Your best brand advocates aren’t influencers with millions of followers – they’re the industry experts who understand your customers’ deepest challenges. Welcome to B2B influencer marketing. Just ask Anton Shulke, Head of Influencer Marketing at Duda and former SEMrush leader: He explains on “Marketing Demystified” that partnering with technical authorities drives more impact than chasing social media stars.
B2B companies achieve results by building long-term relationships with industry experts who deeply understand their field and target audience. That can help in existing markets, when expanding into the North American market or even improve ROI of conference attendance.
“What we do is influencer marketing with experts versus creative marketing,” he said, pointing out the difference to B2C influencer marketing.
Anton draws an insightful parallel between influencer marketing approaches and digital marketing strategies.
“When you do pay per click, you have a creator who’s happy to create video for you for money. You pay them, and it’s great for you. Once you stop paying them, it’s all gone,” he explains. “When you do influencer marketing with experts, you don’t pay them for being influencers. They’re paid for being experts in their area of expertise. It’s not trade – it’s a long, long relationship.”
Finding the right partners
The foundation of successful B2B influencer marketing lies in correctly identifying both your target audience and potential expert partners. Anton shares a revealing example from his experience at Duda.
“I wasted about three months trying to get into the web designers community,” Anton explains. “Web designers don’t have one community like SEO people – they’re split by platforms. WordPress community, Wix community, Duda community. And trying to influence WordPress designers is absolutely useless because if you’re a WordPress designer using it for 5-10-15 years, what’s your motivation to learn a new tool? If you’re on salary, doing more work makes no sense.”
Instead, Anton discovered their true audience was agency leaders who cared about efficiency.
“For someone who counts money in an agency, if you can do three times more sites in the same time with the same people – okay, you can do three times more or have three times less people. That’s a huge segment.”
Building authentic relationships
“Only work with people who want to work with you,” Anton emphasizes. “I’ve tried to work with very different types of people. My experience – it never really works with someone you don’t have chemistry with or someone who doesn’t really see the value working with you.”
Anton explains measuring expert partnership success requires looking at multiple indicators: “How do you measure relationships? How do you measure brand? It’s not easy, but there are things you can do.”
Listen next: Building a brand with soul in the digital age
Content and collaboration approaches
Rather than dictating content, Anton advocates letting experts lead: “We usually leave content for the influencer. The influencer is an expert – I’m not. They know what they can talk about, what’s really important, what’s hot.”
He emphasizes adapting formats to each expert’s strengths, which also helps build mutual value.
“You cannot live on favors,” Anton notes. “Paraphrasing JFK – it’s not what your influencer can do for you, it’s what you can do for your influencer. Sometimes we do webinars only to please our influencer, try to amplify their message and knowledge.”
And let’s not forget about one obvious influencer:
“Your absolute best influencer is your customer – your successful customers,” Anton emphasizes. “If you’re not sure who your influencer should be, go for your customers who really get success using your product. They already love it.”
Read next: Personas to Profits: How to create a customer profile
Looking ahead: The future of B2B partnerships
B2B influencer marketing through expert partnerships represents a strategic long-term investment in brand authority and industry relationships. While it may not deliver the immediate metrics of creator campaigns, it builds lasting value through authentic expertise and mutual benefit.
As B2B buying becomes increasingly complex and collaborative, these expert relationships will only grow in importance for companies seeking to build credibility and drive sustainable growth. The key is patience, relationship-building, and creating genuine value for both partners and audiences.