Tom Augenthaler

The roots of influencer marketing can be traced back to an unexpected discovery while I was part of the HP PR team during the 2008 economic downturn. Facing challenges in our partnerships with media companies, we experimented with collaborating with tech bloggers to promote our products. This unintended foray into working with influencers provided valuable insights into the power of authentic recommendations and paved the way for the evolution of influencer marketing.

While advancements in technology have undoubtedly streamlined various aspects of influencer marketing, it has also brought about a loss of the personalized touch. In the past, identifying and engaging with bloggers required manual effort and extensive time investment. However, technology now enables brands to easily discover and connect with influencers. Unfortunately, this ease of access and control has led to influencers being directed and scripted, eroding their individual voice and authenticity.

Most of the campaigns I've managed back then in 2010-2012 were some of the most exciting. They were so new and pretty different, that the impact we made was so immense. I remember we once ran a campaign where we recruited 31 influencers to run a contest over 31 days, and that ginned up a lot of buzz and drove actually a lot of sales for HP.

First, you have to be very clear with the objective of the campaigns. A lot of B2B SAS companies are having hard time to break the noise because there are a lot of contents. Second, you've got to select the influencers that are able to speak to your target buyers. You've got to be consistent with the right influencers to make an impact. The other one is relationships. B2B influencers marketing is heavily laid on relationships. You've got to know your influencers well. The more you understand, the more it's easier to build and maintain a relationship with the influencers.

My software stacks consist of Google Sheets and Google Documents for basic tasks and managing the campaign. I also use Hype Auditor to verify the social media followings of influencers, Analytica is occasionally used to find and analyze influencers, and lastly I use Chat GPT to find influencers in difficult-to-search niches.

You have to put the success measures in place up front when you determine the objective. Quality of contents shall be counted as qualitative; it can be quantitative in terms of how much contents are we getting produced. I have a measure where I work with the clients to figure out how they can socialize that content through their channels, and the internal stakeholders shall be able to understand what's happening as well

Probably keeping it all together in terms of logistics. You can run a pretty big campaign, but it gets more and more challenging, and that's where a lot of online platforms might help you manage and track the contents. Another challenge would be keeping up with the influencers themselves. You can't really automate a friendship. Relationship aspect is still pretty relevant. Operating in the same space makes you want to keep these channels of communications.

Artificial Intelligence are getting more and more important. I think that's going to form a couple of avenues. More influencers are expected to use tools to create contents. Good influencers won't just slap what AI had given to them, but they will adapt it to make the contents theirs. The other thing you're going to see some artificial influencers to be created. On the B2B side you're going to see people start to follow AI generated influencers, just like how it starts growing on the consumers side now. New business models are expected to develop as a result of AI as well.