In this final 13th episode of Inside Influence where I talk with B2B marketing insiders about what’s working and what’s not in the world of influencer marketing, our perspective has shifted from B2B brands to the influencers themselves. At TopRank Marketing, we conducted the first in-depth research into B2B influencer marketing which inspired this series and Onalytica recently conducted the first research study of B2B influencers to better understand influencer marketing from their perspective. Any B2B marketer that wants a complete picture for success with B2B influencer marketing going into 2021 and beyond will benefit greatly from both reports: The Current State & Future of B2B Influencer Marketing – Onalytica 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Research Report – TopRank Marketing To drill down into the insights around the Onalytica report, I talked with Tim Williams, CEO. We covered: About Onalytica as a B2B influencer marketing platform Tim’s role as CEO at Onalytica The current state of B2B influencer marketing The impact of COVID-19 on B2B influencer marketing Why Always-On influencer marketing is good for both brands and influencers How to convince more B2B brands to focus on the experience they create for influencers as much as they do for customers Opportunities for B2B companies to leverage both external influencers and employee influencers for marketing B2B influencer engagement trends for 2021 What B2B marketers can do to better showcase influencer expertise in content What B2B brands can expect if they hire an agency What to be optimistic about with influencer marketing post-pandemic Check out the full interview podcast here: See the full video interview with Tim Williams in Episode 13 of Inside Influence here: Below is a highlight transcription of our discussion. Tell us about your role and what Onlaytica does Tim: Great. So I’m the CEO of Onalytica and I’ve always been in social media, sort of marketing communication circles and formally in public affairs. I’ve always helped build software that helps brands try and influence the influencers who obviously then in turn influence the target audience or the end consumer. That’s been my passion. I’ve spent 20 plus years helping brands communicate their audience better. At Onalytica we have an influence marketing software. We tend to use this in influencer advocacy, employee advocacy, virtual events, account-based marketing, and social selling. Those are these use cases that we help brands with. I see it as my role to be out there to publish content and to try and lead from the front…listen to what customers are saying and see how technology can really advance the industry. Then in my role, I’d really just try and listen to the brand. It’s a very immature marketplace. It’s evolving. So I see it as my role to be out there to publish content and to try and lead from the front. But importantly, listen to what customers are saying and see how technology can really advance the industry. I’m not keen on us just taking a passive look at the industry 工作职能邮件数据库 and trying to sort of build more revenue with customers. I think that technology is often like a challenge and solution for the industry to mature. So I guess I see my role as just helping in whatever way I can to progress and really just help brands connect with influence communities to create inspiring content. You and your team at Onalytica recently conducted a comprehensive B2B influencer research study. At a high level, what is the current state of B2B influencer marketing? Tim: Well, interestingly, it was off the back of the TopRank Marketing research report. Obviously TopRank are a great, leading agency in the field and producing lots of research and obviously you and I talk about research and have done quite a lot over the past few years. We’ve done some state of the industry stuff before with brands, but we really wanted to flip it to be able to give a 360 degree view on top of your research to people out there. [Influencers] do make a big difference if brands are partnering with them in the right way. I think what was really interesting is that it confirmed a lot of the beliefs in your report that the state of the industry is that influencers do give that third-party opinion. They do make a big difference if brands are partnering with them in the right way. It also showed up a lot of the gaps and a lot of the challenges for marketers on where the industry is going to head and what needs to happen for the influencers to feel like they’ve got a positive experience. A lot of the people doing influence marketing now don’t have influencer marketing in their job description. It’s something that they’re just inheriting and running through pilot programs. I thought it was really interesting. I was very encouraged by the results, the gaps. Some of them do still surprise me with the way some marketers approach influence marketing.