January 2024

Influence marketing for B2B or B2C?

With the development of social media, the growth of influencers has given rise to influence marketing. In this article, we will discuss this strategy from the perspective of B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) activities.

Influence marketing, is it "stonks"?

First of all, it is important to know that influence marketing is now used by 93% of marketing managers. In fact, 9 out of 10 marketers find influence marketing effective. This industry represents nearly $15 billion in late 2022, up from $12 billion in 2021. In addition to being constantly growing, this sector has a more than interesting ROI with an average revenue of $18 for every $1 invested, 11 times more than traditional advertising. Influencers have a real impact on consumption, with 8 out of 10 consumers making a purchase following an influencer recommendation. Here are some statistics showing that social media is truly a communication goldmine:

Instagram : 80% of people use it to search for products or services
YouTube : 90%% of internet users say they discover new brands and products thanks to YouTube
TikTok : average engagement rate per post of 29%.

Influence marketing in B2C, yes!

It should be noted that in B2C, purchases are mainly based on the consumer’s emotions. Over time, social media has developed very competent and effective targeting algorithms. The effectiveness of these algorithms ensures a certain return on investment for a campaign based on influencers and social media. With B2C, you can get a good ROI quickly if you invest in the right influencers at the right time. Here are the 3 most effective networks for B2C currently, according to Hootsuite: Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. TikTok is currently ranked 6th in this ranking, probably due to the youth of the network.

B2C influencers have a profile more or less representative of their community. Their flagship content is photos, live streams, or regular videos. According to a survey of marketers from different companies, influencers and celebrities are prioritized for B2C campaigns. For 71% of them, micro-influencers who target a specific community are the most interesting. Let’s keep in mind 2 interesting statistics: 61% of internet users interact with at least 1 influencer once a day, and the consultation of opinions on social media has increased on average by 45% since 2020.

And for B2B?

Contrary to B2C, B2B purchases are much more based on rationality and usefulness than emotion. In B2B, the status of a true expert is essential to hope to sell. The 3 most effective networks for B2B are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. A typical B2B influencer profile is a bit different from B2C: 25-45 years old with niche expertise on a subject and a community of 1k to 10K on average. For B2B campaigns, recognized journalists and bloggers are prioritized by marketers.

It is observed that 61% of B2B decision-makers start their consideration for a purchase on the internet and on a search engine. In addition, a decision-maker trusts an expert in the field more than a company, as he knows that the latter will implement digital marketing strategies to attract him. We can conclude that for a company, an influencer brings:

up to 51% of its visibility
up to 70% of its engagement
up to 51% of the customer's trust gain for the company and its services

Overall, we observe that influencer marketing is just as relevant in B2C as in B2B...

However, it is important to adapt your strategy based on the target audience you want to reach. Influencer marketing is not a magic recipe for success. You must know how to target and adjust your investments on different types of influencers and networks depending on whether you are in B2B or B2C. Therefore, it can be said without too much risk that influencer marketing will become a major axis in a marketing strategy plan, even more so than it already is today.

Associations: Our advice for increasing visibility on Facebook

Despite the emergence of new social media platforms, Facebook still dominates the social media sphere with 2.85 billion monthly active users worldwide.

Create an Association Page instead of a profile

Being visible to everyone, even without a Facebook account, creating your Facebook page for your association is already a first vector of external communication, which can be easily found via a search engine. The page is created from a “user” profile that becomes the “administrator” of the association’s page. It is then possible to recruit other administrators, editors, and even a team of moderators. All of these actors are also page moderators since they can interact with your community.

It is possible to add a group functionality, one or even several private groups. The objective is to be able to bring people together in order to facilitate exchanges, for example.

It is important to remember that Facebook’s algorithm has evolved in recent years, so it is important to know that the effectiveness of your associative communication has changed on the social network. Indeed, publications from pages have been set aside to highlight publications from profiles. To counter this dynamic, the easiest way was to sponsor page publications to ensure that their communications were well distributed. However, we advise you not to publish your information from a profile but from your Association page. Firstly, because profiles are reserved for individuals (Facebook relentlessly tracks fake profiles) but also because if the person managing the publications from their profile leaves the association, there is nothing left.

Customizing the page

Let’s start at the beginning. It is important when creating your associative page to think about a username, which will allow users to “find” you via Facebook’s search engine. For example, the association Les Petites Victoires du quotidien uses the username @ lespetitesvic.association which allows for better referencing in search results.

The visual is also important, users must be able to understand at a glance what the association does. The banner photo and cover photo are the first elements that your future subscribers will see, so make them want to join! For example, a photo of your members in action!

In order to make your page more dynamic, it is important to provide all the information about your association and to keep it up to date. To prevent the information from being drowned out by all your future publications, you can highlight certain tabs when they appear to be relevant to your associative activity. For example, you can promote the “Event” tab or the “Groups” tab.

Publications

In order to make the publications on your associative page more impactful, we recommend thinking carefully about your editorial line, the frequency of publication, and also the topics you will address. At the beginning, we tend to publish on many disparate topics, and some posts from your volunteers may not even fall within the scope of your association’s activities. That is why a clear editorial line must be thought out in advance and all the actors of the associative page must adhere to it in order to harmonize and standardize your messages to your community. (Who are you addressing, what message are you conveying, what tone is used, which publications are more effective…)

It is important to ensure consistency in the presentation of your publications. Use emojis, theme with brackets example [AG], [Volunteers], [News]. Write rather short texts, maximum 150 characters, and do not hesitate to tag volunteers, people. You can also add a geographic location to your post which will indicate the places where your missions take place, for example.

5 essential tools for your content creation

Are you constantly searching for (free) tools for your content creation? Don't worry, so are we! Today, we're sharing with you 5 essential tools that we use to create content to share on our social networks.

Canva

A well-known and recognized tool, Canva is undoubtedly one of the best online tools for creating content on any type of platform. With its library of images, illustrations, photos, and fonts, among other things, Canva allows us to create our own images, slideshows, and now even videos.

Don't expect complex video editing, but it's more than enough to create a GIF or short video like this one:

Colors

Coolors is clearly the tool you should think of to create your color palettes. This free tool allows you to create a color palette from a photo, for example, while giving you all the relevant information about each color. You can also customize a trendy palette or create your own from scratch.

This gives you an overview of the colors to use on your content!

Unsplash

Need a royalty-free image? Head to Unsplash. This collaborative image bank is based on hundreds of thousands of artists and photographers who offer us their creations in various sizes and resolutions. The site has more than 5 million high-definition images, ranging from portraits of strangers to textured backgrounds. You'll definitely find what you're looking for!

Previewed

I don't know about you, but personally, I'm always looking for free mockups with a good render without spending hours to get something realistic. Well, I found what I was looking for: Previewed!

Be careful, though, there are only mockups with phones, computers, or tablets.

Photopea

Photopea is probably the least known of the 5 tools. However, it is still super practical! If you don't want to invest in Photoshop, this is a great compromise. It's a very simple and comprehensive tool that will allow you not only to retouch and edit photos, but also to export your files in different formats and adapt their size and weight according to your needs.

We mainly use it to make our images SEO friendly by not exceeding 200kb without losing quality on our exported images.

However, it is important to adapt your strategy according to the target audience you want to reach. Influencer marketing is not a magic recipe for success. You have to know how to target and modulate your investments on the different types of influencers and networks depending on whether you are doing B2B or B2C. It can be safely said that influencer marketing will become a major axis in a marketing strategy plan, even more than it already is today.