Business Influencer Marketing x Nearbound x Sales

We've looked at the challenges facing marketing generating qualified leads at a sustainable cost, via typical outbound/inbound methods.

Buyers are becoming increasingly frustrated with the current state of affairs. Reaching out to them and distinguishing yourself from the competition has become more challenging than ever before.

The reason why B2B influencer marketing is gaining so much attention in 2024 is quite simple: it's a fresh approach that taps into the reputation of others to capture the attention of buyers, all while being cost-effective.

Business Influencer Marketing = Word of mouth... at scale.

Even when looking at it from a broader perspective, the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) or cost per engagement (CPE) of LinkedIn Ads can be quite staggering. And unfortunately, the results further down the sales funnel are lacklustre.

If you truly wish to break through the noise, incorporating business influencer marketing into your arsenal as a marketer is essential for future success. If you haven't done so already, you're already lagging behind.

Now we focus on the ever-decreasing return on sales tactics in the pipeline. Calls unanswered (because your prospect is receiving so many), content ignored (because your prospect is receiving so much), emails ignored...(you get the drift)

This article is for AEs, BDRs etc who want a return to accelerated pipelines and a huge reduction in the number of deals tagged as "in limbo". The focus is on how external business influencers (with a side helping of internal cross-functional collaboration), can help in this acceleration as part of their social selling mix.

This is distinct from employee advocacy, customer advocacy or brand-to-brand partnerships. We will draw out the common sales-orientated threads from Jared Fuller's view on Nearbound x Sales and apply them to our domain - business influencer marketing.

Whilst there isn't empirical evidence of marketing teams having progressed "more" than sales, many sales teams in the present day are still operating in outdated ways, similar to how marketing teams used to be. The majority of these teams lack proper procedures or technology to harness the significant potential of the abundant data available within their own ecosystem. This isn't down to sales to sort out in isolation in a silo.

Marketing will have to step-up and both enable sales and (in the context of this article), enable influencers too.

The author's a marketer and is also keen to stress that Nearbound doesn't require a clear-out of inbound and outbound strategies starting over from scratch. Instead, it enhances and modifies these approaches to align with the current environment—a time that craves trust and meaningful connections.

In the Outbound Era, ABC meant “Always Be Closing.”

In the Nearbound Era, ABC means “Always Be Connecting.”

Remember, your network is your net worth. —Jill Rowley

Fuller, Jared; Rowley, Jill. Nearbound and the Rise of the Who Economy (p. 135). Nearbound.com. Kindle Edition.

We can apply some of the three elements of the Nearbound Sales Blueprint to get the most out of your business influencer marketing.

The Blueprint is comprised of three steps:

1. Nailing your nearbound sales math
2. Creating your nearbound account list
3. Running the 3 I’s of nearbound sales - Intel, Influence, and Intros

1 Nailing your nearbound sales math

You can begin to make a difference by redirecting a portion of the effort that was originally allocated to outbound/inbound channels and allocating it to brand advocacy which we view as incorporating employee/customer advocacy, brand to brand partnerships and here - we are advocating for a share of this budget for brand influencer marketing.

If you are in a position where you have all 4 brand advocacy (B.A) channels in play, simplistically you should be aiming for:

1. Around 1/12 of your open opportunities should include external business influencer (B.I) presence
2. Around 1/12 of sales activities target nearbound B.I plays
3. Around 1/12 of accounts assigned to each seller have B.I "attached" - accounts, activities, or deals linked to B.I.

(1/12th = 1/3 brand advocacy share overall x 1/4 B.I share of B.A)

Once up and running, marketing & sales will analyse part 3 to measure cohort trends and growth.

2 Creating your nearbound account list

This part is easier (and different) for brand to brand partnerships because you can use platforms such as Reveal to establish which accounts have the most partner overlap and which have the most relevant signals to run nearbound plays against.

Simplistically you're looking for other businesses who may have already been to your promised land (sold to said prospect) and this works vice versa. You're trying to get a foot in the door.

With business influencer marketing marketing and sales can collaborate to ascertain which existing accounts could benefit (i.e be accelerated in the pipeline) - from possibly being exposed to a business influencer's content.

What will happen though, is that you'll create nett new accounts in the pipeline from the influencer's content itself plus analysing the business influencer's post engagement (likes and comments).

You'll also discover other benefits...

🖋 Test messaging -> Does the ICP engage, comment and resonate with the messaging you're putting out?

☠ No conversations - This is as useful, if no one engaged or converted to a meeting. That's just as useful. You can see that your messaging doesn't hit home, your product isn't a fit, the ICP is wrong. It still holds immense value.

🤝 MQLs/Meetings (or at least starting conversations) -> by leveraging external credibility and accessing their audience. It'll kick start awareness which results in MQLs.

How could you effectively sell to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Amazon?

This may seem like a challenging manual task, but there is a strategy you can employ: influencer marketing.

(You can apply this approach to any high-profile account or executive that you wish to target.)

1️⃣ Begin by visiting their profile and analysing their content engagement.

2️⃣ Take note of the individuals with whom they frequently interact.

3️⃣ Reach out to those individuals and propose a sponsored post where they promote your company, perhaps by linking to an upcoming webinar you are hosting.

4️⃣ Indirectly influence the desired CTO (or executive) by encouraging them to register for the webinar and engage with your content.

3/ Running the 3 I’s of nearbound sales - Intel, Influence, and Intros

The whole will definitely be greater than the sum of its parts here.

Let's focus on the middle element. The other brand advocacy plays we rate - will all help with nearbound, surrounding your buyers with gentle influence from multiple trusted "nodes" - some of your colleagues, your customers, your brand partners and external influencers you select. Just imagine if you have the financial and logistical bandwidth to roll with all 4!

Influence plays a vital role as it pervades every aspect and lies at the core of the Who Economy. Traditional methods of reaching out to buyers no longer capture their attention. Instead, they rely on trusted advisors (B.I's) within their network for guidance.

Flooencer will help you wield referential power, which is about all about building connection, by finding, identifying, and connecting with people in different areas. Identifying “people who have an area of expertise and work with them to develop that expertise…make sure they are tapping into informational and referential power, too, so that they’re able to expand their influence.

Essentially help them become famous and secure long term deals.

You're looking for these type of influencers. When we say "you're" - that can be a joint effort between sales & marketing (partnerships if you are lucky to have that dept).

☢ Influencers that are pro-active, they engaged with the brands to collaborate on the content.

😎 They are "cool", jokes aside, they are fun to work with and were personable (whilst being serious when they needed to be).

🤝 They make direct introductions throughout the campaigns, make an effort to advocate the brand (when appropriate and not being pushy) to help get success.

🎨 They are creative, offered different content ideas, strategies to help the campaign be successful.

📣 They amplify the campaign, they engage with their audience in the comments, directly message some people (who they thought were relevant).

🧠 They make an effort to learn about your brand, the story, the product to help inform their content but also, to truly understand and align to what the goals were of the brand. This is the difference between getting a (as one influencer referred it to us), "a pair of nike's vs. a house".

It's a two way street though.

Influencers will evaluate your brand also.

If you want them to earn income that'll make a big difference, put in the effort and treat each relationship like a true partnership which you're providing a service for.

Come prepared for the initial introduction, care what they care about, have a strong value hypothesis but above all else, make it easy for them.

Social selling is about using social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter to forge genuine connections with buyers, influencers, and decision-makers. Flooencer is a business influencer marketplace you can leverage to help you achieve that.

It's emerged as a popular term. When searching for advice on this topic, you will come across numerous outdated sponsored articles discussing profile optimisation and generic suggestions for engagement tools. This aligns with the conventional outbound & inbound practices.

However, in the Who Economy, your prospects are seeking guidance from those who have already achieved success in your prospect's desired field (their promised land)