Should Influencers be part of your GTM Strategy?
Should Influencers be part of your GTM Strategy?
Insights from Amplitude, Clay, folk CRM and Userpilot
Dear GTM Strategist!
Today, we will unravel the secrets behind one of the increasingly hot channels: influencers. Yes, influencers have been “a thing” in B2C for the last five years, and e-commerce companies are crafty and use their materials everywhere—from ads to landing pages and joint launches. With the advent of the creator economy, influencers recently found a steady place in B2B go-to-market strategies, too.
And it makes sense, doesn’t it? Going where the audience is is one of the first rules of effective go-to-market strategy. Influencer collaborations bring powerful spillover effects of trust and likability. When they are done right, they result in shorter sales cycles, lower CAC, and higher LTV than, let’s say, promoting your LinkedIn post - no shade, but you are dealing with a warmer audience with influencers.
Hubspot’s 2024 State of Marketing report revealed that there are 46% of B2B Marketers are already investing in Influencer & Content Creator Marketing and see good ROI. Are you missing out a potentially great channel for Inbound and Paid?
In this Substack post, we will untangle:
Different types of collaborations with influencers (free and paid)
Best practices and tools for collaboration
How can we select the right influencers likely to deliver good results and manage collaboration with them.
Sounds good?
Let’s go!
🎬Behind the scenes: Fundamentals of this Substack post
What is valuable about my unique point of view on the subject is that I wear all hats 🎩 in the growth equation of working with influencers:
As a business owner, I collaborate with them to promote my products and measure the ROI of these collaborations
As a consultant to other companies, I review media buying and content co-creation deals and measure the effectiveness of such campaigns and
As a content creator (35K LinkedIn, 4K Substack), I collaborate with brands I trust and have to report on how well we did in each campaign.
I sent this Substack to 8 more experts to review and featured some of their statements. When I teased about it, 100 comments under my LinkedIn Teaser resulted in 2 more calls with B2B agency owners.
So I guess we are solid. 🤠
I acknowledge that not everything can be measured to a cent and that the only time to value a collaboration is not “7 days after posting.” But my ambition today is to transparently share the best practices and recommendations I give to companies that are thinking about partnering with content creators on their Go-to-Market mission.
Have an influencer strategy in place; don’t do “random collabs”
If you are a pre-product market fit, you cannot simply lay all your hopes that influencers will magically pick up your affiliate link. That takes MUCH more work and traction. Sure, you can go ahead and sponsor Lenny’s Podcast. It is guaranteed to bring you a traffic spike, which may be a great place to start. However, if this is not available to you right now or even if you have done it, saw good results, and want to scale your influencer channel, here are the types of influencer partnerships that you can consider:
Organic Referrals
A content creator loves the product and shares the excitement for it free of charge. It is a dream scenario, but it can only happen once you have a great Product-Market fit and lots of customer love.
Examples & best practices: AuthoredUp LinkedIn content management tools generate hundreds of thousands of impressions with user love, which they diligently appreciate on social media.
Barter Collaborations
If a creator is interested in or already using a product, a company, and the creator can agree on “barter”—free usage of the product is exchanged for promotions.
Examples & best practices: Riverside offers content creators free use of their premium plans to promote them in their podcasts. Although such partnerships are inexpensive, they can be hard to monitor if executed well.
Passive Affiliate through marketplaces
The transaction only happens when the sale is made. An influencer gets 10-50% of the commission for a sold product, either a life-long or time-limited commission.
Examples & best practices: Partnerstack offers many options to receive referral fees for the software you promote software. Companies like Webflow, Figma, Apollo.io, Quickbooks, Notion, and Pipedrive offer partnership programs.
Active affiliate - own programs
Many companies decided to launch their own affiliate and referral programs. You can register on their websites, and they will confirm if you are eligible for the program. My affiliate program is here: https://store.gtmstrategist.com/affiliates
Examples & best practices: Salesforce, Miro, Figma, Adobe, and Hubspot offer affiliate deals to qualified content creators. The issue with this one is that most affiliates are passive. This is why such programs need to be managed.
Media Buying
A company pays an influencer a fixed price to buy “media space” from them. That placement usually does not involve much collaboration between parties; you are “buying the audience.” The traffic is generally measured by a UTM link and reported by the number of impressions, downloads, and clicks.
Examples & best practices: Companies sponsor podcasts, Substack, or social media posts. Most content creators publish or share their media buying packages and arrange this. Here is the list of sponsors of Lenny’s podcast. The list includes companies such as Miro, Maven, Amplitude, Superhuman, Coda, etc.
Hybrid Collaboration
A company pays a smaller fixed fee, and a revenue share (usually 10-30%) is calculated based on the usage of referral codes.
Examples & best practices: Clay is killing it 🙌. They work with multiple outbound and GTM experts to create new use cases and best practices for using the tool. They diligently create content that best suits their audience. Clay for Creators is a program that supports the next wave of go-to-market content creators. The creators get a 20% commission and some fixed payments.
Launch Collaboration
A company teams up with an influencer (preferably multiple influencers to appear everywhere) to co-create and execute the launch campaign.
Examples & best practices: When Amplitude launches new reports, they team up with content creators to co-create and review them. It boosts the reach and increases the relevance of the report launch because influencers share their personal takes on it.
Event Collaboration
A company and content creator collaborate to co-create, promote and execute the event. The deal is usually fixed, and a target is set for the number of registrations the campaign should drive.
Examples & best practices: Userpilot hosts bi-monthly webinars featuring influential guest speakers. Initially, they conducted these webinars solo, but after inviting guest speakers, they noticed that registrations doubled or even tripled. This increase is likely because people are more inclined to join when they see a familiar name. They select speakers based on the webinar topic and their area of expertise, typically a month in advance, and collaborate with them on the format.
Additionally, Userpilot organizes an annual online conference where over 10 top LinkedIn influencers share their expertise for free, says Lusine Sargsyan, Demand Generation Manager at Userpilot.
Strategic co-creation of the product
The content creator is involved in the product launch and is a part of the go-to-market strategy. Often these influencers are stakeholders or co-founders of these tools.
Examples & best practices: Lempire founder Guillaume Moubèche supported the launch of Taplio, which was a considerable credibility and adoption booster for their launch. They also work with Justin Welsh. This social proof is featured on the website https://taplio.com/.
OK, so now we have a rainbow of many things that we could be doing with B2B influencers. Now, let’s get some work done, folks! ✌️
How to kick off your B2B Content Creator/Influencer Program
A natural first step in selecting influencers would be to ask your target market, “Which influencers do you follow?” to get ideas and inspiration. 💡 If you do that, you can pitch the influencers by telling them that your community members suggested the collaboration - it helps with conversion.
There could also be could be a sweet moment of serendipity is finding influential users who are already happy with your product and doing deals with them. Imagine the passion that they can put into collaboration.
As good as this sounds, it is not always available. Most companies that start with media buying and affiliates often fall flat if the product still strives to achieve product-market fit or should be carefully managed as a partnership program. And here is one more thing—even if you manage to excite people to take the product for a spin, there will be a bitter disappointment if the product is not ready for the masses.
If you are starting out, it is best to follow the do-it-yourself approach—find a couple of influencers to work with, work closely with them, and evaluate collaboration based on results.
Here is a list of tools that can help you manage the influencer collaborations:
You can also select Done for You services - agencies, freelancers or platforms that will help you curate the collaborations.
Long story short, when I work with companies new to influencer marketing, we usually select 5-10 influencers, test budgets, and manage the first campaign by ourselves to get a feel for it. I try to avoid “putting all the eggs in one basket.” Testing on a smaller scale and doubling down on what works well usually works best.
How big should the influencers be, and how much should we pay them?
Collab is either a single post/mention on their channels (lower price spectrum) or higher engagement forms such as events, webinars, and materials co-creations.
But the audience size is not everything. What is mission critical is that the content creator is a good fit for your ICP. When you work with them, always demand audience breakdown data, study their engagement, especially engagement on other promo posts and think very critically is a collaboration would attract relevant attention. I have seen nano creators with 2K followers convert well and 100K creators fall flat in conversations. Think relevance first.
Joran Hofman, founder of Reditus affiliate software and content creator who is in the same content collaborator group for podcasters as I am (Innovators can Laungh) explained:
“When you are going to start with influencer marketing, check your own network first. Who already uses your tool and has a big following under your ICP?
Doing this will help you get the ground running fast, as you don't have to educate them on your tool, and they can create content quickly.
You can leverage this content later when you start recruiting influencers outside your network. It will help them to understand what good looks like, and what is performing well for others.”
10 criteria that I use for Influencer selection
Let’s see how this looks like in practice. When I am deciding on yay or nay for a certain collab, I use this checklist as a shortcut for my decision-making - some elements are scientific, some are not, but for me “easy to work with” is a huge one because I do not have time to chase around influencers when will they publish their posts 🙈 (too high opportunity cost).
Let’s make this simple—Here is the checklist that I use when selecting influencers to work with in my business:
Less than 7x “yes” would make me reconsider the collaboration.
If they have worked with brands I am in touch with, I would also ask their past sponsors if they were happy with the collaboration and required screenshots of past results and case studies.
To bring in more juice - this is an example of proposals I am getting for collaborations. It is nice, short, and sweet. It provides the:
Context - why is this relevant
Firm reference - I can trust a partner; other creators I admire have worked with them.
A specific proposal - what we could work on, not some “let’s have a brainstorming call” vanilla pitch.
Openness to my creative freedom.
It seems personal enough to me - not sent to 500 other addresses.
Bonus points: if he included a link to a 15-minute chat, I would book a call immediately
This email is good, too, because it is honest. It is obviously not a paid collaboration, but I see value in it for my community and an opportunity to do something cool together. They are willing to invest resources.
And that probably makes you wonder- what is a “fair value exchange” in these deals?
I am happy to collaborate pro bono with early-stage startups as long as the product is free, useful for my audience, and actually works. But please, I do not have time or energy to test “random software,” so help me decide if we are a good fit by highlighting what is in it for my community: founders, product managers, growth experts, and part-time builders of awesome products.
A “fair price” depends on the audience's quality and the quality of material/complexity. I usually produce video demos, rich content materials, and deep dives that companies like to use in their other market materials. Therefore, I could charge a premium. A colleague with more followers could charge a premium because her audience is analytical and expects that are hard and expensive to reach elsewhere and, therefore, have reasonable conversion rates. Most semi-professional content creators have their media/sponsorship packs. They should be able to name the price if you contact them for collaboration. You can always negotiate and adjust the scope to fit your budget. It does not hurt to ask.
Update: In this post, Sarah Adam also shared average price quotes and her criteria for choosing a LinkedIn influencer.
After the deal is sealed - the real work begins.
Let’s wrap this up, shall we ✌️
Here are best practices for influencer and content creators collaboration for companies
Most creators require at least some payment in advance when working with new brands. There is a risk on both sides that is fair to be distributed. My best practices how to reduce the risk of collaborations for both sides are:
Agree on a goal of cooperation and write it down - some examples: number of registrations/signups, number of impressions, number of clicks - most influencers will not agree to sales numbers if the purchasing cycle and time to value is longer
Work with batches of influencers 5-10, not a single influencer at a time, to create a synergy effect
Write a written agreement (at least an email will do) in which you define a timeline. Also, agree on communication channels.
Follow up on milestones, send reminders when the deadline is not met, and overcommunicate when necessary.
Prepare a clear brief - what do you expect from collaborations? Mention UVPs, USPs, preferred features to show, and benefits to highlight, but remain flexible. Creators know their audience best. Some creative freedom goes a long way, making the post more credible. Do not treat content creators as billboards - or if you do, at least send them some swag to wear when they are repeating your script 😃 (forget that - it is a terrible idea).
If you are new to influencer collaborations, you should review the materials before they are published and ensure they are published at the arranged time.
Set up a UTM link and unique promotion codes to trace the traffic and conversions.
Try to include a special deal for collaborations whenever possible - WHY now is the question you need to answer together. My most successful collaborations were videos in which I quickly displayed the value - of doing something the audience wants in X time and hands-on tutorials.
Agree on metrics and when they have to be reported
Support creators’ posts as a company to add to its credibility and traction
Whenever possible, agree to do more than one post. It takes time and reps to win over new audiences, and the creator gets better at serving you in multiple collabs
Exchange numbers - often, creators seek feedback loops from companies, but they do not always get it. Ideally, we would know.
Why is this important? Because we do not see links on LinkedIn, especially if you provided your UTM link, we do not know how well the campaign went, and we rely on vanity metrics such as the number of impressions and engagements, but you also want clicks and leads, right? Let’s work together to create the best results possible! ✌️
And the final value gem 💎 in this post goes out to my fellow content creators and influencers who are putting so much love and time into their content ❤️.
Best practices for LinkedIn/Substack/Podcast B2B influencers
Lastly, since I have 80% conversion rates to collaboration (which means I am still too cheap), let me share some advice with fellow content creators to make collaborations smoother for everyone.
Decide on the partnership policies— who are you working with? I only work with products that I or my partners use in the business, and I demonstrate the value of tools by tackling real GTM problems.
Have reasonable pricing in place. Look, it is not the partner’s job to do your pricing. It is your job. If you are in a dilemma about how much you can charge, use these benchmarks or ask other content creators in your network how much they charge. Most of us are very transparent, and yes, we talk to each other.
Have a Media Pack in place - the collection of your numbers, collaborations, case studies, and audience analysis.
Update it frequently. Your audience grows constantly- you want to revise the media packages every week.
Charge in advance if possible. Larger companies have their procedures and rules for payment, most likely you will get paid 30 days after delivering a service, but if you work with smaller companies, try to get at least part of the payment in advance to secure that both parties are serious around the collaboration.
Take charge of the creative process. Research what they are doing with other influencers and how they communicate as a company. Take the product for a spin and portray your hands-on experience whenever possible. The content will be much better. You are not a parrot. You are an opinion leader.
Act professionally - respect deadlines, communicate in advance when “things happen,” lead the partnership, and communicate diligently with the partner. Engage with their other statuses, too, if you can, and follow the company.
Report back the numbers - don’t let them chase you for the report. Send them screenshots of the placement 3-5 days after the campaign, and ask them if they need anything else. You can also share intermediate results with them if there is happy news. Show how much you care for a successful partnership.
Do not disappear after the campaign. Build a relationship. Suggest other ideas you could do together or other content creators you know would be a good fit. Connect with people on LinkedIn and continue engaging with them and their company's content.
Consider how sponsorships fit into your business model, but most importantly, your first loyalty is to the audience. You cannot be an opinion marker if you lose their trust. In my business, sponsorships account for 10% of my revenue, which is reinvested in our content production process so we can continue sharing cool, non-gated content such as this post with you. It takes me 10-20 hours a week to work on content, and I have two people who help me with editing and design. I see supporters of this Substack as a vital part of our ecosystem and celebrate their wins and milestones with them. We are in it to win it together. Be selective and conservative with the number of partnerships you compare stats of promoted posts with your stats. If you see a huge negative difference, you are doing something wrong.
Last but not least - do not sit around and wait for the opportunities to come by. Be proactive. Prepare case studies, gather testimonials from partners, and when you see an interesting collaboration that a brand has with the content creator, suggest working together. Or pitch companies that you love if they have some collaboration options. You can also join groups of content creators to get a pipeline of these deals. If you are interested in that - email me and I will consider doing some intros based on your traction and expertise. Email grow@majavoje.com only, please; my LinkedIn DM is swamped.
Giddy up and let’s unleash the power of independent content creators to fuel your GTM!
In other news:
This week, I published an amazing piece with Ben Williams from Product-Led Geek.
I really admire Ben’s work, so I was more than happy to collaborate with him. In our piece, I shared 5 proven Go-to-Market frameworks everyone needs to know. People loved it - will you? 😇
My new product—The 100-Step Go-To-Market Checklist—is selling like crazy! I’m so happy about all the positive reviews I’ve received—THANK YOU! I will regularly update the assets with new and additional examples.
This feedback from one of the early customers, Nico Trofim-Bancila, was music to my ears:
Your GTM checklist is a fantastic companion for anyone who needs to be guided by a friend through the ins and outs of GTM.
As a use case, not only did you cover a product lunch, but your steps apply to a company launch as well.
What sets your checklist apart is 1. how you combined growth marketing elements with product marketing and 2. how you enlisted so many specialists so together you could create this step-by-step checklist.
I see it as a great combination of the strategic direction and tactics approach.
Very well done, people using it will benefit from it a lot!
Not need to reinvent the wheel with such a powerful tool in place.
Huge kudos, Maja, for another successful and applicable product!
Until next time,
Maja
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Awesome read! Thanks Maja
This is an epic post Maja - very nicely done. 👏