The Case for Influencer Marketing in B2B with Brianna Doe (Founder at Verbatim)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Case for Influencer Marketing in B2B with Brianna Doe (Founder at Verbatim)

Podcast: The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
Host: Dave Gerhardt
Guest: Brianna Doe, Founder at Verbatim
Date: June 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively and tactical episode, Dave Gerhardt sits down with Brianna Doe to make the case for influencer marketing in B2B—an area often misunderstood or dismissed as “just a B2C play.” Bringing 15 years of hands-on experience and agency perspective, Brianna demystifies influencer marketing for B2B businesses. The conversation covers what brands get wrong, strategies for structuring a 90-day pilot campaign, the importance (and limits) of follower counts, how to measure success, and ways to mitigate risk. Real-world examples and audience Q&A add additional insight for marketing leaders looking to invest in or upgrade their influencer programs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Influencer Marketing: Not Optional Anymore

• Influencer marketing in B2B is now essential—Brianna backs this up with data:
  • 84% of B2B buyers rely on peer & industry leader recommendations.
  • 75% of B2B leaders research products after connecting with thought leadership.
  • 87% of buyers trust content featuring known industry experts.
• B2B buying is non-linear: Purchase decisions are multi-channel and trust-driven (LinkedIn, DMs, Slack, communities).

"If your strategy doesn't meet them where trust already lives and exists, you might as well be invisible."
— Brianna Doe, [07:45]

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2. Lessons from B2C: Riding the Wave, Not Forcing It

Brianna illustrates how B2C influencer campaigns work by tapping into existing creator trust and style:

• Case 1: Bumble’s campaign with Emelia Demoldenberg — success came from letting her shape the narrative, not reading a brand script ([06:22]).
• Case 2: Love Island’s Alandria and Nyx — a viral lip combo became a co-created product, selling out in two hours ([08:10]).
• Case 3: GAP’s collaboration with Cat’s Eye—expanded from an ad to a TikTok-fueled brand trend ([09:18]).

Key takeaway:

• Don’t borrow an audience; leverage existing trust and voice.
• Allow creators to co-create, not regurgitate.

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3. How to Structure B2B Influencer Campaigns

A. Go Beyond Sponsored Posts ([10:30])

• Content types: LinkedIn POV posts, product explainers, webinars, YouTube deep-dives, co-branded content, community activations & multi-channel approaches.

B. "The Creator Engine" Framework ([11:15])

• 1. Discover and Co-Create
  • Define success metrics and KPIs before engaging creators.
  • Align with sales, product, and leadership to avoid siloed campaigns.
  • Talk to creators about their rates, preferred content, and partnership models. Build your own rate spreadsheet.

  "Before you engage a single influencer...you need to understand what success actually looks like."
  — Brianna Doe, [11:15]

• 2. Activate: Experiences, Not Just Posts
  • It’s fine to start with sponsored posts, but winning campaigns create curated customer journeys and experiences.
  • Think multi-platform—LinkedIn, YouTube, in-person events.

  "Our mantra is experiences, not just posts…"
  — Brianna Doe, [13:00]

• 3. Iterate and Optimize
  • Campaigns should never be static. Measure, adjust creators/messaging, and double down on what works ([14:10]).

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4. Choosing the Right Creators

• Four archetypes for B2B campaigns:
  • Practitioner Experts (high authority, niche reach)
  • Cultural Amplifiers (high trust, broad reach)
  • Community Connectors (moderate authority, highly targeted)
  • Attention Drivers (broad reach, top-of-funnel)
• Metric for selection: Align creator archetype with campaign goals—not just biggest following ([15:15]).

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5. Getting Team and Executive Buy-In

• Start by aligning on what success looks like for each stakeholder:
  • Executive/C-Suite: Pipeline generated, category association.
  • Sales: Influenced pipeline, leads.
  • Product/CS: Trials, retention, expansion.
• Pick a primary and secondary KPI that matches business priorities ([17:30]).
• Succeed faster by running focused 90-day pilots with 3–5 relevant creators ([18:30]).

"The goal is not to be everywhere. It's to learn quickly and design smarter plays over time."
— Brianna Doe, [18:55]

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6. Measurement & the 90-Day Pilot Model

The 90-Day Pilot Approach ([24:25])

• First 30 days: Research, creator outreach, onboarding, content brainstorms, set up tracking.
• Next 30 days: Launch content, monitor audience and creator feedback, refine message, track funnel impact.
• Final 30 days: Optimize based on data, decide who to double down on, and plan for longer-term partnerships.
• Avoid extremely short pilots; 90 days is the minimum for meaningful learning.

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7. Real-World B2B Case Studies ([24:25])

• Semrush: Started with small, invite-only pop-up in London → grew into major Amsterdam conference with >3M impressions and 1K attendees ([24:30]).
• Sprout Social: Runs micro-events with creators tied to conferences, harnessing community influence and content reuse.
• Novatic: Hybrid advisory-influencer program; focuses on integrating creator expertise and feedback vs. just follower size.

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8. Follower Counts & Representation

• "Follower count is mostly a distraction...unless your main goal is top-of-funnel brand awareness."
• Pick creators who mirror your ICP and business goals.
• Diversity is performance: Citing Deloitte/Kantar, representative campaigns see 16% higher sales ([21:16]).

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9. Q&A and Practical Challenges

a. What Makes a Good B2B Offer? ([31:18])

• Offers must connect to what the target audience actually wants; can be long-cycle and involve multiple touchpoints.
• Short-term and long-term wins both matter.

b. How to Find Creators ([33:16])

• Use platforms like Limelight (for LinkedIn), Grin, and Aspire—or manual outreach to customers about who they trust and follow.
• Start with curated online lists; manually check engagement.

c. Is One Influencer Enough? ([35:02])

• Possible but risky: Limited data/testing. Three or more is safer for learning variety.

d. Integrating Product into Technical SaaS Partnerships ([36:24])

• Don’t expect creators to demo complex products like salespeople. Focus on co-hosted events, strategic product mentions, Q&A segments, and strong downstream nurture.

"Influencers aren't salespeople. You're leveraging them because of their thought leadership, credibility, and trust with their audience."
— Brianna Doe, [37:13]

e. Managing Brand Risk ([40:05])

• Most influencer flops happen when campaigns are run in silos. Mitigate risk by:
  • Pre-validating campaign ideas with cross-functional teams and target customers.
  • Selecting creators already trusted by your ICP.
  • If trying something bold, start with what’s familiar and validated before going experimental.

f. FTC Disclosures and Authenticity ([42:56])

• Disclosure is required, but creative integration is key.
• Seamless alignment and authenticity outweigh the “hashtag ad” risk.

"If it flops, it probably wasn't just because they said it was an ad...it ties back to audience alignment." — Brianna Doe, [43:40]

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Memorable Quotes

• "DTC brands win because they don't just hand creators a script, they hand them a seat at the table."
  — Brianna Doe, [06:44]
• "You don't have to spend $500,000 to run a test. Pick three to five, run a very intentional experiment."
  — Brianna Doe, [19:20]
• "Buyers want to see themselves in your strategy. When you don't do that, you lose relevance. When you do, well, you gain trust."
  — Brianna Doe, [21:16]

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Noteworthy Timestamps

• [05:06] — Brianna Doe introduced
• [07:45] — Core stats on why influencer matters in B2B
• [11:15] — "Creator Engine" explained (discovery, collaboration, KPIs)
• [18:30] — How to run a pilot: picking 3–5 creators, building experiments
• [24:25] — Real-world B2B case studies (Semrush, Sprout Social, Novatic)
• [29:56] — Audience Q&A begins: offers, measurement, risk
• [40:05] — How to mitigate brand risk with influencer campaigns
• [42:56] — Disclosure best practices

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Tone & Style

Brianna is energetic, humor-laced, and hands-on, combining tactical depth with “real talk” and concrete do’s/don’ts. Dave and the moderator keep things brisk, conversational, and grounded in the realities of B2B marketing teams experimenting with influencer for the first (or fifth) time.

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Conclusion / Actionable Takeaways

• Influencer marketing is a must-have lever in B2B, but requires more than “put money in, get leads out.”
• Start small, define clear KPIs, iterate fast, and don’t chase follower counts.
• Co-create authentic, trust-building experiences, not just sponsored posts.
• Validated, cross-team buy-in and risk mitigation are crucial for B2B success.

Whether new or seasoned with influencer marketing, this episode provides a tactical blueprint—and a reality check—for teams eager to make it a functional growth channel.

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Transcript

[Dave Gerhardt]

Hey, it's Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at optimizely. Optimizely is the AI platform built for modern marketing teams, helping you create content, run experiments, personalize experiences and optimize your website. All powered by agentic AI. I want to be the person on my team who actually knows how to build with AI. Not just talk about it, not just use Claude to ask silly questions.

[Harry]

But I want real output, something I

[Dave Gerhardt]

can point to and say I built that and it saved my team hours every week. If you want to be that person, check out this resource. The team at Optimizely is super smart in this area. They've developed a new AI marketing certification called opalu. It's a five day live course designed for senior marketing leaders who are ready to ship more with AI. This is a structured hands on program with just one hour a day for five days where you'll build three real AI agents that saves 10 hours a week. Plus you're going to learn five prompt engineering techniques that actually produce usable output. How to feed your agents the right context so they write and think like you. How to connect them to real data sources so they're pulling from what actually matters to your business. And you'll do all of this alongside 50 other senior marketing leaders just like you, dealing with the same challenges. And at the end, you'll present what you built, get feedback, see what others created and leave with 10 new ideas for what to build next. Plus, 20% of Opal U graduates have gotten a promotion or a new job after completing this. That's pretty cool. So now's the time.

[Harry]

Check it out.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Opal U kicks off every Monday. You can apply right now. Optimizely.com/5 hey, it's Dave. I want to give a shout out to the team at Vector for sponsoring this episode. Vector is a contact level ads platform. Look, you probably have anonymous buyers lurking in your funnel. People that you can't identify or follow up with. People you can't target with any real precision. So you end up throwing ads at job titles and hoping that the right person sees them. Vector fixes that. Instead of targeting job titles and crossing your fingers, Vector lets you build audiences from actual people. The ones in your site, clicking your ads and checking out your competitors. And they just launched their MCP server that lets you connect AI like Claude and ChatGPT directly to their platform. It connects to your LinkedIn ads and site visitor data. So instead of clicking through dashboards, you just ask your AI a question and get an answer. Which ad creatives are fatiguing right now? Which companies are engaging but not converting? Which actually driving pipeline right now? What new ideas we be running? This is an amazing way to use AI and vector together. It turns your data into something you can use in the moment. Head to Vector Co to learn more. That's V E C t o r.co and if they ask you how you heard about them, tell them. Exit 5 please. See you. You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Geart. Hey, it's Dave. Quick note on this one. This is conversation with Brianna Doe.

[Harry]

She was a super popular speaker at

[Dave Gerhardt]

Drive 2025 and she's returning this year for Drive 2026 with more where that came from. So we're going to run this episode back. Briana is the founder of Verbatim, an award winning influencer marketing agency and she spent 15 years helping B2B brands figure out how to actually make influencer marketing work. Her session gets into why most companies treat influencer marketing like a vending machine. Put money in and expect to get leads out. And that's exactly why it fails. She also covers how to structure a 90 day pilot without blowing your budget, why follower count is mostly a distraction, and how to get leadership bought in before the campaign launches, not after it flops. If your influencer marketing strategy isn't built around a place where trust already exists with your buyers, you're probably just shouting into the void. I know a lot of you are focused on influencer marketing right now and Brianna's great at talking about it. So enjoy this session.

[Moderator]

All right.

[Harry]

I love this theme. A lot of stuff about social media. We talked a lot about about There isn't social media and marketing anymore. Social media is the way to do marketing. The thing that Harry mentioned about what RAMP is doing when I asked him about posting that, I think that's the way that companies need to operate today is let's post something organically on social, see what works and then we can decide to spend and do more of that. And this next person has a. Has a. A somewhat related topic and I love this. So we've been talking a lot about the power of in person. I first met our next speaker by chance. I got sat next to her at a at a dinner in New York a couple years ago and now she's here to take our stage and make the case for influencer marketing. In B2B, she spent 14 years helping brands from scrappy startups to household names stand out in a crowded feed she's the founder of Verbatim, an award winning influencer marketing agency. She's also an influencer strategist who's worked across B2C and B2B. And a LinkedIn creator herself, if you don't already follow her, giving her a true 360 degree view of influencer marketing, Please give a warm welcome at Drive to the great Brianna Doe.

[Brianna Doe]

Yeah, you know what's funny? Can everybody hear me? Can you hear me?

[Harry]

Yeah.

[Brianna Doe]

I've been asked maybe 37 times today if I'm nervous. And I was like, no, no, no, not nervous at all. Everybody in this audience is somebody that I respect so deeply and I feel like I'm gonna black out.

[Harry]

So wait, wait, wait.

[Dave Gerhardt]

We got.

[Harry]

Let's give her some noise. Let's go.

[Dave Gerhardt]

You got it.

[Harry]

Let's go.

[Moderator]

You're good.

[Brianna Doe]

So first things first. Hi, I'm Brianna Doe. Like Dave said, I work in influencer marketing. Have for a long time. Our clients are a mix of B2C, E commerce, sustainability, nonprofits, and B2B SaaS. And honestly, I just love influencer marketing. I was doing it long before I ever started creating content. I think it's a very misunderstood market and I think a lot of us do it really badly. So very excited to chat about this today. Quick pulse check. Who here has run an influencer or creator led program before? Just raise your hands. Okay. Keep your hands up if you would call it successful. Okay. Awesome. Another question. Who here has purchased a product, B2B or B2C based on content they saw from an influencer? Amazing. I do it daily. So awesome. Yeah, I'm very, very, very gullible, very easily influenced. So I'm a marketer. We love our stats. First things first, influence marketing is not optional anymore. We can debate about it afterwards, but for the sake of this, it's really not. First things first. 84% of B2B buyers rely on peer and industry leader recommendations. 75% of B2B leaders research products after engaging with thought leadership content. And 87% of B2B buyers give more credence to content featuring industry experts they trust. And the thing is, I'm preaching to the choir. But B2B buying behavior is not linear at this point. People aren't just googling what's the best CRM or best employee engagement platform and then calling it a day and choosing the first option that pops up. They're piecing Together insights from LinkedIn, DMs, comments from their peers, industry leaders they respect. They're piecing all of that together. Slack communities, for example. And that's where their influence lives. So if your strategy doesn't meet them where trust already lives and exists, you might as well be invisible. I really just want to talk about Love Island. So lessons we can borrow from B2C. First things first. The one on the left, we have Emelia Demoldenberg. If anybody watches Chicken Shop Dates, she interviews celebrities. She recently partnered with Bumble to do a full fledged campaign. And DTC brands win because they don't just hand creators a script, they hand them a seat at the table. So with her, this campaign was impeccable. Right? It wasn't a brand trying to borrow her audience. It was Bumble already leveraging the trust that she's built and leveraging the voice that she manufactured as well. The content leaned into her style, it leaned into her humor. She talks about being single, she talks, she flirts with her celebrity guests. And that's why it worked. It wasn't just about the delivery. She was part of the architecture. And when you let creators shape the narrative, instead of handing them a brief and saying, write this, post it like an ad, the campaigns feel alive because they actually are. Any Love island fans in the room?

[Moderator]

Yeah.

[Brianna Doe]

Oh, my gosh, so few. Okay, well, second one. Love Island USA took the world by storm this summer. Nick and Alandria were a couple that came out of that purpose here. What happened is there were so many jokes, so many cultural moments created from their relationship, and a big one was a lip combo that Alandria wore every day became a whole thing. And so she partnered with a brand called Nyx right after Love island ended and it sold out in about two hours. They saw the wave and they jumped on it. They didn't force the trend. They didn't try to manufacture the experience. They kind of rode the wave that this couple was already creating and wrote that all the way to a sellout. Finally, short term sparks and long term plays. Final question. I'll ask Gap. Cat's Eye ad, Anybody? For context here, we also have the Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle ad, which I think is a good juxtaposition. Not aligning with your customer base, not really aligning with the demographic juxtaposed against Gap, who partnered with Cat's Eye, a diverse multicultural girls group. 20 million views on YouTube. I think 15 million of them are me. But they did incredibly well. And there's been. The thing is, with them too, it's not just that they sold a lot of jeans or that the ad went viral. This became a trend all on its own. If you get on TikTok and look this up, you'll see creators recreating the dance, wearing new Gap jeans that they've bought. It's taking on a life of its own. And so there's this mix between, okay, we have this one moment that we can capture this one ad that won't live on in perpetuity. But how can we turn that into a trend that actually transcends time and to an extent, transcends culture? So how do we actually do this with B2B? That's great. We're not selling with combos, right? It's not as interesting necessarily. There are a few main things to consider before we dive into actually implementing this yourself. There's so many ways to partner with influencers outside of just sponsored posts. I will say this plays a lot into your budget, right? If you're a lean startup, if you're new, if you're testing this for the first time, you're probably not going to get $100,000 to build out a full influencer program or campaign. But you can leverage different types of content. So we have the most straightforward point of view, led LinkedIn content. This can be product explainers, this can be product walkthroughs, this could be just content that talks about how they're implementing it into their tech stack, whatever the case may be. We also have YouTube explainers and deep dives, webinars, conferences, cradle activations, where brands are co hosting events with creators. They're just co creating these experiences together instead of trying to own it on their own. Podcast partnerships, co branded content, niche communities and multi channel activations. So when you pair sponsored LinkedIn posts with long term webinar series and YouTube explainers, all right, that's all great, we love it, but how do you actually do this for yourself? Right? So the way I break this down, I call it the creator engine. I came up with that name myself. So you're welcome. First tier is discover and co create. So before you do anything, before you engage with a single influencer, before you sign any contracts, you need to understand what success actually looks like. And I think a lot of the time, you know what I see, when I was in house and now working with clients, you kind of create this in a silo. You decide what success looks like. You're not really talking to the sales team or product or CS to get their point of view. You're probably talking to your leadership team. But I would venture to say that for a lot of folks and for A lot of marketers, there is going to be a disconnect between what success looks like. You run a campaign, it goes Great, you get 500,000 impressions and then your CMO asks you how many leads you generated, how much revenue you generated, and the answer is a matchup, right? So before anything else, dial in your KPIs, dial in your metrics for success, and dial in the campaign parameters as well. If this is a one time test or a three month test, like how are we actually going to refine along the way? How do we make this more than just a static campaign? And next, then you can start integrating creators into the process early. And what I like to say too is, you know, I get a lot of questions about budgets, like how do I know how much influencers are going to charge? How do I know if I can afford it? You can ask them. You can, you can reach out to them. I actually have.

[Harry]

There's supposed to be some like spreadsheet, like some database with like everyone's rate in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brianna Doe]

Well, I mean, unfortunately with LinkedIn especially, they don't like us having any data. So you gotta build it on your own. But you can just ask them, right? And you can build your own spreadsheet, which I love to do. But reach out to them, start to understand how they approach their own partnerships. If they've done it before, what kind of content do they prefer to produce and create? They'd like to do bundled posts. How much do they charge? If you want to co host a webinar, how much of an additional fee would that be? It's okay to start gathering information and take that back to your leadership team. Then you get to build your brief, which is my favorite part. So first understand success, then talk to creators, dial in your budgets, and then as you start to create those contracts and nail down who you're going to work with, build the briefs to act as the strategic guardrails. So how do you want them to show up online? What do you not want them to say? What do you want them to know about your brand that maybe they don't know? What will they not get out of a product demo with you or an explainer video that they want to make sure they're able to highlight in their video content. So the goal with the campaign brief is not to lock them in so they feel like they're just creating an ad for your brand, but it is to give them enough of a boundary so they know where they have leeway and so they can actually comfortably and authentically integrate their voice into their content instead of having to go back and forth with revisions tier 2, then you get to activate. So repeat after me, our mantra is experiences, not just posts. Now that's not to say you can't just do sponsored posts. This might be a spicy take, but I think sponsored posts do just fine. It is not a lost art, it's not dead. But if there's nothing curated about it, if you're not intentional about when you're launching campaigns, what you're having them post about, what kind of experience you're creating for the consumer, then it's a bit of a lost art. So integrate creators into your curated customer journeys. And I think one thing to note here too is influencers are not your salespeople. And I say that because it's really easy to say, I'd like to hire you to do five posts for me. At this rate, publish them. Things are going to go great. Then I come back to you and ask you how many sales you've generated, but you have no insight into the funnel that then people are going into what messaging is in the email or the lead nurture photos that they get afterwards. You don't get to decide that. And so I can't put that on you to a certain extent. But what does matter is making sure that any sort of influencer content that you do create, any sort of influencer flows or campaigns that you do curate, it leads back to a purpose and it leads them into a curated journey based on the experience that you've already started. And if your budget allows, go beyond LinkedIn, webinars, YouTube, TikTok, we'll dive into this later. But your buyers do not just live on one platform and then finally the third tier and what I would consider to be the most important part. I mentioned this earlier, but your campaigns should never just be static. You should be refining along the way, iterating what's working, what's not. If you have a three month contract with a creator and the first month is going horribly, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't work with them again. It doesn't mean you should cancel the contract. It does mean you should ask yourself what the data is telling you. If they're driving back to my example, 500,000 impressions and no leads, is it the messaging? Is it the creative? Like taking the time to understand what that story is and then iterating along the way will drive a lot more success. Okay, so choosing the right creators, you know how to approach it, you got to build Your campaign brief. You have to iterate along the way. But who should you partner with? And I think one of the most the things I hear the most is just work with micro creators or just work with macro. Either work with somebody with 10,000 followers or work with somebody with 200,000 followers. Really the question boils down to what your goals are for your campaign. Which drives back to what we talked about originally. But there are four main tiers that I bucket creators into. We have the practitioner experts, right. So high authority, but also niche reach. They have deep subject matter expertise and their trusted voices within very specific segments like a Dave Gerhardt actually. Yeah. Then we have the cultural amplifiers. So maybe they have high trust and or authority but their reach is more broad. It's not just one market segment or one icp. There's value in that too. But it really is going to go back to your campaign goals. Community connectors. This is where we're talking about moderate authority but very niche reach. That person with 15,000 followers but 10,000 of them are decision makers at series B startups or attention and drivers. So very broad reach, not really curated or niche content. And so that's going to be best for things like top of funnel awareness, brand impressions, things like that. All right, so you got your creators, you have your campaign brief. Now what? This is something I always dealt with when I was in house. How to actually make this win for your team. And the first thing is starting back when you're defining success, like I keep saying, and I'll probably be beating a dead horse. If you are aligning with your team at the very beginning, before you have any content published, you're going to be in a much better position than you are six months down the line when your campaign is running smoothly, but you have no actual results to show for it because you didn't align on success at the beginning. So typically what you'll see is four different segments for what they're looking for. Executives in C suite, we're looking at pipeline generation or influence pipeline. High intent leads or category association. Right. For sales, obviously influence pipeline or pipeline gen product, you're looking more at trials or freemium signups and cs maybe like account retention and expansion. And just to note, you do not have to hit all of these at once. Most campaigns won't and probably shouldn't. You're going to pick one primary and one secondary metric. But it is important to look at the other metrics that you're still influencing anyway so you can tell that full story when you're Reporting. Okay, so step one, you know how you're going to define success. You know what you're going to tell your team. You know how to communicate the wins to them. When you're launching an influencer program, the goal is not to be everywhere. It's to learn quickly and to design smarter plays over time. And the brands that win are anchoring their strategy and business outcomes, not just in more followers or partnering with creators with more followers. So first things first, take a step back. Ditch LinkedIn, ditch YouTube, and ask yourself what impact you're actually trying to drive. If you're choosing creators that are based on your ICP and your goals, you might actually realize LinkedIn isn't our first channel. Or maybe we dedicate less spend to YouTube and more to TikTok. It's interesting to consider, but it is important to remember that follower counts really don't matter. They kind of do. Unless you're looking to focus on brand awareness and impressions. And what I always say too is you don't have to spend $500,000 to run a test. You don't have to work with every creator, but you do have to be intentional about the ones that you are partnering with. Pick three to five, run a very intentional experiment, and then design one or two focus plays around that. So maybe it's a mix of sponsored posts with some webinars or co branded content. And at the same time, if you're running all these tests but you don't know what success looks like, or you don't know how you're going to measure success, you're going to be stuck in the same loop. So engineer what I call your learning loop. You're going to use those activations to test narrative formats and creator types before you expand your budget, your campaigns, or even your channels, and then measure what matters. So like I said, one primary metric, one secondary. Typically what I see in B2B is lead gen or direct conversions. And then maybe brand awareness impressions reach things like that. But have the two main ones that you're tracking continue measuring the rest, continue reporting out on those, but frame the story that you're telling your team and your company around the two main metrics that are going to define success. All right, so then with step two, you're turning those signals into strategy. So it's been three months, six months, campaigns are going well, experiments are running smoothly, you're working with good creators, maybe you're getting more budget. Maybe you just want to stop working with three and continue working with the other four. This is when you can start moving from one off campaigns or just sponsored posts into longer term activations. This is when I recommend moving from, let's say a bundle of three sponsor posts to an ongoing partnership for nine months. And when you can start layering your influence, moving from just sponsored posts or just a webinar series to testing other channels, testing in person events, testing micro events, that's when you can really start expanding on the influence that you're starting to leverage and also continue to make sure your budget works harder. I think the thing that I see so often is you get more budget, you get more spend. It's exciting. You're spending money everywhere, but you're not measuring the way that you should. It's easier to scale, harder to continue measuring. So make sure you're building scalable measurements you can report out to your team and it should always, always, always map up to your business priority, demand gen, audience growth, whatever the case may be, remember you're North Star. I do think it's important to note too, you know, in influence marketing it's so easy to default to the same ten well known voices. I don't know if it's just my LinkedIn feed, but I see people calling this out all the time. You know, you see the top 10 influencers that I follow that list and it's the same people over and over again. But buyers want to see themselves in your strategy, they want to see themselves in your ads, they want to see themselves in your influencer content. And when you don't do that, you lose relevance. When you do do that, well, you gain trust. And so the companies that reflect the audiences that they're targeting consistently outperform. Deloitte and Kantor actually did a research study on this and they found that representative Campaigns typically see 16% higher sales across the board. So it's more than just a DEI initiative. It is actually tied back to business outcomes.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Hey, it's me, Dave. Our friends over at Customer I.O. are sponsors of today's episode. They're a really cool company that helps marketers turn first party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS and push. And they built their platform for marketers who actually care about the craft. Because marketing is a craft that takes creativity, thought and taste.

[Harry]

Right now everyone thinks they're magically a

[Dave Gerhardt]

marketer because they have access to AI and the result is kind of painful. More robotic emails, more noise, more bleh. AI isn't magic. It's not going to fix bad strategy or write great copy for you magically. But the best Teams also aren't ignoring it. They treat AI as infrastructure. When it's built the right way, it actually makes marketing feel more human, not less. And that's what Customer IO is doing. Their AI handles repetitive work like setup, orchestration, and tasks that should be automated so that you can focus on what actually matters. The craft of marketing, the strategy, the creativity. This is how good marketers are using AI right now. Not to replace thinking, but to support it. If this landed with you at all, this idea about the craft of marketing, I want you to go and check out Customer IO. It's Customer IO, Exit five.

[Harry]

Go and check them out.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Customer IO, Exit five. Hey, it's Dave. Look, I want to tell you about Drive 2026. This is our annual event we do for the Exit 5 community. It's a two day B2B marketing conference in Stowe, Vermont. We built it for marketers who want to get smarter and actually connect with their pe. This isn't a generic industry conference. It's a small, intentionally designed event where the programming, the venue and the schedule all work together to create the conditions for real conversations. Attendees spend two days getting into the tactical details of B2B marketing, what's working, what's not, and how the best teams are thinking about the problems that actually matter. This is all about workshops, sessions and discussions that are built around participation, not passive listening. I want you to actually come and be there. If you're going to take the time to leave your family, leave the office, get outside of work, like actually be here, take notes, pay attention. It makes it all worth it. And here's the thing though. The B2B marketing stuff, that's what's going to get you to justify the ROI on your ticket. That's why you're going to be able to tell your boss that you want to go to this. But the best moments at DRIVE don't happen on stage. They happen at breakfast, on an afternoon hike, over a drink, after dinner, right? Somebody's going to be roasting marshmallows at this place. It's that type of event. We designed this for, for this connection. This is on purpose. Long breaks, unhurried meals and opt in activities where people spend time together outside the session room. Because look, we're all people. Where else in your life can you talk to someone else who understands your job as a B2B marketer? I go to my kids swim lessons. I can't sit there and talk to dad next to me about B2B marketing. But you can through the Exit 5 community and that's what drive is all about. It's September 8th through 10th, 2026 at the Lodge at Spruce Peak in Stowe, Vermont. Check it out exit5.com drive to learn more about it. It's exit5.com drive and I hope to see you there.

[Brianna Doe]

And it's one thing to kind of just plug some diverse creators into your ads or your campaigns. It's another to take the time to understand who your audience is, what actually matters to them, how they represent themselves or how they want to be represented. Do that research and then plug them into your campaigns that way as well. So if your influencer program features the same five voices everyone else, it's important to ask yourself, are you really building influence or are you just broadcasting to the same echo chamber? A couple of case studies so that we can nail this down. One is Semrush. Did anybody go to Spotlight last year? I think it was in Amsterdam. So they actually started with an invite only influencer program in London, tested it out with 10 to 12 marketing creators and they structured it like a B2C pop up. So they had a photographer out there to do headshots. They had them do a street team activation where they stopped people on the street and ask them questions about their marketing programs. That did well. And so their next step was to turn it into a whole in real life conference in Amsterdam in 2024 called Spotlight. That led to 500 plus organic social posts, 3 million impressions and a thousand attendees. And they're running it back this year as well. Second example, Sprout Social. So they co host micro events and dinners across the country with top creators. And what you'll typically see if you haven't seen this online is they tie it to a conference or an event that's already happening in that city. They did it with Inbound, they did it with Spotlight, I believe. So they sponsor these community led events instead of creating the event themselves and then inviting a bunch of random customers to it. What they do is they tailor it to the audience that the creator they're co hosting with speaks to. And they host 10, 20, maybe 30 people. Then they use that creator content across different channels and they will also send creators as brand reps to industry events. And so this is what I mean by micro events or experiences that you can curate. I will say I wouldn't start with this. If you're trying to prove out influencer marketing in your brand or in your company, it is important to validate it with something that you can measure, quantifiable and Tangible success, because that's how you're going to get the budget that you need for events like this when you're ready to start investing in longer term relationships and building more experiential moments. Micro events with creators are a great idea. And Novatic is Natalie Marco Tullio here. Okay. I feel like an infomercial for them. I talk about them all the time. But basically they built a hybrid influencer and advisory program with Prof. And audience fluency. So essentially any creator they work with gets regular demos, they get access to content before it goes live, and they don't rely so much on follower counts. They actually focus more on subject matter expertise, and then the creators also create content for them. But they're a lot more focused on finding ways to integrate the creators or the advisors into their program and into their existing tech stack and marketing strategy, rather than just partnering with influencers across LinkedIn who have a ton of followers. So to bring it all home, you have your 90 day pilot. What I always recommend to anybody that wants to do influencer marketing. If you can only do it for a month or for 60 days, it's just not long enough. The absolute minimum is 90 days. I would always aim higher, but 90 days is great to start. So the first 30 you're gonna set up to learn, understand who you're trying to target, what their pain points are for the specific campaign, how you want to engage with them, and who you want to partner with. Nail down your budget. You can start with asking creators first to get a better idea, then onboard the creators. This is when you take time to do product demos, walkthroughs if they're not already using the product, and then you can do content brainstorms as well. I do this with creators all the time. You do a 60 minute walkthrough with them, brainstorm with them for another 60, and then give them basically a library of content that they can then build on for themselves. Lock in at least three deliverables per creator. If you're doing a 90 day pilot, it should be no less than one sponsored post per month, maybe two to three if you have the budget. And make sure you're building out your tracking and measurement before you start. Next 30 days, you have your creators locked in, contracts are signed, briefs are sent out. You start to activate your campaigns and monitor the performance. So this is when you start to test your messaging, your initial messaging, and then collect feedback, not just from your audience, but from the creators themselves. How's the audience reacting? How are they liking the content? That they're producing, they feel like it's resonating with their audience. Are they seeing the results that they would want to see from their content? This is when you can start to refine fast, but you also have to move quickly and be willing to pivot as well and then track the movement across the funnel. Let's say you're looking for just generated pipeline and impressions, right? But see how many people are getting stuck at different stages in the funnel as well. And also a great thing to see is how it's influencing customer retention, if it is at all. And then by day 90, this is when you can take all the performance data, analyze and adjust so that creator feedback, any early signals you saw, double down on who's performing well, maybe kick out who isn't, and then use those learnings to evolve into longer term partnerships. And once you're past those 90 days, that's when you can scale beyond the pilot. So double down on what's working. This is when you can start speaking to the leadership team to a deeper extent as well about what's working and what's not, what you're going to do differently, who you're going to partner with, what ICP this is resonating with and which one it isn't. You can start layering new activation types and then build for repeatability. And then this is where you can move from what I consider like scattered campaigns to a clearer system. It's okay if this isn't all fleshed out on day one. It's okay if it isn't all fleshed out on day 90. And I think what's interesting too is day 182 years in, you're still going to be pivoting, you're still going to be refining, but you are going to have a much clearer grasp of what's working and what's not. So you can make sure you're partnering with the right creators and wasting less of your time. And that's all I have.

[Audience Member]

Love it.

[Harry]

I have a bunch of questions for you actually. So one of the things that's challenging and like this started out like I did a bunch of this early, before exit 5 became a real company. And so I have an interesting like point of view as like being an influencer. Right. And I think one of the things that it's hard to, I think it's because it's a new channel. I think a lot of marketing leaders and teams kind of just like they expect to throw money on it and a result to magically happen.

[Brianna Doe]

Yeah.

[Harry]

And it's like, we don't treat it like, like if you ran a bunch of Google Ads and the Google Ads were shitty because they drove to shitty landing pages and shitty offers, are you going to go to Google and say, well, Google doesn't work? Yeah, and I think a lot of, I think a big part of this and you hit on this is like understanding what the offer is and having a real strategy versus like, oh, we're going to, we're going to pay Briana to do a post and we're going to get this off thing. How do you think about like working with companies? Or do you have any examples of like, of offers that have been effective? Because unlike consumer brands, the offer is not always just direct sales. And like in B2B, it could be eight to 12 months before I, you know, I seen Brianna post three times over the course of the year. And then I also went to one of their webinars and I also did this other thing and then I ended up buying. Do you have any advice around, like how marketers can coach their teams and leadership on like how to, how to think about the offer and the result of these.

[Brianna Doe]

Yeah, Well, I think it's funny you bring up Google Ads too, because I feel like leadership teams do that, like ads won't work and then they say, Google doesn't work for us, let's turn it off and try another platform. So I think it's actually very similar pain point. You expect to just throw this messaging and it'll work with creators too, and it just won't. Right. You're dealing with human psychology, with the way people digest information and consume it. When I think about the offer, it really needs to tie back to what your customer actually cares about or what your target audience actually cares about. I forget which company it is. There was some agency, I think Tim Davidson worked there, where you did these gift cards that apparently everybody just loved these $25 gift cards and they were closing like crazy for some reason. That works. Right. And so it might be a pattern interrupt, it might not be the offer that you think it's okay if it's a longer sales cycle. But what I would ask myself, or ask my team, is, okay, what are the short term wins that we can account for here? Especially if it's a longer sales cycle, what are the long term wins? And then how can we incentivize people not just once read this post, click this button and get 25% off, but how can we continue to engage them throughout the course of that influencer campaign or event activation. But I think it just starts with understanding where your customers are at.

[Harry]

And the other thing is, what's your take on like how to actually go and find creators or tell you what I say to people and you can maybe poke holes in it. But, but this question drives me nuts because I feel like as a marketer there's not going to be some magic database that has a list of people in your industry. Doesn't this just come back to like having a strong opinion about your industry? Actively watching, listening to podcasts, watching videos on YouTube, seeing who's who has a voice on TikTok. Like I, I do think we kind of expect there's there to be some magic database of like oh, we sell into finance and like here's the ranked followers versus Finance versus don't you need to actually know? Like, do you feel like it has to be firsthand knowledge of where the creators are or maybe am I, am I wrong? Is there some way to figure out who's influential in your space?

[Brianna Doe]

There are two ways. So there are actually some platforms if you're looking for LinkedIn specific creators. Limelight is a great one. I don't believe you can filter by industry, but you can see which audiences they speak to, what the demographics are and then actually reach out to them through Limelight as well. I believe outside of that there is Grin, there's Aspire, where you can categorize by content type, content pillars, like the typical audience they speak to. I don't use any of those. I prefer more manual approaches. So what I actually like to do is speak to customers, existing customers, and ask them who they follow and who they trust. I did this a lot in fintech as well. When you're speaking to accountants, like what newsletters do you follow, which podcasts you listen to? Are there creators that you look to to give you up to date accounting information or accounting news? It's a little manual, but you should be speaking to your customers anyway. So it's kind of a win win. But you can speak to your customers, understand who they care about, who they trust already. And then another great way, also a bit manual, but just Google literally like Top fintech influencers, Top X creators. You'll start to see these curated lists across Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and you can use those as your first step into finding creators and then look at who they're following and engaging with. Then you'll build a flywheel.

[Harry]

It's like a lookalike audience of creators. Questions for Brianna on Influencer Influencer Marketing.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Moderator]

So for that, that top left quadrant where maybe you want an influencer who can go super deep in subject matter expertise in like a niche, a very niche industry you've mentioned like you can choose to like drop three, work with four and like a lot of plurals. Is it feasible to do this with like one influencer versus a pool of influencers? If you're in a niche industry, yes.

[Brianna Doe]

Short answer is yes you can one, your data is going to be minimal because you can test less content types, less messaging, things like that. And you're also just beholden to whoever their content happens to perform that day as opposed to kind of spreading the risk across four to five influencers or three to four. I will say if you're going to partner with one creator, you have to look at the short term wins or metrics a lot less still track them and measure them obviously. But you're going to be looking at or what I'd recommend is looking at a way longer term partnership because you're going to work with them pretty closely or you should work with them closely on refining the messaging along the way, pivoting to different types of content, focusing on different kinds of campaigns with them and seeing what lands. My recommendation is at least three, but you can make it work with one.

[Stephanie]

Hi, I'm Stephanie. I signed my first influencer. We had our first webinar. It was really successful. So I got budget for three more webinars but now I'm struggling because my I want to ingest like more product into it. But my product is technical, it requires professional services and since we're not B2C we can't just like send a tube of lipstick. So how are you seeing the influencers that you work with use product like in their day to day? If I can't just turn it on for them overnight, what's a creative Solution? It's a SaaS platform so we help automate the mundane parts of seller's days.

[Brianna Doe]

Mundane parts of what?

[Stephanie]

Of a seller's day. Like account planning, deal qualification, forecasting.

[Brianna Doe]

How did you. Sorry, I have questions for you. Yeah, how did you structure your first webinar?

[Stephanie]

I mean it was a one time contract signed a webinar said if I was successful, if I hit the registration goals and the MQL goals, I would sign three more. So we did hit those goals and we signed three more together. But it was more thought leadership than product specific.

[Brianna Doe]

Were there product like integrations or mentions within the webinar or is it.

[Stephanie]

Yes, the person on our side that's what we did. We would show up and we would ask them a question and we'd be like, oh, and by the way, this is how we do it. Okay, so there's product mentions, but like, if I want them to get behind the camera in my product. Are you seeing people do that with influencers?

[Brianna Doe]

I am. I wouldn't say it performs very well.

[Stephanie]

Good to know.

[Moderator]

Yeah.

[Brianna Doe]

I think the thing with co hosting a webinar with a creator is kind of going back to what I alluded to. Influencers aren't salespeople. You're leveraging them, I would assume because of their thought leadership and the credibility and trust that they've built with their audience. So what I'd recommend is looking at the funnel that you have them going into after the webinar, still continue with the product integration, still mention the product, maybe even have a segment during the webinar where you just talk about the product for a little bit. Another recommendation I have is if you have a Q and A element, if you don't add one, but if you have a Q and A element, manufacture some questions in there that you can then speak to the product specifically. But I wouldn't put the onus on the webinar and the influencer alone just to handle that.

[Harry]

Yeah, just to build on that. I think in B2B, it's different. Like nobody, I think the play would be like, use that relationship to get interest of a new audience and then it's on you after to nurture and follow up and to share product related stuff. And it's like, hey, we earned your. Like, use the webinar to get people to know like, and trust you and, and for some reason. And then now you have the right to like reach out to these people and have something thoughtful to say.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Harry]

I think especially in B2B, a lot of times the influencer and creator types of partnerships, it is, it is different than like, here's me trying on this lipstick. It's more like, can we do we have a shared mission around like the story that our company sells. And so like your mission, your, your ICP is salespeople finding influencers who make interesting content to salespeople. Like the dream one would be like you do a collaboration with corporate Natalie.

[Moderator]

Right.

[Harry]

And, and earn corporate bro. And it doesn't. You don't need them pitching your product. You're using their, their audience. That's the whole point of the influencer thing. You're drafting off an audience that's. That's not yours. Right.

[Brianna Doe]

Yeah, or even building off that, like partnering with somebody who specifically has built trust with a sales audience like a Kevin Dorsey or John Barrows. Because then they're going to bring more of that audience and you have to do less work to bring them in.

[Harry]

What else? You in the back, Shout it out.

[Audience Member]

Sir, I'm glad you mentioned the sales. It ties into my question. So can you talk about how you discuss risk, especially to the brand, with your clients? About I'm going to hand it over to influencers. The reason that I mentioned is there was a pretty universally sales influencer led

[Dave Gerhardt]

campaign that went on LinkedIn a couple

[Audience Member]

months ago and was just Hillary, a bunch of group chats that I'm in. A lot of fun was made of it. Okay, a superhero AI whatever mumbo jumbo. But it was just getting torn to shreds in private conversations and DMs people saying, have you seen this? What? I joke, like I haven't seen it. I don't know that joke. When I started to look at it, I was like, my goodness, this company, I'm not hearing. It's the first time I've heard of them. I'm not hearing anything positive about their brand. And it's been like this one influencer campaign may have just trashed it entirely, killed their startup, I don't know. So there's inherent risk involved with bringing outsiders in. Can you talk about how you cover that off with your clients?

[Brianna Doe]

Yeah, that's a great question. I think first off, my assumption with that story would be that they did not. Okay, hopefully that marketer isn't in this room. But whoever that marketer is, my assumption is they didn't speak to like maybe their sales team or to CS or to some other department about the influencer program or campaign before it launched. Like when I hear about an influencer campaign flopping so tragically like that, it's typically because it's built in a silo. And to an extent they're probably not even asking the influencer themselves for their opinion. They're handing them a brief and maybe it looks fun or it looks engaging, but they're not taking the time to truly understand if it's what their ICP is looking for. And so that's where I start with that conversation with risk with brands is, okay, your CEO might have this cool idea or your head of marketing might have this cool idea. Let's actually pre validate it a bit. Look at who your customer base actually trusts. Look at what kind of content actually resonates with them to the extent that we can figure that out, and that's how we'll mitigate that risk. Especially in B2B, it's very risky to do fun, catchy content. And I think it can also flop really easily because humor just isn't really a big part of B2B marketing. So you have to be very careful and weigh the risks. And that's typically what I say to the C Suite. I also do say, if you want to run a campaign like that, if you want to kind of test the waters, start with something that your audience will actually be expecting first and then maybe get creative once you have initial messaging and validation built out, that's where I would start.

[Harry]

Does that mean influencers are bad? Or, like, couldn't have been the company that put out that shitty campaign and they still would have gotten roasted, right? Like,

[Brianna Doe]

yeah,

[Harry]

Yeah, maybe. But that's what Harry talked about. That's the risk. And I think you, you do know. And sometimes you have to try something crazy. I think a lot of times, though, if it's going to be that bad, there's, there's usually a red light. There's. There's a. There's a yellow flag behind the scenes at, like, somewhere.

[Brianna Doe]

Well, that's another thing too. Like when I think about, let's say the notion faces campaign. People were tearing that apart on LinkedIn. I consider it extremely successful. The Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle ad, I hate to say it, but, like, their stock increased, the jeans are selling well, I guess like that. So what's successful? Okay, people are making fun of it, so maybe not. Did it impact their bottom line? We don't actually know. I think that's the part that we can't speak to if we're not working on the team or seeing those results. But it is worth asking, like, okay, is this just driving conversation and what kind of conversation is it sparking? I would say that one would be unsuccessful because if they're making fun of it to that extent. Yeah, but that. Yeah, that's what I would. That's what I would ask.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Just a quick one.

[Brianna Doe]

I see when this stuff happens, sometimes it says, this is an ad and they tend to not work as well. Is that, is there a way of

[Harry]

getting around that or do you have any advice for, for dealing with that?

[Brianna Doe]

Are you talking about, like, the specific ad disclosure?

[Harry]

Yeah, ad disclosure.

[Brianna Doe]

So first thing I'll say, Federal Trade Commission does require that influencers disclose a param partnership, whether it's paid, product is given in return, whatever the case may be, if there's some form of compensation. They have to disclose it. So the ways around it. I think one thing creators could do better and brands can encourage them with this is you don't just have to put like hashtag ad at the bottom. I think that's really off putting. You can say really grateful to have partnered with XYZ with notion. Right. Really grateful to have partnered with whatever brand. I think finding ways to integrate it into your content as a creator is a lot more effective. But that also ties back to the kind of campaign you're building as the brand. So giving them the opportunity to create their own content and have creative freedom will allow for more seamless integration like that and spicy take. If it still flops, the content probably wasn't great. So use that to refine your messaging for the next activation that you do with that creator. See what landed and what didn't. Chances are it's not just because they said it was an ad. I think a lot of the time it ties back to like audience alignment or just they're caught off guard. Like the product doesn't align with their audience. They've never heard them talk about it. They've never talked about like their tech stack before, for example. Creators also need to find a way to make sure the content aligns with their audience. But brands need to make sure they're partnering with creators who can make that seamless integration. Does that answer your question?

[Moderator]

Cool.

[Audience Member]

I was just going to make a comment on that campaign and if you're in here, I apologize. I'm sure many of you in this room were probably invited to take part in that and I know that I was. And if they were to just follow your framework, I think that would not have been quite the disaster that it was perceived to be on social media because just me as the person that didn't participate but got the kit. It was given to me and I'm not sure others. 24 hours before the launch date, I didn't know what it was or what it was for. It was just a question from CEO saying, hey, do you want to participate in this? And I said, sounds cool. Send me more. Day before campaign. Here's your stuff. You look at it and you go,

[Brianna Doe]

it's a little weird.

[Audience Member]

And then this happens.

[Brianna Doe]

Yeah, I think that's not special in this brand too. I think any brand that's trying influencer marketing is especially in the B2B space. That's worth celebrating and worth encouraging. I think that speaks to the reactivity element of it too. Like if they've given. If you give your creators more time to digest the campaign and give their feedback, you're also going to be able to refine it even before you launch it. That's also why you should have contracting in place. So just a note there.

[Moderator]

Cool.

[Harry]

All right. You can find Brianna after if you want. Give it up for Briana.

[Brianna Doe]

Thank you.

[Harry]

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what? I'm not even going to ask you

[Dave Gerhardt]

to subscribe and leave a review because

[Harry]

I don't really care about that. I something better for you.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So we've built the number one private

[Harry]

community for B2B marketers at exit 5. And you can go and check that out.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Instead of leaving a rating or review,

[Harry]

go check it out right now on our website, exit5.com our mission at Exit 5 is to help you grow your

[Dave Gerhardt]

career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do

[Harry]

that than with us at exit 5. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day asking questions about things like marketing, planning,

[Dave Gerhardt]

ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group

[Harry]

or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days, so you can go and check it out risk free and then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more more exit5.com and I will

[Dave Gerhardt]

see you over there in the community.