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B2B Influence Is a Team Sport. Are You Playing the Right Positions?
By Lee Odden Influencer marketing for B2B companies has matured significantly over the past decade and especially since Covid. Need proof? Follow the money.
Forrester has predicted that 75% of enterprise B2B companies will increase budgets for influencer relations in 2026. Influencer programs have also become more structured and B2B creators are fast becoming a focus for activations. The conversation has changed from “should we do this?” to “how do we do this better?”
And yet, one of the most persistent gaps we see is a strategic one that resembles the brand vs. demand debate: many B2B brands treat influencer engagements as a transactional media buy rather than an opportunity to build relationships that can compound visibility, trust and credibility over time. The result is campaign-level activity that generates short term impressions but is challenged to move the needle on pipeline, deal velocity, or category credibility in industries where sales cycles extend far longer than a 3-month pilot.
The B2B brands seeing outsized results with influencer marketing are operating from a different playbook. Not only do they think of influence as a long term initiative, they also think of it as a team sport, one that assembles the right players into the right roles, and a clear sense of what each is trying to accomplish at every stage of the buyer journey.
Every single day, I am having conversations with B2B companies investigating what better influencer marketing programs could look like. Here are some of the common questions that come up and answers.
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What Is the difference between a B2B influencer and a B2B creator?
One of the most important distinctions in influencer marketing for B2B companies is the difference between an influencer and a creator. And when to activate each.
A B2B influencer brings deep domain expertise, authentic credibility, and an established audience of professionals who trust their perspective. They may be technical experts as well as keynote speakers, published authors, and recognized practitioners. Their value is authority and relevance, the ability to validate your brand’s point of view and put it in front of an audience that respects their judgment.
A B2B creator, by contrast, often leads with media production skills. They are platform-native, skilled at packaging ideas into formats that perform and even entertain. They will often have familiarity with the subject matter and may even be a practitioner. B2B creators are increasingly migrating from B2C audiences into B2B content. Their value is reach, format fluency, and engagement.
High-performing B2B influencer programs use both. The strategic question is knowing which role serves your audience best at each stage of the buying journey, and mapping your influencer mix accordingly. A well-known industry voice may generate awareness and credibility at the top of the funnel. A niche expert with deep engagement in a specific community may be far more effective at the consideration stage. Getting that mapping right is what separates programs that generate visibility from programs that generate pipeline.
How do you find the right influencers for a …read more
Source:: Top Rank Blog
