Influencer marketing has now evolved from an emerging tactic to a core capability for B2B brands that understand the power of increasing credible visibility, driving buyer trust, and delivering measurable impact across the customer journey.
According to our most recent B2B Influencer Marketing research nearly two-thirds of B2B marketers now report having a mature influencer marketing program, and 43% say their programs deliver outstanding results, rising to 79% among teams with mature strategies. These gains are not accidental. The data shows a clear relationship between strategic integration, long-term influencer relationships, and performance outcomes, underscoring that influence works best when it is embedded, not episodic.
At the same time, execution is inconsistent for most B2B companies. 48% of marketers cite identifying, qualifying, and connecting with the right influencers as their top challenge, while 49% say integrating influencer content across a broader mix of marketing tactics is the most important trend. That means, while investment and maturity are increasing, many marketers still lack a practical roadmap for how influencer marketing can and should be applied, from building brand authority and driving demand generation to inspiring sales enablement and advocacy. Without that focus, even well-funded programs are at risk of not performing. And poor performance is no longer an acceptable outcome.
That gap is why understanding practical use cases for influencer and creator engagement matters. Our survey of B2B marketers found that the most effective programs are always-on, highly integrated, and creatively differentiated. In fact, 99% of marketers using an always-on approach rate their programs as effective, and top performers are significantly more likely to use unique content, creative campaigns, and data-driven targeting. To translate those insights into action here are over 30 proven use cases for B2B influencer marketing that can deliver results across the customer journey.
Influencing discovery: building B2B brand authority, reach, and trust
For the early stage of the buyer journey, the primary goal is to build awareness, establish credibility, and earn the trust of the target audience. B2B influencers and creators are uniquely positioned to help brands achieve these goals by in a number of ways from contextualizing and validating the brand’s category to adding credible distribution amongst hard to reach buying comittees.
Co-Creating Thought Leadership:
This involves partnering with one or more Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to co-author a substantial piece of content, such as an eBook, whitepaper, or research report, which is either gated for name capture or ungated for maximum distribution. The influencer’s name and insights add significant credibility and draw, encouraging downloads.
A prime example is Adobe’s “Analytics Champions” campaign, where the company enlisted prominent data and martech experts like Ronald van Loon and Bernard Marr to contribute to an in-depth guide. This influencer-led asset generated 150% more lead captures than Adobe’s previous efforts, demonstrating the power of expert validation.
Branded Podcast Series with Influencer Hosts:
A branded podcast can be a powerful tool for sustained thought leadership, and using a respected industry influencer as the host elevates its status and expands its reach. The influencer can leverage their network to secure high-profile guests, adding further value.
SAP’s “Tech Unknown” podcast, hosted by influencer Tamara McCleary, saw a 66% increase in downloads and generated over 52 million social media impressions by featuring influential guests and clients. This strategy transformed the podcast into an “influencer hub” that positioned SAP and its partners as authorities. Similarly, Dell launched its “Trailblazers” podcast hosted by renowned biographer Walter Isaacson to showcase stories of innovation, successfully leveraging his network and credibility.
Amplifying Proprietary Research:
B2B brands often invest heavily in proprietary research. Engaging influencers to review, comment on, and share this research adds a crucial layer of third-party validation and dramatically expands its distribution.
For its “Data Paradox” research report, Dell Technologies collaborated with eight tech industry influencers who provided commentary for an interactive eBook. This approach resulted in influencer-driven content achieving twice the engagement of previous campaigns and generating over 1.7 million impressions through the influencers’ own social channels.
Humanizing Technical Content:
Many B2B products are complex and can be difficult to market in an engaging way. Partnering with professional creators or charismatic experts can translate dry technical details into entertaining and accessible content.
Lenovo’s “Late Night I.T.” is a masterclass in this approach. By creating a web series styled as an after-hours tech talk show hosted by futurist and comedian Baratunde Thurston, Lenovo made complex IT topics engaging for decision-makers. The campaign was a massive success, earning 72 million video views and a 7-point lift in brand consideration.
Purpose-Driven Brand Initiatives:
Aligning with influencers around a shared purpose or social cause can build powerful brand equity and resonate with audiences on a deeper level.
Microsoft executed this brilliantly by partnering with National Geographic photographers to create a campaign spotlighting women in STEM. The initiative was not about selling a product but about promoting a shared value, and its impact was immense, reaching 91 million people and garnering 3.5 million likes in a single day.
Industry Trend Commentary:
In fast-moving industries, brands can position themselves as relevant and forward-thinking by sponsoring influencers to provide their expert analysis on breaking news or emerging trends. This allows the brand to insert itself into important industry conversations in a credible way, leveraging the influencer’s voice to interpret events for the market.
“State of the Industry” Reports:
Brands can establish themselves as an authoritative source of information by commissioning an annual “State of the Industry” report featuring contributions from a panel of diverse influencers.
HubSpot’s “State of Sales” interactive report series is a strong example. By featuring insights from sales leaders and promoting the report through their networks, HubSpot created a go-to resource that generated over 120,000 unique visitors to its microsite and contributed to a 47% quarter-over-quarter increase in Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
Brand-Owned Media Contributions:
Featuring influencers as guest contributors on a company’s blog, resource center, or newsletter is a classic tactic that adds credibility and fresh perspectives to a brand’s own content channels.
Zapier has effectively used this strategy by featuring micro-influencers on its blog to share productivity tips. This creates a symbiotic relationship: Zapier gets high-quality, authentic content, and the influencers amplify the brand’s reach when they promote their published articles to their own networks.
LinkedIn Newsletter Sponsorships:
As more professionals launch and grow newsletters on LinkedIn, sponsoring a popular and relevant influencer’s newsletter offers a direct and highly targeted channel to reach a dedicated professional audience. This tactic places the brand’s message within a trusted, curated content environment.
Creator Led Marketing Campaigns:
The most ambitious brands are developing large-scale, marketing campaigns where influential creators are central to a larger brand narrative.
Travelport’s “The 7 Wonders Challenge” won the Grand Prix at the B2B Marketing Awards for its campaign featuring adventurer Jamie McDonald. The campaign, which documented his attempt to see the seven wonders in seven days using Travelport’s tech, was a massive brand initiative that increased platform adoption by 42% and generated a six-fold increase in leads.
Influencing engagement: driving B2B buyer education, confidence, and consideration
In the engagement stage of the buyer journey, the focus shifts from broad awareness to education and building confidence. The goal is to help buyers evaluate solutions and move them closer toward a purchase decision. Influencers that are true subject matter experts can be very impactful here because of their ability to communicate from a place of deep expertise, which creates value and builds directional confidence.
Influencer Led Webinars and Virtual Events:
A webinar featuring a well-known industry expert as the main speaker is a powerful magnet for qualified leads. The influencer’s reputation draws attendees, and their expertise provides genuine educational value.
Sprinklr’s “Across the Socialverse” masterclass event, which featured social media luminaries like Ann Handley and Jay Baer, drove over 5,000 registrations and generated a significant pipeline of qualified leads.17 The software company
Later also successfully used this tactic, collaborating with four creators for a webinar discussing social media and mental health.
Live Conference and Event Amplification:
Brands can maximize the ROI of their proprietary conferences or their presence at major industry events by inviting influencers to attend and act as live correspondents. They can share insights, conduct interviews, and create social buzz that extends the event’s reach far beyond the physical attendees.
SAP has successfully used this strategy, with influencers at one event driving 50% of all social media mentions and causing the event to trend on Twitter. Also, HubSpot’s INBOUND conference partners with creators like Sarah Chen-Spellings to capture and share the event experience with their engaged audiences.
Social Media Takeovers:
This tactic involves giving an influencer temporary control of a brand’s social media account, such as for an Instagram Stories Q&A or a LinkedIn Live session. It introduces a fresh voice and perspective to the brand’s channel and allows the influencer’s audience to engage with the brand in a new, authentic context.
Product Demonstrations and “How-To” Videos:
One of the most effective ways to educate prospects is to show them how a product works in a real-world context. Collaborating with a trusted expert to create a tutorial or demo adds a layer of credibility that a brand-led demo might lack.16 The content feels less like a sales pitch and more like a helpful recommendation from a knowledgeable peer.
Unboxing and First Impressions Videos:
Particularly effective for new hardware or software with a distinct user interface, this tactic involves sending a new product to an influencer for them to share their genuine, unscripted first reactions. This creates authentic buzz and anticipation around a product launch.
“Ask Me Anything” (AMA) Sessions:
Hosting a live Q&A session on a platform like Reddit, LinkedIn, or a niche forum with an industry influencer allows the audience to engage directly and get their specific questions answered. This fosters transparency and community. As part of its “I.T. Squad” campaign on Reddit,
Dell has successfully hosted AMAs with its influencer experts to build credibility and engage directly with the IT community.
Interactive Content and Tools:
Brands can partner with influencers to co-create and promote an interactive tool, such as a quiz, ROI calculator, or simulator, that provides tangible value to the audience.
Mailchimp supported its “Guess Less, Sell More” campaign with a “Customer Journey Builder Simulator,” an interactive tool that allowed users to test automation flows and drove significant engagement with the brand’s core capabilities.
LinkedIn Carousel Posts:
The carousel format on LinkedIn is highly effective for breaking down complex topics into digestible, educational slides. Partnering with an influencer to design and share a carousel post that explains an industry concept or a product’s value proposition is a powerful way to leverage the platform’s native features for engagement and thought leadership.
Community Building in Niche Groups:
B2B brands can establish a strong presence and build deep trust within a target audience by partnering with an influencer to co-host or actively moderate a dedicated community, such as a Facebook Group or a Slack channel. This positions the brand not as a vendor, but as a facilitator of valuable industry conversation and a central hub for professionals.
Influencing decisions: accelerating B2B sales, conversion, and advocacy
For the decision stage of the journey, the objective is to convert consideration into confidence that results in a sale and can also help turn new customers into loyal advocates. Influencer marketing at this stage is focused on providing validation, removing purchase friction, and decision confidence. The entire buying committee needs to be on the same page to defend the decision and the right mix of influencers can play an important role in making that happen.
Affiliate Marketing & Referral Programs:
This is one of the most direct and measurable ways to drive sales through influencers. By providing influencers with unique, trackable affiliate links or discount codes, brands can attribute sales directly to their efforts and compensate them with a commission.
Productivity expert Ali Abdaal, in a single YouTube video about AI tools, successfully integrated three different affiliate links, demonstrating how this can be done effectively to drive what was likely a lucrative outcome for both him and the featured brands.
Influencer-Driven Contests and Giveaways:
A contest or giveaway hosted by an influencer, where the prize is the brand’s product or a free trial, is an effective tactic for generating qualified leads and growing a brand’s own audience. The influencer promotes the contest, and entry requirements often include following the brand’s social accounts or signing up for a newsletter, directly building the brand’s owned audience.
Targeted ABM Support:
For high-value accounts, influencers can be engaged in a highly targeted manner. This could involve an influencer creating a personalized video message for the key decision-makers at a target company or co-hosting an exclusive virtual roundtable for a handful of strategic accounts. This hyper-personalized approach can be instrumental in opening doors and accelerating deals.
Influencer Testimonials on Landing Pages:
Featuring quotes, star ratings, or short video testimonials from trusted industry experts directly on product and pricing pages can significantly increase conversion rates. This provides a final point of validation at the critical moment of decision.
Co-Branded Case Studies:
While traditional case studies are effective, a case study co-created with an influential customer or industry expert carries even more weight. This involves detailing how the influencer used the product to solve a specific problem and achieve measurable results, creating a powerful piece of sales enablement content.
Product Review Campaigns:
Actively encouraging and facilitating honest product reviews from credible experts on their personal blogs, YouTube channels, or third-party review sites like G2 and TrustRadius is crucial. The YouTube channel Efficient App, for example, creates “No-BS software reviews” that drive consideration and often include affiliate links for the products discussed.
Influencer-Sourced Market Research:
A brand can leverage an influencer’s highly engaged and relevant audience to conduct market research. This can take the form of a sponsored poll or a survey shared by the influencer, providing the brand with valuable first-party data, product feedback, and insights directly from their ideal customer profile.
Sales Enablement Content:
The content co-created with influencers should not exist in a marketing silo. These assets can be repurposed as powerful tools for the sales team. Sales reps can share influencer-led webinar recordings, blog posts, or video tutorials in their outreach to build credibility, educate prospects, and warm up leads before a call.
Creator-Moderated Customer Peer Panels
An influential B2B creator can moderate a live or recorded discussion between existing customers from similar roles or industries. The brand would participate lightly, while the creator guides the conversation toward lessons learned, implementation realities, and ROI considerations. This format can reduce perceived vendor bias and help prospects self-identify with peers, making it highly effective for evaluation-stage buyers.
In-Person VIP Events:
For high-ticket B2B sales, fostering personal relationships is key. Hosting an exclusive, intimate dinner or roundtable for a small group of high-value prospects and customers, with a prominent industry influencer as the keynote speaker or special guest, can be an incredibly effective way to build relationships and accelerate deals.
Creator-Led Solution Walkthroughs for Buying Committees:
In contrast to a product demo delivered by the brand, a respected B2B creator can produce a structured walkthrough video explaining how they would evaluate and implement the solution for a real-world use case. The content is framed around decision criteria, tradeoffs, and practical considerations buyers care about during evaluation. These walkthroughs can be used in nurture, retargeting, and sales follow-up to support internal consensus building.
Influence has become a distinct advantage for successful B2B marketers. As AI-driven discovery, LLMs, and algorithmic feeds increasingly change how buyers find and evaluate information, trusted human expertise plays a more important role than ever in what solutions are surfaced and believed. Our B2B Influencer Marketing Report reinforces this shift: 79% of marketers with mature influencer programs report outstanding results, and teams with advanced strategies are 1.5x more likely to heavily involve influencers in co-creating content, strengthening credibility and performance at the same time. Influence works because it aligns with how modern buyers, search and answer engines evaluate trust: through experience, authority, and relevance.
Going forward, the opportunity with influence is greatest when implemented within a framework like Best Answer Marketing. That means collaborating with influencers to help deliver the most useful, experience-backed answers across the buyer journey. It means integrating influence with proof points like original research, and coordinating messaging across channels, reinforced through consistent presence. When influence is designed to deliver buyer questions, translate complexity, and validate insight, it compounds brand value over time and improves confidence long before a sales conversation begins. With the growing impact of AI discovery and rising buyer expectations for trust, influence is most effective when it helps a company earn “best answer brand” status – being the first and most defendable choice for your buyers, where it matters most.
