What Everyone Gets Wrong About B2B Influencers with Sarah Adam, Head of Partnerships & Influencer Marketing at Wix | Ep. 330

0:01Sarah Adam:Welcome to The Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Yes. Thanks. Good to be here. You're in one of the newer areas of the B2B world, I guess you could say, and B2B influencer marketing. Could you give a little background on how you got into influencer marketing and then we can dive into it? So yeah, I've been doing, I work at Wix. I've been here for five years now and I've always been in different like partnership roles, focusing on our B2B target audience.

0:56So focusing essentially on our B2B products. And roughly three years ago, we launched a significant solution for targeting agencies and freelancers. And we were aware back at the time that there is a perception gap in terms of our brand and how it's perceived among these audiences. And we, in our discussions internally in the marketing department, we were well aware of this challenge before we even started to market the product. And we were thinking of what would make sense, like what would be the best way to approach this community, these communities, this audience that we are well aware are not natural to Wix.

1:42Because Wix, you know, that has been around now for over a decade is known for its B2C solutions and the brand is so strong. So we were aware of this gap. And then from the work that we were doing, the research, etc., it became clearer and clearer to us that we need to be working with, partnering with, rubbing shoulders with the people that lead these communities, the people that are trusted by the communities. And these are influencers. These are content creators that don't only create great content in our niche, but they also have influence, right? They have following, they're able to create content that's compelling, that's engaging, that's authentic, that people trust and relate to.

2:31So that was kind of the moment where we decided to invest in this. And we've been doing it ever since and scaling slowly. So since I started three years ago, and that's kind of where it began. It kind of grew from that brand perception challenge back in the day.

2:50Sarah Adam:What do you think is the biggest myth B2B marketers still believe about working with influencers? so i think for i get this a lot when i talk to colleagues people from like you know if it's vp marketing or even cmos from brands that are maybe not as large as wix but they're you know they're strong b2b brands and they say to me yeah but you know i tell them about what i do and the success we're seeing. And then they'll say like, yeah, but I don't think there's no way there are influences in our niche, right? Let's say it's a cybersecurity solution, or let's say it's fintech and they'll think, no, no, no.

3:32Like, you know, they think of influences as like Mr. Beast or, you know, typical B2C type of influences and activity. And they find it very difficult to relate to that and to imagine that in their own niche. And I always say to them, yeah, but every niche, every community has those people that speak louder than others, the ones that people listen to, that people trust. The challenge is finding them, discovering them. And also, I think there's a misconception about what an influencer is. An influencer is not just Mr. Beast. Influencers in B2B could have as low as 2 ,000 followers. And it could be someone on LinkedIn that doesn't even consider themselves an influencer, isn't even monetizing their activity on LinkedIn.

4:22They're just genuinely sharing content that's super relevant for your ICP. And so many times we've reached out to influencers and it's their first brand deal ever. and we need to kind of really hold their hand and explain to them what this thing is and what we want from them it's very interesting but yes I believe and I think it's a big misconception I think that it's not sure I think that every niche has its influences and the more you're familiar with it the easier it is to detect who those people are and you know if these are people that have never worked with brands before or if you as a brand think no no I don't want to pay someone to post, that's okay.

5:06There's so many things you can do with these people beyond just sponsoring a post, right? Like, especially in B2B, like if they, if you're looking for someone to participate, you know, to be a guest on your webinar, to speak at your customer event, you know, there are so many other ways to partner with these people, not just paying them for content.

5:29Sarah Adam:So if you were going to build a B2B program from scratch today, with everything you know, what are like the first three things you do to make it work? It's a good question. The first thing I think, and this is like a process that you would need to do is research, research, research, to spend time, enough time to really immerse yourself in this niche in the market that you're focusing on, to really be part of the conversation. I don't mean to participate, but I mean to be there, to be listening, to be aware of who people are listening to, what are people saying. In other words, who are the relevant influencers?

6:17So I think it all starts with that research and you really need to, I don't think there's a shortcut. I mean, I'm not aware of a shortcut and I don't think looking for a shortcut is a good idea because it takes time to really be part of that. So I would, first of all, really immerse myself and spend, I mean, it could take days, really. That's definitely number one. Number two, I think, is to identify the different communities or outlets, like not just the influencers themselves that you should be partnering with. And then I'd say the third thing, once you've done the research, you've identified who the key players are, is to actually start reaching out to them.

7:00before you have a plan, that's okay. But just to start talking to them and understand like, how do they work with brands today? What are they doing? What's working? How much do they charge? Like to get a real idea before you even start to budget, just to understand what you're working with, what the potential is, what are the options? Because you'll be very smart after those steps.

7:23Sarah Adam:I know it's like the research part and for everything's so important because the influencer space is so non-transparent everybody has different rates everybody has different styles everybody has different working styles everybody puts out different pieces of content and you have to navigate that process but the question i had for you is how do you choose the right influencers in b2b are you looking for followers engagement content quality niche expertise what is your like stack rank on like criteria you're looking for? So to answer that question, there's a question that you need to ask before, which is what is your goal, right?

8:06So for us, our goal is brand awareness, which means that if I'm looking at influencers and influencer content, what matters to me is the reach that they get. So less the following, I care about their reach. So how many, you know, average views are they getting on their posts, engagement, who's engaging with them, right? If my goal is brand awareness, for example. So the things that I look at, okay, and this is, you know, some things here are relevant for B2C as well, but I'm going to highlight the ones that are most relevant for B2B. So number one is their title. What is it that they do, right?

8:50Because if they, I'll give you an example, if I'm doing a campaign and I want to target web designers on LinkedIn, okay, so their profession is super important to me. And that could be something that for B2C is overlooked. Okay, so the profession has to be within the niche, right? Otherwise, it just doesn't make sense to work with them. Then there's the yes following is interesting, but it's not a deal maker or breaker. What is the average views that they get and the engagement they get? So let's say we're ticking the boxes. You know, they've got the right profession. They've got the right numbers.

9:30Then I dive into the content itself. Now, I'm not looking for high, high, high quality. Let's talk about, let's say, video, right? So I'm not looking for high, high, high, fine, fine, fine content, right? Because that's not the point. The point is they need to be authentic. They need to be relatable. so it's okay to have not only okay it's advisable to have to be working with different influences with different styles right you don't want everyone to look like your brand and and your content and that's that's for you to do with your ads and on your social channels but when you're working with influencers you want those unique styles because each style like that attracts different audience, like different following and viewers which are relevant for you.

10:20So I deep dive into the content and I'm looking for that authenticity for that unique style. And in terms of like quality of the content, obviously, it needs to be clear, you know, good audio or whatever, but nothing too polished. So those are the things I look at. And if it ticks all the boxes, if I like everything that I see, that's when obviously we'll reach out. So that's pretty much the process.

10:51Sarah Adam:You talked about a little bit about things you're looking for content-wise, like the quality of audio, like it doesn't have to be this. So I want to go talk a little bit about the brief. I think this is like one of like the, also the most like tricky things to get right because you don't want to like stifle the creativity of a creator because they know the audience. But you also have to like be in some guardrails of what your brand, especially if you're a bigger brand, you have to be in some guardrail. So what does like a brief look like to you when you're briefing a creator and saying, I want to do X with a creator?

11:34Yeah, the brief is very important. And I give like a good example that I think is kind of easy to understand and imagine. But I say, imagine that, you know, you found this influencer and you're stepping into a car with the influencer. The influencer's driving. He's at the driver's seat. And you, the brand, are sitting at the back. and you give the driver your brief, which is essentially the destination, right? So you want to be very clear as to what the destination is. In other words, what do you want? What should the end product be, right? What are your goals? You want to raise brand awareness.

12:13Is it a specific feature you want them to talk about? But then you shut up and let them drive sort of thing. like you let them decide according to, you know, after all, they are content creators. This is what they do best. They know their audience better than you do. So to let them get there freely. So to give them the creative freedoms. In other words, we give the boundaries of what the kind of do's and don'ts and try and make it as clear as possible, as brief as possible, um, hence the name brief and to, um, and to not interfere. So it's very important to give the creative freedom, uh, but just to make sure that from the get-go, so before they start creating, it's clear to them what success looks like and means to you, right?

13:04So for example, if it's a brand awareness campaign, um, focusing on a specific product launch or feature, um, and you'll be measuring and impressions is the most important thing, right? No hard call to action at the end. I just want people to, I want them to stop scrolling and get an aha moment, right? So when the creator knows that in advance, like it's, it's clear to them or it's easier for them to understand and be aligned with what is expected.

13:34Sarah Adam:I love the name. I think you nailed it. I think so many people forget that the word brief means brief and it's so really funny because I've seen briefs that are i would say books i would say like you can't say this you can't see this you can't say this this is a not wrong and it turns into you just basically saying something and then they and then they come back and say why is this not performing and it's like well you're basically saying what we should say to our audience that but not even in our voice tone of voice just in your tone of voice and you expect them to care what you're saying um i think one thing that i like you to pull back the curtain a little bit is like how do you negotiate these influencer contracts when there's like no standard like industry rate card for things very challenging yeah what like could you give like a little example of like what averages go for some people like who are doing some campaigns they should know like yeah if i'm doing this this is what i should be charging yeah so obviously a very good question and i often talk about it on linkedin like in my posts i share real numbers and pricing now pricing uh i've learned a lot about it um the hard way slowly slowly from campaign to campaign looking back at i mean it's difficult for me to look back at like the first deals I did like as a brand like the agreements that we had and the amount of money we paid because it just makes me like want to throw up it takes it takes quite a few campaigns to understand like what the ranges are in your niche like it does vary from niche to for sure.

15:29So for me to, I compare price, like I do share pricing that we're seeing in various platforms on LinkedIn, but I'll give an example. Okay. Like for let's say Instagram, TikTok, like short form. So we see anywhere between$500 for a dedicated sponsored video that obviously appears on the influencers channel, not UGC that we put on ours. So anywhere between$500 to say $4 ,000. So let's say I have this range that I've, you know, and that's a big range. Okay. But if we are, you know, and generally speaking, like if I were to do a list of all the influencers that we've ever worked with on the B2B front, which is probably in the hundreds, you know, the range in terms of following, it could be anywhere between 2K to say a million.

16:27However, it's really the views that matter the most. So what I'm trying to say is over time, you create your own benchmark, your own ranges, and your own way to, like the way we do it at least, is we calculate, you know, let's say I'm looking at an influencer's profile. I have their data. They've sent me their pricing. so I break it down to the cost per view so I look at their average views today and you know the pricing that they sent me and I calculate the cost per view and that's how I can compare between influencers of different sizes and also that too like I'll have a benchmark after a few good campaigns I have a benchmark so if it's below or if it's equal to then I don't negotiate however if it's way above you know i will um but negotiation with uh influencers i always say to my team like you need to be careful because these aren't just this isn't a conference you want to sponsor or like some supplier for swag you know like these are influencers and they have they're connected to other influences that you'll probably you know if you're in the same niche especially b2b and it's quite small they talk to each other and you need to be very delicate because you don't want to burn bridges you don't want them talking badly about you in their communities um i mean yeah you don't want to just pay everyone whatever it is they ask for because that's stupid but it's okay to say to someone listen like we love your content we respect that that's your pricing.

18:09It's above our budget for now. Um, I'm going to keep you in mind for a future campaign where I have a bigger budget, you know? So I don't, um, I don't try, this isn't like an ego trip. Like this is, you know, you have a budget for a campaign. There are X amount of influencers that you're reaching out to. They each charge differently. Like every single, like each case, you need to break it down and compare and decide if you want to negotiate or not. And if you do, then can I afford it or not? And you kind of build like a puzzle of this, uh, of budget until you complete it. And when you start, because pricing is all over the place, you have no idea how it's going to end.

18:54You know, like you think in your head, ah, great. You know, I have 50 K. let's say it's LinkedIn I want to work with 50 influencers they're going to do one post it's going to cost a thousand dollars no it doesn't work like that because you start reaching out to them they don't all get back to you this one can't this one's that they give you their pricing it's way more than you thought and there's some that are less than you thought so you kind of you need to to just be aware that you can't control everything and you need to just slowly slowly put the pieces together. And what I say also is, you know, when you evaluate the campaign or you're measuring, you know, the campaign, I always look at the entire campaign and not just to kind of fish out one piece of content or one influencer and make a judgment because it's not all going to perform the same.

19:50You know, every each piece of content will perform differently. Some will flop, some will pop that's just the way it is um and i think at the end you know you defined what your goals were and kpis were for that campaign wait till it's over give it what 30 days depending on of course the platform and then evaluate it as a whole i think the the three things i like about

20:11Sarah Adam:that is one like i do know that it's just like employees too like they talk about salary even though you don't want them to talk about salary they're talking about salary creators are talking to each other about hey this brand charged this or this brand said this are they cheap are they not should i work with them do you like that do you like the the influencer manager there do you not like them are they mean to work with are they easy to work with like there's all that all those things happen where a conference is way different they they're just trying to get whatever so that as they can and also like i think so many influencers like some like don't know at all like what the space is so they probably are underestimating themselves and then some people think they're bigger than they are and they're overestimating so it's like a weird space where you don't know everything it's very strange yeah um the what what are some ways like how are you managing all this in the back end?

21:15Sarah Adam:Is it like a system you use? Like, how do you manage, like, I have, you said you have hundreds and hundreds of creators. Like, how do you manage it? Like all these creators, are they in a document? Are they in a CRM? Are they like, what does that look like on the back end? So we, when we started off, it was of course, Google Sheets. We did look into, there are so many end-to-end platforms that are very expensive. um we i remember we did a series of demos got extremely confused by them and our conclusion was that um it's not good for us i mean there are many faults like for example to use them in most cases influencers need to opt in to the platform and then what do you do if they don't want to opt in like what do you not work with them or do you have a parallel workflow for influencers that don't want to opt in.

22:06And then if they opt out after your campaign's over, you won't see the performance of their content in that campaign anymore. And then we moved our workflow to monday.com, which works well because it gives me at least, and the other members of the team, a good overview of the pipeline because we have several people working on different campaigns at the same time with different influencers. So that's how we track everything. And we also use, we use a tool called Favicon for discovery, for influencer discovery, and we use a tool called Scrapey Monster for monitoring. So those are the three main tools that we use for the workflow.

22:50Sarah Adam:No, I do think like there's some good influencer platforms, but then like you said, the opt-in is like really annoying for some creators and some creators so that so like yeah there's no I just wanted to see what the your back end looks like because I think everybody has it and also like one thing I think I'm really interested in is like you have hundreds but like the best like influencer managers I say are really good at like staying personal with creators I would say so how how are you like making sure like maintain relationships with them make sure yeah it's it's not easy but it's like you said it's it's very important when we started off uh we insisted on getting on calls with everyone which is extremely time consuming but even like a 30 minute call an intro call changes so it just sets up the relationship for success you know you know when you just talk to someone.

23:53And then I remember we reached a stage where we knew we wanted to scale considerably, like, and we knew that we can't in our existing headcount, there's no way we're getting on calls with everyone. So we moved to like an email first or email only communication, which actually surprisingly, like we were sure that creators wouldn't want that, but actually there are many that even say to us, no, email's fine. So, but at least there's still a relationship, even if it's over email. But what we do is we kind of try to find a spot in between where if it's a very strategic influencer, if it's someone that maybe we've either very large or someone that maybe we've been trying to work with for a very long time and is suddenly interested, you know so or maybe someone that speaks a lot or is very identified with one of our competitors although not exclusive with them but there is like some sort of hesitation there then we get on a call and of course if there's a situation along the way where we sense that there's there isn't alignment or maybe they submitted a video that's so off brief um and it's just not good enough to like to respond via email is just going to be just going to lead to more miscommunication and understanding so we get on a call so we try to find a solution in between what we don't like there was a period of time where we did try to we did use a couple of agencies and we did end up feeling quite frustrated that we didn't own the conversation and the relationship that everything had to go through a third party through the agency um so we we believe like our conclusion is that as time consuming as it may be, it's so valuable.

25:43And it's really the reason why we love what we do is because of that relationship.

25:50Sarah Adam:I know you said at the beginning, like, the number one thing you ask before you do a campaign, or anybody should ask before is like, what is the goal, right? And I know you've gave some metrics like views. So I'm guessing like, after these campaigns done you use those tools to like scrape and say okay here are all the views here's the cost here's the cost per view per creator this is how it performed is there any other criteria like i know some creators that like 10 000 followers but they're like all in your niche and then there's some periods that have 10 000 followers and maybe 10 are in the niche like How do you balance those type of things?

26:36Sarah Adam:Because obviously it's awareness. So you're going on your own views, but is there quality of views versus not quality of views you look at as well? So I think anyone in this industry needs to understand that you'll never really be able to say who those views are exactly. especially you know today when you're browsing through you know you're scrolling on tiktok on instagram you're getting content that's being recommended to you you're not necessarily following those people but you're being recommended it's it's being recommended to you by the algorithm so i think you just need to because if you're if you're like data obsessed um then you'll probably won't sleep a night working with influencers you do kind of need to understand that at some point you need to let go in a way.

27:30But the way we deal with that understanding is investing a lot in the influencer discovery process and to really choose them wisely. So for example, I would rather work with an influencer who is, if it's a web designer and they have an Instagram channel and they do reels about many different things and not just web design, then I would prefer to work with one that only creates content about web design, like one after the other. That's all they do. That's that focus. So we believe in investing a lot in the selection process to prevent those things from happening. Now, another option is to invest in paid.

28:20So to boost, to promote those videos, and then you do have control over targeting and you have way more data. So I guess, again, it depends on the goals and what you're trying to achieve with that campaign.

28:33Sarah Adam:You know, you give examples of like the channels you're working on, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. Let's say like LinkedIn was banned today because it's the number one B2B channel, I would say. like what would be like your the next platform you're going to like double down on like like the most like if LinkedIn was banned yeah the answer to that would would vary depending again on who the target audience is and where do they kind of hang out I mean there is no other social platform like LinkedIn I mean in some cases like for example for the web development space niche um x is really powerful but then for like web design instagram is more powerful for web designers so it just depends on the on your target i have two more questions for you one of them is um like what is one of like your most spiciest takes about influencer marketing and b2b that like most cmos probably would disagree so i guess to answer that i could say that i think at least the mistakes that I see one of them and it goes back to our discussion about creative freedom etc I I know of of companies of of teams that give the influencers scripts like they tell them what to say and that to me is like it like hurts me in my body to hear that because that to me is the worst like don't you know you don't want to feed that you don't want to put words in their mouth You don't want them to say your tagline.

30:16You don't want them to speak like you because that really takes the authenticity away. And I think creator, I hope creators in those situations, you know, wise enough to say, no, no, no, no. Like I'm going to, I'm going to tell me what the message is that you want me to deliver and I will do it in my own words. Because otherwise it just looks and feels like an ad, which is, which is really defeating the purpose completely. right because you're just crushing the authenticity which is really why you should be working with influencers so i'd say that's probably the number one yeah it's so crazy to me because i think

30:55Sarah Adam:like the point of doing influencer marketing is like you're trying to tap into an audience that you want to gain trust in and you want to gain authority in and you want to gain views in because your brand doesn't have necessarily that trust or views or people don't know that your brand that much or you want more people and you're telling you're trying to give make the the influencer less trustworthy by giving them a script that won't work for them so that immediately people are tuning out so i just think it goes against like what influencer marketing is in the first place which is trying to be you're trying to tap into another person's audience and that's really what influence it yeah and gain trust with your brand and more trust with your brand lastly is like i asked everybody in this podcast this question but what is a marketing hill you would die on

31:52so i think actually uh what i said before about about telling the influencer what to do that's definitely something that i you know i feel and my team as well that we in a way like represent the influencer in the organization so we'll have requests sometimes from brand from the brand team or from different PMMs um and and we need to be kind of the gatekeepers and to say to them no no no this isn't the way it works or this won't work or you know we need to approach this differently or no you can't tell them what to say or no they won't read our tagline like that's something that i feel that the influencer marketing manager's job is as well so it's not just representing the brand in front of the influencer but it's also kind of advocating for um and and and gatekeeping um within the organization with the different teams that you're working with on the campaigns yeah i i mean i would probably