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How B2B Influencer Marketing Can Drive a Full Funnel Content Strategy
By Nick Nelson Late stage buyer journey results are what B2B marketing leaders tend to care most about. Ironically, it’s also where B2B influencer and creator marketing programs are most prone to underinvest.
TopRank Marketing’s new research for the 2027 B2B Creator and Influencer Marketing Report found that, compared to all others, B2B marketers who rated their influencer program as very effective were significantly more likely to use influencer marketing in support of:
The evaluation stage (62% vs 44%)
decision stage (63% vs 48%)
The post-sale stage (46% vs 25%)
Influencer marketing for B2B brands is often viewed as an awareness play, focused on building recognition and foundational trust through the established credibility of B2B creators. That’s certainly a huge part of it. But without a content strategy designed to capitalize on that early-stage influence, brands aren’t going to see the full value and impact of their investment.
Here’s how to tailor your influencer mix, topics and content types for each stage of the modern B2B buyer journey.
Awareness stage: Attention and credibility
For buying groups and customers at the beginning of their journey, the utility of content from business influencers and creators is all about reaching as many relevant people as possible, establishing brand credibility, starting conversations, and building relationships. Aim to make a big splash with thought-provoking content from respected voices in the world of your buyers..
B2B Creator Mix for Awareness:
This approach aligns with how most B2B marketers use influence today. TopRank’s State of B2B Thought Leadership research shows 66% of B2B marketers rely on thought leadership at the awareness stage to build visibility and credibility, reinforcing why recognizable, trusted voices play such an important role early in the buyer journey.
That tracks with our latest B2B influencer marketing survey data: B2B marketers rank trustworthiness and credibility (46%) and audience relevance (40%) well above raw audience size (30%) when selecting creators to work with. Reach still matters at this stage – you need enough of it to make a splash – but it’s the tiebreaker, not the headline.
Effective influencers and creators for upper-funnel, awareness stage initiatives include a type of influencer/creator that we call, brandividuals. Thinkof them as keynote speakers, consultants, podcasters, social media personalities, and increasingly, entertainment creators who bring high level visibility and infotainment vs. depth to industry topics. Entertainment creators are a newer addition to the B2B influencer mix, but they are rising fast: our latest research shows entertainment creators now show up in a third of B2B influencer rosters overall, and very effective programs lean into them at nearly double the rate of everyone else (43% vs 25%).
Very effective B2B influencer marketing programs are nearly twice as likely as all others to partner with entertainment creators.
Awareness Topic Selection:
As with all awareness stage content, your topics will be more high-level, aimed at showing off your knowledge of the industry and the challenges your potential customers are facing.
Think about topics like:
Industry trends. What’s happening now and what’s on the horizon? How can your audience best prepare?
Best practices. What processes need fixing in your industry? What are people falling …read more
Source:: Top Rank Blog
