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Daniel Murray
Welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Millennials podcast. Today's guest, Vin Matano, an ex sales rep turned into full time creator and founder of Creator Buzz. We get into how B2B influencer marketing really works, what makes a great creator brief, and how brands can actually win with creators excited to dive in. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the up. What's up, Finn? Welcome to the Market Millennials podcast.
Vin Matano
Thanks for having me. This is round two.
Daniel Murray
You're in a totally different spot. As you were before we talked last. So.
Vin Matano
Right.
Daniel Murray
You want to give people a little bit of background of your progression from sales creator to now business owner so that people know what you're doing now for sure.
Vin Matano
Yeah. So prior to starting this business, which I guess we'll talk about in a bit, I spent the last six years at a Martech company on the sales side. So I was, you know, doing the whole outbound cold calling, sending emails, and then went into a closing role and saw a lot of success there, all while building my personal brand, really around sales. I shared a lot of sales tips and stories about sales, you know, deals I lost, deals I won. And that's kind of how I got into the creator economy. And then, you know, fast forward started to notice a big trend in B2B SaaS, companies working with creators like myself, which really was the antithesis of the business that I run now, which is Creator Buzz. It's a B2B influencer marketing agency. So that's kind of how the product progression went.
Daniel Murray
Could you give everybody the landscape of like, what B2B influencers? I know people know what influencers are, but what is like a B2B influencer?
Vin Matano
Yeah, it's been around for a while, B2B influencer marketing, but it's definitely taken a new form with like the rise of LinkedIn and the creators on the platform. I'll say in the traditional sense, influencer marketing is when a influencer or someone that has a maybe a large following in a particular niche promotes a product or service. It's the same case with B2B. Right. The traditional sense of influencer marketing is like, maybe I want to promote this water bottle and you're in market for a water bottle and you buy this water bottle. B2B is a little bit different. It's an Individual who potentially is a knowledge based creator or a professional who has other professionals that follow them. And they're basically promoting a, maybe a software as most common or a service to help another business.
Daniel Murray
Let's go into what does a B2B influencer marketing program. What are like software companies doing to set these, set up a program right now?
Vin Matano
Yeah, well, they can come in a lot of different forms I would say for our clients. Majority of them are running LinkedIn campaigns. So I'll use that sales use case as an example or maybe a marketing use case for your audience. So for example, if there's a marketing technology company that exists, there's obviously want to get in front of other marketers. And there's a lot of trends that are happening right now within the go to market space that is kind of changing the way folks are buying. So you know, marketing departments are spending more and more on digital advertising, which they're actually seeing, you know, less conversions. A lot of people want to shop anonymously. 80% of the buyer's journey is done anonymously. So that means they're spending more and more on ads and essentially seeing potentially less return on that. And then on top of that, sales outreach is extremely difficult right now. There's a lot of noise, especially with AI sales reply rates around like 1 to 2% industry wide. And buyers really want to shop on their own terms and really shop and get recommendations from friends, from colleagues, from trusted advisors, influencers. And so that really kind of developed a whole trend of influencer marketing. So going back to the example, if you're a marketing technology company and you sell to other marketers, instead of maybe running an ad and trying to use LinkedIn to target these marketers, you might work with individuals who have large followings that talk about marketing all day, every day and their followers are all marketers. And you might kind of, you know, get them onboarded to your software, let them use the tool. If they see value in the tool, they can promote the tool in a form of a sponsored post or potentially like a newsletter sponsorship or you as a, you know, podcast host, I'm sure you do a lot of brand partnerships as well to a professional audience. And that's typically the use cases that we see most.
Daniel Murray
That all makes sense. I want to go into like what does a good look like in B2B influence influencer marketing? Because I know for some brands it's hard to think about, hey, I need to shell out 10% of my budget to go do this. I know it's going to get More and more as people realize that influencers have more influence. Just how B2C it's been happening for the last 10 years, it's going to start doing the same thing for B2B. But what does a good creator look like? What should brands be targeting? What should they set it up as a campaign? Should they do a one off? What does good look like in this space?
Vin Matano
Yeah, well, I mean, obviously it definitely depends on the use case and the type of product that you have. Right. I think There's A in B2B, one of the biggest differentiators for how you set up a campaign is understanding how you go to market. So if you are a sales led motion, your campaign and your influencer motion is going to look wildly different from a company that has a really large PLG motion, meaning someone can just sign up on the tool, sign up for the tool by themselves, they put their email in and they get access to the tool versus the sales led motion. They might have to talk to sales, go through a long sales cycle, meet with security. Procurement might take months. Right. And so the best campaigns that we're seeing with both in mind are really, really like niching down with the creator. So for example, if you are a, you know, know revenue operations software, well, we want to be like deeply embedded into the revenue operations department. And I think companies that we work with kind of take this kind of full funnel approach where going back to the use case of revenue operations, maybe you're working with those ICs who are actual rev ops individuals and maybe they don't have really large followings but like all their followers are rev ops folks. They're sharing really tactical like workflows of how to maybe use the tool. Tutorials that maybe don't get as much reach, but it's actually going to, you know, help with the conversions. Whereas the other group of influencers that we might want to find are more the ones that can kind of capture attention and maybe they're creating, you know, specific episodic content. They're creating, you know, skits or parodies or things that I'll just address a larger market and then bringing that, you know, audience to go down the funnel, finally reaching those folks that are in the rev ops roles that are actually, you know, kind of creating those workflows. So these answer your question. The, the best clients that I see are kind of taking that full funnel approach, finding creators that are helping with the top of the funnel and then helping those helping, working with creators that are really helping with more bottom of.
Daniel Murray
The Funnel one thing you do really well and you're a great creator with your video content and showing up at conferences and documenting, even this podcast you're documenting and everything you're doing is documenting. So what is some advice you would give to a B2B creator who wants to get started doing what you're doing, wants to be seen by these brands to start getting partnerships, but they don't even know how to even get get started because there's a lot of conflicting advice out there. How to be good on LinkedIn, how to be good on Instagram, how to. So what is. How would you recommend someone get started if it was your playbook?
Vin Matano
Yeah, you know, I'll just give like my experience of how I got started. I think, you know, there's definitely not a one size fits all, but I think in most cases, most people can benefit from just sharing their own uni story. I attended a video workshop actually with LinkedIn. It was held by the LinkedIn product team that creates the video feed and a bunch of other creators that were there. And the main thing that they talked about was the videos that do the best on their platform really cover like two main things. It's going to be one, lived experiences. So if all of, if everyone on LinkedIn has a job, you have content to share. You lived an experience of working a job, it could been maybe a horrible job, maybe you had a bad experience and that's okay, you share that. Or maybe you had a really good experience and you learned so much and you, you had a bunch of wins and like that's cool to share too. And then the other piece that LinkedIn prioritizes in their video feed is value. So unlike TikTok, where maybe you can be rewarded by doing a funny trend or doing a dancing video purely for entertainment purposes, LinkedIn does not prioritize that within their algorithm. They prioritize knowledge share and lived experiences. So if you can combine the both of those in, in one piece of content, like you're golden and you have really infinite pieces of content to talk about. When you think about it, especially if you've been in the workforce for, you know, over a few years or so, like you have plenty of ammunition of things that you wish you knew, things you learned big wins. Any emotion that you're feeling in the day to day that's like, that's content. Any anything the day to day that you think is just normal and everyone knows about it, or that's not the case, like you can share any part of your day, how to Structure your calendar, how to respond in slack messages. Like the littlest things content.
Daniel Murray
Yeah, that is amazing. And I know a lot of people will come and say like I'm starting to do video, I'm not getting any seen at all. You do something, I'm just going to use you as example because you have videos and people can go back and look at your example. Like one things you do well, I mean and that creators could should start following is like even if you're doing these episodic content and they're prioritizing value, they're prioritizing lived experiences, it's still a fee that's competitive. So you do need to do like a good hook in your video and have something hooking. Hooking someone. You need to have good cuts like, like good, like transitions in the video. You need to have emotion to storytelling to. I think that's where a lot of people, a lot of people come to me and ask me like, how do I like get more views on social. And a lot of the time it's the content and value is there is just the way they set up the content and format is not there. Like there's no hook, there's no like the values there, but the, the pieces that make a great video aren't there.
Vin Matano
Well, I think for someone like, so that advice is really, really important. But that advice also is for someone that's like already experimenting with video there, you know the advice for. There's a lot of people on LinkedIn that are doing, you know, they grew on the platform by just doing strictly text based posts and they've never posted a video in their life. And that's unique to LinkedIn. Whereas on TikTok every user that uploads to TikTok is a video creator. Right? And so like there's different, there's different levels of the advice. The advice I would give to a creator that is already testing video and maybe not seeing results is 100% what you had said. Like we want to dive into the hook, the format. It all comes down to storytelling too. And maybe we can dive a little bit deeper on that, which I'm happy to talk through. But all of my videos, if anyone goes down this feed, I also am a creator and I see the most success actually doing storytelling. And it could be on the simplest topic, but it's really how you tell a story. And on short form content you storytell much differently than you would in any other format. So for example, like, you know in school we're taught how to tell a story where you set the, you know, you set the plot or the loc of the story, then you sent the context and then you have that problem resolution and then there's the journey to solve that problem and then there's the payoff. That's the traditional story arc in short form content. And in social media it's completely different. You have to start with the highest point, the climax of the story first because that's what's going to get people hooked. And then you set the stage, then you set the context, and then you set the journey and then you set the payoff. So it's almost like you kind of start it from the end essentially and then build out the scene. And if you go through all my videos, they all start that way. I always start with the climax and then build out the scene.
Daniel Murray
I love that. I also think that advice does apply to if you're doing text based posts. I think you still need some sort of hook in a text based post. I think you need some sort of storytelling, you need some sort of value add. You need some sort of like way for people to engage if you want to get more people to answer some things. But I do agree with you. Like, that's why I love LinkedIn, because I'm shy on camera. So when I started five years ago I could just write a text post and not have to show my face. And now it's, I mean now everybody says show your face, but I still think if you're a great, great writer, double down on writing on LinkedIn.
Vin Matano
Yeah, I mean I, I'm a creator, like full and through. Like even though I run a business and that's, you know, how I generate most of my income, I am a creator. And I truly believe that you as a, if you identify as a creator, you need to try out different formats, always try new things. Like I have a new series that I'm trying to create and it's something I've never done before. It's like a long form series. I've never ever done that before. And if you're comfortable with text and you grew your audience on text, like that is your sign to probably test out other content formats. And if you're a great writer, chances are you're actually going to be able to create a really great video because you know how to write a great script, what you can even do to get started. If you're a great writer, take your best performing written post and literally just read it on camera because that's probably a pretty good script that you wrote, that's a perfect place to start. The only difference is, is around the visual hooks, which is something that you don't have to really consider when doing text posts. So the thing that you really need to focus on is the different types of hooks that are involved when actually creating a video that you really don't have to consider when you're doing a text post. And there's really three types of hooks that you want to consider when creating an engaging video. The first would be the visual hook. So this is what your viewers see when they first come across your video. It should basically keep them like, visually satisfied when they're scrolling on the feed. And I always like to use the best clips that I possibly have from either like an event or any B roll that I have. Like these. This should be the most visually appealing. That's the first part. That's a visual hook. And your mind kind of processes that visual hook first. And then what they'll see is. Or then what they'll hear is the spoken hook. And this is basically what you say in the first few seconds of your video. Right? So you should, like, really stick to using power words to make users basically want to stay around and watch your entire video. And then the other piece of it is your text hook. And this is what they might read. And this is the text you're including on the screen to make sure that you're kind of hitting all the different points from visuals to text to spoken word. And that's something you have to consider when creating a video that you don't necessarily have when you're creating text posts.
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I think, I mean, that breaks it down. Amazing. And I think it also something that you can dominate well as a B2B creator, because a lot of B2B creators aren't doing this very well. So if you take this format and put it into B2B, you probably could stand out where like 5 years ago text would stand out now. Like, a good video could do 5x a text post. If you do a hook, do the have a visual. A visual text on. On the video. All the stuff that VIN just said. I want to ask you, like, what, what do you suggest as a creator and for B2B companies, like, what is. What should the brief look like for a B2B creator? Like, how could you get the best out of that creator without like, stifling how great of a creator they are? Because I know, like, I seen you do videos with us. I've seen a lot of B2B creators get sponsorships, like what should be in the brief and what shouldn't be in the brief to make sure they get the best out of that B2B creator.
Vin Matano
Yeah, the brief is so important and in my experience, I think the brief should also be brief, not to use that word, but like you should have brevity in mind. Because I'm on both sides of the business. I am also a creator, so I do brand deals. I see when brands send me briefs, but then I also produce briefs for the clients that we do work with. And I do believe it becomes a bit too much or overwhelming when the briefs are way too long. Like when I've done some campaigns with some really, really large brands, they send me PowerPoint decks. It's a little too much. All I need to know as a creator is if I don't already know, I should know. But like, what does the company do? What am I doing in this video? Like, why did you reach out to me for this video? What am I promoting? I need to also know the deliverables, like right away, what do I need? Is it two videos I'm posting? Is it a story? What exactly am I posting? I need to know the cta because that's probably a really important part if there's a unique link that should all be there in the brief. Of course, you know, from the brand perspective, you of course need brand guidelines, right? You got to make sure that if there's sponsored posts going out on behalf of the brand, you got to make sure that they're not talking about the brand in the wrong manner. They are not using words, they shouldn't be using all that stuff, the non sexy stuff, that definitely should be included. And then my favorite thing is also also to include examples. So if you've already done influencer marketing or maybe you haven't done an influencer marketing campaign, you should look at, see what your competitors are doing or folks in your industry in terms of their sponsored content. Do your research. There's actually a library that LinkedIn offers for sponsored content so you can search up maybe competitors or just like, you know, players in your industry. Copy the links of their post if you like them and include them in the brief because that really is actually going to help the creators, give them some context on what they should be creating.
Daniel Murray
I do agree, I think as clear and concise as possible without stifling creativity because every creator I think needs some sort of guardrails, otherwise it will go crazy. But I do think that creators don't need a million different points otherwise it's just going to turn into something that doesn't get attention for your brand and that's not really what you want. Let the creators create and you just have your goal in mind so the creator can overachieve for that goal that you, you have. The next point I want to make is could you go over like the different types of like sponsorships that usually happen in a B2B because I know there's, it also depends on like where that person is creating. But there are a lot of different ways you could do sponsorship from post to newsletter to in person events to this, that and that.
Vin Matano
Yeah, I'll say the most obvious brand partnerships are the sponsored posts which nowadays happens on LinkedIn and then like traditionally in B2B because I know you've been in this space for a while. So traditionally when we people thought of B2B influencer marketing sponsorship, it really traditionally came in the form of like a newsletter sponsorship or a podcast sponsorship. But now I mentioned with the rise of LinkedIn and the creators on the platform now, that is becoming almost, you know, one of the standards that companies are expecting now. There's a ton of other ways you can work with creators. Right? That, that's just not, that's just the most obvious one. Right. You could also work with a creator on your own company owned assets, your own branded assets. So if you run a webinar series or if you are producing some sort of like big annual report or white paper or any interview series, like you can have these influencers be a part of them or if you have any in person events, have them speak on a panel and then have them also promote the event. What we're seeing a lot of me firsthand as a creator and now we're trying to push this for a lot of our brands. We've done this a handful of times actually. This weekend there's a big restaurant event out in Chicago, National Restaurant association. And we have a client in the POS space who sells point of sale systems to restaurants. We found a Chicago based food creator. We're sending him to the event on their behalf. He's going to wear the company branded shirt, he's going to have a microphone with the branded logo on it and he's going to go and basically do street interviews. And so we're seeing a huge trend in that we're actually sending a lot of creators to events where they can go on behalf of the brand, capture content. They can help also drive foot traffic at booths. Like obviously, you know, like booths can run extremely Expensive, specifically at those like really big events. Like I think Dreamforce is like over 300 grand for a booth or something crazy like that. And so having a familiar face or someone well known in the industry, like maybe stand by your booth definitely will help with foot traffic and even like, you know, small ancillary events like happy hours or dinners, inviting an influencer there and kind of, you know, using their like likeness to help drive registration. That's totally fine. We, we've seen the big trend in that.
Daniel Murray
I think the one thing that you said that was very interesting and I think a lot of B2B are stuck with the old booth model and I think the move towards that, what a lot of B2C brands do and the reason they do events is a pure content play for them. And like the reason they have alo, has their alo like retreats is because they know influencers are going to go, but they're going to capture tons of content, tons of interviews, tons of social assets, tons of assets to put that can go to pr. Tons of assets. And I think the one thing you said about having creators be there, but also like being a face of some series you're doing or content that you're going to do that you get posted on your social, own social channels, get distributed is gold because one, they, they have like the relatability and people will recognize them. And two, you're getting tons of content. So like the content team doesn't have to like run the circle of like losing finding different ways to create new pieces of content you've created. You can create like two hours worth of content that you could chop up that could be content for the whole year basically. So I think that's very interesting.
Vin Matano
Totally. I mean think about Coachella, right? Obviously that's in the consumer space, but like Coachella has become where consumer brands do influencer marketing, right? And that is slowly happening in B2B. I mean there is so many conferences that are happening. I know Canva Create just had their conference. They sent a ton of creators out there. The Adobe Summit, they sent a ton of creators out there as well to capture content. So like B2B is having their own like brand trip moment. I know the Cannes Lion Film Festival is coming up in the creator festival. I know so many creators going to that with software companies. So like it's happening. It's of course, I think on the highest scale and the smaller scale maybe has not caught up yet. But the largest events that are in our industry, there's a ton of creators getting Flown out to these events to capture content. It's already happening.
Daniel Murray
Yeah, and you're right, it always starts with big budget and then moves down the chain to smaller budget. But it's still like if you can get a creator, hire someone to do, do this internally, like there's different scrappy ways of doing it. I just wanted to make sure I highlight that play because so many brands could benefit from doing that and they just don't. Don't do that. What does a ideal partnership look like that a creator gets excited for? Because I know like there's a difference between hey, I'm coming to you Vin and I'm giving you one post and I'm paying you for the one post but I'm never going to work with you again. Versus hey, I want to do this campaign with you, Vin. I'm going to, we're going to fly you out here or we're going to do X, Y and Z. You're going to do and I want you to post on these, your, your channels on this. What are you seeing on both? What a success is? Is one off working very well, where you get a lot of creators and do one off things or finding going deep with a few creators and winning with that?
Vin Matano
Well, I think the goal is always going deep with a few creators. You know the truth of the matter is though, I think creators have a expectation that they should be offered a long term agreement, which that's the goal you want to get there as a brand, right? As the brand, you want to develop deep relationships with influence with the creator. However, in most cases there needs to be some sort of trial period or experimental period before entering into such long agreement. Like you might test, you might start with just a one off agreement and that's okay. Like I think creators, the narrative has gone so large where it's like, no, I'll never do a one off post and if you really like the brand, you should. One off posts are fine. It's okay. It's like you can experiment on both sides. You as the creator, you also don't want to jump into a long term agreement because you don't know how that relationship's going to go. Like it's a good testing period for you to test out the product and test out to see if your audience even vibes with it. And then as the brand, they can also test to see how they like working with this creator. So with all of our brands that we work with on the business side, we're recommending that, you know, we kind of Start off on a campaign where we're offering either one to three at max post to creators as a testing period. Then from there we decide if we want to extend or maybe just end the relationship with that creator and that's okay. All right. The goal though is to get to this point where we have like this always on campaign where creators are now partners to the brands and it just, it develops more trust with the creator's audience. It doesn't look like you're just jumping from creator to creator to creator.
Daniel Murray
What type of creators do you. Would you say brand should like steer away from, like, if they. From the posting on LinkedIn, like, what are. What, what, what. What makes like a non. Not good creator?
Vin Matano
Personally, I don't usually recommend creators that are just creating content for engagement. Now what that means it can come in a few different ways. There's some creators that are just doing like meme content on the platform. And to me, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that to a brand. One of our clients is because in most cases those creators are really just saying, hey, these memes will get a lot of impressions. In some cases they're stealing the content that's not even their original meme, which is a whole nother thing on LinkedIn that's happening. And in most cases, if they're just doing that and just relying on that, they may have not even really developed a deep relationship with their own audience to actually move product, AKA drive conversions. Now, the best creators that we work with foster a really great community with their following, no matter how big it is. You can have a really small following or a large following, but you can tell if you go in the comments of someone's post if there's conversation happening within the comments, and actual not AI comments, but like people having discussion about what you wrote in the comments. That's what we look for. That actually will be the creators that drive the most conversions, regardless of their following.
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I, I agree. I think, I mean with everything, it depends. But I do, do think there's a lot more creators on the platform since I've seen from a long time ago that just chase straight virality and clout. And if you didn't set up a community or a, I wouldn't say a community, but a following before you started doing that. A lot of that is just fake engagement coming out there. And I see it all the time. And obviously I'm, I create memes on the market millennials. So that's my brand. But I, I've been known for that. So it's like, not like I'm trying to steal names from that. So.
Vin Matano
No, I, I don't.
Daniel Murray
I'm not saying you're going against me. I saying, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. I know what you mean, but I mean, I used to share content to like hype creators up in the beginning, like tweets. And then everybody stole that. So then I stopped doing that because everybody started doing that. So it's like you, you could start a trend and then when you start seeing everybody do that, you have to go somewhere else. Otherwise it screws.
Vin Matano
And I'll be clear too. Like, I'm not saying memes in general are bad. I'm saying like, I know creators that like, have applied to our campaigns that like, if you go down their page, every single post is a meme. That's not someone I'd recommend. But like, if you're doing memes and other content and text posts and video and like, that's total. That's. That's cool. Like, that's totally fine. That Will Aiken is a really great example. I don't know if you know Will Aiken. He's. I know he's well known. He's great. Yeah. The sales space. He creates all types of great content from written posts to like 10 minute product reviews, to really funny skits, to memes, to like training tips. Like, he is perfect example of like someone that can kind of do it all.
Daniel Murray
Yeah. Jay Schwedelson and like marketing. Like, he posts a meme, but he also posts clips from his podcast. He posts like text posts. Like he posts images like he does all the time. Is like, that's pretty much what people want to work with. Lastly, I wanted to ask you is like, what is a marketing hill?
Vin Matano
You would die on marketing hill. I would die on marketing. I would say content doesn't always need attribution. Now, not to say that you shouldn't have that in mind, but sometimes I believe some content should just be. You're taking swings and just truly just trying things out with no return in mind in some cases. I'm not saying that should be your entire strategy, but I don't think enough, especially in B2B, I don't think enough B2B companies have like a, a fun budget where it's like, let's just do something different than we normally do without any expectation of return, you know, because we, we work with a lot of different brands and in most cases, influencer marketing is a very new motion for most of the brands. We work with and I think when we started getting into early conversations before anything's even planned and they're like, you know, talking specifically about like this needs to drive X amount of results. It's good that they are have that in mind and it's good intention to think about when you're, when you're running these campaigns in the long term. But in the beginning, you know, you should maybe try to have some sort of testing period where you can figure out what exactly works best for your brand and what type of creators work best. So that's my. I think the hill I would die on is not, not every piece of content needs attribution.
Daniel Murray
I mean, I, I agree. I think if you do that the incentives of offering the content like you should treat your content. What do I think could deliver best for the audience? And usually if you have that in mind, you good things happen when you, when you're going, when you're going with the mindset of my goal for this piece of content is to get 10,000 views, then you're not, you're just thinking about it as you're not thinking long term. And social is a long game where every piece of content connects to a bigger story and not every piece of content is going to win and it deincentivize people to do things that are, that might not succeed.
Vin Matano
Yes, that's exactly it. Like if you're saying, hey, my goal, I need to get at least 10,000 views on a video. If you have a format that's kind of been working, then you're just going to rely on that always and that's going to get stale over time. You'll be less likely to say, hey, I want to try out a new format. It might flop, but I don't actually want to. You know, we need to make sure we hit 10,000 so I'm going to go back to what's been kind of steadily working for us. So I totally agree with that sentiment. It's like just give yourself the autonomy to say let's take a swing and let's expect this to flop and if it flops, it's okay. Like we need to take more swings and not enough companies are doing that.
Daniel Murray
Lastly, where could people find you and what you're doing?
Vin Matano
I am everywhere. But I would say I'm Most active on LinkedIn. I share all the ups and downs. I do build in public content and I hesitate saying that because I think that's been overused now. But I truly do build in public content from like I Share when I have a maybe not too great call with a client and maybe they're maybe unhappy, I share that stuff. Everyone has unhappy clients. No one shares it though. You know, I share my finances for the business. I share every aspect of me running the business. And even the wins too, of course. Like, you know, when, when things are going well, I def. I share that as well. And I do a lot of storytelling. And if you're looking for inspiration for how to maybe create more engaging video content, I don't teach anything, but I do. You can learn through maybe just consumption of some of the storytelling that I, that I put out. Because I'm very intentional about it, I don't think.
Daniel Murray
I think the word build in public is maybe overused, but the how of doing it is not overused. I think people like think they're building in public or they've done it for a month or two and it's not working for them. But I think like the true ones that are winning, like you and the other creators who are doing this, are the ones who just are continually just doing it and like, like showing, behind the scenes showing. And more brands should do that. And they just feel like, I feel like they're scared of something happening if they don't do that. And that's where the advantage comes for smaller brands to start competing with these other brands is. Yeah, you have less guardrails than those huge brands so you can do these type of pieces of content.
Vin Matano
So exactly that. Yeah, I'm just again going back to like taking swings. Like I'm just, I'm taking, I'm taking big swings. Like I'm gonn to. I don't need to necessarily be better. I'm just trying to be different in a pretty like, crowded market.
Daniel Murray
Well, thank you so much for coming on and I really appreciate it.
Vin Matano
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Daniel Murray
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.
Podcast Title: How to Win at B2B Influencer Marketing with Vin Matano, Founder of Creatorbuzz | Ep. 332
Host: Daniel Murray
Guest: Vin Matano
Release Date: July 16, 2025
In the opening segment, Daniel Murray welcomes Vin Matano, an ex-sales representative turned full-time creator and founder of Creator Buzz, a B2B influencer marketing agency. Vin shares his journey from a six-year tenure in a Martech company's sales department to building a personal brand around sales tips and stories. This transition into the creator economy laid the foundation for his current venture, Creator Buzz.
Vin Matano [01:10]: "I spent the last six years at a Martech company on the sales side... building my personal brand, really around sales... that's how I got into the creator economy."
Vin Matano provides a comprehensive definition of B2B influencer marketing, distinguishing it from traditional influencer marketing. While traditional influencer marketing often involves promoting consumer products to a broad audience, B2B influencer marketing focuses on promoting products or services to other businesses, typically through knowledge-based creators or professionals on platforms like LinkedIn.
Vin Matano [02:03]: "In B2B, an influencer is someone who has a following of other professionals... promoting software or services that help another business."
The discussion delves into how B2B companies can establish effective influencer marketing programs. Vin emphasizes the importance of understanding the company's go-to-market strategy—whether it's sales-led or product-led growth (PLG). He highlights the shift in buyer behavior, noting that 80% of the buyer's journey is now conducted anonymously, making traditional sales outreach less effective. Influencer marketing emerges as a strategic solution to bridge this gap by leveraging trusted advisors and professional networks.
Vin Matano [02:54]: "Buyers want to shop on their own terms and get recommendations from friends, colleagues, and trusted advisors... influencer marketing addresses this trend."
When asked about advice for B2B creators, Vin shares insights from his own experience. He advocates for sharing "lived experiences" and providing value through knowledge sharing, especially on LinkedIn. Daniel reinforces the importance of effective storytelling and engaging video formats, suggesting that creators start by repurposing their best-performing written content into video scripts.
Vin Matano [07:37]: "Share your own lived experiences and provide value through knowledge sharing. Combine both elements to create compelling content."
Daniel Murray [09:18]: "Even if you're doing episodic content and prioritizing value, you still need a good hook and engaging storytelling to capture attention."
The conversation shifts to the mechanics of creating engaging content. Vin explains the importance of hooks—visual, spoken, and textual—to captivate the audience from the outset. He outlines a modern storytelling approach tailored for short-form content, where the climax is introduced first to hook viewers, followed by context and resolution.
Vin Matano [12:16]: "In short-form content, start with the climax to hook viewers, then build out the scene and context. This approach keeps the audience engaged."
Vin explores various sponsorship models prevalent in B2B influencer marketing. While sponsored posts on LinkedIn remain the most common, traditional forms like newsletter and podcast sponsorships are also significant. Additionally, he highlights innovative approaches such as integrating creators into company-owned assets, webinars, annual reports, and in-person events. An example includes sending a local food creator to a restaurant association event to capture content and drive foot traffic.
Vin Matano [18:50]: "Beyond sponsored posts, creators can participate in webinars, white papers, and in-person events to enhance brand presence and generate authentic content."
The dialogue emphasizes the value of long-term partnerships between brands and creators. Vin advocates for starting with trial campaigns—typically one to three posts—to assess compatibility before committing to ongoing collaborations. Building deep, trust-based relationships ensures that creators can authentically promote the brand, leading to sustained success.
Vin Matano [24:11]: "The goal is to develop long-term relationships with creators. Start with a few posts to test compatibility, then move towards ongoing partnerships."
Vin advises brands to steer clear of creators who solely focus on engagement through memes or non-original content. Instead, he recommends partnering with creators who foster strong communities and engage in meaningful conversations with their audience. Such creators, regardless of their follower count, are more effective in driving conversions and maintaining audience trust.
Vin Matano [25:58]: "Avoid creators who rely only on memes for engagement. Look for those who have meaningful interactions with their community, fostering trust and driving conversions."
One of the key takeaways from Vin is his stance on content attribution in marketing. He believes that not every piece of content needs explicit attribution to achieve broader marketing goals. Allowing creators the freedom to experiment without strict performance metrics encourages innovation and long-term success.
Vin Matano [29:12]: "Content doesn't always need attribution. Allow creators to experiment and take swings without the pressure of immediate returns."
In conclusion, Vin shares his active presence on LinkedIn, where he practices "building in public" by sharing both successes and challenges. He emphasizes the importance of transparency and continuous storytelling to engage and grow his audience.
Vin Matano [32:02]: "I share every aspect of running my business on LinkedIn, including challenges and wins. This transparency helps build trust and engagement with my audience."
Daniel Murray wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast for more insights from top marketing professionals.
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This episode offers invaluable insights into the evolving landscape of B2B influencer marketing, providing actionable strategies for both brands and creators to navigate and succeed in this dynamic field.