To find B2B influencers your buyers actually follow, start by asking recent customers who helped them decide what to buy. Then look for those voices, and similar ones, in event agendas, podcast guest lists, newsletters and competitors' partnerships. Shortlist only the candidates whose audience you can show matches the people you sell to, because follower count tells you reach, not fit.
Why not just pick the creators with the biggest following?
Because in B2B the people who matter are a small, specific group. Practitioners make the same point again and again: a creator with 8,000 followers who are mostly buyers in one category can be worth more than one with 80,000 general business followers (Net Influencer, 2026).
Most creators we track are not large accounts. In our directory of 2,588 business creators, the median LinkedIn following is 5,354, and 64% of creators with a known count have between 1,000 and 9,999 followers. (Our directory is a selected collection of creators who post about business topics, researched mostly from public LinkedIn posts, so it describes who we track, not the whole market. See how we research.)
Small accounts can still drive pipeline. Favikon reports that Vector, a B2B SaaS company, worked with seven creators who averaged about 13,000 followers. Three were existing customers and four were category thought leaders. On a $12,000 budget, with one post per creator per month for three months, Vector reports $1.1 million in pipeline. Favikon counted only about 111 interactions per post (Favikon, 2026). That is one company's reported result, published by a vendor that sells creator-search software, so treat it as an example, not a benchmark. It does show how a follower minimum can rule out the right people.
Finding those people is hard. Net Influencer reports that nearly half of B2B marketers name identifying, qualifying and connecting with the right influencers as their main challenge (Net Influencer, 2026). LinkedIn's own 2026 survey of B2B marketers also names finding credible, relevant creators as the biggest hurdle (LinkedIn, 2026).
Who exactly are you trying to reach?
Start with a real buying decision. B2B purchases involve several people, and they don't all read the same things. In 6sense's 2024 survey of 2,509 B2B buyers, the average buying group had 10.9 people. In 85% of cases, buyers had their requirements nearly or completely set before they contacted a vendor (CustomerThink, 2025). The survey covered purchases of at least $10,000 and did not measure creator influence. The point for you is that the voices shaping requirements act before your sales team is involved.
Separate the roles. The economic buyer, the technical evaluator and the internal champion each trust different sources (Directive, 2026). A security engineer's favourite podcast and a CFO's favourite newsletter can both be useful, but for different campaigns.
Then ask recent customers and qualified prospects about one specific decision:
- What problem were you trying to understand when the project started?
- What helped you set your evaluation criteria or compare approaches?
- Was there a person, newsletter, podcast, community or event you kept going back to? What did it help you do?
- What did you share internally when you made your recommendation?
Record each person's role, the decision and the source they named. Treat the answers as leads, not proof. People forget where they learned things, and they may name a familiar voice over the one that actually changed their mind. Directive also suggests using CRM data, win-loss findings and your customer-facing teams to spot the experts who come up in sales conversations.
Where should you look for candidates?
Build a broad list before you rank anyone, so you don't anchor on the first famous names you find.
| Where to look | What it tells you | What it doesn't |
|---|---|---|
| Your own customers | Who already uses your product and has an audience. Three of Vector's seven creators were customers (Favikon, 2026) | Whether that audience includes buyers |
| Conference agendas, webinar panels, podcast guest lists | People repeatedly asked to explain your market (Directive, 2026) | Whether they have their own audience |
| Newsletter authors in your niche | People with a direct, owned channel to readers | Who those readers are |
| The #brandpartner hashtag of a non-competing company that sells to your buyer | Creators who have done paid work and know how disclosure works (Favikon, 2026) | Whether that deal worked |
| Competitors' sponsored creators | Who is active in your category | A creator tied to several competitors may be oversaturated (Directive, 2026) |
| Comment sections of strong posts | Respected practitioners who rarely post themselves (Directive, 2026) | Reach |
LinkedIn is also building discovery into its ad tools. Its Creator Marketplace in Campaign Manager lets brands search creators by topic and expertise, and find organic and sponsored posts that already mention the brand (LinkedIn, 2026). At launch in June 2026 it was an alpha for select brands and creators in North America, covering English-language content only (PPC Land, 2026).
How can this directory speed up the search?
Use it to widen your list and spot existing relationships, not to make the final call.
- Browse by topic. Topic pages group creators by what they write about, so you can start from your buyer's problem rather than a job title.
- Check who already talks about a brand. Brand pages show which creators mention a company and which have a disclosed deal with it. We track 787 brands; 138 have at least one disclosed creator deal. Look up your own brand, then a competitor, then a non-competing tool your buyers use. Creators who already mention your product unpaid are often the warmest leads. Sponsorships lists every disclosed deal we found, newest first.
- Don't rule out newsletters without a media kit. In our directory, 228 of 830 active B2B newsletters had at least one sponsor in recent issues, but only 6 publish an advertising page on their site. Read recent issues to see who sponsors them, then ask the publisher directly.
- Size podcasts realistically. Among podcasts with a third-party Podscan audience estimate, the median is 200. 22% are estimated at 1,000 or more, and 4% at 10,000 or more. These are approximate estimates, not verified downloads. A small show can still be a good buy if the right people listen.
- Save as you go. Bookmark creators to your shortlist and download it as a CSV for your evidence file.
Our sponsor data comes from the text of recent issues and episode notes, so ads that only run in audio are missed.
How do you check a candidate's audience matches your buyers?
Ask for evidence about the channel you plan to buy. A creator's LinkedIn audience tells you nothing about their podcast.
LinkedIn. Every member can see follower demographics broken down by job title, location, industry, seniority, company size and company, and can export them as an .XLSX file. LinkedIn shows only the top five results in each breakdown, so a segment you care about may be there but too small to appear (LinkedIn Help). Ask for the export. Clay's Obaid Durrani suggests a quick first check: look at who follows a creator and filter that list by job title (Favikon, 2026).
Comments. Read the comments on recent posts. Look for people in your buyer's roles asking informed questions or adding their own experience, and give that more weight than generic reactions (Directive, 2026). Commenters are a self-selected group, so treat this as a supporting signal, not a sample of the whole audience.
Newsletters and podcasts. Ask the publisher what they can show: subscribers or downloads, the period covered, how it was measured, and what they know about readers' or listeners' roles. Check whether a figure means subscribers, emails delivered or opens.
For the full checklist, including fake-engagement checks and disclosure history, see how to vet B2B influencers.
What should go on the shortlist?
Keep a short evidence file for each candidate, so a small, well-matched creator can be compared fairly with a large account whose audience is unclear:
- Buyer fit: Which role, industry and decision this partner might reach.
- Evidence: Customer nominations, audience data for the specific channel, and relevant engagement, each with a date and source.
- Expertise: Two or three pieces showing how they handle your buyer's actual problem.
- Commercial fit: Formats they offer, past sponsors, likely price and any competitor conflicts.
- Open question: What you still don't know, and who you'll ask.
For example, a security buyer names a creator whose posts discuss vendor risk. Comments show security practitioners debating how they evaluate tools. That supports the creator's LinkedIn audience. But if you want to sponsor their podcast, the open question is whether the podcast reaches the same people. Ask for podcast-specific figures rather than copying their LinkedIn follower count into that row.
If a candidate has real expertise but can't support the audience claim for the channel you want, keep them as a maybe, not a match.
How do you approach candidates and test the fit?
Keep the first message simple. SAP's influencer lead advised introducing yourself, complimenting the person's relevant work and asking how they like to work with brands (Content Marketing Institute, 2018). SAP started small. In its first pilot, 11 influencers at its 2016 Sapphire event accounted for 16.5% of the event's social media impressions. The next year, 15 influencers accounted for 25%. Those are impression figures for one event, not pipeline, but they show the value of a defined pilot.
Before a bigger commitment, run a small paid assignment that resembles the work you want, such as a paid expert interview, a draft post or one limited sponsored collaboration (Directive, 2026). Agree in advance what you'll judge it on: whether the content was accurate and sounded like the creator, whether they were reliable to work with, whether target buyers responded, and whether the reporting was usable. One test can expose a poor working fit quickly, but influence often builds over several posts, so don't treat a single result as final. Our guide to briefing B2B influencers covers what to agree before you pay.
Your next step
Pick one current buying decision and ask three recent customers what helped them set their requirements. Then look up your brand and one competitor on our brand pages, browse the topic that matches your buyer's problem, and save the strongest candidates to your shortlist. New to the channel? Start with what B2B influencer marketing is.
Sources
- [Research Round-Up] A Detailed Look at Real-World B2B Buying, CustomerThink (David Dodd), 2025
- Influencer Marketing: Lessons From One of the World's Largest Software Brands, Content Marketing Institute, 2018
- B2B Influencer Marketing: The Complete 2026 Guide, Favikon, 2026
- How B2B Brands Can Drive Impact with Creators and Stronger Creative on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Newsroom, 2026
- LinkedIn launches Creator Marketplace and BrandWorks for B2B brands, PPC Land, 2026
- How To Find And Vet A LinkedIn Influencer, Directive, 2026
- B2B Creator Vetting: 30 Experts on Why Audience Quality Beats Reach, Net Influencer, 2026
- View your creator analytics, LinkedIn Help