Using the Power of Influencers to Reach SMBs · Using the Power of Influencers to Reach SMBs A B2SMB Playbook: Best Practices for Winning, Keeping & Growing Small-Business Customers

Using the Power of Influencers to Reach SMBsA B2SMB Playbook: Best Practices for Winning, Keeping & Growing Small-Business Customers

Playbook Contributed by

RAMON RAYGlobal Speaker,

Entrepreneur, Author

B2SMB PLAYBOOK: Using the Power of Influencers to Reach SMBs © 2019 B2SMB Institute 2

About B2SMB Playbooks 3

Abstract 4

Introduction 5

Playbook Contributor 7

Why B2SMB Brands Work with Influencers 8

Common Characteristics of Influencers 10

The Role of the Influencer 11

Engagement Options 14

About Ramon Ray and Smart Hustle Magazine 19

About the B2SMB Institute 20

Playbooks19 Online 21

B2SMB Playbooks provide actionable solutions to some of the most common issues in B2SMB sales, marketing and operations. We’ve enlisted some of the brightest minds in SMB-focused solutions to share their best tactics.

Who should use this Playbook? B2SMB practitioners responsible for branding, marketing and selling to small-business customers.


The Problem: Many B2SMB companies understand the reach and influence of persuasive industry voices, but have trouble figuring out how to best engage with these influencers and leverage them to connect with small businesses. Influencers can connect with small businesses with credibility and authenticity that B2SMB companies can sometimes find difficult to project on their own.

The Process: Creating pilot projects like research surveys and content marketing campaigns with an influencer partner can leverage their audience and help to determine the best process for maximizing ROI. Providing valuable content or marketing tips can associate your brand with value and trust, and can open the door for further engagement down the line.


Over the past decade, content marketing has become an increasingly important approach for B2SMB businesses. With an ultimate goal of getting the attention of the consumer and driving them to action, many SMB-facing businesses have focused on creating and distributing valuable content that can attract and retain their core customer base.

This content ranges from extensive research surveys that showcase elements of a company’s area of expertise, to lighter how-to or “tips” articles, to op-eds and thought leadership published on company blogs.

Furthermore, influencers often host webinars, Twitter chats, video, webinar and other live format campaigns.

As with all online content, the goal is, bring attention to the brand and/or their education and reach a large audience (or a new audience) with the help of social media boosters, and aggregators.


As such, industry influencers have become increasingly important hubs for businesses that are looking to connect with SMBs via this kind of content marketing.

Influencers — who are often analysts, researchers, or columnists —often are already providing compelling content that has helped them to cultivate and maintain trusted, independent relationships with small business audiences.

Many B2SMB companies have discovered that partnering with influencers can associate them with valuable thought leadership, help get their message in front of the right audiences, and amplify their reach.

Brands are “impersonal” and leveraging an influencer can add warmth and personality to a “brand.”


Ramon Ray, editor of Smart Hustle Magazine, has built a career as an entrepreneur and keynote speaker, and is a key small-business influencer.

Ray spoke with the B2SMB Institute recently about how companies can think about reaching out to influencers and conceptualizing projects to engage them with.


RAMON RAYGlobal Speaker, Entrepreneur, Author

As online influence becomes more and more important, lots of major brands that deal with small businesses — from Salesforce to AT&T, from DexYP to Yext — have engaged industry influencers to give their content marketing strategies an edge.

These companies have broad marketing budgets, so influencer marketing isn’t necessarily their main strategy for driving sales —rather it’s a way to tell their story more deeply, and with more of a personal touch.


Ramon Ray, of Smart Hustle Magazine, points to the ways that bigger businesses are using influencers as a model for smaller B2SMB companies: “They want to add better positioning for their brand and to look warm and credible,” he says.

And it’s not just “credible.” B2B marketers are really looking for influencers who are experts, associated with authority and thought leadership.

“With B2B influencers, it’s a composition vs reach story,” writes Michael Grover of Marketing Insider Group. “While there certainly is an upper-echelon of recognizable B2B influencers – they speak at shows, they have blogs, they write books, and they do have relatively large followings — the real B2B influencers are those literally connected with the buyer’s journey. And, since people follow people similar to themselves, the audiences they create might be small but could be very powerfully connected. True influencers in the original sense of the word.”


The Mark of an Influencer

In his article, “How to Track the Elusive B2B Influencer,” Grover studied a variety of factors that make B2B influencers “more findable,” and looked at some common characteristics of influencers who attended trade shows, determining:

The number of followers influencers have is significantly more than the average social media user

Influencers tend to engage across multiple social platforms

Influencers air their comments about the content of multiple trade shows

The number of brands and people who are influencers is almost equal


https://marketinginsidergroup.com/influencer-marketing/how-to-track-b2b-influencer/?utm_source=B2B+Marketing+Insider&utm_campaign=75b94dd21e-Marketing+Insider+Group+Top+Posts+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_40b372c1a0-75b94dd21e-108360833&

1. Facilitate Authentic Connections

Ray, meanwhile, has worked with AT&T, as the company has tried to reach SMBs, and explains how he has been able to put a credible and personal touch on the telephone company’s connection with these businesses:

“The business owners have a lot on their plate, so when AT&T can work with an influencer, whether it’s me or somebody else, we can set the mind of the business owner at ease. We can help short circuit the connection with, ‘Hey I’m Ramon Ray, I’m working with AT&T.’ Instead of hearing from the Vice President of AT&T or the VP of Salesforce, they’re like, ‘Oh this guy started four companies, he’s been in debt, he knows what it’s like to lose his house and he is associated with Dell or AT&T or whatever the brand is.’”


2. Create Clarity

Ray says the world of marketing for small businesses has changed a lot since he started out — which is why influencer marketing is increasingly valuable.

“I think the small business owner today can figure out [basic marketing], and the technology’s getting simpler and simpler to use,” but that the same time, the ease of tech means there is more clutter. “It’s so easy to create an app that adds a little more confusion to the market — hence influencers breaking through the clutter.”


3. Render Relatability

Ray says it’s often his job to try and make the technology relatable to small-business owners who may not have the same level of technical expertise, but also just to make the brand look good. And he says that he has a variety of engagements — while some bigger companies will pay him for a more involved collaboration, smaller companies also reach out and engage in smaller ways, just to be on his radar as opportunities arise.

“There’s a lot of things startups can do with influencers, where they don’t have a big budget, or ‘We have no budget, we just want to work with you, we’re going to send you some cookies or some socks, why don’t you give them to your community?’”

Ray mentioned one marketer who sent copies of his book out to influencers, and they in turn tweeted out, and put it on YouTube: “He got huge exposure, no money passing hands in the least.”


Cash, Goods, Barter

While cash is the only thing that can pay the rent or buy food, Ramon says that in lieu of cash, one way to start working with an influencer is just to connect with them and say hello. Have a phone call to figure out what might work.

Maybe you can pay for their travel and accommodation to a conference and they’ll live-tweet the conference for an honorarium.

It’s all about human-to-human relationships. Maybe you don’t have a $10,000 budget, but you can send some needed gear to an influencer.

“Of course, seasoned influencers will mostly and deservedly want to be financially compensated for their time, but you can ask and discuss,” says Ray.


Test the Waters

Ray also suggests starting engagements with pilot projects, like commissioning white paper research and co-creating content marketing campaigns with an influencer partner.

That way you can get a sense of how the influencer can leverage their audience and help to determine the best process for maximizing ROI.


Disclosures

It’s important to work with influencers who disclose their relationships with you and their community.

You don’t want your brand to get in trouble with the FTC or another agency, nor does the influencer.

Always be sure to disclose any compensated relationship.


Determine Engagement GoalsSometimes, an influencer is particularly good at reaching into new SMB communities that are hard to connect with, says Ray: “I work with many brands that say, ‘Ramon, you have 20 thousand people, 50 thousand people, 100 thousand people in your community, let us work with you on a campaign to reach them.’ For other campaigns they say: ‘We have our existing community,’ but they want influencers there to make that brand relatable, credible and add humanity to it.”

The type of engagement really depends on the situation and the company’s size and goals, says Ray: “GoDaddy, they’re this big billion-dollar company, and they already do all the advertising they need, everybody knows their name. They have a strategy for their content, how to have a web host, how to pick the best website, they’re going to work with variety of agencies or others or influencers to do that. And maybe they also do some local event marketing — that’s when the influencer comes into play … to soften that brand and get a little more local.”


Meanwhile, a smaller brand may be looking for the most value for the buck. “They work with an influencer like me to put some content together, then instead of doing an ad saying ‘Buy from us,’ they do an ad around the content. So, the ad says, ‘Ramon says this works’ — see the difference? They’re not doing an ad saying ‘Buy from us,’ they’re doing an ad promoting the piece in the Wall Street Journal.”

Ray says that in this way “you can take an influencer’s content and an influencer’s name and add legs to it and scale it.”

One co-branded content piece can turn into a Twitter chat, an eBook, Facebook ads around the brand, and can boost more content in the brand’s existing community.

“You can use a copywriter to help you with that,” he says, but then it’s really the influencer’s network and social channels that will make the piece gain real traction. You may start with the piece, but then it expands into: “Hey we’re going to do the Ramon Ray show.”


Smart Hustle Magazine is a digital and print magazine that shares the challenges, celebrates the successes and chronicles the hustle, the smart hustle, of today's small business entrepreneur.

Smart Hustle is the brainchild of Ramon Ray, celebrated author and technology evangelist. In addition to writing the best-selling The Facebook Guide to Small Business Marketing, Ramon is a celebrated speaker, small business event organizer and publisher of SmallBizTechnology.com.

You can follow Ramon on Twitter at @RamonRay.


http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Guide-Small-Business-Marketing/dp/0470875208

http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/

http://www.twitter.com/ramonray

The B2SMB Institute is the first professional organization focused on advancing excellence in the business-to-small-business ecosystem.

B2SMB leaders, practitioners, brands and enterprises rely on the Institute for critical market intelligence resources, peer-to-peer networking, best-practice guidance and specialized skills development.

The B2SMB Institute champions small-business-centric thinking and practice, with a focus on how to reach, engage, win, keep and grow SMB customers.

Our member-driven organization serves as a dynamic, daily destination to find, meet and network with B2SMB decision-makers who share common needs, challenges and goals.

Visit https://b2smbi.com/ for details on resources, benefits and membership opportunities.


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Playbooks19 Online is a two-day web event produced by the B2SMB Institute, featuring peer-to-peer workshops on how to successfully win, keep and grow small-business customers.

The Virtual program will feature leaders in B2SMB marketing, sales, product development, customer service, delivery and more, offering B2SMB practitioners a crash course in doing their jobs better.

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Using the Power of Influencers to Reach SMBs · Using the Power of Influencers to Reach SMBs A B2SMB Playbook: Best Practices for Winning, Keeping & Growing Small-Business Customers