The Truth Behind B2B Influencer Marketing with Brianna Doe, Founder + CEO of Verbatim | Ep. 387

28 Jan 2026 · 43 min · 17 chapters

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In short

Brianna Doe (Verbatim) explains the “truth” behind B2B influencer marketing in 2026—why it often fails when brands run one-off LinkedIn posts, and how to run it like a system to build trust and credibility.

Guest backgrounds

Brianna Doe is Founder + CEO of Verbatim, working in influencer/creator marketing for both B2C and B2B clients. She also wrote The Unapologetic Professional.

Key claims

B2B marketers are often “five years behind” B2C and default to LinkedIn; success requires experimentation, repeated creator exposure, internal KPI alignment (sales + brand metrics), and human-to-human connection (including amid AI). “Influencer” is just a subject-matter expert with influence; authenticity means staying within creator/brand values, not oversharing.

Notable examples

She describes a process: align stakeholders on success, identify where the ICP lives (podcasts/YouTube/other channels), reach out for rates before budgeting, create a campaign brief, review content, get analytics at 7 and 30 days, and use data even if conversions lag (e.g., brand mentions/traffic spikes). She also shares her own imposter-syndrome story interviewing a closing keynote at Content Marketing World.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Meeting Brianna Doe

0:46 to 2:42

Daniel introduces guest Brianna Doe and discusses their speaking engagements.

“So B2B influence marketing has been like a hot topic for a while.”

State of Influencer Marketing

2:43 to 4:14

Brianna shares insights on the current state of B2B influencer marketing.

“Actually, typically the conversation starts with like me asking what their hesitations are, their current frustrations are with influencer marketing.”

Challenges in B2B Marketing

4:15 to 5:58

Discussion about common challenges B2B marketers face with influencer marketing.

“But if you're partnering with like a subject matter expert or an industry leader or whatever, they have influence.”

Redefining Influencer Roles

5:59 to 7:35

Brianna talks about the misconceptions of influencer roles in B2B marketing.

“It's more of a manual thing with a lot of influencers.”

Building Trust through Influencers

7:36 to 9:30

Exploration of how influencer marketing can build trust and credibility.

“I feel like you nailed it too for a lot of marketers.”

The Case for Diverse Platforms

9:31 to 11:23

Brianna advocates for using diverse channels beyond LinkedIn for B2B marketing.

“And I've been getting a lot of really cool feedback about it.”

The Unapologetic Professional Book

11:24 to 13:12

Discussion on Brianna’s book and its focus on individual success definitions.

“Well, I think my first question would be, why do you think that?”

Rethinking Career Success

13:13 to 14:03

Brianna discusses challenging societal definitions of success in careers.

Navigating Job Titles and Experience

14:03 to 17:02

Explore the complexities of job titles and how to define personal success amidst varying industry standards.

“like level and expertise but it's it's two different companies so it's so hard because There's levels at one company, different levels at another company.”

Understanding Authenticity in Marketing

17:03 to 21:08

Dive into what authenticity means for marketers and influencers, and how to maintain it.

“Tell them, you know, looking to focus on these features or legal said you can't use phrasing like this, whatever.”
Show all 17 chapters

Handling Criticism and Developing Thick Skin

21:09 to 23:22

Learn how to accept criticism and develop resilience as a content creator or marketer.

“Being authentic doesn't mean you're going to be this angel in everybody's eyes, but it's about your value system and making sure that you're sticking to that.”

Reframing Imposter Syndrome

23:23 to 28:00

Discover strategies to reframe imposter syndrome as a tool for personal and professional growth.

“move on it doesn't have to affect your life that much um so but i wanted to go into more like okay so um so let's go into the thought of like reframing imposter syndrome as a marketer or in your career?”

Overcoming Self-Doubt in Career Growth

28:00 to 30:54

Learn how to challenge self-doubt and build a personal evidence folder to boost your confidence.

“And I thought I wasn't good enough and that they could have found somebody better.”

The Process of B2B Influencer Marketing Campaigns

30:54 to 38:28

Discover the step-by-step process of creating and executing a successful B2B influencer marketing campaign.

“an influencer campaign could you just share the process of what it looks like from hey we have a campaign to what happens next to get the influencers?”

The Importance of Tracking and Audience Engagement

38:28 to 41:04

Understand the significance of tracking metrics and maintaining consistent engagement with audiences for successful marketing.

“Like maybe it is the messaging or it's something else.”

B2B Influencer Marketing: A Controversial Perspective

41:04 to 41:45

Explore the idea that B2B influencer marketing can be effective if approached correctly, despite industry hesitation.

“help but there's so many or evangelist or whatever you want to say it's just i think Like, but influencer marketing does work.”

Finding Brianna Doe and Her Book

41:45 to 42:00

Learn where to find Brianna Doe on LinkedIn and discover her book.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:01Welcome 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 f*** up. we are back with another episode of the market millennials podcast today i have the brianna doe on the podcast and funny thing about brianna and me we seem to have a speaking slot at the same conference and we're in the same stage but we never know we have that speaking slot together to like a week before so we never prepare for it it tends to be a good slot but it's the guru conference with our friend jay you know jay on the podcast but uh yeah we we tend for the last like couple years we've been on the same speaking gig together so it's been fun it has been fun our annual meetup yeah we literally have one get together before and then we get on stage and say random stuff so it's fun so we talk about 25 minutes every 12 months exactly and this is the longest we'll probably talk until a guru conference i'm kidding we'll probably talk more but i want to get into this um you've been doing in the influencer space for a while you've been dealing with that for a while where let's just start where what does the current state look like of influencer marketing it's changed over the year but what is like current state 2026 what should people be thinking about i mean a lot of the conversations i'm in are with b2b marketers right now who still either aren't sure if they want to do it or they're not seeing a lot of success with it because they're not trying new things or experimenting.

1:48So B2B influence marketing has been like a hot topic for a while. And I do think it's going to pop off even more, kick off even more in 2026 now that we're here. In terms of B2C influence marketing, it's just still booming. I mean, especially with this shift, this ongoing shift to YouTube and more creators really investing time over there and more brands seeing the wins on YouTube, that's what we're focusing on with our B2C clients, but B2B is, I don't know, it's an interesting space. A lot of folks are still trying to figure it out. And I think they automatically think of LinkedIn first and they're not necessarily seeing a lot of success with it.

2:25So it's a year of experimentation. That's a good point. I think also just like B2B marketing is always like five years behind e-commerce and B2C. Like it's crazy how that happens. And also they're in like the early stages of what like e-commerce b2c marketing used to be where like you just do one-off posts and that's considered like influencer marketing they're not hiring people as like brand ambassadors they're not doing long-term partnerships that some are doing it i'm not saying they're not but they a lot of companies still are like let's get a bunch of influencers to do a post for us and and then they're like why is this not working um right they do the one post and it doesn't get whatever like a million impressions and so then they they get on a social media platform and say influencer marketing sucks and it's not for b2b but you didn't really test it like it's it's larger than one post i do think budgets play a role obviously but you have to be willing to at least invest in the same creator multiple times um it you're beholden to the algorithm so so with your clients what do you what is first like what is like what do you tell them the why to do this and And then what are some ways that you have seen for both seen at work, influencer marketing?

3:44Actually, typically the conversation starts with like me asking what their hesitations are, their current frustrations are with influencer marketing. And a lot of it typically ties back to, you know, it doesn't work for us. It's not successful. And so we usually dig into like what an influencer actually is. I think that's another thing with B2B marketing is, you know, not to paint a wide brush, but I think some B2B marketers are like really against the word influencer, almost as if it minimizes or downplays the work that they're doing. But if you're partnering with like a subject matter expert or an industry leader or whatever, they have influence.

4:20You can call them an influencer. It's OK. So that's the first step is kind of understanding together, like what influencer marketing is and how we can adjust goals for or adjust our campaigns for whatever their goals are. And that leads into the why. It's about building trust. It's about building credibility. We're saturated with content on the Internet. And so if you have the opportunity to partner with creators or leaders who have already built trust with this audience that you're trying to reach, why not try and find creative on brand, relatively non-salesy ways to connect with them? I don't know.

4:58And that's been a big part. And I will say, too, like with the rise of AI and everything else, why not look for those ways to connect more human to human? Your audience is probably looking for that. So that's typically part of the why. and I would say it's interesting the main with our b2c clients they're mainly focused on like tiktok instagram and youtube with b2b clients like I said they think about linkedin first which is a completely natural assumption and we do do influence marketing on linkedin but I also encourage them to think about other channels as well like their audience lives outside of linkedin they have favorite podcasters they have favorite youtubers and so leveraging other channels where there's also more like a built out, you know, process or system around influencer marketing can help because LinkedIn does kind of feel like the wild, wild west when it comes to creator marketing right now.

5:52It's just funny to me that I get the word influencer. It's so broad. It's so, um, there's very, people have their preconceived notions of it, but at the end of of day like mark when you you're doing advertising for anything you're putting an advertising on like a rented platform to get people to like be interested or have attention in what you're trying to do or the message you're trying to portray same thing as influencer you're renting an audience that they that you're becoming a part of an audience that they have um they've been a part of but uh the better part of influence and market is that they like facebook doesn't inherently have like trust with like the users that they have an influencer has built trust for them to be able to follow that person whether it's on the newsletter podcast youtube whatever they have a trust and so you basically inserting yourself in a conversation that's natural to someone who's already talking to the people you're doing but you do markers are already doing this with like launching it on all these platforms it's just funny that doing it with a human seems like a harder maybe because it's harder to do because it's not you don't go into like a lot of it's not you go into a system you press i want this is how much money i want to spend this is like the audience I want to hit and this is like, what do you want to do?

7:26It's more of a manual thing with a lot of influencers. Some tools are making it easy, but it's just funny to me that people still have a stigma, like a preconceived notion of it. Yeah, I would agree. I feel like you nailed it too for a lot of marketers. I can't log into an ad platform, like I can meta business suite or whatever, and just adjust my messaging a bit. Like the post is already out there. You know, I can't, it's not an ad that I can turn off and on the way I typically would in the past. And I think also it's, there are still so many like CEOs and CMOs who, when they think of the word influencer, they think of like a Kim K.

8:10Like, well, we're, we're a SaaS product. I'm not going to partner with Gwyneth Paltrow or whatever, but it's, there's so many layers to what an influencer is. I mean, you don't have to partner with somebody that's going to cost you$500 ,000. You just need to find folks that have built trust in whatever your niche is. I want to go into a little pivot a little bit. So you wrote a book and it seems to be landing. The message in the book seems to be landing with a lot of people. So what do you think are people are reacting to the most in the book you wrote? if you want to say a little bit of what the book is and go a little bit, but I just, it's interesting, like the message that you're coming up with, I wanted you to tee it up so then we could talk about it.

8:58Yeah. So the book is called The Unapologetic Professional and it's, I mean, essentially about learning how to unlearn other people's definition of success and figure out what success looks like for you in your career and then build a career that's not only like meaningful or fulfilling, but also sustainable. Like if you have a career you like, but you burn out two years in and never go back to it, I wouldn't really consider that a win. So building a career that feels sustainable and aligns with goals that you've set for yourself, not what you think they should be. And I've been getting a lot of really cool feedback about it.

9:36Something I'm hearing a lot that's resonating with folks is about this idea of learning how to untangle your sense of self-worth from your job title. I think I see that a lot with myself and with marketers too and with other industries, but everything we do or so much what we do is performance-based. And so what I do doesn't have to be who I am, but it's hard to separate those two. And the other thing that's resonating a lot is this idea of a portfolio career. So kind of figuring out if you do want multiple side hustles or streams of income, or if you want to work on multiple projects at a time, understanding what that looks like, and then building it in a way that feels right for you.

10:19I know this is like a pivot from Influence the Market, but I want to go down a little bit. But for example, I feel like people your whole career, if you're not at like a cool company with a cool job title, you seem to not be very cool. You think you're not cool even though you're not like salesforce running marketing or you're not here doing this you seem it's funny like even going to do my own stuff um like my own founding stuff i sometimes think i get less credibility because i'm not ahead of marketing at a company that is doing this but i could be like let's say making more income than that job and it's like and but And it's still like, we still have this perceived notion that being in a company, being in a cool company seems cool.

11:15So how would you break my thought path or a person's thought path that if I'm not doing this, I'm not cool. If I go down this different path, I'm going to lose all my credibility. How do you rethink that? Well, I think my first question would be, why do you think that? and there's no right or wrong answer, but for some people it's, I don't know. Well, my mentor always told me I need to make sure I work for the largest company or I see all my friends working for Nike and Apple and I don't have that logo on my resume or whatever the case may be. But understanding where that's coming from, it's helped me and I've found that it helps some of the people I mentor too because then you can start to challenge it a bit.

12:01How am I actually defining what's cool? also why do I care what's cool like and even to a greater extent how am I defining success for myself so for example if success for me looks like landing nine large speaking gigs a year I don't know and I'm securing those even though I'm not working at a cool company like clearly my expertise is showing through in a way like it's not hindered by the fact that I don't have this logo. If it's landing certain types of clients and you're landing them, okay, clearly I'm on the right track. I think even if you're not hitting those goals, you need to have those goals for yourself because otherwise you're just, you're going to get whiplash, like chasing after what other people define as success.

12:46And I think it's hard, especially if you're in the LinkedIn bubble, you know, everybody has like X meta, X Apple in their headlines. And it's easy to start defining yourself against those standards too but success looks so different for everybody um and i'd rather have my own definition than have to be beholden to somebody else's yeah i think that's a great i think it's more of a especially also being in i think maybe you you felt this before but being in the content creating space that sometimes you see these the linkedin bubble challenging that oh you haven't you're not in this big org doing this so how why should i listen to your opinion it's and it's what i think about is i'm still doing marketing and i'm still doing all these things it might look different how you're doing it but i'm still promoting my brand i'm still thinking about distribution i'm still writing content i'm so all these things that are marketing but it's just i'm not at x company i'm not at this company or it's just funny how we look at job title as as such a big thing and also it's weird because a manager at oracle and a head of marketing at small it could be the same exact like level and expertise but it's it's two different companies so it's so hard because There's levels at one company, different levels at another company.

14:20And people say to themselves, I'm a director here, and this person's the head of marketing, and I'm not a head of marketing, but I have 15 more years of experience than this person. Why am I not this? I just think job titles are so hard because what it means at different companies are – I know you probably hear this a lot, but it's – No, I'm laughing because it's true. That thing's standardized. Like it's, yeah. And it's exhausting to try and hold yourself up to it. Cause to your point, I could be a director of marketing at one place at a startup, for example, but then that's a senior growth marketing manager at a larger company.

15:01And it's like, okay, well, did I take a step down? Like if you, nothing standardized, it's all confusing. Everybody's making up their own rules. I mean, I remember I, gosh, early in my career, I had a brand manager job and they, they wanted me, they wanted me to call me like the Crayola manager or something. It's just like everything's all over the place. So you have to figure out, okay, like how am I defining success for myself? And then kind of put your blinders on and just make sure you're working towards that. And it's also like a job title when you have it, you could re, if you want to forwardly say, it doesn't, you're not stuck to that job title.

15:37You can always remarket it and say it differently. like you know if you're a manager of marketing you could tweak a little bit on linkedin not change the job title automatically but to show what you're actually doing so people understand it's exactly the same as that director is doing at that company or so some of it is is remarketing and redoing but also not beholding yourself to the standards of other people it's like a good idea too um yeah no that's a great point though i just think the problem is when you're fighting against other people for jobs and they oh you don't have any director experience and it's the person who had director experience out of that a million dollar revenue company and the person who is a senior manager is doing it for 50 60 70 million dollar companies it's it's different levels is more hierarchy.

16:35It's funny how the world works. It's hard, yeah. And to your point too, it's especially difficult if you're trying to negotiate or get into a new role. I do think, to your point, yeah, tweaking it on LinkedIn. And then also, if you've been in a role for a while, make sure your job title still reflects what you're doing. Make sure you're setting yourself up for whatever that next opportunity is so if you do need to renegotiate your job title i've done it like a year into a role before um so that's always an option too um i want to go into something you talk about a lot and i think we could frame it as for marketers but also for influence and marketing too however but um people throw around the word authenticity a lot and like what does that actually mean so but what does it actually mean to be like one your authentic self as a in your career and then also i'll go i'll say like what is it if you are a creator or hiring an influencer like what how do you tell them to be their authentic self that's a great question i think it's actually i'll start with the second one because that one's easier for me to articulate because like if i'm if i'm If I'm securing some creators for a brand partnership, like for a client, we'll give them the campaign brief, right?

17:58Tell them, you know, looking to focus on these features or legal said you can't use phrasing like this, whatever. It's easier to then look at the content they draft and say, this just feels a little salesy or like it just doesn't sound like you. because I think when we're working with creators, you can tell what their normal organic content looks like and then what their sponsored content looks like and you just want to make sure that it's as close to their normal voice as possible. But I think when you're the creator or you're the person showing up online, it's hard. I'm curious what you think too.

18:35Authenticity is a tough word for me because people throw it around so much. It almost feels like it's lost its meaning and it means different things to different people, what immediately comes to mind is that you're not filtering yourself in such a way that people view you a certain way. Like if you are not being honest about your thoughts and feelings and you're only sharing what you think people want to hear from you, I would deem that as inauthentic. But you also, I mean, people also like to say, bring your full self to work. That's not really possible. I can't bring everything to work all the time.

19:10I think that's terrible advice, to be honest. It's not great. Yeah. Because I feel you have the right to protect what part of you want to be private and not. But I think authenticity to me is like, are you sticking to the values you've set forth and that you've set forth for yourself and your audience of who you show up to be? so i don't like sharing everything about what i do my life but i like to share parts of it and i think that's fine i think that's authentic to share parts of it and hide parts of it because you don't have to but i think it's just not sharing away from your values and going way different it's like a brand i think of it like as a brand like you're running a brand it's inauthentic for a brand whose values are this this and this to then put out a post that is like way different to what they stand for as a company um or they they've been shouting on the rooftops i think that's inauthentic and and people will sniff that out so the problem is like the new generation has keeps receipts so if you go if you if you if your receipts say you said this one time and you show up like that another time, that is where it becomes a problem.

20:36This is where you're going against who you are as a person. I like that a lot. I agree. You're right. I think you articulated it perfectly. It is just about not straying from whatever values you've assigned to yourself or that you align with. And to your point, too, I don't share everything online, and I don't feel less authentic for doing so. Other people will share literally everything that goes on in their lives at any given moment, and that's authentic to them. I think that's fine. And I do think it's important to remember, too, you can be authentic and people can still not like you. Being authentic doesn't mean you're going to be this angel in everybody's eyes, but it's about your value system and making sure that you're sticking to that.

21:22so yeah i mean some people won't like the way you talk or the way you look or the way you act or the way you say things and they're not your people um so just just stick to the problem is if you want to put yourself out there at work or at in online you're going to get natural people who are not going to like you for any reason and you just gotta have to accept it it's little things could annoy people for example i know i'll even say on this podcast people hate that sometimes you i mean i would say i use the word like a lot it turns them off okay then stop listening to me there's a thousand other podcasts out there to listen to i bring on the best guests they are good uh i never said on the best podcast in the world so if you want to follow my podcast i'm trying to hype up marketers and it's okay if you don't like the way i talk that's a good point yeah it could be the littlest like the tiniest thing that you never thought people would notice that they don't like and you have to develop a thick skin in my opinion once you start creating anything online kind of exactly what you said if you don't like it that's okay you also don't have to follow so i mean and i will do the caveat i think people think influencers or people it doesn't it still hurts everybody to try to publicly shame them online because you think you don't like something it's just just unsubscribe and move on don't try to ruin someone's day behind your laptop there if a creator is creating they're trying to put out their content if someone's doing something at work to try to share a story don't dog them for the story that they told um just move on it doesn't have to affect your life that much um so but i wanted to go into more like okay so um so let's go into the thought of like reframing imposter syndrome as a marketer or in your career?

23:42How, how, how do you reframe this? Because you're going to, if you're doing something, if you're growing in your career, you're going to have imposter syndrome because you're going to have to do different things and you're going to have to do things you're not amazing at all the time. So how do you reframe that for people, um, in their career? Yeah, I think, um, it starts with accepting exactly what you said. Nine times out of 10, you're not going to be able to completely eradicate imposter syndrome for your life. If you're moving towards anything new, if you're growing, if you're, you know, trying new things and accepting new opportunities, you're probably not going to feel 100 % confident in every single one.

24:25I do think a large part of it is learning to, as cliche as it sounds, like be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Like you have to be okay with discomfort because you know that it's leading you to something else. And one thing that's helped me, and I touch on this in the book, is just recognizing it as imposter syndrome. You don't have to be ashamed of it. It is what it is. You feel X, Y, Z about this new opportunity. And then asking yourself, what can I learn from this? And what am I trying to accomplish? And just focusing on that and essentially taking each opportunity as a chance to prove yourself wrong.

24:58If you think to yourself, I'm starting a new job. I don't think I'm good enough. I don't know why they hired me. but I'm going to prove myself wrong in all these areas. And I'm going to focus on learning X by Z while I'm in this role. That has helped me a ton. Cause you're really only at competition with yourself. So. Yeah. I like, I mean, you are your biggest competitor at the end of the day. So you should, but I want to, do you have any, I know you, you, you said, do you have any like personal story where you, this has happened to you and your career and you've done that and how you reframed that thought to make sure that you did something different.

25:45You probably have a bunch, but. Yeah, it's like the theme of my career. So I guess a really recent example, I have a podcast and it's still uncomfortable for me, like being a podcast host. But I love interviewing people. So I got an opportunity last year at Content Marketing World. They asked me to interview the guy who was doing the closing keynote. They wanted me to interview him on stage, which was absolutely terrifying. And the minute I got the email, I was like, there's no way I'm going to be good at this. He's an incredible podcaster, incredible interviewer. Why would they ask me? I'm going to get on stage and ask me these questions.

26:24And he's going to be like, who is this weirdo who can't formulate a question? I had all these thoughts running through my head. obviously I immediately said yes to the invitation and then spent the next like three months spiraling over it and what I worked through as the reframe was okay I feel all these things I have all these thoughts some of which I shared with you about why this isn't going to work and then I asked myself what is the worst case scenario like what's the worst thing that could possibly happen from this forced myself to think about it it's very dramatic it was like I forget all the questions and then he gets frustrated and like walks off stage or something.

27:03I was like, okay, so that's the worst case scenario. What can I do to mitigate the risk of that happening? I can prepare with the questions, send the questions over ahead of time for approval, which we had to do anyway, and then just make sure I have like a little note card or whatever I needed while on stage. So don't forget them. The second worst case scenario is that I mess up. I, you know, trip over my words or like get really nervous. Okay. Sometimes you just have to accept that something can happen. I might trip over my words because I will be nervous, but I will mitigate the risk of that nervousness by prepping ahead of time.

27:44And so in that there's a mix of like, I do recommend thinking about the worst case scenario, actually making yourself articulate it and understand what it is and then understand what steps you can take to avoid that. And then Then I asked myself one final question. It was, what are your main hesitations with this in terms of how you view yourself? And I thought I wasn't good enough and that they could have found somebody better. But that's immediately challenged by the fact that they specifically asked me to do it. And the keynote approved me as the interviewer. And so giving yourself that evidence is really helpful.

28:19And when you think about your career, I'm sure you've heard it before. People talk about it as the brag book or just your evidence folder. create like a resource for yourself full of all the ways that you can challenge those thoughts. Like times when you've wanted something, times when you've gotten good feedback from a manager, a client, a customer, whatever the case may be, and build like that argument for yourself so that you have it when you need it. I like that a lot. I also think you, going along that brag book, it sucks, but nobody else is going to hype you up in your career as much as you need to hype yourself up and it sucks that that's the case but you the brag book is one way that can help you show that you've done all these things and you can brag about them and you have to share your wins all the time and also it's crazy how many like what ifs we think about when going into new jobs going taking new opportunities of what the team thinks i'm not good at my job what if i don't hit my goals what if i don't but everything is in the future it's not happening so what you said is totally true is mitigating those risks but yeah i like i like how you reframe these things i need to get better because i did the same thing at inbound i i hate speaking on stage i always think i'm gonna mom it i always over prepare i always goes better than i thought it was but not amazing but i always like better than i thought it was as a good outcome but i always think the worst is going to happen and um until i get off stage i'm like thinking about that that's it's terrible so i i understand that feeling that i like your point too about the what ifs like just really ask yourself okay like what if i didn't hit my goals okay you'd probably take those learnings back to your team and then you'd refine whatever it is, the next campaign, the next iteration of the program.

30:23What if they decide they made a wrong decision hiring me? Okay, what if? What are you actually going to do to mitigate that? Yeah, to your point, I think it's just important to actually articulate what those what ifs are and then realize it's in the future. What you have to do now is, as cliches it sounds, just work hard and set goals for yourself. but I feel you I felt the same way at inbound candidly and it went better than I expected so I take that as a win let's go I just I mean I'm bouncing around this conversation because I think there's a lot of things to talk about but just from the let's say like a client side of like an influencer campaign could you just share the process of what it looks like from hey we have a campaign to what happens next to get the influencers?

31:11What does it take? What does a brief look like? And then what happens post the campaign? Oh, my favorite topic. Yeah. So, okay. So before anything else, before you even start thinking about who you'd want to partner with, I always recommend aligning internally with your team on what success looks like. And not just with your marketing team, but anybody else who's considered a stakeholder. So the CMO, the CEO, however large your organization is will inform this, but maybe it's even the sales team. Understand how each department is viewing success because what you need to do is make sure that any influencer program you're building, you can report the learnings within the organization and still be able to show how it was successful or how to refine it.

32:04So practical example, the sales team might see success as direct conversions or at least book demos. Meanwhile, your senior marketing managers see success as brand awareness and engagement. And so making sure that you have some form of alignment in there or at least you're prepared to track and measure multiple KPIs and metrics. So understand what it looks like internally. that's also then going to inform what kinds of creators you work with. So once you're clear on that, you're clear on how we're defining success, the goals of the program or the campaign, you'll probably align on timing then as well.

32:45And then you'll look into influencers. So a big part of this is understanding where your target audience or demographic or ICP, whatever you want to call them, lives on the internet. are they consuming a lot of content on YouTube are they they listen to 67 different podcasts like podcasting is where you should go is it LinkedIn like understanding if it's going to be one primary channel that you start with or maybe a primary and secondary and budget will inform that as well obviously then you can start looking at creators so going back to my point about success and how you're defining it that's when you're going to break down you know the channels that you're leaning into, the kinds of creators you want to partner with, whether they're smaller with more niche audiences or larger with more broad audiences, you can drive awareness.

33:37And then you'll build your initial list of potential creators. I will say, like pausing there for a second, you don't have to necessarily know your budget yet. I think what I found over a lot of brands or marketers don't even start the process because they don't know how much it's going to cost, but it's okay to reach out to creators and just start gathering rates and taking that back to your team if you need to get budget approval. So you can start reaching out to creators, share some information about the campaign, what you're trying to focus on, if it's a specific product or launch or event, whatever the case may be.

34:15Let's say this is all going very smoothly. You've logged in some creators who are interested. Now you're in the contracting phase. While you're getting contracts squared away, that's when I'd recommend building the campaign brief, if not earlier. So this is going to include those metrics for success that I talked about 90 times already. That's going to be included in there so creators know how to do well for this. Any messaging guidelines, do's or don'ts for how they can talk about the brand, brand assets. It's basically your holy grail or source of truth for creators that they can operate within the parameters of the campaign really effectively.

34:52and hopefully limit the amount of back and forth with content feedback. And then from there, the campaign is going to kick off. So you're reviewing content, you're approving it, you're finalizing dates, posting dates with creators, content's going out. I recommend getting analytics from the creators at the seven-day mark and the 30-day mark. And then you're going to take all those learnings. And if it's a one-time campaign, not a rolling one, take those learnings, look at what happened, look at the results, see what worked and what didn't and then you can optimize accordingly. Final thing I'll say, I do think it's important to remember that even if it wasn't a success on the outside, it's really important to still look at the data and see what story it's telling you.

35:36It could have been a messaging issue. It could have been some of the creators weren't a good fit, but look at what did and didn't work and then you can apply that to your next program. I think that's great. I think one thing that i see a lot of people making mistakes on is they don't set up the foundation of tracking internally to make sure this is good could be a success internally what i mean by that is if you're going to do a certain geo launch or something like that and you're not like isolating like spike in brand mentions or or google searches or something that whatever that goal is and you're not isolating that internally in your dashboards and stuff like that and you're just expecting sales or something because it could be that you get the spike now people know about you they do something else and it's a trailing metric because of your buying cycle there's so many things that could happen but you don't you're not like you could be attributing that to a wrong thing where there's a spike in brand mentions here um and i don't something happened so set up the tracking beforehand is usually what i'll say before and then i also always say too because i'm i'm in the space is that you try you have to hit an audience multiple times for them to remember you as you don't run one facebook ad to one person and never show it to that person again so why are you not running multiple things to that audience to stay top of mind so they when they that audience sees that they relate that influencer with that brand and you and you're getting so one-off that's why i don't like one-off campaigns and i think it's you got to refrain like would you do the same thing on a facebook ad or something like that the cost might be different that's a different story but you're trying to create a you you have to show up multiple times for people to realize because you were creators are also educating their audience on who you are and the first time might the messaging might be wrong or um the offer might be wrong or and it's not the creator it could be the offer the messaging the launch um the graphic all these things or you gave two tight of guardrails so they can do what they do as creators there's so many things that could have gone wrong so i just adding those two things yeah those are great points especially especially the tracking because that's kind of my point too i mean so let's say you ran a campaign you were trying to drive sales and let's say it doesn't work you don't drive any significant number of sales but you do see those brand mentions or the you know traffic increase, that's interesting data too.

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38:31Like if people are engaging, let's say with one of your creator's posts, clicking on the landing page that you've set up and then still not even like signing up for information or converting or whatever, that's going to tell you something too. Like maybe it is the messaging or it's something else. And to your point, kind of what we were saying at the beginning, yeah, the one-off posts, man, it's just, it's so much pressure for the creator, first of all. And it's also so much pressure for the marketer too. I mean, you wouldn't do that with a Facebook ad. You wouldn't turn it on, show it to one person, then turn it back off and be like, well, why didn't this convert?

39:05And so actually giving your audience time to get used to your brand and get comfortable with it is really important. Also an algorithm, the creator cannot control the algorithm. I'm sorry. It's like one time a post can go off, the one time it can't go off it's just that's the one thing and that's not an excuse to make but you should just know that it's repeat exposure that is the way way to be successful with creators that i've seen long-term partnerships because also creators will do over and above what you say if you invest in them they'll talk about you naturally they will do more in the the production point of view they'll do a lot more if you show investment versus not show investment um lastly i'd like to ask people what is a marketing hill you would die on i don't know this might be too spicy i don't think okay i'm gonna go back to influence marketing um i will die on the hill that b2b marketing b2b influencer marketing can work but most b2b marketers are too focused on just differentiating themselves from D to C to actually test the space.

40:24I think they're just scared to call influencers what they are, and they're scared to invest the resources because it might not pay off the first round. That's my hope. Is that spicy? I think, I mean, it's not spicy to me because I agree, but I think for some people that it is pretty spicy i think it is it's true it's the definition of an influencer is so broad and that's i think people they people have tried to reframe them as creators or brand ambassadors or whatever but there's like all this reframing to try sell it internally to have someone work help but there's so many or evangelist or whatever you want to say it's just i think Like, but influencer marketing does work.

41:14You just have to do it the right way, partner with the right person. And actually, there are lower left ways you could do it too. So, yeah. I mean, I'm on your side. But, yeah, I think people more like that take, some of them. But that's okay. Well, it's my hill. Yeah. Your hill. You're dying on it. They don't have to die on it. They could get off of it. yeah they don't have to come to my hill it's my hill so lastly where can people find you and what you're doing and your book and all that good stuff yeah you can find me on linkedin brianna doe i feel like i should pay them rent because i'm always on that platform so that's where i mostly am and then the book you can find at brianna doe.com um yeah you can find everything at brianna doe.com well thank you so much i appreciate it thanks thanks for having me Thanks so much for listening.

42:11Keep 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 podcasts. 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.

42:39you

From the publisher

B2B Influencer Marketing isn’t broken, it’s just misunderstood.

Author and CEO Brianna Doe joins Daniel on The Marketing Millennials to explain why most B2B influencer programs fail before they even start. 

From unrealistic expectations to poor internal alignment, Brianna walks through what actually makes Influencer Marketing work, especially in B2B. They cover how to set the right goals, choose the right creators, write effective briefs, track the right metrics, and avoid the trap of one-off campaigns. 

And, what does it mean to be authentic? They explore personal branding and how Marketers can stop letting job titles and imposter syndrome define their careers.

If you’re a B2B Marketer looking to refine your influencer program, set realistic goals, and even build your personal brand, this episode is for you. 

Follow Brianna:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianna-doe/

Follow Daniel:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter: www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials

Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: www.workweek.com

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