Influencer outreach: creators and experts who carry your story to buyers

Most B2B marketers already do this. In a LinkedIn and Ipsos survey of 1,500 marketers in six countries, 55 percent said they already work with influencers, and 43 percent planned to raise that investment in the coming year (LinkedIn and Ipsos, 2025, via PPC Land). The hard part is the match. TopRank Marketing's 2025 report names identifying, qualifying and connecting with the right influencers as the top challenge, cited by 48 percent of B2B marketers (TopRank Marketing, 2025).

Buyers say the same. A marketplace founder said the digital PR stuff was all about links in the past, but now it's about distribution that puts the brand name in people's mouths, through whatever vectors. The content is a lot easier to produce now, he said, but the amplification is still hard. Another buyer said "I was already thinking... aligning with email and social... using this content to meet with people wherever they are."

Attention on social bunches up at the top, as Joe found: And it really applies on social algorithms too. I was looking through Mr. Beast's videos. If we sort these by popularity, we go all the way down, from the millions down to the tens of thousands. I will say, just spot-checking YouTube, I've seen a little bit less of it than I'm seeing in Google search. If you look at Mr. Beast, a lot of his stuff gets millions of views. I haven't seen a lot with zero, which is interesting. It does bring up the question, why are YouTube videos more popular than search results? And I think it's because maybe the recommendation algorithm spreads stuff around. So one voice your buyers watch beats ten they never see.

In B2B the best voices are rarely celebrities: the analyst a CFO reads, the operator with a newsletter, the practitioner whose LinkedIn posts get passed around a buying committee. Joe goes looking for the people who know: It's all about asking better questions. You ask smarter and smarter people the smarter and smarter refactored questions to get better knowledge and access. Reach without trust doesn't help a considered purchase. Joe aims his own writing the same way: To get noticed by the leaders in the field I need to speak to the top talent that would hire me.

And you don't want to be a content creator without a back-end model. Every post we arrange points to a page you can measure.

Joe's view is blunt: By default, any person or brand on social media should think humor and or memes first. If you want to grow, that should be the default. If you look at engagement rates for all the big agency accounts, they're pretty abysmal, right? Like only RGA is winning. We bring the facts and the creator brings the tone, because, in Joe's words, marketing is about secretly getting attention.

We test on social before we build. Joe's own example: I think we release breaking news three times a day about the performance of certain tech stocks on traffic or funding or something else, where it has to be social, first for validation and then do the content on the back end. Or, from his 2021 notes: Spray and test what works! His plan for his own feed that year included a funny smart limerick Irish tweet like my Marie Kondo one, or use Twitter memes that work.

1. Map. We build the list of voices from what your buyers read, watch and listen to. Joe's method: Go to publications that publish in our niche. Find the top 5 percent by organic traffic, LRDs, social shares. Filter down ideas from there. Each voice goes into a table with all the information about them we need. Name, outlet, email, summary of beat, last 5 articles, 5 most similar articles. The question behind the list: The big idea is like how do we give your audience a hug in marketing, and so what that means is who is your best market that you would love to give a big hug.
2. Agree the rules. You approve the list, the topics and any budget for paid partnerships before outreach starts.
3. Pitch. Each creator gets a note written for them, with data, access or an expert attached. We group creators by niche, the way Joe groups reporters: What's better too is if we're pitching different groups of cities, like this guy's based in Massachusetts. So I'm going to use just a base pitch template. I'm going to customize it for Massachusetts. Then I can go to other Massachusetts ones and pitch them that one. So instead of over preparing and sequencing things out, I think it makes sense to be a little flexible and go back and forth.
4. Log. Every post lands on your dashboard with its link, marked earned or paid.