If you are responsible for leading the marketing efforts for your enterprise or business, you already know how much has changed in the B2B partnerships and marketing space in the recent years.
And you’ve probably noticed that the substantial rise of B2B influencer marketing is starting to consume your marketing newsfeed, conference invites, and your competitors’ content strategy decks.
In 2025, that’s no gimmick. It’s a core growth strategy.
In B2B, influencer marketing is not about doing a podcast with a TikTok creator who drinks matcha and reads McKinsey.
It means collaborating with people your buyers already trust, industry analysts, creators, and voices of real authority within your own world. The people who can actually move buying committees.
In this blog post, we will take a deep look into partnerships with influencers, what they are, how they are done, and what B2B brands can learn from companies who are really nailing it.
What Is Influencer Marketing in B2B?
B2B influencer marketing is the practice of a business collaborating with key thought leaders in an industry, like tech analysts, consultants, content creators, or agency founders, to promote their services, by speaking at events and creating content, to gain the trust of business decision-makers.
In B2C, it’s all about mass appeal. In the B2B space, on the other hand, it’s all about relevance and trust. The goal isn’t virality. The real goal is to get through to a hard-to-reach, high intent, audience.
Why Influencer Marketing for B2B is Different
Let’s be real: Your buyers trust a LinkedIn rant from an industry nobody more than your polished case study. Edelman’s data shows 68% of B2B buyers rely on expert voices over corporate content. So if you’re not borrowing trust, you’re losing deals.
The B2B buying process is long, logical, and consists of several decision-makers. And even though buyers love data, they tend to trust people more. This is the reason influencer marketing is so effective.
You’re not just buying reach, you’re borrowing trust.
The B2B advantage:
- Tighter targeting: Reach specific roles, verticals, or problem-aware segments
- Credibility: Your message comes from someone who’s walked the walk
- Lead quality: Attract leads who are already sold on the problem
- Content depth: Collaborate on formats your buyers already consume: newsletters, AMAs, podcasts, webinars
How Influencer Marketing for B2B Will Grow Your Brand
1. Reach New But Relevant Audiences
We all know, getting your message heard, in today’s highly competitive digital world, is tough. Here, B2B marketing influencers are your fast track.
They’ve developed dedicated audiences in specific industry niches, which are the exact audiences you want to reach.
Let’s take an example to understand better, consider a LinkedIn influencer focused on enterprise cybersecurity. This influencer has a network of CISOs and IT managers, basically your dream audience.
In working with these B2B influencers, you leverage their hard-built authority and they bring you pre-warmed audiences.
Did you know 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing, making it a key channel for these collaborations? It’s about precision targeting, not just mass appeal.
2. Diversify Your Content
Getting tired of the typical whitepapers and case studies? B2B influencer marketing breathes new life into your content strategy.
Beyond that, working with B2B influencers can lead to highly engaging content that has a much better chance of resonating more with the modern buyer and feel less like a sales pitch.
Let’s be real for a moment, in this age and world of stunning and vibrant media, a boring, monotonous article or Linkedin post sticks out as an eyesore.
However, an informal podcast conversation with industry-respected B2B influencers, talking about industry challenges and where your solution fits, or a sleek LinkedIn influencer carousel post simplifying complex concepts is sure to grasp the attention of your wandering audience.
These engaging content formats enable you to achieve wider reach, since your audiences can’t help but consume eye-catching content, which is the end goal.
3. Build Credibility Faster
Establishing trust as a new or challenger B2B brand can take years. B2B influencers are a game-changer here.
When a respected industry expert, a successful founder, or a recognized technical voice talks about or advocates for your solution, they are entrusting you with one of their most precious commodities: their own hard-won authority.
This “borrowed trust” gives your brand instant gravitas that brand-led campaigns alone can’t achieve.
When well-known B2B influencers mention that they really like your product, the people in their audience, who have confidence in their taste and judgement, are much more likely to check out your product.
4. Fuel Your Pipeline
The ultimate goal for most B2B marketing is pipeline growth, and influencer marketing in B2B happens to be very effective at producing quality inbound leads.
When you engage with B2B marketing influencers on co-branded content, like a joint webinar, an exclusive report, or a live AMA on a relevant topic, more than raising awareness, you’re creating demand. These collaborations attract qualified leads who are actively looking for a solution, having engaged with content from a trusted voice.
For example, creating a webinar co-hosted by a top LinkedIn influencer and your expert can bring hundreds of relevant attendees that turn into quality MQLs.
5. Open Doors to Community
Most important B2B decisions occur within private, trusted communities, secret Slack channels, industry forums, or networks of peers. B2B influencers have the potential to be an essential part of THESE spaces.
Partnering with the right influencer in LinkedIn or a community leader means they can introduce you to groups, facilitate deeper conversations in DMs, or organically bring up your solution in discussions where buying committees are forming.
Having easy access to these trusted networks is one of the most potent, but often overlooked, elements of B2B influencer marketing. It places your brand right at the middle of industry conversations.
This is especially beneficial when teamed with strong attribution.
According to a recent B2B marketing report, 42% of B2B buyers engaged with influencer content during the research stage of a purchase decision, underscoring its impact.
How to Find and Collaborate with the Right B2B Influencers
Not all influencers wear ring lights.
The best B2B influencers might be:
– A RevOps leader with a loyal Substack audience
– A MarTech founder active in Slack communities
– A niche podcast host with 5K weekly downloads
– A cybersecurity consultant with an engaged LinkedIn following
Where to Look
– LinkedIn (especially posts, not follower counts)
– Niche newsletters and podcasts
– Communities like Pavilion, Superpath, or RevGenius
– YouTube interviews, Twitter threads, Medium essays
– Your own customers or power users
Collaboration Formats
– Sponsored content
– Co-branded guides or reports
– Webinars or online events
– Guest blog exchanges
– Product walkthroughs or demos
– Newsletter takeovers
And while most influencers charge for partnerships, B2B creators often care more about value alignment and thought leadership than a flat fee.
Want proof? An Ogilvy report from 2023 found that 75% of B2B companies already work with influencers, and 93% planned to increase their investment in the coming year, highlighting the emphasis on sustained relationships.
What B2B Brands Get (and What They Don’t)
Let’s break down what separates successful B2B influencer campaigns from the rest:
The Good Stuff
- Niche over reach: Choosing experts your buyers trust, not just follow
- Educate, don’t sell: Co-creating content that solves problems, not pitches features
- Play the long game: Treating influencers as collaborators, not contractors
- Make attribution easy: Using UTM parameters, discount codes, and multi-touch attribution models to measure impact
- Join the narrative: Letting influencers shape the content based on what their audience actually cares about
What Doesn’t Work
- Paying for one LinkedIn post and calling it a campaign.
- Controlling the content too tightly.
- Optimizing for impressions instead of qualified leads.
- Ignoring feedback from the influencer’s audience.
Metrics That Actually Matter
To track the real impact of B2B influencer marketing campaigns, these are the metrics worth keeping an eye on:
- Engagement quality: Are the comments coming from ICPs or random marketers?
- Clicks and conversions: Use trackable links, forms, or influencer-specific landing pages
- Leads generated: Count MQLs from co-branded content or events
- Content performance: Compare influencer content to your brand-led campaigns
- Sales velocity: Track if influencer-touched leads move faster through the pipeline
According to a recent B2B marketing report, 42% of B2B buyers engaged with influencer content during the research stage of a purchase decision. This underscores the channel’s impact on early-stage buyer journeys.
And with tools like Trackier, you can directly attribute leads to those touch-points, without guessing.
Challenges to Watch Out For
This is where most B2B marketers falter:
- Finding True Experts: Vet your influencers, are they sharing because they are informed, or because they are just loud?
- Keeping it Authentic: Viewers can smell a script a mile away.
- Measuring ROI: Not everything is going to be instant, look at assisted conversions and long-tail impact.
- Cross-Team Collaboration: You’ll need buy-in from content, product, and legal.
Need inspiration? Here’s how Affnads scaled their performance-led campaigns for their clients with Trackier.
Influencer Marketing for B2B in 2025 and Beyond
These are the standout trends we’re seeing emerge this year:
Micro > Macro:
Brands are turning to influencers with quality 2K–10K followers. Research supports this shift and notes the impact of niche, high-engagement experts on B2B influencer marketing.
Rise of the Analyst-Creators:
Big sharks like Gartner are being pushed to the sidelines, while niche LinkedIn creators are emerging as the new thought leaders to follow. B2B buyers rely on peer-level experts to inform their decisions, since they’re relatable, relevant, and part of the conversation in a real way.
Video-First Everything:
Live streams, interviews, video newsletters, video marketing absolutely dominates the arena. 90% of marketers feel that video marketing represents a positive return on investment.
AI-Powered Matchmaking:
Tools matching influencers and brands now use content fit, not just keywords. In fact, close to half of B2B marketers surveyed in a report indicated that AI will be the biggest trend, shaping and expanding influencer content.
Embedded Partnerships:
Instead of just promotions and content deals, B2B brands are increasingly inviting influencers for long-term relationships as advisors, early beta testers or integrating them into product feedback loops. These creators help shape the product, messaging, and go-to-market strategy, so the partnership becomes more valuable for everyone involved.
Forget vanity metrics. Neil Patel’s 2025 deep-dive shows micro-influencers (those 2K–10K follower accounts) drive 3x more conversions than big-name analysts.
Why? Their audiences see them as peer advisors, not paid shills.
Wrap Up
The takeaway?
In B2B influencer marketing, people buy from people. Not your logo, not your tagline. And certainly not your average demo video.
Begin working with the voices that your audience already listens to. Those who speak their language, live their struggles, and know what motivates them to act.
And, if you need help monitoring those touch-points along the funnel, making your influencer strategy as accountable as your ad budget, you’ll want a partner like Trackier.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the 4 types of B2B influencer marketing?
There are four main types of B2B marketing that most brands use today:
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Account-based marketing (ABM)
Most solid B2B marketing strategies blend all four, depending on your goals and the stage of the buyer journey.
2. What are the 3 R’s of influencer marketing?
The 3 R’s are your cheat sheet for picking the right influencers:
- Relevance
- Reach
- Resonance
3. What is B2B vs B2C influencer marketing?
The big difference is who you’re trying to influence and how.
So while a B2C influencer might focus on lifestyle or trends, a B2B influencer is more likely to be a tech expert, founder, or analyst sharing insights your audience actually relies on.
4. What is B2B marketing with example?
B2B influencer marketing is just businesses selling to other businesses.
For example, Trackier offers performance marketing software to ad networks, agencies, and ecommerce brands. That’s B2B.
Don’t think of it as just selling a tool, you’re solving a business problem.
5. What is the best strategy for B2B influencer marketing?
The best approach? Keep it real, useful, and measurable.
Build relationships that feel organic and offer value. That’s what drives real results in influencer marketing.
