Mediaboss Marketing

The pandemic has changed the way we buy products, and the traditional model of influencer marketing will have to change too in 2021 to make sure that it keeps customers engaged.

Influence marketing has matured over the last few years and has reached a critical point in its delivery of results resulting in an uptick by businesses who recognize how valuable influencers are to the enterprise.

San Francisco, CA-based Inpulsus recently announced a new consultancy designed to empower enterprise marketers to self-diagnose their current or forthcoming Influencer Marketing (IM) programs to improve and advance future marketing campaigns.

Its Influence Maturity Quotient (IMQ) looks at categories such as program scope, influencer relations and ability to execute to place influence at the center to unlock growth opportunities that a mature IM strategy can deliver.

A recent report, "Into the Mainstream: Influencer Marketing in Society 2020" from Takumi, quotes that 73% of brands have upped their influence marketing spend this year despite the pandemic.

Additional validation comes from Gartner, where in their latest 2020 CMO Spend Survey, which reports that globally CMOs looking to optimize costs have shifted almost 32% of agency work to their own in-house teams, 53% of which was social marketing.

With IM proving itself to be critical for many CMOs, it is tempting to move straight to campaign execution at the expense of a unified IM strategy.

Inpulsus sees untapped potential for many marketers to more fully optimize and scale IM, growing audience engagement and gaining positive results for their businesses.

Inpulsus believes that new ideas in how marketing and business organize around IM internally can unlock vast growth potential. It predicts the following changes will happen across the B2B landscape throughout 2021:

IM will also augment R&D as companies activate enterprise influencers to participate in product development and provide informed feedback and recommendations.

CEO, Robbie Vann-Adib says: "As more companies see better direct return on investment from Influence Marketing versus traditional paid media, the opportunity to become vastly more efficient and drive positive impact to the business is incredible".

If used properly, IM can become a strategic function especially in the B2B sector that brings together external influencers, employee, customer and partner advocates to create communities that can drive business impact.

The challenge is finding the right partner in 2021 to drive these influencer management programs if you do not have an in-house team. Certainly something to think about in your 2021 planning.

Original post:
2021 predictions: B2B companies will use decentralized tools to manage the role of influencers across the enterprise - ZDNet