. How can people connect with you and learn more about Verbatim?
Well, thanks for having me. And you can find me on LinkedIn. I basically live on here. I’m nowhere else. Um, so you can find me on LinkedIn website is weareverbatim. com. And if [00:36:00] you’re looking for an agency. We’d love to work with you. Awesome. Well, check out verbatim. com. Like, subscribe, check out this episode and more on our streaming platforms.
Catch you guys next time.
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