How are B2B enterprise brands measuring influencer marketing success? Regardless of industry, this question keeps resurfacing again and again.
And according to one influencer marketing manager in the B2B space, the “answer” we continually seek lacks an industry standard; a set of benchmarks to guide us. With a thriving program and the influencer relationships to prove it, I set up a video interview to learn more.
Introducing Becca Taylor, Influencer Marketing Manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), who drives programs that foster influencer relationships through authentic brand interactions. She’s passionate about creating great experiences for influencers and business stakeholders alike, while always seeking new and better ways to execute and measure those activities.
Becca is the first of many influencer marketers to be interviewed for “My Influencer Marketing Philosophy”, Traackr’s newest video series where we showcase those executing and scaling influencer programs every day. Often, marketers at different companies are facing the same hurdles. By sharing both their hurdles and triumphs, we hope to inspire you to overcome your own challenges while also pushing the industry forward as a whole.
Watch the video below to gain insight into Becca’s influencer marketing philosophy, revealing who owns influencer relationships at HPE, how they measure success, and their journey to an always-on influencer program.
“My Influencer Marketing Philosophy” with Becca Taylor, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Who are you and what’s your philosophy on influencer marketing?
Becca Taylor: I’m Becca Taylor, I’m the Influencer Marketing Manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and my thesis on influencer marketing is your relationships are important. Invest in them, care for them, and treat them as the important individuals they are.
Who owns influencer marketing at HPE?
BT: I often get asked, who owns influencer marketing. First thing I’m going to say is if you ask five people, you’re going to get five different answers. It’s different for every organization. I think there are natural affinities in several areas. For us, we started in social marketing. That was several years ago. Then we transitioned to a brand marketing organization, then we transitioned to our content organization.
How do you measure the success of your influencer programs?
BT: Metrics are a really big challenge for influencer marketing, there’s no industry standard. There’s no benchmarks everyone is working towards. At HPE we have focused on two primary goals with our metrics. One is the health of our program. So, is the community of influencers and internal subject matter experts that we’ve built, are they vibrant? Are they engaged and talking to each other? It’s like a satisfaction score. The second thing we focus on is more outcome oriented, so can we somehow tie the influencer activities back to either our revenue, which is a lot harder in some organizations, or at least, the primary goals of our business.
How do you maintain always-on relationships with influencers?
BT: Maintaining an always-on engagement with influencers can sometimes be a challenge. At HPE, we certainly struggled with that. It’s one thing to say you have to be consistent. It’s another thing to actually execute on that. When we began our programs, we were very event focused so we would work with influencers at one event and we would have a great week and then we would kinda not talk to them again until the next event six months later. And then we would have another great week and we would just fall into this cycle.
How can brands transition from a campaign focused influencer strategy to always-on?
BT: Think of ways that you can try to bridge that gap between those peaks so that your influencers are always remembering who you are. Even if it’s just sending them a DM and saying, “Hey I haven’t talked to you in a little while, what are you up to?” That can go a long way to make sure that they don’t feel like you only come to them when you need something.
Learn More about HPE’s Influencer Strategy
I want to give a big thank you to Becca for letting us capture her great insights on camera. To keep up with Becca, you can follow her on Twitter. To hear more about HPE’s influencer strategy, check out 7 Lessons from the First Ever Influencer Marketing Tell All which features more insights from our customer panel at Content Marketing World that included Becca Taylor.
For next steps to take your B2B influencer program to the next level, download The Rise of Influencer Marketing in B2B Technology which highlights six trends you won’t want to miss.
Stay tuned for more episodes of “My Influencer Marketing Philosophy” and get the B2C and agency perspective on influencer relations.