An Ultimate Guide to B2B Influencer Marketing in 2024

• May 21, 2024

Reading Time: 12 minutes

Getting leads for a B2B business can feel much like trying to steer a ship in rough seas while blindfolded. This is where B2B influencer marketing as a powerful strategy comes in. Teaming up with the right bloggers is a surefire way to make your brand almost invincible. You gain the reach and reputation needed to survive the attack of new products and services while also increasing your revenue. 

At the same time, influencer marketing can be a waste of money if you aren’t sure about how it works. So, in this blog, we will look at how you can get into the world of bloggers and influencers and check successful case studies of other brands working with this tactic. 

What Are the Benefits of the B2B Influencer Marketing Approach?

There are loads of case studies showing that a B2B influencer marketing plan works well (at least when you do it right). Besides, 78% of B2B marketers say that influencer marketing is suitable even for small campaigns. But what is the secret of this tactic?

• Increased brand exposure and awareness. Influencers are by definition people who are popular and have a large following. By strategically collaborating with bloggers in their niche, B2B organizations and businesses can boost their brand awareness and reach more prospects, especially when all that is paired with SEO, PR, and other marketing tactics.
  
• Competitive advantage. Leveraging a B2B influencer marketing strategy can help you gain more online visibility compared to your competitors. This helps you outrank them in search results.
  
• More credibility. 69% of people trust influencers more than they trust those shiny, expensive ads. This is normal as they relate to humans who add personality to your brand. By partnering with trusted bloggers, you will gain more credibility from your target audience. As a result, you will see an increase in brand loyalty and more sales. 
  
• More website traffic and leads. Influencer collaboration is a good way to grow your traffic and revenue by extension. More website traffic is a natural effect of brand awareness and exposure. As more people now know about your brand from their favorite bloggers, they also increase the number of referral traffic. With this growth, you get more lead prospects and conversions.
  
• Massive ROI all around. Businesses that work together with influencers make about  $6.50 on average for every $1, while 3% of them make even as high as $20 return for each $1. The success rate is so high, with only 18% of people failing to gain any returns using this strategy. Think that’s the only perk? Nope. You also end up building some of the best relationships with others in your niche.

7 B2B Influencer Marketing Case Studies to Learn From

A case study or two (maybe a dozen, who is counting) is a great way to critically assess the effectiveness of a strategy. Thankfully, there are more than enough of those that help you get a closer look at what works and why. Here are some that show how a B2B influencer marketing strategy can drive fantastic results when done correctly. 

#1 Shopify (the POS Go)

Source: Shopify

In a world where there are tons of tools for B2B businesses to reach new customers, blogger partnerships can still come in handy. We see this in the Shopify case study. Shopify is a popular B2B e-commerce platform designed to help entrepreneurs easily manage and scale their businesses from anywhere. It is no stranger to influencer marketing, as many of the brands work with bloggers. 

Spotify launched its POS on May 4, 2020 in an effort to simplify payments for offline stores. To raise awareness about this new initiative, the e-commerce giant chose to partner with well-known Shopify business owners and e-commerce experts whom many entrepreneurs admired and looked up to. Soon, traditional influencers and even customers were talking about it.

The Outcome

By sharing the success stories of Shopify entrepreneurs who had a positive experience using the new product, they were able to see a huge number of people embrace the initiative. As a result, they were able to:

• Make a revenue of over $3 billion by 2023;
• Push the brand awareness further with many blogs, SM videos, and sites talking about the product;
• Positively impact the lives of customers by making easier payment systems, increase brand satisfaction, and brand loyalty.

#2 Adobe (Make Your Move)

Source: Adobe

An example of how brands can use B2B influencer marketing platforms to drive incredible growth is Adobe. Known for their digital products which have become great assets to creatives around the world, Adobe wanted to promote Acrobat, one of their main products. This was as far back as 2022. 

So, how did they choose to execute their plan? In the “Make Your Move” campaign, Adobe partnered with B2B influencers, for example, Ade Hassan (founder of Nubian Skin), Dom Santry (co-creator of the app Daisie,) and Timothy Armoo (entrepreneur and founder of Fanbytes).  

Hassan made a downloadable helpful planning toolkit for people looking to set up their own business and featured in Adobe promotional videos where she shared her experience and tips on using the Adobe product in her own operations. 

Santry also made a toolkit for fundraising and was featured in videos sharing his journey and telling how Adobe products helped. Armoo shared his marketing playbook and toolkit, as well as helpful tips to help businesses find their unique audience and deliver the best value through their services. 

The Outcome

Each of these three people has made formidable impacts in their respective fields and gained the respect and admiration of people, including notable celebrities. By having them share their experiences and unique insights with the public, Adobe was able to:

• Raise public awareness with the media and notable experts, talking about their brand and products on popular platforms like LinkedIn, etc.;
• See over a hundred thousand more visits on their landing pages and over 80 million views of their videos;
• Gain an insanely impressive amount of conversions;  
• Push engagement rates higher;
• Deliver better value to customers and new conversions as they gain more knowledge on how to improve their own businesses.

#3 LinkedIn (Ask the Experts)

Source: LinkedIn

Another example of influencer marketing in B2B done right is LinkedIn. Being the biggest and most popular professional social network in the world, they already have easy access to some of the most reputable bloggers across all niches. Today, you can find millions of professionals, companies, and over 180 million influencers, which makes it one of the best places to look if you want to find an industry expert. 

So, how did they leverage this to expand their reach even more? The answer is by using the expert influencers already on their platform. The LinkedIn “Ask the Expert” series (which is a useful resource that helps marketers navigate the platform) featured some B2B great bloggers across several niches in digital and social media marketing. 

Each expert in the downloadable resource shared their insights with other marketers. Today, there are over a million expert answers from such collaborations, making them the go-to for industry advice. 

The Outcome

The benefits of having industry leaders and top influencers share how they use the platform to build better business connections that drive growth was massive. As a result, people began to:

• Trust the platform more (more credibility) and leverage it more;
• Refer their platform to other professionals in their circles, which means more users;
• Establish themselves as the best hub and resource for professional networking and knowledge.

#4 Canva (#createwithcanva)

Source: @MsCareyLee on X 

Canva has built a reputation as one of the most popular and user-friendly platforms for creatives. Today, there are millions of active users all over the world who use it to create stunning visuals for their social marketing and digital marketing campaigns as well as personal uses.

So, how did Canva take advantage of influencer marketing to grow its brand awareness? They launched a massive social media campaign and partnered with famous creative professionals, business owners, and entrepreneurs. bloggers had free access to the Canva Pro features, and many jumped at the opportunity. These influencers shared their creative processes using Canva to make amazing designs. Today, Canva has over 170 million users with over 800,000 teams paying for premium access.

The Outcome

Thanks to the campaigns that used famous graphic designers and free premium access for bloggers and even educational institutions, the brand was able to see immense benefits like:

• Rapid brand exposure as students, influencers, and creatives flooded the internet with thousands of social media videos showing them using Canva;
• Increase in subscription rates;
• More user-generated content sharing handy tips, tricks, and hacks, which boosts brand reach.

#5 Salesforce (Connections 2023)

Source: Salesforce on Instagram

It’s hard to mention the top 10 SaaS brands in the tech space without naming Salesforce. It is one of the easily recognizable CRM platforms, and many professionals across diverse industries use it in their day-to-day business operations. 

But how did they build such a powerful brand presence for themselves? You guessed it – by including the use of B2B influencers as part of their marketing tactics. They organized major events and used well-known figures to create a media buzz around these events. 

For example, the #salesforceconnection2023 had so many engagements on social media platforms, with many well-known business experts sharing their excitement about being invited to speak at the event.

The Outcome 

Thanks to Salesforce’s special knack for pulling off massive influencer-generated buzz, their events are always a success. Because of the unique approach of using bloggers from several niches, the brand was able to see: 

• Record increase in event participation and attendance; 
• Remarkable growth in brand awareness and trust;
• Increase in the number of subscribers. 

#6 Monday.com (mondaydotcom)

                                                                           Source: @A_Rom23 on X 

Many businesses today leverage Monday.com to help them plan, organize, and manage their projects. This collaboration tool is not only a big part of the remote and hybrid work culture but also a great case study on what B2B influencer marketing is and how it can help businesses achieve their goals.

The brand chose to use cross-industry blogger collaboration as a strategy to push their brand awareness higher. This meant they had to select their influencer partners (mostly people who work remotely, project managers, etc.) from different fields strategically. Taking a leaf from Canva’s playbook, they provided free access to bloggers. 

The Outcome 

Monday.com’s strategy worked. As a result, the company was able to enjoy:

• Massive increase in social media engagement shares;
• Increase in the pool of subscribers;
• Millions of impressions and referral traffic. 

#7 Microsoft 

Source: @Michealbrown_ai on X 

Everyone who has ever used a computer at one time or another has used Microsoft software. Still, even brands that are already household names can reap the benefits that come with influencer marketing. 

To promote the launch of the Copilot AI companion, Microsoft turned to bloggers. They include cloud experts, famous tech personalities, AI experts, and even business experts. The company featured some of them in their social media videos and had some of these experts address the FAQs that people had.

The Outcome

By leveraging the trust people have in influencers and industry experts, Microsoft was able to: 

• Create massive hype for their AI product;
• Ease public concern by addressing their questions and demonstrating the usefulness;
• Increase brand reach and see a massive adoption of their newest tool;
• Give their new tool a competitive advantage over other similar AI products.

Protip for Better Results

You can also improve the results of your influencer collaboration by adding SEO tactics, like link-building, local SEO, etc., to your marketing strategy. This is a great way to grow your brand reach and get organic traffic at the same time. Still, keep in mind that when you get backlinks to improve your rankings, all links do not have the same effect. Some can even hurt your credibility. So, take your time to root out any bad links and disavow them before they cause any harm. 

Best Approaches to Building an Effective Strategy

Putting together an influencer marketing strategy isn’t a problem. A real challenge, though, is to make that strategy effective. There are some obvious components you have to include: goals, KPIs, budget, metrics – the list goes on and on.

But here comes the most important question “What are the tactics you should use in order to make your influencer marketing successful?” Here are four creative ideas you could integrate into your strategy:

1. Get B2B Influencers to Create Content for Your Accounts

Yes, you’ve read that right. A typical collaboration with a blogger would suggest that they promote your product/service through their channels. Of course, you can still send them your product for testing and get a review. But what if you take a completely polar approach? There are a couple of things you can do:

• Account takeover. Choose a day when an influencer takes over your account on any social media (maybe even all of it) and let them have fun. You can invite them to your office and make them talk to your team and record some short-form videos or simply tweet cool things that they notice. You can even start a live stream to allow anyone to keep an eye on this day. Sure, you could script some parts of it. But in reality, the best content is genuine content.
• Tutorials and events by them. You see, B2B influencer marketing is different compared to B2C. And most bloggers you are dealing with are real experts in your niche. So, why not embrace this and offer an added advantage for your users? You can host an event together and document it on your social media. Alternatively, you can record or write a tutorial by your influencer. It will all depend on your type of business. Still, the idea remains the same: prepare a useful piece of content for your audience in collaboration with bloggers.
• Fun challenge. If you feel like you want to add some bonding between your brand and your audience, try to create a challenge with some influencers. You can almost make a show of it. This type of content won’t be particularly informational, but it can add life to your account and definitely increase engagement. What could it be? A contest, a traditional game tweaked for your niche, or even a challenge you create together with your audience.

2. Use All Types of Video Content

It’s no surprise that video content is on this list. Videos are popular and effective. In fact, marketers who used this type of content made revenue 49% faster than those who avoided this tactic. Isn’t that crazy? 

Anyway, the main point is to leverage video content as much as you can. We’ve already covered some of those examples, but here are additional ideas: 

• Invite some influencers to your webinar and organize a discussion around a hot topic in the industry.
• Get a blogger to host your webinar. You can even do that without any company rep in the webinar itself. Let the influencer answer the questions and talk to the audience.
• Film a series of short-form content for different platforms.
• Create a gamified crash course with them. 

The opportunities here are endless, so just go for it.

3. Launch an Update or a Product Together

What if an influencer could create something in collaboration with you? It works especially great if you choose a blogger who is a fan and a frequent user of your product/service. If they have some feedback or an idea for your business improvement, give them credit for that and launch it together.

Imagine your next update could be more than just the ending of one of your sprints. Instead, you could promote it as a feature by your influencer of choice. You can even create a new product in partnership. This way, a blogger will definitely promote it (it goes without saying). So, you will get access to new audiences that can potentially become your regular clients. 

4.  B2B Influencer Marketing Requires Experimenting to Maximize Results

The key to any successful marketing is flexibility. If something doesn’t work, just try a different approach. Don’t be afraid to experiment and adjust. For example, after you do an account takeover, why not try a newsletter takeover? 

You can do it just once or create a monthly newsletter hosted by a particular blogger or different ones. It can be a refreshing strategy for your email marketing. Besides, maybe it could even open some sponsorship opportunities.

And it goes far beyond that. You can also experiment with your budgets, priorities, and even the type of bloggers you collaborate with. For example, if you tried working with some bloggers with a huge following, explore micro influencers next time. A trial-and-error approach is the only strategy that works in the long term.

Step 5. Nurture Your Influencer Relationships

Simply paying for one blogger interaction and forgetting about it is hardly a sustainable strategy. What you can do instead is try to make friends with influencers in your niche. Consider creating a so-called “influencer think tank” or even inviting some of them to your advisory board. The ultimate idea is to grow together and collaborate far beyond just a single project.

Conclusion

B2B influencer marketing can significantly enhance your brand’s visibility, credibility, and revenue when done correctly. By strategically partnering with bloggers and influencers, your business can gain a competitive edge, attract more leads, and build stronger customer relationships. The key lies in understanding how to effectively implement this strategy and learning from successful case studies. As demonstrated, companies like Shopify, Adobe, LinkedIn, Canva, Salesforce, Monday.com, and Microsoft have reaped substantial benefits from their influencer marketing campaigns. By leveraging these insights and incorporating creative approaches, you can maximize the impact of your influencer marketing efforts and drive substantial growth for your business.