Inside Influence 12: Paul Dobson from Citrix on The Secret Sauce of B2B Influence: Authenticity

As with most marketing, there is no silver bullet to B2B influencer marketing but there are some essential best practices and strategies that have been proven time and time again. To uncover that secret sauce of working with B2B influencers, Episode 12 of the Inside Influence Show features Paul Dobson, Senior Director, Social and Influencer Marketing at Citrix. In addition to a few highlights from the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing report, we discussed Paul's experience working with influencers at Citrix as well as:

• Where influencer marketing fits in the mix at Citrix
• Tips on being great at influencer marketing for a B2B technology brand
• Influencer Marketing vs. Influencer Relations
• The impact of influencer marketing on customer experience
• Advice on starting an influencer marketing program at a B2B brand
• How to get executive buy-in to an influencer marketing program
• How to decide which influencers to work with
• Examples of influencer engagement
• Opportunities to grow influence with B2B brand executives
• How agencies can be most helpful to B2B brands with influencer marketing
• Predictions of influencer marketing in 2021

See the full video interview of Inside Influence Episode 12 with Paul Dobson here: Below is a highlight transcription of our discussion. Tell us about your role at Citrix and where influencer marketing fits? Paul: I've been on quite a journey through Citrix. I started off in the PR side of things. So, to some extent I've always been working with with influencers. The media, then went into analyst relations, so the Gartners and Forresters of the world and now social and influencer influencer marketing as well. I really enjoy this aspect of my role and, you know, sitting in corporate communications means getting good exposure to a range of influencers that have gotten me here in my career. Being head of social media means that I also have a lot closer ties to the marketing organization and how we execute that. So it's really the best of both worlds as far as I'm concerned. Influencer marketing is an interesting split sometimes between PR and comms or marketing. You seem to be in a sweet spot. Paul: Absolutely. So it's kind of interesting the way that we're approaching marketing, et cetera now is we're really evolving it somewhat. The barriers between the teams are starting to break down a little bit more effectively. We're really forming pods and tiger teams around certain campaigns and projects. It helps to be able to understand what's going on elsewhere and it is a real sweet spot because obviously the influence has come from many pools, not just a traditional B2B influencers. In the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, you were named as one of the top 20 influencer marketing professionals. What does it take to be at the top of your game when it comes to B2B marketing? With influencer marketing? Paul: It's an interesting question because I think as far as influencers are concerned, everything has to come back to the corporate strategy and what you're trying to achieve with what you're doing with influencers. Everything has to go back to that when you're designing your program. For us, it was reaching out and attracting new audiences. I'll talk about HR as one audience which is not a typical audience for an enterprise B2B technology company. We wanted to showcase our technology in a very different way that correlated with market trends around something called employee experience. And that's very important when we're all sitting at home and working and still trying to do our jobs.

Part of the benefit of working with influencers is that they have a different lens on what's happening in the world and what's happening with your company.

So, think about what the corporate goals are and then try and work out what you want the influencers to be able to do. For us, it was social amplification to a certain degree, reaching their audiences with content that we're working on together, presenting at events when events still existed and potentially may exist again in the future, and then content generation as well. Part of the benefit of working with influencers is that they have a different lens on what's happening in the world and what's happening with your company. You're giving a different perspective to your audience as well as, as their audiences. That's how we, in a nutshell, started off with the program and then developed and grown from there. What are you most excited about when it comes to working with influencers? Paul: It still is super exciting. I mean, I've been working with influencers now for over 20 years, so it's most definitely something that gets me out of bed in the morning. To the point we were talking about earlier on, your personal career is your own. It shapes how you think and how you react in certain situations. And as a marketer you end up responding, probably subconsciously, to a situation based on those experiences that you've had.

The best influencer campaigns come from the sparring that goes on between what they think and what you think.

But collaborating with influencers to me means that you're able to temper that to a certain degree and the best influencer campaigns, in my view, come from the sparring that goes on between what they think and what you think. And then it kind of comes out to be something in the middle. It helps you grow as a person in your career. What I love most about working with influencers is the kind of range of "aha" moments that you have as you go along. And you work with them to form and build campaigns. Because the plans that you start off with, they kind of wiggle a bit. But you get there in the end and they change ever so slightly based on the interactions that you have with your influencers. What's your preference:  influencer marketing or influencer relations? Paul: Most definitely, I would say influence relations. You have to build the relationship with your team of influencers in order to do effective influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is a subset of influencer relations because without the relationship, it just becomes a series of tactical campaigns.

Influencer marketing is a subset of influencer relations because without the relationship, it just becomes a series of tactical campaigns involving somebody else, other than people in your organization. Being able to build out and bring relationships with influencers means it can go anywhere and you can come up with things that you possibly wouldn't even thought about before. You talked about the value of relationships and our research study showed that 12 times more marketers cited themselves as being very successful with their influencer marketing that ran always on programs, relationship-driven programs versus those that were doing intermittent campaigns. So there's ROI in those relationships. Paul: I also think that when you build a degree of familiarity for your audience with the influencers that you're working with, there's a certain comfort that they get from recognizing the people that you work with and the information and the insights that you bring. We're starting in 2021 to incorporate our influencers, not only in the awareness elements, but also further down the funnel as well to make sure that people see them as their journey goes on. Our research discovered that 77% of B2B marketers say that their prospective customers rely on advice from industry experts and 74% agree that influencer marketing improves customer and prospect experience with the brand.  Do you find this kind of optimism with Citrix? Paul: I would definitely agree with that. There have been a couple of instances where our influencer program has helped us resonate more with certain audiences that we're trying to connect with. It's reduced the amount of time that would take to strike a chord with a certain audience and build appeal with those audiences that we don't necessarily have a natural affinity with.

It [Influencer Marketing] has reduced the amount of time that would take to strike a chord with a certain audience and build appeal with those audiences that we don't necessarily have a natural affinity with.

I don't have the statistics in hand, but our brand tracker shows that with a specific audience, we had a much higher unaided recognition in 2020 than we did in 2019. So, it's a great way of building our brand with new and existing audiences.  As we become more of a use case focused organization versus pushing product, getting out those use cases and having them explained with a slightly different lens with that third party voice is very valuable to give that viewpoint to our customers. It's proving to be very important. I think the customer events that we had in the Fall, were an example of where we were able to leverage influencers to really give that additional lens to our consumers. Based on your experience with influencer marketing at Citrix what advice can you share for other B2B marketers who are thinking of starting their own program? Paul: So, interesting question. When we started off our formal influencer program above and beyond what we were doing with the press and with the analysts, what we were thinking about is what we were trying to achieve and what our corporate and marketing goals were going to be. For us it was about reaching out to new audiences, showcasing our technology in a way that really correlated with the trends in the market, and educating senior level executives. Traditionally, our technology was seen as a very enterprise and kind of in the guts of the organization. We wanted to make sure that they were aware of the benefits of the technology that they, in some cases, had already bought. That's one thing that really shaped the content aspects of what we were trying to do. Then we wanted to think about when it came to the engagement with the influencer team. We had three things in mind, which was presenting at events virtual or otherwise, creating content and social amplification. When it comes to the execution, think about what it is that you want your influencers to do, Maybe something experiential as where you're going from your organization. Those were the three pillars that we started off with.

Don't build a team of like 20 influencers because if you're trying to build a relationship with 20 people all in one go it's, it's not going to be the easiest thing to do.

I think also it's important to not go out too hard with influencers. Don't build a team of like 20 influencers because if you're trying to build a relationship with 20 people all in one go it's, it's not going to be the easiest thing to do. We started off with a program of five to get them off the ground and get really strong results and demonstrate the results that we could build the program on and ask for more funding. Then we wanted to hone in on the areas that we felt were most appropriate for us.

The strongest relationships come from the interplay between your in-house team of influencer relations managers and the team of influencers that you build for the benefit of your organization.

The final piece of advice I would give as you get up and running is not to be too prescriptive. I think we talked about some of this before our discussion, the strongest relationships come from the interplay between your in-house team of influencer relations managers and the team of influencers that you build for the benefit of your organization. So, there's gotta be something in it for the the influencers as well. They need to build their business and their brand as much as you need to build your business and your brand. Otherwise, I think you end up with cookie cutter, corporate marketing campaigns and activities that are presented through the lens of the influencer.  I don't see the value in necessarily using them as a direct corporate mouthpiece. The value comes from the breadth and variety of opinions and views. To connect with Paul, you can find him on Twitter and LinkedIn. Be sure to check out our previous Inside Influence B2B Influencer Marketing show interviews:

• Episode 1: Rani Mani, Adobe - The Value of B2B Influencer Marketing
• Episode 2: Garnor Morantes, LinkedIn - The Power of Always-On Influence
• Episode 3: Ursula Ringham, SAP - Behind the Scenes with Influencer Marketing Operations
• Episode 4: Janine Wegner, Dell Technologies - Thought Leadership and B2B Influence
• Episode 5: Jen Hotlvluwer, Spirion - Award Winning B2B Influencer Marketing
• Episode 6: Amisha Gandhi, SAP - The Power of Mutual Value for Influencer Marketing
• Episode 7: Pierre-Loïc Assayag, Traackr - Maximizing Marketing ROI with Influencer Technology
• Episode 8: Srijana Angdembey, Oracle - How Influence Creates Better B2B Customer Experiences
• Episode 9: Brian Solis, Salesforce - How B2B Influence Adds Value to Business Customers
• Episode 10: Ryan Bares, IBM Systems - Growing Influence Inside B2B Brands with Employees
• Episode 11: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Sprinklr - Elevating B2B Content with Influencers

To better understand what hundreds of the top B2B marketers are doing to succeed at influencer marketing, including case studies featuring SAP, LinkedIn, Monday.com and Cherwell Software, be sure to check out the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Research Report:

The post Inside Influence 12: Paul Dobson from Citrix on The Secret Sauce of B2B Influence: Authenticity appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

B2B Marketing News: Top B2B Marketing Pandemic Skills, Marketing Word of The Year, Bing Adds Analytics Features, & LinkedIn’s New Stories Ads

Some B2B Brands Are Going All-in On Digital Advertising B2B digital advertising spending has largely skirted the sizable losses seen in traditional ad spend, and certain B2B brands have started shifted more budget dollars to digital media, according to recently-released eMarketer study data of interest to B2B marketers. ANA The Road To Chatbots, Virtual Assistants For B2B Marketers, Per Forrester The B2B buyer journey has changed almost entirely into all-digital experiences, and B2B marketers who rush the process by using traditional chatbots or virtual assistants risk losing customers, according to newly-released Forrester survey data. MediaPost Facebook Expands Brand Collabs Manager to Include Facebook Groups, Adds New Group Post Options Facebook has augmented its Brand Collabs Manager tool, with the inclusion of several new partnership location features aimed at helping influencer marketing and brand partnerships through the use of sponsored Facebook group posts, the social media giant recently announced. Social Media Today Netline Debuts B2B Intent Data Service Buyer engagement platform Netline has launched a new B2B data service, with tools aimed at using B2B content-consumption and buyer prospect intent data to drive sales, and MediaPost takes a look. MediaPost Twitter Acquires Multi-Participant Streaming App Squad, Which Enables Screen-Sharing Within Chats Twitter has acquired screen-sharing chat app Squad, a move that could provide new streaming outreach options for marketers and brands if Squad’s functionality is eventually incorporated into Twitter, the firm recently announced. Social Media Today ANA Pivots On Marketing 'Word of the Year' The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has chosen "pivot" as its marketing word for this pandemic year, edging out "virtual," "agility" and "resiliency," the trade organization recently announced. MediaPost Bing Webmaster Tools adds Microsoft Clarity integration Microsoft's Bing has enhanced its Webmaster Tools feature set with a new update that has made it easier to access Microsoft’s Clarity web analytics tool and its features, and has made it more straightforward to add the functionality to websites, Bing recently announced. Search Engine Land LinkedIn Starts Testing Ads in ‘Stories’ Microsoft-owned LinkedIn (client) has begun testing advertising options for marketers using its recently-launched LinkedIn Stories format content, and has also brought wider availability to its full-screen mobile ads, among other new options, the firm recently announced. Wall Street Journal Google Web Stories ads now available via Display Network Previously only available to marketers through Google Ad Manager, Google has made Web Story Ads accessible through its Ad Manager and AdSense services, offering programmatic selling through its display network, the search giant recently announced. Search Engine Land B2B Marketers Pick Up New Skills During the Pandemic Collaboration tools, virtual presentation skills, remote motivation and coaching, and increased social media knowledge are among the top new skills B2B marketers have added during the pandemic, according to recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at “creating personas” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist The 25 Best Ads of 2020 — Adweek TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — MarketingProfs' Top 10 B2B Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2021 — MarketingProfs
• Lee Odden — The final flourish that makes things magical: dessert courses and marketing recipes for your holiday season — ActiveCampaign
• SAP / TopRank Marketing (client) — #CXUnplugged Talks: The Age of Influence in Marketing [Video.] — SAP Customer Experience
• Lee Odden — Playing Favorites by Jay Acunzo — Jay Acunzo

Have you found your own top B2B marketing story from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below. Thank you for joining us for another weekly edition of our B2B marketing news, and we hope that you'll return again next Friday for more of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

The post B2B Marketing News: Top B2B Marketing Pandemic Skills, Marketing Word of The Year, Bing Adds Analytics Features, & LinkedIn’s New Stories Ads appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Best Of Social Media Marketing: Fuel Your 2021 With Our Top 10 SMM Posts

In 2020 B2B marketers continued to find new and creative uses of social media marketing during a pandemic year unlike any other, and we've been fortunate to feature many excellent articles on our blog over the year that explore how marketers are pushing social media marketing to fuel new levels of success. We're lucky to have a wealth of talented B2B marketing professionals contributing to the TopRank Marketing blog — which will celebrate its 18th year in 2021 — including our CEO Lee Odden, Joshua Nite, Elizabeth Williams, Anne Leuman, Nick Nelson, Debbie Friez, Birdie Zepeda, the author of this post, and Alexis Hall, among others. The insight and expertise our team has acquired helping some of the top brands in the world including 3M, Adobe, SAP, LinkedIn, and Oracle plan, implement and measure a variety of marketing programs has often made it here to our blog. To help our blog community grow their social media marketing knowledge, we're delighted to offer our annual list of the most popular social media marketing posts of 2020. The social media marketing posts that proved to be our most popular of 2020 based on web analytics and social media data are listed below. We hope that they will help you ask the right questions and provide best-answer solutions to some of the most important challenges we'll all be facing anew in 2021. We give many thanks to all of our blog authors for their work in advocating social media marketing best practices, and especially to our dedicated readers for continuing to make the TopRank Marketing blog a go-to B2B marketing resource.

Our Most Popular Social Media Marketing Posts in 2020:

1. Social Media Polls For Marketers: 6 B2B Brands Winning With LinkedIn Polls — Lane R. Ellis

Data from social media polls shows what customers are thinking about when it comes to a variety of important subjects, and in the most popular social media marketing post of 2020 on our blog, I took a look at how B2B brands Microsoft, Olive Communications UK, Redis Labs, LinkedIn News, Dell, and RateLinx are winning with LinkedIn polls. Polls offer a unique two-for-one value for B2B marketers, providing quality feedback on what customers want while also offering brands a powerful interactive social media marketing element. This post examines the year's changes in online polls, and gives examines of how B2B marketers and brands are using social media polls in innovative ways, including six B2B brands winning with LinkedIn polls. You can check out all of my posts here, and follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. [bctt tweet="“Poll data shows what marketers are thinking about when it comes to a variety of important subjects, ranging from everyday tasks to far-reaching future trends.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

2. Get Ready For Video In 2021: Watch 5 Creative Examples of B2B Marketing on YouTube — Lane R. Ellis

In our second most popular social media marketing post of the year, I share the latest from YouTube, and how B2B marketers are using the video platform to power creative and engaging campaigns. Taking a look at YouTube Shorts and other features adding in 2020, we also share five creative examples of successful B2B marketing on the platform from:

• HP
• Adobe*
• Constant Contact
• Deloitte
• Ernst & Young

[bctt tweet="“YouTube’s orbit casts a wide swath in the B2B marketing universe, and 64 percent of B2B buyers have increased their use of online video during the pandemic.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

3. 32 Top Social Media Marketing Influencers To Follow — Lane R. Ellis

With a powerful group of 32 top social media marketing professionals to follow and learn from, our third most popular social media marketing article highlights how the SMM industry is bursting with innovative B2B marketing professionals — people who push the boundaries of existing social platforms, embrace new ones, and ditch low-performers. We’ve put together a list of 32 top social media marketers that includes a number of fantastic folks who may not already be on your Twitter “following” list, in addition to some industry stalwarts who those new to social media marketing would be wise to follow and learn from. We’ve also added a quote, tip, or short lesson from each of these 32 subject matter experts, to help inspire your own social media marketing efforts. [bctt tweet="“With unprecedented targeting via the social media platforms, it is essential brands and media companies not take a one size fits all approach with their social video strategy.” — Caitlin Angeloff @caitlinangeloff" username="toprank"]

4. 5 Things to Know About Building Trust in the Age of Social Media — Nick Nelson

In the fourth most popular social media marketing post of 2020, our content marketing manager Nick Nelson shares five items to help build trust in the age of social media. Nick also explores the roles that trust and transparency play in developing an effective B2B social media strategy during this unprecedented time, along with examining how brands can best reach the crucial objective of trust-building using social media today. You can check out all of Nick's posts here, and follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn. [bctt tweet="“The worst stand any brand can take is standing still.” @NickNelsonMN #SocialMediaMarketing #PurposeDriven #B2B" username="toprank"]

5. Active Social Media Listening: Tips for a New Era of COVID-19 — Debbie Friez

Now is the time to listen beyond your basic brand searches, and in our fifth most popular social media marketing post of the year, our influencer marketing strategist Debbie Friez helps you dive into the many insights B2B marketers can gain from social media listening, along with tips for better social marketing during times of crisis. Debbie shares insight from Meltwater's Lance Concannon, Brandwatch's Joshua Boyd, Sprout Social's Kristin Johnson, Sprinklr's Ragy Thomas, and other subject matter experts. Social media listening requires marketers to move beyond monitoring to analyzing the full situation, which can often be a moving target, and Debbie takes a close look in this insightful piece. You can check out all of Debbie's posts here, and follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn. [bctt tweet="“Social listening tools move beyond the top level of monitoring and help hone your strategy with deeper insights into the sentiment, regional differences, and understanding of the conversation.” — Debbie Friez @dfriez" username="toprank"]

6. 10 Fresh Social Media Marketing Tools To Boost Brand Storytelling — Lane R. Ellis

Have you tried all 10 of these fresh social media marketing tools? In our sixth most popular post of the year, I show how to refine and expand your brand storytelling with 10 of the year's latest social media tools. Sifting through tens of thousands of available tools can be a hit and miss proposition, but these 10 fresh marketing tools let you skip most of the research queue and get right into useful tools for helping you tell marketing stories in new ways through social media. Learn from our collection of 10 fresh tools to boost your social media marketing experiences, including image and video manipulation tools, headline analysis utilities, social media monitoring apps, and more. [bctt tweet="“Sifting through thousands of available tools can be a hit and miss proposition, making reviews and vetted lists of truly useful utilities more useful than ever for helping you tell marketing stories in new ways.” @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

7. 8 Things B2B Marketers Need To Know About Reddit in 2021 — Lane R. Ellis

In our seventh most popular social media marketing post of the year, I take a look at whether B2B marketers should be using Reddit, and share eight things B2B marketers need to know, including how businesses are using it, the latest news from the social media platform, and why more firms than ever will be using it in 2021 and beyond. We also take a look at just how effective Reddit is for advertising and organic marketing communication, and dig in to some of the top tips and advice for B2B marketers new to Reddit or those looking to expand their presence on the social media platform. While Reddit may no longer be the wild west for B2B marketers, incorporating it into your strategy doesn’t have to be a shootout at high noon if you take to heart the information explored in this article. [bctt tweet="“Reddit has also been a popular platform for hosting ask-me-anything (AMA) events, which can be a good way for B2B firms to begin utilizing the service if the interviewee is especially relevant to a particular topic.” @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

8. Our 10 Top Social Media Marketing Posts of 2019 — Lane R. Ellis

In our eighth most popular social media marketing article of the year, I examine some of the writing that resonated with B2B marketers over the year, offering a variety of approaches to social media marketing success. From top-notch B2B marketers to follow lists, under-the-radar LinkedIn* features, social media statistics to the subtleties of Twitter lists and B2B social video, these practical and helpful posts offer a glimpse at many aspects of successful social strategy. [bctt tweet="“It’s clear that B2B social media marketing is strong and growing stronger, and it’s also apparent that direction and guidance in where to focus your B2B social efforts is needed now more than ever.” @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

9. 5 Ways to Make Brand Social Media Profiles More Compelling — Joshua Nite

In our ninth most-popular B2B social media marketing post of the year, our senior content marketing manager Joshua Nite shares five ways to make brand social media profiles more compelling. "Brands have never had such rich opportunities to interact with customers and potential customers. They’ve never been able to so easily display what the brand is about, what it stands for, and how it can bring value to people," Josh noted in this insightful and popular piece, in which he shows how savvy B2B marketers can:

• Ditch the Corporate-Speak
• Eliminate Problematic Language
• Say Why You’re Here
• Focus on What You Do for Your Audience
• Include a Call to Action

You can check out all of Josh's posts here, and follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn. [bctt tweet="“There’s still a real possibility to engage with your audience on social, start conversations, and build relationships. And it all starts with making sure your profile invites people in and gives them a next step to take.” @NiteWrites" username="toprank"]

10. 5 Case Studies on How to Optimize B2B Influencer Engagement on LinkedIn — Lee Odden

How are B2B brands successfully working with influencers to achieve marketing goals using professional social media platform LinkedIn? In the tenth most popular social media marketing article of the year, our CEO Lee Odden shares five helpful case studies showing how to successfully engage B2B influencers on LinkedIn. "While there are robust opportunities to connect with potential customers on LinkedIn, the platform is busier than ever, making it hard to stand out," Lee noted. "There are also challenges in terms of reduced organic visibility and the trend towards distrust of sales outreach and what brands publish directly. With so much information, many buyers are suffering what I call Content Attention Deficit," Lee explained — a deficit he explores in detail in this insight-filled article. You can check out all of Lee's 2,600+ posts here, and follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn. [bctt tweet="“Before you get started with B2B influencer engagement on LinkedIn, it’s essential that you have a documented influencer marketing strategy.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

Thanks TopRank Marketing Writers & Readers

There you have it — an especially strong array of our 10 most popular social media marketing posts from the particularly unusual year of 2020. Additionally, we publish several social media influencer lists every year, and we wanted to share them here as a helpful way to find and follow some of the leading digital marketing influencers:

• 25 Top B2B Marketing Influencers To Follow In 2021 #MPB2B
• 50 Top B2B Content Marketing Influencers To Follow in 2021 #CMWorld
• 20 B2B Influencer Marketing Pros to Follow from Top Brands
• 32 Top Social Media Marketing Influencers To Follow

Another helpful resource for B2B marketers to learn about crafting a successful B2B influencer marketing program is our recently-launched Inside Influence series, featuring interviews with top industry experts such as the latest episode with Marshall Kirkpatrick of Sprinklr. We published dozens of posts this year specifically about social media marketing, a tradition we'll continue in 2021, so stay tuned. Please let us know which social media marketing topics and ideas you'd like to see us focus on for 2021 — we'd love to hear your suggestions. Many thanks to each of you who read our blog regularly, and to all of you who comment on and share our posts on the TopRank Marketing social media channels at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. *Dell, RateLinx, Adobe, and LinkedIn are TopRank Marketing clients.

The post Best Of Social Media Marketing: Fuel Your 2021 With Our Top 10 SMM Posts appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Inside Influence 11: Marshall Kirkpatrick from Sprinklr on Elevating B2B Content with Influencers

Without question the digital age we live in is marked by remarkable advancements as well as ease of information creation, distribution and proliferation. As they say, we live in an age of information overload. What can B2B marketers do to stand out? Simply create more "useful content"? For 2021 and beyond, the bar for stand out B2B marketing is much higher than utility. Our guest, Marshall Kirkpatrick on episode 11 of the Inside Influence Show featuring B2B Marketing Insiders, has some smart insights on how influence can play a role in creating (Dan Pink quote) and connecting the dots between the kinds of insights buyers are attracted to, that drive engagement and action. Marshall is the founder of Twitter influencer platform Little Bird which was acquired by Sprinklr where he is now Vice President of Influencer Relations, Analyst Relations, and Competitive Intelligence. During our talk, we covered highlights of the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, some important topics for B2B marketers that want to better understand the role of influence in B2B marketing including:

• Marshall's evolution from the first blogger at TechCrunch to founder of Little Bird to VP at Sprinklr
• How Dan Pink's Symphonic Thinking translates to being a B2B influencer marketing thought leader
• Insights into working with B2B influencers
• B2B influencer activations that actually work
• Opportunities for B2B brand executives to build influence
• How to unlock influencer potential from executives who are not natural to social engagement
• Advice on outsourcing an influencer marketing effort with consultants or agencies
• What's most exciting about B2B and influencer marketing in 2021

See the full interview with Marshall Kirkpatrick, check out the Inside Influence Episode 11 video below: Below is a highlight transcription of our discussion. You are an OG when it comes to influencer marketing. Can you share with us a little about your experience starting Little Bird and how you got to Sprinklr? Marshall: My background is actually in blogging first and foremost. I was a tech blogger covering startups and ended up using tools to break news stories and was the first blogger ever hired over at TechCrunch. I saw in that experience that when you're in an influential position online, people bring you a lot of information. Lots of startups were always coming to us and saying, "Oh, look at this cool new thing. Here's my perspective on the market." And that was really an educational experience for me. And so, as I developed in my blogging career, I wanted to start looking around to find other influential people who were also receiving a lot of inbound information so that I could know who to watch and listen to in order to break news stories quickly and learn through watching them.

I wanted to start looking around to find other influential people who were also receiving a lot of inbound information so that I could know who to watch and listen to in order to break news stories quickly and learn through watching them.

So I built some research tools for discovering the most credible experts, the most influential people in any industry that I was covering as a journalist and in time ended up productizing some of those lessons learned in the form of a startup that we named LittleBird. LittleBird ran for five years and it did exactly what I was looking for as a journalist for marketers. It said, let's find the people in your target market that are being followed by the largest number of other experts and specialists in a particular field. So, especially good for B2B. It focused on discovery, so five years after we founded it, LittleBird was acquired by Sprinkler, which is now the world's leading customer experience management platform. Born of social listening, the technology listened to the keywords and people's content in order for brands to manage relationships with customers and crises and opportunities. It was a really good marriage of our small startup that specialized in discovering experts and influencers and now this whole big suite of tools for actionability that Sprinkler has built in social listening and beyond social now as well. It's just a perfect fit for it. I'm not working on the product anymore. LittleBird has been turned off now for some time, but I get to see emails come through about big new deals with global brands that have purchased a wide swath of different sprinkler capabilities and products. Quite often I get to see in that announcement and included in the deal was Sprinkler influencer marketing and I got to feel some pride as a result of that. In the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, you were named as one of the top 20 influencer marketing professionals. What does it take to be at the top of your game when it comes to B2B influencer marketing? Marshall: I think that part of the challenge is that sharing valuable, interesting information in a time of information overload is tough because there's no shortage of information out there. And the bar is quite high to rise above the noise. The way that I go about that is by engaging in a lot of what Dan Pink calls, symphonic thinking, where he says that in the emerging economy that we live in, one of the most valuable ways for knowledge workers to generate value is through symphonic thinking or the creation of connections between seemingly disparate people and ideas and initiatives.

One of the most valuable ways for knowledge workers to generate value is through symphonic thinking or the creation of connections between seemingly disparate people and ideas and initiatives.

When you create a connection between things, it's like you light up a circuit and it's a really generative kind of process. So I make a conscious effort to form connections between people and concepts and topics. Furthermore, in order to do that one layer lower, I build systems to deliver a stream of interesting things to connect to one another. So, in addition to using Sprinkler to listen to thought leaders and conversations and all kinds of different industries, one of my favorite new tools is I've got a Twitter list that I maintain of just amazing, fascinating people. And I don't just watch all of their tweets. Instead, I have bookmarked the search results page for a search inside of that list of people for any time they use the words, amazing, new, innovation or learning. It's just a steady stream of amazing new, innovative things being learned by amazing, innovative people. It's a really high signal to noise ratio of a stream of information because of the care put into the source selection and then the creation of the interface. It's like a little conveyor belt of amazing things to pick up and connect to other things on to try to generate value. What are you most excited about when it comes to working with influencers? Marshall: Well, for me, it still comes back to the same themes around discovery. I'm a very awe driven person and I find that really influential people, especially in B2B, are a constant source of awe for me. One of my favorite examples is some work that I've done recently with John Hagel who was, by our metric when he worked at Deloitte, the most connected guy in all of Deloitte, the giant consulting firm, an incredible organization. In a social graph analysis of Deloitte people on Twitter in particular, he was the Deloitte person most followed by other Deloitte people. So you want to follow that guy, right? So I sure did. I spent hours and hours reading John Hagel content: reading his blog posts, reading his books. And then I produced a podcast with him. The podcast was really fun and it was really nice to get to connect with him face-to-face. Then I created some derivative content based on that podcast. Then he went and he shared it out with his whole network of people.

The part of that process that has driven the most business value for us as well as been most exciting for me, was the very first step in the process when I was spending hours and hours reading John Hagel content.

But the part of that process that has driven the most business value for us as well as been most exciting for me, was the very first step in the process when I was spending hours and hours reading John Hagel content. That put all of his experience and knowledge and insights into my head s0 that I could deploy entirely behind the scenes at work and connect it to other projects and other initiatives that we have going on publicly and privately. That's really where the lion's share of value was available from. The advocacy that occurred in the end was overshadowed by all the business value available just from reading his work. What are the characteristics that make a great B2B influencer? Marshall: That's a question that I have explored in a lot of different ways over my career. Currently, my standard or my criteria are three: First, I look for people that have influence. Not just generally, not even just inside of my industry or our target market, but specifically for people who have influence with our existing customers and people like our customers. We've got a quantitative way that we can make that assessment. I pull out that yardstick whenever I consider engaging with an influencer. At Sprinkler it works really well.

It really requires a good amount of emotional energy invested to cultivate these relationships over time and keep them moving forward, if you want to make them authentic and sincere.

The second thing that I look for are people who are smart, that I feel like I can learn from. Because otherwise it's easy to kind of peter out. It really requires a good amount of emotional energy invested to cultivate these relationships over time and keep them moving forward, if you want to make them authentic and sincere. And especially if you're perhaps working with a more modest budget and it's not just a big transactional kind of thing. And the last thing that I look for are people that I like, because if I don't like someone, then it's not going to be much fun to work with them. And I want it to be fun. That ends up being the most effective work. So once you find an influencer and you've defined what it is you're looking for, what is it that you do with them? What do your activations with influencers look like? Marshall: I've taken a lot of different forms. I'd say that one of the most heavyweight plays that are in our playbook has been a combination of a webinar, blog post and then private advisory phone call where we have anyone on our staff that wants to come and participate in a private phone call with one of these influencers, come and ask questions off the record and learn from their experience. You get the demand gen from the webinar and the blog post and then the more foundational value from the private advisory phone call.

One of the most heavyweight plays that are in our [influencer activation] playbook has been a combination of a webinar, blog post and then private advisory phone call.

I am very sympathetic to Forester's perspective when they say that the most savvy brands in influencer marketing are not looking to influencers for reach because often that ends up in disappointment. But where influencers really shine is their ability to create high quality, high relevance content that breaks through the noise of this era of information overload. When coupled with paid media, then you've got a really awesome combination. It really works well when the brand brings the budget for the reach and the influencer is the source of the high quality, authentic, high relevance content. That's probably the most heavyweight of capabilities or plays in the playbook. But I do a lot of small stuff as well. Yesterday I was watching some teammates prepare a presentation for the analyst firm, Gartner. I was providing some feedback on their presentation and watching which parts of the platform they were emphasizing, more or less. During a break I went and I opened up my list of amazing things mentioned by amazing people and Dion Hinchcliffe had posted a link to a survey that he had just published the results of, that said the number one thing that CIO's are looking for today, especially in the pandemic around digital transformation, is a combination of automation and workflow management. I thought that was really interesting because there was a big component of that in the Sprinkler story that we were preparing to tell Gartner. So I took that and went immediately inside the company and said, Hey folks, let's elevate that part of the story. It's really on trend right now and we've got a strong story to tell.

My favorite kind of influencer engagement: a kind of earned media and learning focused engagement that can be pretty lightweight [effort].

So thank you Dion, an influencer for that information. Then I re-shared that post of his publicly and some other folks then came in and engaged and affirmed that they had similar perspectives and I continued to learn and get more data points. And Dion came back and said, thank you so much for sharing it. And our relationship took another step forward. Over the years, I've just learned so much from Dion. That's my favorite kind of influencer engagement: a kind of earned media and learning focused engagement that can be pretty lightweight. While much of influencer marketing has been focused on external experts, there are many opportunities for B2B brands to grow influence from within. What's your take on opportunities to build brand executive influence? Marshall: I think there's a lot of opportunity for it. And yet, it's a challenge for the ages. It is something that I think many of us have aspired to unlock for a long time for the executives that work at the companies. It is a great opportunity because so many of those executive leaders have tons of contact with customers and many times they're great storytellers. They spent a lot of time with customers, they interface with other executive leaders and so are really efficient, high impact communicators.

[Executive influence] is a great opportunity because so many of those executive leaders have tons of contact with customers and many times they're great storytellers.

The challenge I think, is finding ways to tap into that executive insight and flow of knowledge and access to information, much of which can't be shared publicly. Some of it can and it requires a different sort of muscle memory, a different kind of workflow and often multiple sets of hands to help say, "Hey, let's remember, let's go unlock some of those stories that we get to hear, you know, in company meetings. Uh, let's, let's find some that are appropriate to share publicly because they're such incredible stories." I know that's the case for our executives at Sprinklr. The stories that we get to here inside the company walls are just amazing. The giant brands that we get to help solve really interesting problems for. When we're able to reference those, either named or blinded, and do so publicly, they're just great stories. They're the kind of content that rises above so much in a world of information overload. In the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, we found that the things B2B marketers outsource most often to agencies include: identifying influencers, managing relationships, developing strategy and measuring effectiveness. What have you found to be most useful when it comes to using outside help? Marshall: We have been the outside resource a fair amount ourselves as a search technology on, uh, uh, management technology. And then we do a lot of our own internal influencer relations. I am real happy to do that for ourselves, but many times when working with brands that don't have that experience or talent in-house, especially for the relationship cultivation and the practical management, well, frankly I refer them to you and your organization appreciate this. You've done an incredible job of building brand equity and a demonstrated track record of success around that. I don't know anyone who has come close to the kind of thought leadership and track record of success that you and the folks that TopRank Marketing have. So congratulations on that. I appreciate that. It's a great team and that's where the magic happens. I guess I would just suggest that people find good partners to work with and do it in a way that helps build your own capacity and learning instead of just outsourcing it.

Find good partners to work with and do it in a way that helps build your own capacity and learning instead of just outsourcing it.

It makes me think about something that Jean bliss says when she advises executives that are thinking about taking jobs in customer experience, but I think it's good advice for almost any field. She says, when you go and you talk to a company about leading their customer experience, you should speak to the other leaders at the company and see how they talk about customer experience. Is it something that's everyone's job and that they are going to partner with you on? Or is it something that they're going to outsource to you and then wash their hands of? Because you really want to avoid being in that latter situation. You want to look for those partnership types of organizations where everyone is going to be participating and up-leveling their skills as they do, even though it's one person's bottom line responsibility. I just love that model. What has you excited most when it comes to opportunities with influencer marketing in 2021 and beyond? Marshall: I'll tell you one thing inside of our company on one thing outside of our company. I'm really excited about some of the new research and analytics capabilities that are being built inside of Sprinklr on top of influencer discovery in order to get early high quality insights into topics of interest to influencers and their communities.

Everybody says that they do artificial intelligence and machine learning, but Sprinklr has been doing a gargantuan amount of artificial intelligence for almost 10 years now.

Everybody says that they do artificial intelligence and machine learning, but Sprinklr has been doing a gargantuan amount of artificial intelligence for almost 10 years now and so has a really deep corpus of knowledge about a bunch of different, specific industry verticals. That means that we can discern what's going on in conversations, especially in B2B, faster and better than any other source when monitoring influencers or discussions at large. So I'm excited about that. For me personally and outside of the company context, I think this is a pretty nerdy answer, but I'm really excited about taking my notes from reading and learning from influencers and putting them into a startup called Rome research. Rome is a note-taking app for networked thoughts. It's a place where every note that you take is linked out to every page across the corpus of your notes, where the same words appear. It makes it really easy to jump from reference to reference of interrelated thoughts. And it's just wonderful. So, the incorporation of enterprise class influencer discovery and listening and understanding with last mile, human in the loop discernment of key lessons learned and insights and perspectives and filing that away in a note-taking system that gets automatically linked up to all the related notes from other influencers and other readings on that given topic, creates what some people call a second brain. It's the ability to, upon reflecting on any topic, snap your fingers and say, Show me all of the things that I have read and take a note of on this topic, and put them all in one place, allow me to filter them, et cetera. I'm excited about unlocking more value from that this year. To connect with Marshall, you can find him on Twitter and LinkedIn. Be sure to check out our previous Inside Influence B2B Influencer Marketing interviews:

• Episode 1: Rani Mani, Adobe - The Value of B2B Influencer Marketing
• Episode 2: Garnor Morantes, LinkedIn - The Power of Always-On Influence
• Episode 3: Ursula Ringham, SAP - Behind the Scenes with Influencer Marketing Operations
• Episode 4: Janine Wegner, Dell Technologies - Thought Leadership and B2B Influence
• Episode 5: Jen Hotlvluwer, Spirion - Award Winning B2B Influencer Marketing
• Episode 6: Amisha Gandhi, SAP - The Power of Mutual Value for Influencer Marketing
• Episode 7: Pierre-Loïc Assayag, Traackr - Maximizing Marketing ROI with Influencer Technology
• Episode 8: Srijana Angdembey, Oracle - How Influence Creates Better B2B Customer Experiences
• Episode 9: Brian Solis, Salesforce - How B2B Influence Adds Value to Business Customers
• Episode 10: Ryan Bares, IBM Systems - Growing Influence Inside B2B Brands with Employees

To better understand what hundreds of the top B2B marketers are doing to succeed at influencer marketing, be sure to check out the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Research Report here:

The post Inside Influence 11: Marshall Kirkpatrick from Sprinklr on Elevating B2B Content with Influencers appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

B2B Marketing News: B2B Tech Marketers Hit Pre-Pandemic KPIs, Global Ad Forecasts Improve, B2B Buyer Advocacy Study, & Google’s New Ad Formats

One-Third of B2B Tech Marketers Say They’ll Meet Their Original KPIs This Year 42 percent of B2B technology executives say they’ll meet their revised 2020 key performance indicators, while 16 just say they won’t meet KPIs — two of several items of interest to digital marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts Year-End Global/U.S. Ad Forecasts Improve Markedly Three recently-released global advertising spending forecasts predict a much stronger outlook for 2021 than in 2020, with improvements in the global market especially better — up an average of 7.8 percent in the studies compared to 4.5 percent for the U.S. MediaPost Guiding the new B2B buyer from attraction to advocacy It takes an average of 6.2 touch-points to go from a sales qualified lead to a closed sale, while 76 percent of B2B practitioners say customer expectations for digital experiences that are more personalized will reach all-time highs, according to newly-released Adobe and Forrester survey data. Adobe (client) Virtual Events Are A Part of “Core Strategy” For 1 in 3 Marketers Now Marketing professionals have increasingly made virtual events a vital part of their strategy, with marketers measuring webinar success primarily by lead quality, pipeline conversion, registrations, and audience interactions, according to recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts Majority of marketers want to continue WFH after pandemic, but concerns linger Most marketers have expressed the desire to keep working from home even after the global health crisis subsides, according to newly-released survey data of 28,000 Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) members. The Drum Google Discovery ads can now use your 4:5 social image assets The latest update from Google Ads now allows the 4:5 image aspect ratio format within Discovery ad campaigns, along with an array of new audience selection workflow features, the search giant recently announced. Search Engine Land YouTube upgrades Premieres with trailers, themes and a live pre-show option Google-owned YouTube has augmented its video Premieres function with several new features including live-chat sidebar communication, video trailer previews, and a Live Redirect live pre-show streaming option, YouTube recently announced. TechCrunch Twitter's Testing a New Option Which Would Limit Tweet Replies to Followers Only Twitter has begun testing an option that would allow users of the social media platform to designate tweets which could only be replied to by followers, a change that would add an additional layer to brand-audience engagement options. Social Media Today Consumers Are Obsessed With Feel-Good Short-Form Content Right Now Brands that offer short-form content, especially when it consists of feel-good or otherwise positive content, are expected to see greater success in 2021, according to recently-released study data of interest to digital marketers. Adweek Brands Change Tactics, Increase Focus On Customer Marketing, Advocacy, Study Finds 83 percent of marketers see successful customer marketing utilizing success stories, 79 percent testimonials, and 72 percent use advocate marketing, while the top metric for measuring customer marketing effectiveness is customer engagement — several of many findings of interest to digital marketers in recently-released survey data. MediaPost ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at “consumer privacy comeback” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist Why Pantone Believes Gray and Yellow Will Be 2021’s Colors of the Year — Adweek TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden / TopRank Marketing — How B2B Influence Adds Value to Business Customers — Brian Solis
• Lane R. Ellis — 100+ Content Marketing Predictions for 2021 — Content Marketing Institute
• Lee Odden — The B2B Forum 2020 Edition of Marketing Smarts [Podcast] — MarketingProfs
• Ty Heath / LinkedIn (client) — Get to Know the New B2B Decision-Makers: LinkedIn's Ty Heath Shares New Research on Marketing Smarts [Podcast] — MarketingProfs
• Lane R. Ellis — Top 10 Digital Marketing Articles of this Week: 4th December 2020 — PageTraffic

Have you found your own favorite B2B marketing story from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below. Thanks for taking the time to join us for another weekly edition of our B2B marketing news, and we hope that you will come back again next Friday for more of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

The post B2B Marketing News: B2B Tech Marketers Hit Pre-Pandemic KPIs, Global Ad Forecasts Improve, B2B Buyer Advocacy Study, & Google’s New Ad Formats appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Break Free B2B Marketing: Tim Crawford of AVOA on The New Normal

Just what is a B2B influencer, and what do they actually look like? In our new third season of Break Free B2B Marketing video interviews we're having in-depth conversations with an impressive array of top B2B influencers, exploring the important issues that each expert is influential about. Successful B2B influencers have a rare mix of the 5 Ps — proficiency, personality, publishing, promotion, and popularity — as our CEO Lee Odden has carefully outlined in "5 Key Traits of the Best B2B Influencers." Ticking all of those boxes is Tim Crawford, CIO strategic advisor at AVOA, who we're thrilled to be profiling today. One way for B2B marketers to break free is by looking at what successful C-Level executives are doing and thinking. This is especially true in the middle of an unprecedented year, where what is “normal” for any business owner or leader is almost constantly changing. Tim Crawford has a unique insight into the minds of C-Level executives. He’s gained this both by spending over a decade both being a CIO himself and spending nearly as much time working as a professional consultant. Frequently being quoted in publications like the Wall Street Journal and Forbes while hosting popular podcasts like CIO in the Know and CxO in the Know are just a few of Tim’s credentials when it comes to addressing the executive suite. In case you didn’t already know, a CIO, also known as a company’s Chief Intelligence Officer, is the person in charge of its IT (information technology) department. Tim Crawford was invited to be one of the expert speakers during Season 3 of the Break Free B2B Marketing interview series because of his vast experience surrounding CIOs. This expertise is especially relevant right now as the world’s workforce is changing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. How do you safely manage a secure remote workforce? How do you approach the “new normal” and how do you speak to those looking for assistance within this dynamic landscape? These questions, and more, will be answered during today’s hour-long interview between Tim and TopRank’s own president and co-founder Susan Misukanis.

Break Free B2B Interview with Tim Crawford

If you’re interested in checking out a particular portion of the discussion, you can find a quick general outline below, as well as a few excerpts that stood out to us.

• 1:53 - Tim’s New Normal
• 3:40 - Unexpected gains for CXO’s in the last three to six months
• 5:28 - Faulty plans
• 5:46 - Tim talks about what he calls the “virus crisis”
• 7:45 - How the workforce adjusts to working from home
• 10:17 - Diversifying supply chains
• 12:04 - Defending against phishing 14:59 - Protecting privacy for corporations and WFH employees
• 17:10 - How do CIOs deal with the new habits required for at-home workers?
• 18:16 - Working from home distractions
• 21:20 - CIOS partnering with HR
• 24:06 - IT and critical thinking
• 26:04 - It’s okay to schedule time to think
• 27:50 - How do businesses work through uncertainty
• 31:46 - Pandemic preparedness
• 33:26 - How to go back or move forward with office culture post-crisis
• 38:15 - How would you counsel CIOs who are "holding" right now?
• 43:57 - Tim’s approach to engaging in B2B partnerships
• 52:41 - The differences between B2B and B2C influencers and partnerships
• 56:30 - Tim’s last piece of advice

Susan: We've talked about security, privacy, supply chain, human capital management, and economic impact. Is there another category that we didn't cover and should, because this is an issue and you're dealing with in the CXO community and counseling about that? Tim: There is a lot of what we do, especially in I.T., is based on a process, right — you mentioned it earlier. People process technology. It's a guideline that's been used for several decades. The challenge is that I.T. — to a large degree — has lost a critical component over the decades. We've gotten so focused on things like best practices and so focused on processes that we have actually lost a lot of the ability to do critical thinking. Case in point: think about work from home. When you have a support organization that is used to supporting corporate networks, it's usually well defined. You know the technologies that are usually in play, you know the equipment that the user is going to be connecting from. There might be some other variables in the mix, but for the most part there are known quantities. When you get to work from home, it's all over the map. You have no idea what you're walking into. How is the connectivity, which Wi-Fi technology are they using? Is it broadband? Is it DSL? Is it something else? You just don't know what technology, or are they using a Mac now when they're accustomed to a Windows system? Are they using a nonstandard system that doesn't have a corporate image on it? And what other things are running on that system? And do you have kids that are also using that system and might be downloading things on it? Do you have a lot more variables that come into play? So it's probably important now more than ever. It's been true before, but it's now more than ever important that we start to think about critical thinking. You have to logically kind of walk through a process and think about how all of these other aspects come into play. And that's not something that we have been teaching our I.T. teams. And frankly, this is not something that we've seen in the entire ecosystem, is this critical thinking. But more-so going forward, we will have to rely on that, because as things change, once we get past the virus crisis, once we start to escape the economic crisis. Critical thinking will be far more important. And we see that in the social impact. I mean, we can see it in our everyday lives, whether it's around racial injustices, the way people are treated, the social impact, the sustainability of organizations, all of these are going to require critical thinking much more than we have in the past. [bctt tweet="“In our everyday lives, whether it's around racial injustices, the way people are treated, social impact or the sustainability of organizations, all are going to require critical thinking much more than we have in the past.” @tcrawford" username="toprank"] Susan: You see this industry kind of rallying around that critical thinking need? And, you know, services and so forth, opening up new industries, opening up, or gosh, “This is Tim and x and a few executives.” And you're planting the seeds. Tim: Yeah, unfortunately, I wish it was the former. But today it's the latter. We are just planting the seeds and frankly hoping that they germinate. I think they will for a number of different reasons this time more than in past years and past events that we've experienced. But the reality is that most people are still kind of fighting through the virus crisis and all the impact that comes from it. Here in California, we went from one shutdown to opening things up and now we're back in the last couple of days here to another shutdown. So you know, it's how do you work through that from a business standpoint — and forget about B2C — that's even more complicated. But from a B2B standpoint, it's just as complicated. So we have to think beyond that once we get past the virus crisis. And I have a whole separate range of discussion we could go into, but around the virus crisis, the economic crisis, and the social impact. At the end of the day, all of this is based off of uncertainty around the virus. Once we get certainty around the virus, that will have a dramatic impact on choices. We make things we do. It will also start to impact the economic crisis that we're all feeling. And it will start to create clarity around the social impact long term. The virus certainty is what we absolutely need to be focused on. And whatever we can do to drive toward that from there, then we can get into these other aspects. As we start to think about how we come out of this at the end, assuming that you do, you are one of the lucky ones that do come out at the end, because let's face it, there are a lot of businesses that will not survive the next six months as we get through the virus crisis, because the reality is we won't see a vaccine in mass, at least here in the U.S., for at least six to nine months. I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal recently, and one of the questions that came to me was when do we start to get back to that rebuilding process? And this is a discussion that took place a couple weeks ago. But at that point in time, I said Q3 of 2021. Now, this is before we had hit Q3 of 2020. And everybody on the call kind of like went, “that far out?!” I'm like, let me play it out for you. And I walked through my thinking around it and they all came around and realized that, OK, I understand how this kind of plays out. So I think we have to hunker down and be in it for quite a while longer here and just be realistic about it. But once we start to get in that mode, we'll start to get more innovative, too. [bctt tweet="“I think we have to hunker down and be in it for quite a while longer here and just be realistic about it. Once we start to get in that mode, we'll start to get more innovative.” @tcrawford" username="toprank"] Keep your eye on the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Also check out episodes from season 1 and season 2. Take your B2B marketing to new heights by checking out out previous season 3 episodes of Break Free B2B Marketing:

• Episode 1: Kevin L. Jackson, GC GlobalNet — The Future of Cloud Computing

The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Tim Crawford of AVOA on The New Normal appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Best Of B2B Influencer Marketing: Our Top 10 Influencer Marketing Posts To Optimize Your 2021

2020 saw the continued rise in influencer marketing's scope and success in both B2C and B2B industries. This continued an explosion of interest in the practice over the past several years, and with more practitioners than ever now going all-in, influencer marketing has continued to be a primary focus on our blog throughout this extraordinary pandemic year. We're lucky to have a wealth of talented B2B marketing professionals contributing to the TopRank Marketing blog — which will celebrate its 18th year in 2021 — including our CEO Lee Odden, Joshua Nite, Elizabeth Williams, Anne Leuman, Nick Nelson, Debbie Friez, Birdie Zepeda, the author of this post, and Alexis Hall, among others. As an industry approaching $20 billion annually, influencer marketing is now far from a shiny new object to sophisticated marketers. The insight and expertise our team has acquired helping some of the top brands in the world including 3M, Adobe, SAP, LinkedIn, and Oracle plan, implement and measure influencer marketing programs has often made it here to our blog. To help our blog community grow their influencer marketing knowledge, we're thrilled to offer this list of our most popular influencer marketing posts of 2020. Of course, collaborating with influencers is something we do daily for clients and ourselves, and during this pandemic year influencer engagement has become even more central to our B2B content marketing solutions, alongside social media marketing, SEO, and other forms of digital advertising. The influencer marketing posts that proved to be our most popular of 2020 based on web analytics and social media data are listed below. We hope that they will help you ask the right questions and provide truly best-answer solutions to some of the most important challenges we'll all be facing in 2021. We give a massive thank you to all of our blog authors for their work in advocating influencer marketing best practices.

Our Most Popular Influencer Marketing Posts in 2020:

1. 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report from TopRank Marketing — Lee Odden

Our CEO Lee Odden wrote the most popular influencer marketing post of 2020 on our blog, which is fitting, as he was also the primary author of the groundbreaking 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, 45+ pages rich with survey data, case studies from B2B brands of all sizes, insights from top B2B marketing experts, plus a list of 20 top influencer marketing practitioners from B2B brands. If you're looking for a single definitive article about B2B influencer marketing, you can't go wrong with this excellent piece by Lee and the accompanying report. Check out all of Lee’s 2,600+ posts here, and follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn. [bctt tweet="“With much of the research and media attention focused on B2C influencer marketing, we believe the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report to be the first ever research report dedicated to B2B.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

2. 25 B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign & Engagement Ideas for 2020 — Lee Odden

Lee also wrote our second most popular influencer marketing post of the year, offering up 25 inspiring B2B influencer marketing campaign and engagement ideas. As Lee noted, "Implementing just a few of these could help a company with a substantial amount of influencer program activity," which is why this article has seen significant traffic and why its campaign ideas have had continued implementation among the B2B marketing community. From conducting a series of video interview with influencers or engaging an influencer host on a brand podcast, to inviting influencers to provide content for an interactive content experience, Lee dishes out a vast array of B2B influencer marketing campaign ideas to infuse your own efforts, whether you have an established strategy in place or are just starting a pilot B2B influencer marketing program. [bctt tweet="“Influencers are not magic, but when you develop strong relationships with a relevant group of influencers, the impact on your marketing across the customer life-cycle can seem magical.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

3. 20 B2B Influencer Marketing Pros to Follow from Top Brands — Lee Odden

With a stellar group of 20 top influencer marketing professionals to follow and learn from, our third most popular influencer marketing article of the year was also penned by Lee, and together he and industry experts including Ursula Ringham of SAP*, Rani Mani of Adobe*, Jen Holtvluwer of Spirion*, Garnor Morantes of LinkedIn* and 16 others explore both the significant optimism and many unrealized opportunities influencer marketing offers for B2B companies. [bctt tweet="“B2B brands that build relationships to co-create content with industry voices can integrate influence with thought leadership to build the authority and influence of brand employees.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

4. 14 Expert B2B Influencer Marketing Predictions for 2021 — Lane R. Ellis

In the fourth most popular influencer marketing post of 2020, I shared top predictions for 2021 from 14 industry expert including Ann Handley of Marketing Profs, Brian Solis of Salesforce, Ryan Bares of IBM Systems, Judy Tian of LinkedIn, and many others. This article gives you helpful expert takes on what B2B influencer marketing will look like in 2021, and where it is most likely to take B2B marketers and brands when a post-pandemic world eventually arrives. Check out all of my posts here, and follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. [bctt tweet="“2021 will see B2B marketers taking influencer marketing into not only a new year but a new more mainstream era of wider adoption among major brands.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

5. 5 Key Traits of the Best B2B Influencers — Lee Odden

What are the 5 key traits of the best B2B influencers? Popularity isn't enough, and in our fifth most popular influencer marketing post of the year Lee shares how top B2B influencers also use proficiency, personality, publishing, and promotion to drive measurable business goals. Featuring seasoned influencer marketing leaders including Brian Solis, Tamara McCleary of Thulium, CTO advisor Keith Townsend and others, Lee's post reveals how mismatched expectations are not helpful for anyone, and encourages readers to think about the 5 Ps to evaluate and nurture your own influencer community, and to consider where of each ideal influencer needs to score on the 5 Ps in order to be a good match for the kind of activation you've got in mind. [bctt tweet="“Understanding what makes a great influencer is both art and science, soft and hard skills. The success of identifying, qualifying and engaging influencers is also directly tied to how they will be engaged and to what end.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

6. 24 Essential B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics — Lane R. Ellis

With 24 essential B2B influencer marketing statistics, in our sixth most popular post of the year I wrote about the compelling story statistics are able to tell — one of trust-building, credibility, and the more personal touch that influencers are able to offer brands. Even if you’ve already developed an influencer marketing strategy, the wealth of information coming out about its power to build trust and inspire action has grown, as shown in this collection of 24 significant B2B influencer marketing statistics to strengthen your future campaigns. [bctt tweet="“Implementation of influencer marketing has grown not only among pure B2B marketers, but also in the marcomm sector, where 67 percent of global marcomm professionals see influencer marketing as being within their scope.” @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

7. Three B2B Marketing Tactics That Will Outlast the COVID19 Pandemic — Lee Odden

Can you guess which three marketing tactics will outlast the pandemic? Make a mental note, and check out Lee's insightful list of three enduring B2B marketing tactics in our seventh most popular B2B influencer marketing posts of the year. As Lee notes, "The challenge many B2B marketers are facing is to understand how to navigate both the short term changes in what works for customers in the current environment as as well as in the long term, post-crisis," an assessment that may be even more relevant as we move ahead into 2021. [bctt tweet="“How buyers feel about B2B brands short and long term will directly contribute to which brands are the most relevant as budgets open up and business solutions investments experience substantial growth.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

8. B2C vs. B2B Influencer Marketing – What’s the Difference?  — Lee Odden

What's the difference between B2C and B2B influencer marketing? Plenty, as Lee shows in our eighth most popular post, including why seeing B2B influencers as only content distribution channels or advocates for hire is a misplaced B2C-centric expectation. Lee digs in to how influence plays a role across the entire business customer life-cycle — from awareness to advocacy — and how the best approach to collaborating with B2B influencers also spans the spectrum of customer engagement. [bctt tweet="“It’s important to look at B2B influencers as partners not just content creators or distribution channels.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

9. Always-On Influence: 5 Examples of Ongoing B2B Influencer Marketing In Action — Lane R. Ellis

In our ninth most-popular B2B influencer marketing post of the year, I ask why top B2B brands LinkedIn, Adobe, Dell Outlet*, RateLinx* and AT&T* are using always-on influencer marketing, and share helpful examples from each of these companies. I also take a close look at how B2B influencer marketing drives brand authority and increases trust and engagement, especially during uncertain times. [bctt tweet="“Always-on marketing replaces on-again off-again campaigns with a fluid ongoing effort, continually cultivating and carefully building efforts that allow businesses to seamlessly adapt their marketing efforts.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

10. How B2B Influencer Marketing Offers Brands an Ideal Alternative to In-Person Events — Lane R. Ellis

How can B2B marketers replace the benefits lost due to cancelled real-world events? B2B influencer marketing is an ideal way for brands to drive digital conversations during the global health crisis, and in the tenth most popular influencer marketing article of the year, I share 13 key benefits for brands, including insight from Brian Solis, author Bernard Marr, Tom Treanor of Treasure Data*, and members of our own team including Lee, our president and co-founder Susan Misukanis, account manager Elizabeth Williams, influencer marketing strategist Debbie Friez, and others. [bctt tweet="“During this global shift to a digital-first customer experience, marketers who incorporate empathy into their efforts are especially well-poised to deliver successful virtual experiences.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

Thanks TopRank Marketing Writers & Readers

There you have it — an especially powerful selection of our 10 most popular B2B influencer marketing posts for 2020. Additionally, we publish several influencer lists every year, and we wanted to share them here as a helpful way to find and follow some of the leading digital marketing influencers:

• 25 Top B2B Marketing Influencers To Follow In 2021 #MPB2B
• 50 Top B2B Content Marketing Influencers To Follow in 2021 #CMWorld
• 20 B2B Influencer Marketing Pros to Follow from Top Brands
• 32 Top Social Media Marketing Influencers To Follow

Another important resource for B2B marketers to learn more about crafting a successful influencer program is our recently-launched Inside Influence series, featuring interviews with top industry experts such as the latest episode with Ryan Bares, Global Social Programs Lead: Social Influencers & Employee Advocacy at IBM Systems. We published dozens of posts this year specifically about influencer marketing, and we plan to bring you even more in 2021, so stay tuned. Please let us know which influencer marketing topics and ideas you'd like to see us focus on for 2021 — we'd love to hear your suggestions. Many thanks to each of you who read our blog regularly, and to all of you who comment on and share our posts on the TopRank Marketing social media channels at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. *SAP, Adobe, LinkedIn, Dell Outlet, RateLinx, AT&T, Spirion, and Treasure Data are TopRank Marketing clients.

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