To increase B2B personalization, think like an influencer

Digital sales and marketing can feel like a popularity contest.

Everybody’s fighting for attention, and many view “going viral” as the ultimate win for their business. That might not be the case anymore.

Both B2B and B2C businesses are waking up to the power of “niche influencing,” which means positioning key sales and marketing leaders as experts, or “influencers,” in a radically niche area.

Instead of shooting for the stars with viral campaigns that generate views but fail to create real brand engagement, niche influencers strive to create personalized content that’s highly valuable to a small corner of their market.

If you’re interested in applying this philosophy to your next sales and marketing campaign, consider these tips we’ve learned:

Content should generate value, not views.

Creating high-value content for a small audience is better than creating less-valuable content for a large audience.

This is because successful content marketing requires your business to provide tools and resources – aside from those offered through your business – that are useful to your audience.

If your content is valuable, your audience will remember your brand and return for additional insights. This process earns your business a following, which can eventually result in leads. Most of your followers probably don’t need your service at the time they’re engaging with your content, but the respect you’ve earned by providing quality information means you’ll be their first choice when they do.

For niche businesses, creating valuable and memorable content is all about going deep, not wide. To use our business as an example, many executive search firms specialize in healthcare and strategy, but few specialize in the intersection of both. We find that creating content in this niche specialty area garners a more personal response from our audience, even if it’s a smaller response than we’d get from creating healthcare-exclusive or strategy-exclusive content.

But how specific is too specific? That’s where audience testing comes in handy.

Ask your audience what interests them.

Once you know which niche community you’d like to tap into, reach out directly to individuals and ask what content would interest them. If you’ve yet to make direct contacts, try conducting a LinkedIn poll asking the same questions. Otherwise, email surveys, market research or even having your marketing team shadow sales calls can give you a hint about what people are interested in.

Being a niche influencer is all about appealing to a community within your focus area. When content marketers ask their audience what interests them, it’s like fine-tuning their influencer status on a micro-level.

The takeaway:

Businesses are discovering that the key to effective sales and marketing lies not in going viral, but in becoming niche influencers within specialized markets.

By focusing on creating highly valuable content tailored to a specific audience, brands can cultivate a loyal following that translates into meaningful engagement and leads. To adopt this approach effectively, businesses should prioritize generating value over sheer views and engage directly with their audience to understand their interests and needs.

To learn more about the sales and marketing landscape, visit CharlesAris.com/sales-and-marketing.