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Traditional PR is dead for B2B businesses
10 Plays4 months ago
Traditional PR is dead for B2B businesses
I spoke with Michelle Urwin, VP Marketing at Skai and she shared her views on how they stumbled upon a very successful influencer formula.
Key takeaways.
- How their influencer program was inspired by an industry culture here in Ad Land UK
- How a simple format can be very effective
- How they plan to scale their program
- The role of measurement
- How PR will be rolled into influencer programs
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Moon at Dawn Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Moon at Dawn podcast where we interview B2B marketing leaders to help understand how they think, plan and activate B2B influencer marketing campaigns. So let's get straight into it.
00:00:16
Speaker
Michelle, welcome to the Moon at Dawn podcast. I'm delighted that we finally was able to follow up on our initial chat a few months ago. um Before we get into some of the questions I had, I'd love for everyone to understand a little bit more about you and your role. Sure. And thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be doing
Role of Michelle Irwin at Kenshu Sky
00:00:35
Speaker
this. um So I'm Michelle Irwin. I'm Global VP of Marketing at Kenshu Sky, which means I look after all things brand and demand. um We're an omni-channel advertising platform. So working with advertisers who are spending a lot of money on their campaigns across search, social, retail media. um I'm really looking for automation and optimization and the insights to essentially make those campaigns more effective.
00:01:00
Speaker
effective and more efficient. So um my role, I've been with Sky for eight years altogether. um And before that, I actually worked, I started my career at IBM and then worked for a couple of agencies, B2B marketing agencies, including Ogilvy. So I've been in this space for quite a while now.
Influencer Marketing in B2B: Skepticism to Acceptance
00:01:20
Speaker
great Well, great. Well, part of the day is really to dive into like how you and Kentree Sky really think about influencer marketing. So I'd love just to get your perspective on the role of B2B influencer marketing for your overall go-to-market strategy.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So I think I mentioned this when we first spoke, like this word influencer kind of gives me the shivers. and I think it's got a really bad reputation, primarily from the B2C world where um ah you get all the kind of celebrities going on Love Island. And that's kind of what you associate now with an influencer. um So I think for a long time I never really considered it as part of my strategy. I think since we spoke I've actually been thinking about it a lot more and it's becoming kind of a bigger part of what I want to do especially as we go into H2 this year.
Innovative Marketing Strategies: Retail Media Thursdays
00:02:14
Speaker
So one of the ways and I guess we almost kind of fell upon it by accident
00:02:21
Speaker
So one of the things that we wanted to do last year was find a platform for our customers to have a greater voice within Sky. And we're always getting asked within retail media, especially, hey, like, what can we do? Can we speak at an event? Can we be on one of your webinars? And we only had so many events and webinars that we could actually invite them to. So we actually We talked about developing a podcast and then we were like, no, everyone kind of does a retail media podcast. Like why would ours be different? um We wanted to think about like maybe doing it on the blog. And then we were like, no, again, like not that interesting written content. So we got creative and in the UK, there's a concept called media Thursdays where in the past, like people used to go out from the media world, have a few drinks on a Thursday night. And we were like, maybe we could do retail media Thursdays
00:03:10
Speaker
where we invite people from the industry to come to the pub and we film them talking about retail media. So we created this idea and it blew up. um We had primarily, again, like it was never really a lead gen tool to begin with. Like, yes, a little bit of brand awareness, but more just a platform for our customers. um And actually what we found was people started reaching out to us saying, hey, can we be on your TV show? Like, I love this series, can we be on it? And we've probably had more pipeline from that than anything that we've ever done. So it made me think, actually, these guys like have a big reach when they're promoting this series and it's getting out there and people are seeing it. Like it is almost our own mini influencer program. um So that's really kind of how we've started to dip our toes in and now definitely thinking about how we can kind of expand the reach of that and scale it beyond what we've been doing just in the UK.
Executing and Measuring Creative Initiatives
00:04:08
Speaker
So interesting, well, the lengths people here in Britain will go to get a free drink. k um but But just so so when you like set about the course to put together this this Retail Thursday is like, what was the expectations? How did you approach it from like reporting back to the business with how you was going to like measure success? Like what was that initial kind of ideation and reporting back to the team to get almost approval because there would have been some investment from your side. I've seen ah i've seen the um the execution. I know that there's, you know, it's, you know, shot with, with, you know, some like camera and lightness if you have a bit. So, so yeah, how did you go about that? So initially, because we did it as a way to just keep clients happy, it really was about the number of clients that we could get on it and their feedback. And then obviously kind of some of the softer metrics around
00:05:03
Speaker
a number of views of the videos. like Is it worth putting the time into it? like Are people actually watching this? Are they interested? like The engagement with the videos on social media, um how much like the companies that we have as guests, how much we can get them promoting it and the engagement that they get and so on and so forth. That has evolved massively as soon as I started realizing this was way bigger than we originally anticipated. Now we track everything. So still kind of some of those softer brand metrics like impressions and so on and so forth.
00:05:39
Speaker
but also looking at like the number of inbound opportunities that we've had, I think, which is now over
Isolating Content Impact on Business Metrics
00:05:44
Speaker
10. We've had 10 companies reach out to us and say, hey, can we be on this show? There's even on a anecdotal type stuff, so I was at an event recently and someone came up to me, like massive trade shows, someone came up to me, they're like, hey, you're that girl from that TV show? It's mad, I've become my own influencer. um So it's kind of funny now that we're just like, it's people are recognizing us and they know the series and people comment on it. Somebody even came up to me at our own event and he was like, Hey, I'm coming over to the UK. Can I be on your show when I come? So we're looking at everything from like how much it's helping with renewals, how much is helping to accelerate original pipeline, how much it's helping to create net new pipeline.
Amplifying Influencer Marketing with Paid Media
00:06:25
Speaker
um We're kind of just monitoring all of those kind of more revenue based metrics.
00:06:32
Speaker
Interesting. Well, how are you isolating the impact of the content and the output to some of those metrics that you mentioned? Like how how are you joining adults? We have a very good marketing operations team that are able to do kind of all the stuff in the background. To be honest, a lot of people when they reach out, so we've actually got, we've created a separate form on our website. So if anybody goes on, there's like a whole hub on there, kind of like Netflix style. And then it's like, do you want to be on the show? And then they'll reach out. So we've got all of the tracking against that. So when somebody does reach out and they're a new lead, we're then able to, if it then converts to an opportunity, we've got all of the tracking in place to be able to see that. So it's a lot of the work kind of by the team, but a lot of it still is quite manual. So I went to an event, a guy came up to me, he was like, Hey, like, can we do something for your show? And then.
00:07:26
Speaker
I just kind of have to remember that it was tagged to retail media Thursdays and and get that in there. So yeah, it's quite manual at the moment, the process. We've not completely yeah nailed it. There's also at the moment, I think one of the things that we're starting to look to do is how we can use, let so LinkedIn have just launched their new influencer ads. So what we want to start to do is actually when we've got a guest on there and they're promoting it on their channels is actually then use paid media budget to actually boost it through um through their network. So again, what we'll make sure we do is have those tracking links so that we can start to see if that's impactful.
00:08:08
Speaker
um And that's going to kick off kind of as of this point forward whenever we have someone post. Oh, great. So that was going to be my next question. So typically when we find an initiative that's working well, you want to kind of double down and exhaust that opportunity.
Scaling Influencer Marketing Efforts
00:08:25
Speaker
So is the next iteration for you exploring the paid media elements or is there doing more with the content that you have or is it doubling down on the amount of shows that you do? like What's the next steps beyond expansion into paid media amplification. So I'm working through this at the moment with the team, but one of the things that we've been talking about is potentially actually using some test budget to really try and scale this. So I don't know about other people, we're seeing less and less impact from traditional PR. I think a lot of like the journalists, they're bombarded with news and you get this one tiny line in an article and I
00:09:08
Speaker
I'm just starting to get to the point where I think it's kind of like it's a lot of money for not a lot of impact so could we potentially reallocate some PR budget to actually really try and like test and lean into influencer marketing a lot more in H2 and I think we've got a good platform to start from like there's a lot of ideas being floated around but I think with Retail Media Thursdays we've found a really good formula in the sense of We don't have to pay these influencers like they want to be on the show. um What we will do is put budget behind, one, being able to do more promotions like boosting the posts, putting more kind of paid media behind that, maybe even doing like paid media on other websites if we're freeing up a lot of money from our PR budget. And then also scaling the show. So I'm based in London. It's really easy in the UK to just get people in London and do the filming.
00:10:00
Speaker
it's a lot harder to do it in the US where everybody's based across multiple cities. um So we're currently trying to figure out a way that we can scale it because we're only a small team. um How can we scale that in the US? Like how can we get more people from the company being the hosts? How can we find cheap video resource to film it in different cities? So we've started kind of doing a few in H1, but we're definitely looking at how we can do more of these episodes. The other thing we're also trying to do is like proactively identify influencers now, so people with big networks um and a lot of reach within retail and commerce media.
Building and Engaging Industry Influencers
00:10:42
Speaker
So we're working directly with LinkedIn to understand like who are those people. um They're helping us pull together a list so that then we can proactively reach out to them, which we've not really had to do beyond our customers, um like proactively reach out to them to see if they're interested in being on the show.
00:11:00
Speaker
I'm also taking it on like specials. So we're going to Cannes in a couple of weeks and trying to like build on the buzz around Cannes and just grab people and do kind of segments and stuff. So yeah, that's kind of where we're heading and how we're thinking about it. Really, really interesting. You picked up on something, oh, I picked up on something where you mentioned about pulling it from PR budget because influencer marketing by nature, overlaps with lots of different elements of of marketing. Like if it can come from brand, it can come from content, it can come from PR. So is it how how you are looking at it is more from a PR play or or do you predict that over it time that how it's performed today is more of a performance element or actually how you categorize it doesn't doesn't really matter? It doesn't really matter. I think especially the way we kind of are as a business, we're small and pretty agile and there's
00:11:58
Speaker
no kind of set targets. We, we loosely measure PR, it's difficult, like the share of voice and all of that stuff. So I think if we're looking at like the number of mentions and the amount of impressions, we're going to get a lot more from doing this than we will from kind of what we've been doing so far and the amount of coverage that we've been able to get. So I'm not, I'm not getting rid of PR completely. Um, But I do, I am going to massively cut down on it and then switch switch some of the budget over and and give this a try. The other the other area we're looking at um is how can we tie it into potentially an affiliate program too. So again, there's companies where we can kind of create an affiliate marketing program.
00:12:46
Speaker
um and potentially identify some of these influencers, but pay them to like reward them if they are able to get and traffic to our site. So that might not even be Retail Media Thursday that we use as a hook there. There are other kind of people in the industry. There's a guy who always does these like rankings of different providers in our industry. i And we're thinking like if we can give him an incentive to then obviously not rank us higher because we want it to be independent, but we've always come out pretty well in it. So at the end of it, say like, if you follow through to like, if you go through to Sky, like you'll get this reward and kind of reward him for doing referrals and stuff. So again, not really influencer marketing, but I feel like they all could get kind of bucketed together a little bit. Interesting. And on the affiliate play, I guess it's still in its infancy, but have you, have you started to speak to influence about how, how that proposition might resonates with them?
00:13:44
Speaker
No, not yet. Not yet. Okay. And then thinking about retail first, just a few other extra questions on that.
Challenges and Aspirations in Influencer Marketing
00:13:52
Speaker
What kind of challenges have you come up against? Is it just guests not showing up, expectations not aligned, maybe like the content they shared wasn't as good in their clients and you have this this conflict there. Have you come up with any kind of challenges with it so far? It's been really easy. um we We haven't. The biggest challenges, honestly, is like finding a pub that will let you film in it um because they've got all these crazy rules. And it's the scalability. like it We don't want it to be shot on an iPhone. like We want it to look good. So having somebody on hand that can come and film it when we don't have that resource in-house is a challenge. um And also just we're a small team.
00:14:38
Speaker
in the UK. So again, like finding the time for us to go out for a couple of hours and do the filming like it it's pretty time consuming on the day. So I think they're just the biggest challenges. We don't do an awful lot. I mean, I think we're on like 40 episodes or close to 40 episodes now. So it's kind of like one every couple of weeks that we're filming. So it's it's not too bad. we have I mean, we've had no problem trying to get guests on it. We just have this constant pipeline of people and that want to be involved. So that's always been great. And then we always just do like a quick prep call to talk through the questions and what they want to get across.
00:15:17
Speaker
sometimes challenging to kind of like stop people from being too salesy, especially when it's partner companies, like we want to keep thought leadership and interesting. So that's the challenge sometimes is that people often have their own objectives from doing this kind of thing. And we want to keep it very like neutral. And it's not about you. It's just about raising your brand awareness. um But no, it's relatively easy to do, to be honest. Okay, I'm thinking about some of the aspirations that you've kind of alluded alluded to, like what What's, what's, what's parts of inference and marketing that you really want to do, but there's maybe constraints because of budget, team, resources, time, like what would be the grand vision you'd love, love to do?
Lessons from Past Marketing Initiatives
00:16:01
Speaker
I would love to have a whole network of people that we can use. So last year, actually, we tried creating a very neutrally branded site called Breakthrough, which was going to be like the source for all things omnichannel. and we wanted to reach out to people who were influential in the industry and nobody was really that interested in being part of it. And I think there was a couple of things that we realised. One, this topic of Omnichannel is so broad that people are just like and the like, it's not that interesting of a topic that people want to be known for. And the creative around it just wasn't that interesting. like It was
00:16:43
Speaker
All online, we weren't doing anything different like it wasn't in the pub and I think we learned a lot from trying to do that and using content as the way to do that. So I think for anyone kind of thinking about this, like, don't just do what everybody else is doing, get creative, like, think about a fun way that people, like, people want to be in the pub, like you said, anyone will do anything in England for a free drink. So we've kind of played off that insight. um But it really, like, it's not just going to work, like, people
00:17:14
Speaker
They might want to be part of it but it's not going to get the excitement and the buzz, if you don't kind of come up with some kind of fun wrap around it so that's been one of my learnings. um i think Other kind of challenges, again, it's resource on our side. Like my team's 12 people, I think. um It's not a lot when you're doing every marketing function across that. So we don't have somebody who's dedicated to this where it's kind of their full-time job, maybe in the future, if it starts to be successful, and but it is kind of amongst everything else. So just finding the time to really kind of build a plan and
00:17:56
Speaker
scale that and find the right influences in the first place. um Luckily, that's where we're kind of leaning on LinkedIn a little bit. And I'm still waiting for them to send me that list. But um yeah, I think that they're kind of the biggest challenges that we've got at the moment. Okay. and And is there anyone in the industry that you're taking inspiration from? They might be in a completely different category. But is there anyone you think who's doing a particular good Good job in influencer land. Oh, not that I can think of off the top of my head. It's actually, I don't think too many people in B2B marketing really do it that well. um I know years ago I worked for IBM. This was like 2005 maybe when I was an intern and we
00:18:50
Speaker
at that point reached out to kind of like 20 people that we'd identified as very significant. And these were proper influencers. They weren't like customers who we were trying to kind of be advocates for us. These were kind of like people like analysts and and the government and people like that that we really wanted to reach out to. And I always remember that we we just played to their egos. ah We were like, you're one of the most influential people in this industry. like We had someone really senior from IBM who actually reached out to them for us. And we played to their egos. And I was like, that's the way to do it. like I've always remembered it that it worked. And it's like,
00:19:37
Speaker
It's mad, but it's just, I think that's what we've found has kind of been the best way to engage some of these people. So like, yes, it's an example from like 17 years ago, however long, that oh my God, that makes me feel so old. um But it's it's an example from a long time ago, but it worked and it was a really effective way. And I think um that's been kind of the model that we followed here. a so So thinking about how businesses might want to start in influencer marketing and perhaps don't have a budget ring fence for it.
Advice for Starting Influencer Marketing
00:20:16
Speaker
If you were started again, and it sounds like you're on an incredibly lean budget anyway, but if you were started again and you hadn't landed on that that idea, like what would you recommend to perhaps brands starting again, or if you were starting again without that kind of initial insight or ideation, like
00:20:35
Speaker
What would you suggest um for France starting out an influencer marketing? I think for me, and even where I'm at now, like I feel like I am starting out at it. like Retail Media Thursdays was kind of an accident and that's at the point where we're scaling, whereas now I'm starting to think, okay, we could do a lot more here, rather than just using our clients who have almost been influencing the industry for us. it's almost feels more like client client advocacy that we've been doing. um So for me right now, it starts more like let's not boil the ocean. Let's not get carried away. Let's not
00:21:11
Speaker
like I kind of see the vision where we have this world of influencers that are constantly like talking about Sky and promoting us. And we've got all of these leads coming in and all of this business just because people think we're amazing. like That's the oak tree. That's kind of the future future. We have to build the different branches that kind of create that oak tree in the first place. And I think that's where I'm at right now. is like starting to build upon Retail Media Thursday with other ideas and see if there's ways that we can start to kind of dip our toe into this. So one, who are those influencers? Like, are they kind of extrovert and want to be on these TV shows? Or actually, do we need to find another way to engage them, whether it's the affiliate model or whether it's inviting them to a round table just to start building relationships with them and um kind of having those discussions maybe around
00:22:03
Speaker
How do they want to engage with us? like how can we um How can we influence the influencers? So I think that's my advice, is don't try and bite off more than you can chew, especially if you've got limited resources like me. Dip your toe in, see if it works, and see if you can kind of build on things that you've already got, like a Retail Media Thursday, to start and expanding into influencer marketing. that say Brilliant answer. just just Just one final question for me. So it's influencer marketing is not new, but it's relatively new for for brands in B2B.
Future of B2B Influencer Marketing
00:22:42
Speaker
What do you think is the future for influencer marketing in B2B in the next 12, 24, kind of five five five months per perhaps? i Where do you think this is going?
00:22:55
Speaker
i I know from my personal habits that I spend more time on LinkedIn scrolling through feeds than I do on what have traditional been the kind of influencers, maybe like even in analyst reports or on news articles. Like I don't spend that much time in that type of content anymore. Like most of what I consume is on LinkedIn. and So I don't, I really, I'm getting to the point where I'm like, I don't think the future is in PR. I think that whole model has to change. It's very outdated how a lot of PR agencies work today, and they're going to have to start dipping their toes more into kind of this influencer realm. I think now, especially the LinkedIn are starting to kind of penalize you if you to and have web clicks on the feed. Like I know they've made the feed smaller this week, if you do that.
00:23:50
Speaker
Like they want more content on that page, which kind of, I think content is the core of everything that people do in influencer marketing really. So I think having now kind of LinkedIn reward in that, it's a really good opportunity for us as marketers to kind of partner with some of these influencers who want your content. Like they want your data. They want your stats. We did a state of retail media study at the beginning of this year, and we've seen. a whole bunch of different people pick it up, like the charts from it, and then they start writing about it. People who you would consider influencers. So again, like how can we feed more of this content to these people where we can keep it in platform on LinkedIn and probably get a way bigger reach um and visibility than we would hidden in one line in a press article. So I think that's where it's heading.
00:24:43
Speaker
You heard it here first, like traditional PR is dead and it's all going to be like LinkedIn influencer marketing. That's a ah an excerpt for my LinkedIn next week. That's for sure. We'll quote you on that. I'm glad my PR agency is going to hate me. ah Well, thank you so much for coming on. Lots of insight, lots of stuff that we're going to be able to share. and So like Michelle, thanks again. Cool. No worries. Thank you so much, Chris. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye.