As influencer marketing continues to take the B2C world by storm, marketing executives at companies of all sizes are wondering if this rapidly evolving marketing strategy can be implemented for their specific use cases. they focus on DTC, B2C retail or even B2B. For the latter, influencers can help promote white papers and eBooks, two of the preferred content formats in the tech industry.

Introduction to influencer marketing

First off, what exactly is influencer marketing? An easy way to understand the concept is to distill it down to the digital equivalent of having someone tell your story for you. Using influencers is like making a word-of-mouth campaign exist within a specific social network of choice, preferably using individuals who most resemble your buyer personality or who have an influence. about your clients in an ambitious or authoritative sense, in the category you are focused on.

Before you dive into using influencers in and around white papers or ebooks, it’s important to make sure you’re working with the right kind of influencers for the phase of your campaign.

Difference in types of influencers

Different platforms and experts provide different audience size breakpoints as a mechanism for separating influencers, usually in a macro, micro, and nano format. However, the size of an audience only tells part of the story; there are other aspects related to their scope and focus to consider.

Celebrity or ambitious influence: This is the most common example of an influencer, typically used to describe a celebrity or famous individual on the internet who has amassed a significant number of followers on at least one social platform. According to the AIDA framework, celebrities and large untargeted demographics are best suited to the attention phase, acting as a carnival barker at the top of the funnel. In the B2B world, they are used sparingly, with the exception, of course, of famous CEOs and business coaches.

Peer or micro / nano influence: This is where most influencers are located. These individuals are everywhere because technically anyone can be an influencer as long as they have at least one follower. Our neighbors, family, coworkers, and passive internet friends would all be seen as influencers at the peer level. When their categorical personalities and buyers are similar enough, they can be exceptionally useful in driving sales. However, another fantastic use case is to use peer influencers in the amplification stages of a campaign, once the heavy lifting is done by an expert.

Authoritarian influence or at expert level: This is going to be the most useful type of influencer for B2B brands, especially in a format that best suits the expertise. These people are recognized in their sector of activity as being sufficiently informed to provide concrete advice. Their audience size can vary from relatively small (nano to micro level below 10,000 or even 1,000) to relatively large (nearly 1,000,000 + macro). The most important attribute they possess is an unblemished reputation in the field in which you operate.

Difference between white papers and ebooks

While they are used interchangeably depending on whether the content is closed or not and how technical the content is, there is a difference between white papers and eBooks that needs to be addressed.

More importantly, white papers are typically associated with a company’s specific products and services, while an eBook will typically focus on industry concepts that are not directly specific to a business. Both can be blocked, presented in multiple formats, use a variety of styles, and are used to generate leads. They just have a slightly different direct and indirect sales approach. So how can influencers be used in these types of content?

Case 1: Appeal to authority

The first method of appealing to authority is to get rid of someone else’s existing authoritarian influence. Asking an existing expert to create an eBook for your industry that strongly promotes your product or service can help a business gain authority through the direct influence of that expert. In this example, the influencer is practically looking at your solution to an industry-wide problem.

Case 2: Sponsor ebooks created by a known expert

Sponsoring existing content is less expensive. In this example, the audience should already be quantifiable and, from the prospect’s perspective, provide some degree of calculable ROI; it is, however, less direct than a transfer of authority.

In the eyes of a prospect, the writer remains the expert and the commissioner is no longer a possible expert by proximity, however an influence of degree still exists.

Case 3: Active co-writing alongside an expert

This method is the next step over the first case, where the expert creates some of the content alongside a potential brand expert. EBooks still work best in this example, as the target may be industry-wide solutions whether or not the company expert is raised to the same level as the original expert. What makes this ideal case is the dual-audience approach, in which the authoritative influencer and brand presumably have unique audiences to promote the material to.

Case 4: Approval / writing by an expert of your white paper

Written transmissions and approvals contained in content work best on white papers, as these assets are company specific and therefore need to focus on internal company expertise which then receives expert approval. of the sector. It’s the white paper equivalent to co-writing an ebook.

Case 5: Attracting authoritative sponsors to legitimize your own expertise

When looking to establish your own authoritative expertise, the outreach approach can work backwards by attracting the sponsors most closely associated with the embodiment of the qualities you want your own brand to associate with. This is generally used by individuals as a mechanism to improve their own profile in the industry.

Case 6: Syndication to authoritative sources to further transmit authority by association

In this example, the asset is typically blocked on multiple posts and priced on a lead basis. While there is additional value beyond the simple lead, as this can be seen as a backdoor brand, given that your business is still associated with the post in an expertise-by-association mechanism, that a prospect decides whether or not to go through the gate process to read your whitepaper or ebook.

Use peer influencers to maximize dissemination

Once assets are created with the help of authoritative influencers, consider considering their creation as part of a campaign and not in a vacuum for content creation. There are a few areas where peers can now be used:

1.) Review content on networks where the buying audience exists. While a B2B brand may attempt to exert authoritative influence directly on LinkedIn (given its role in the B2B world), it is also possible that influencers from the broader industry will provide brief reviews of the ebook or of the white paper created on LinkedIn.

2.) Ask different influencers to share review urls to signal the request and spread further. Building on the previous point, the available influencer pool can now expand to any influencer with a LinkedIn profile in order to share or even comment on the reviewed posts.

Keep amplifying

Continue to distribute your created assets in as many formats as possible, across different mediums that your buying audience can use to engage with you. One of these mechanisms would be to use newsletters to expand the reach of your influence. As long as a business includes asset URLs in as many mediums as possible (according to the authority concepts described above) and tracks effectiveness through specific campaign-specific KPIs, white papers, and assisted e-books by influencers can become a fantastic tool for B2Bs. .