Influencer relations has grown up.
B2B buyers now listen to practitioners and newsletter writers long before they speak to sales. Our research with 100 senior B2B marketers shows how far the channel has moved, and why we think it belongs in the PR programme next to media and analyst relations.
- Research
- April 2026
- Respondents
- 100 senior B2B marketers
- Also draws on
- CreatorIQ, LinkedIn, TopRank, Sprout Social
- Published by
- Resonance and Agentcy
The adoption curve has already shifted.
Influencer relations has moved out of the experimental budget and into the mainstream B2B marketing mix, with more teams using it and spending on it than a few years ago.
- 85%
- of B2B marketers use influencers, up from 34% in 2020TopRank, 2023
- 55%
- of B2B marketers partner with creatorsLinkedIn, 2025
- 171%
- year-on-year increase in creator spendCreatorIQ 2025–26, 1,723 respondents
- 52%
- rate influencer relations strategically importantResonance + Agentcy, April 2026
Creators are the newest trade press.
For twenty years B2B PR earned credibility through journalists and industry analysts, and buyers still read both. What has changed is that the circle of voices buyers trust has grown to include people who publish for themselves.
Practitioners post on LinkedIn and hosts run podcasts for small, specialist audiences, while engineers explain products on YouTube and operators write newsletters that land in the inboxes you most want to reach. These people deal in the independent, third-party credibility that PR has always traded on. Their audiences are often smaller than a trade title's, although they tend to be far more concentrated among the people you sell to.
We run influencer relations the way we run media and analyst relations. We research which voices carry weight with your buyers and build relationships with them over time, giving them evidence and access they can use. We then measure what the work does for reputation and for pipeline.
Map them like a media list
Find out which creators your buyers follow and how often and how credibly they publish, then keep the list ranked and up to date as the conversation in your market moves.
Brief them like analysts
Give creators data, customer proof and spokespeople with something to say, because practitioners take a brand seriously when it helps them do their job.
Measure them like earned media
Track share of voice, message pull-through and AI visibility first, and then follow the programme through to the registrations and pipeline it influences.
What 100 senior B2B marketers told us.
Investment is rising and marketers agree on the channels that count, although the way most teams run the programme has not caught up.
- 59%
- say industry practitioners and hands-on experts are among the most valuable independent voices
- 45%
- name LinkedIn creators, and the same share name YouTube, as their joint top priority channels
- 45%
- increased influencer relations investment over the last 12 months
- 10%
- have an established programme with a defined budget and process. 48% are still campaign-led or unstructured
- 35%
- still manage the channel with spreadsheets and manual tracking. Only 10% use a dedicated platform
- 31%
- say measurement and proving ROI is the biggest blocker to scaling the programme
Source: Resonance + Agentcy research, April 2026. 100 senior B2B marketers.
The numbers are starting to stack up.
Influencer relations has long been dismissed as enjoyable but hard to prove. Public case studies are still scarce, although the ones that exist point clearly in the same direction.
- Dell Technologies
- 2x engagement and more than 8,000 landing-page views by amplifying research through tech influencers.
- Adobe
- 150% more LinkedIn form completions through expert-led activation on the platform.
- SAP Tech Unknown
- 66% more podcast downloads and more than 52 million social impressions from a creator-led content programme.
- Sprinklr
- 23.4 million people reached, nearly 100,000 engagements, MQL benchmarks beaten and creator activity tied directly to ARR.
- Goodcall
- CAC cut from $185 to $7, with more than 6,000 sign-ups from creator-led TikTok ads.
Most teams still run the channel with tools built for campaigns.
Most teams still manage influencer relations with spreadsheets and ad-hoc outreach, which leaves them with gaps in discovery, context and measurement.
Discovery
Teams often don't know which expert voices shape their category, because those voices are spread across LinkedIn, podcasts, newsletters and technical communities.
Context
Even when they know the names, they lack a live view of what those people are saying and where a brand could credibly contribute to the conversation.
Measurement
Most organisations still can't connect creator activity cleanly to pipeline in the CRM, or to the wider visibility of the brand.
AI answers draw on what creators publish.
Influence no longer stops at the original post. A credible mention from a creator can shape how a buyer sees a category wherever they come across it, whether on LinkedIn or in a podcast or newsletter.
The same material also feeds the answers AI assistants give. When a buyer asks an assistant which vendors lead a category, the answer is built from what credible, independent sources have published, and podcast transcripts, newsletters and YouTube explainers are part of that record. Anyone planning for AI visibility should therefore treat influencer relations as part of the same programme as media and analyst relations.
- BrandLink has grown into a more formal publisher and creator environment.
- TikTok
- Now talks about lead quality and pipeline measurement through its HubSpot integration.
- YouTube
- Creator Partnerships makes discovery, permissions and performance analysis far more native.
We run influencer relations as part of PR.
We bring the same discipline to creators that we bring to journalists and analysts, with Agentcy providing the intelligence and the measurement.
Find the voices
Agentcy maps the creators and hosts your buyers follow across the main social, video and podcast platforms, and ranks them by how relevant they are to your category.
Build the relationships
We keep in regular contact and offer early access and briefings, backed by a steady supply of useful evidence, in the same way we look after journalists and analysts.
Create the openings
We secure podcast guest spots and co-created content on the topics your market is discussing, with usage rights and disclosure agreed up front.
Measure it like PR
We report share of voice, message pull-through and AI visibility in one view alongside your media and analyst coverage, and we trace the programme's effect through to pipeline.
Read it in full.
The report runs to fifteen pages on adoption and the economics of the channel, the gaps holding B2B teams back and what an always-on programme looks like. It's free, and there's no form to fill in.
Download the PDF- Pages
- 15
- Format
- PDF, 2.9 MB
- Research
- April 2026
Explore it with AI. Ask an assistant to summarise the findings for your own programme.
Common questions about influencer relations.
What is B2B influencer relations?
B2B influencer relations is the work of building long-term relationships with the independent voices that B2B buyers trust, such as practitioners, podcast hosts, newsletter writers and technical educators who publish on LinkedIn, YouTube and Substack. It runs much like media relations, with creators treated alongside journalists.
How is influencer relations different from influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing usually means paid creator activity bought one campaign at a time, whereas influencer relations is an always-on discipline built on relationships, sitting next to media and analyst relations. The report found that always-on programmes outperform one-off campaigns, although only 10% of B2B teams have an established programme.
How do you measure B2B influencer relations?
Start with the measures PR already uses, such as share of voice, message pull-through and visibility in AI answers, and then connect creator activity to registrations, pipeline and revenue in the CRM. Only 24% of B2B teams track pipeline or revenue influence today, and 31% say proving ROI is the biggest blocker to growing the programme.
Who took part in the research?
Resonance and Agentcy surveyed 100 senior B2B marketers in April 2026, and the report also draws on published data from CreatorIQ, LinkedIn, TopRank and Sprout Social.
Build the operational muscle for influence.
Resonance runs media, analyst and influencer relations for B2B technology brands, with Agentcy supplying the intelligence and measurement behind the programme.
Talk to Resonance More research