5 B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign Examples and Advanced Insights

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LinkedIn has become an increasingly popular platform for B2B influencer marketing, but what differentiates a successful campaign from a mediocre campaign?

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Who should you hire? 

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How much should you budget?

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What is a good campaign idea?

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Instead of providing opinion-based answers to these questions, we'll show you examples of B2B influencer marketing campaigns that performed exceptionally well and provide a detailed analysis that answers all of these questions.

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#1: Notion Faces 

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The goal of the Notion Faces campaign was to generate brand awareness, and according to the team behind the campaign, it was the largest LinkedIn campaign ever (as of several weeks following the launch). 

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The most remarkable aspect of the campaign was that, in addition to generating over 20,000 engagements, it also organically generated over 60 UGC posts from members of the Notion community without any incentivization.  

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While Notion has run numerous influencer marketing campaigns, this particular campaign is proof that the campaign concept is arguably even more important than the creators hired to execute it.

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The Campaign Concept and Execution

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Notion has an in-house artist who personally draws a "Notion Face" for every employee. 

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It's a small personal touch that has remained a core element of the company's culture, and the influencer marketing team at Notion decided to host a LinkedIn takeover campaign, where creators would all change their profile pictures to a custom Notion Face. 

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The execution was brilliant.

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First, each creator added a "loading" badge to their profiles to create anticipation:

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The LinkedIn influencer agency founder behind this campaign, AJ Eckstein, jumped in and created a post himself to further amplify anticipation:

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On the launch day, all of the 50+ creators involved in the campaign swapped their profiles to their Notion Face.

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The team at Notion gave creators the freedom to post whatever content they felt would resonate with their audience.

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Here are a few of the remote work post examples:

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In contrast, here are some more educational content posts:

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Inside each post, you’ll see that the creator links to a template where the audience can create their own Notion Face:

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The audience involvement significantly amplified the campaign's reach because each person would then create their own Notion Face, which triggered the 60+ UGC posts:

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The Notion team also went above and beyond, even sending their creators cookies with their Notion Faces.

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By going above and beyond and deepening relationships with your partners, they’re more likely to talk about your brand organically, both in person and on social media.

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Campaign Partners

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Whether you should partner with macro or micro creators depends on:

1. Campaign goal: Brand awareness or product signups?
2. Your ICP: B2B decision makers or individuals?

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In this case, Notion's goal was to increase brand awareness and reach more individual employees. Therefore, partnering with primarily macro creators made more sense.

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One of their most successful posts was by Linda, a creator with over 600,000 followers, who had an average comment/like count of 3,324 and 215 per post, respectively.

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However, some smaller creators were still involved in the campaign (e.g., creators with 20,000-40,000 followers and an average of ~30 comments per post).

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Additionally, Notion didn't target a specific industry with this campaign because it has a broad B2C audience across various industries.

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For example, one of their creators was a former sales rep at Meta, one was an email marketing expert, and others were career coaches and personal branding experts.

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Unique Actionable Insights   

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• Involve the audience: Offer a fun tool and a CTA to have audience members participate and share. For example, you could offer a free quiz.
• Create a prelaunch strategy: Instead of just posting the content, ask creators to build anticipation with a specific action item.  
• Send memorable gifts: The deeper the relationship you build with creators, the more likely they are to recommend you to their audience organically. 

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#2: Hootsuite’s VHS Tape

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Product marketing campaigns are hard to master. 

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How do you create a concept that is viral and shows the value of the product (or new feature)?

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Hootsuite’s VHS tape campaign is a perfect example of how you can combine them both. 

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The Campaign Concept

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Hootsuite launched a new AI chat tool, OwlyGPT.

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However, most of your LinkedIn feed is probably already inundated with posts about the latest AI tips and frameworks. 

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So how do you make it stand out and doesn't look like "just another AI hack"? 

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Hootsuite's social media team first identified the product's differentiator and then highlighted it in a viral concept. 

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Specifically, the key differentiator is that OwlyGPT is trained on real-time social conversations, allowing it to generate more accurate and relevant responses.  

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To showcase OwlyGPT's differentiator, Hootsuite's team sent VHS tapes to influencers who then posted a picture of themselves with the VHS tape.

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In the post, the influencers explained that while most of the AI tools available show you outdated information,  OwlyGPT delivers timely insights based on current data.

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This might seem like a hard concept to duplicate, but here’s a prompt you can ask ChatGPT to help you brainstorm:

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"I want to create a viral LinkedIn influencer marketing campaign that highlights (brand name's) new feature. For context, the feature (explain the feature's differentiator/what makes it special/pain point it solves).

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What are some unconventional or viral ways we can showcase the unique value of this product? I want to execute something similar to Hootsuite's viral VHS tape campaign. 

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Context about Hootsuite VHS tape campaign: Hootsuite's product's unique value was that it is trained on current data, so they sent VHS tapes (illustrating the problem of old/outdated data as is common with other products) to influencers to showcase that working with old data leads to poor results."

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Campaign Partners

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They partnered with 11 influencers, all of whom were social media professionals. 

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However, they were all specialists in different areas. For example, there were DTC and B2B social media managers, some of whom were in-house employees, while others were agency owners or managed social media communities. 

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By selecting a diverse range of social media experts, Hootsuite maximized reach while ensuring impressions remained relevant. 

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Engagement rates and follower counts varied, though most of them were micro to mid level creators.

The lesson here is that audience relevancy is much more important than total reach for product marketing campaigns.

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Another lesson from the data is that audience content match is critical. 

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When I analyzed the lowest performing posts, I noticed that the typical content those creators published was often memes rather than thought leadership content.

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(Note: You can see any creator's full content feed in Favikon.)

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While this VHS tape is a viral and intriguing concept, it's still a departure from the typical meme content that some of the creators frequently post.

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In general, you'll see better results working with thought leaders rather than viral creators for product marketing campaigns.

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And even if you're working with thought leaders, ensure that the campaign concept won't disrupt the creator's typical content style. 

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Unique Actionable Insights

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• Use a viral approach to highlight the product's differentiator. Explain the feature to ChatGPT and then say, "What are some unorthodox/viral ways I can highlight this differentiator on LinkedIn?" You can also give it some context on Hootsuite's VHS campaign to use as a reference. 
• For product marketing, partner with micro/mid creators who match your ICP: Avoid macro creators for product marketing campaigns. If you have multiple ICPs that are similarly profitable to the business, pick one creator to represent each segment to maximize unique reach.
• Check for content/audience fit. Will your campaign concept blend organically with the rest of the creator's posts?  

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#3: Teachable’s 9-5 Quitter’s Club

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Teachable is an online course hosting platform that recently ran a LinkedIn campaign designed to inspire creators to pursue their side hustles.

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This was a top-of-funnel campaign designed to drive attention rather than immediate conversions. 

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The Campaign Concept

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Teachable asked creators to share their stories of either quitting their 9-to-5 jobs or starting their side hustles. Here are a few examples:

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This campaign concept works because the idea of quitting a 9-5 job is already a proven, viral concept. 

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It's emotionally charged as it's both a scary and aspirational moment for many side hustlers. 

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To think of a similar campaign concept that's relevant to your business, ask yourself:

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Is there a rite of passage moment that the most successful percentage of my audience always experiences?

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Another way you can brainstorm creative campaign ideas is simply looking at the macro creators in your niche and analyzing their top performing posts. 

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(You can do this by downloading the free Favikon Chrome extension, and it will show you the top performing post of any creator):

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Examine the top-performing posts of a macro influencer in your industry and identify a concept or idea that's relevant to your audience.

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If you find one, you can turn it into a full influencer campaign. 

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For example, this macro creator's 5th highest performing organic post is about leaving your job, which validated the "9-5 Quitters" concept:

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You can also review the paid ad campaigns you've run in the past that were successful and adapt those concepts into influencer campaigns. 

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If you're still stuck, ask the partners you're working with if they can each submit three ideas. Often, creators appreciate having a say in the campaign idea, and they also tend to know what will resonate best with their audience.

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Campaign Partners

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For this campaign, Teachable primarily partnered with mid-tier and macro creators (ranging up to 400,000 followers). However, they did involve a few micro creators.

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However, all of them either had their own side hustlers or businesses and fit Teachable's ICP.

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Partnering with larger creators made sense for this campaign because:

1. Teachable's ICP is broad: As a B2C business, Teachable primarily serves individuals, so it made sense to maximize reach.
2. The goal was brand awareness: When your goal is brand awareness, you're measuring impressions and reach at the expense of some audience relevancy. Macro creators deliver just that – more reach at the expense of some audience relevancy.

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Teachable also sponsored some creators to publish multiple posts for this campaign. For example, Colin Rocker posted twice for this campaign:

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The same is true for Morgan Young:

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Sponsoring multiple posts with the same creator can be effective as only a small fraction of the creator's audience will see both of your sponsored posts.

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Peter Conforti analyzed LinkedIn influencer Adam Robinson's audience and found that only about 10% of the engagements came from "repeat likers" (i.e., people who engaged with more than one post within a two-week period).   

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Unique Actionable Insights

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1. Capitalize on "rite of passage" moments: If there's an emotionally charged event that all of your successful audience experiences, ask creators to write about that.
2. Sponsor multiple posts, as a single post is likely to reach only a fraction of the creator's audience. While this may not be true for podcasts or newsletters, where the audience consumes each post, it is more applicable when working with macro social media creators. If their posts regularly earn high engagement, the social algorithms will likely show those posts to new audiences as well. And, only a small fraction of their followers likely saw the first post.

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#4: Synthesia’s AI Dubbing Around The World

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Synthesia is an AI-powered video tool that recently released an AI dubbing feature. This feature automatically translates your video into a different language and adjusts your facial expressions to match.

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The Campaign Concept

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To promote the feature, they collaborated with five creators from Italy, Germany, Spain, India, and Brazil to create videos in their native languages. 

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The first part of the video was the creator speaking in English (using the AI dubbing feature) and then it showed a flashback of the original version of that clip, but spoken in their native language. 

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The novelty of the feature was a key factor that made this campaign particularly effective. 

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Another factor that made it effective was how creators demonstrated how the product worked rather than just telling the audience what it does.

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Rather than asking creators to explain, in theory, what your product does or how they could (theoretically) use it, ask them to demonstrate a specific use case. 

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In fact, this was a piece of advice from ClickUp co-founder, Chris Cunningham, when asked about how to run B2B influencer marketing campaigns:

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Campaign Partners

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The campaign partners selected for this campaign were from diverse countries and spoke various languages. 

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Additionally, because the feature was applicable to a broad audience, and Synthesia's primary goal with influencer marketing is brand awareness, they primarily targeted macro-influencers. Here's a breakdown of the creators they partnered with:

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While this campaign was designed to highlight Synthesia's translation capabilities, it's worth noting that partnering with international influencers, particularly those who speak a different language from your native language, is an excellent way to reach a new audience authentically. 

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To execute this campaign, Synthesia worked with influencer marketing agencies based in these countries. 

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However, you can also use Favikon to identify top creators in a particular country. Select a country and then add filters like industry, LinkedIn engagement/follower count, and language. 

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This makes it easy to quickly find relevant influencers in a specific country or region (you can also include specific cities).

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Unique Actionable Insights

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• Show a product use case rather than explaining what it does: People don't buy features, they buy solutions. Demonstrate how the product solves a specific problem.
• Collaborate with international partners: While Synthesia partnered with local agencies, you can also simply use Favikon to identify international influencers. 

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#5: Storylane’s Comedic Shorts

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Storylane is a B2B demo software SaaS that invested over $500,000 in LinkedIn influencer marketing in 2024, and they're planning to scale it further.

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They primarily invested in product marketing use cases and comedic shorts. 

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While the product posts performed well, the comedic shorts were unique in that they not only generated many views but also attracted the right audience and effectively showcased the pain points the product solved.

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Here's an example of the top performing video we identified:   

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The Campaign Concept

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The comedic shorts created generated about 66% of total engagement, despite the fact that the comedic shorts only made up about 30% of the total sponsored posts (according to our sampled data). 

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However, instead of just creating humorous content with a viral concept, they acted out the real pain point that Storylane solves – the fact that non-enterprise prospects often don't convert because they want to buy the product without going through the hassle of booking and attending a demo. 

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So unlike most viral shorts, these short videos still captured the attention of the right audience (sales professionals) and demonstrated the problem that the software solves (converting customers who want your product but don't want to get on a sales call).

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Here’s a great example:

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Campaign Partners

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Unlike most companies aiming to maximize reach and brand awareness, Storylane didn't hire macro influencers.

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Instead, they hired primarily salespeople who matched their ICP.

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By hiring smaller influencers who matched their ICP (sales professionals), the content of the videos was still relevant to sales professionals, and the scripts contained jokes that salespeople appreciated and also demonstrated the value of the product. 

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For example, they partnered with Tom Boston and Will Aitken, both of whom are sales coaches but also regularly post comedic shortform sales content.

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Therefore, these creators were not only experienced in creating comedic video clips, allowing Storylane to rely on their expertise to guide the video scripts, but they also ensured that the sponsored content organically blended into the creators' content feeds.

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For example, you can see that Storylane's comedic shorts blend organically with Tom's typical content:

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As a result, the content often outperformed the creators’ average total engagement per post, which is fairly rare for most sponsored content.

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In fact, nine of the fourteen (64%) of the sponsored comedic shorts we identified outperformed the creators’ average engagement per post. 

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Unique Actionable Insights

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• Comedic short-form content can be effective: The key is to ensure the humor is relatable to your target audience, thereby capturing relevant attention.
• Work with micro creators who match your ICP and illustrate the product pain point: Especially if you're a startup or smaller brand, you can't run huge brand awareness campaigns. The happy medium is working with people who match your ICP and illustrate pain points the product solves in a comedic manner.
• Invest in the video concept: Most people forget that a post's potential reach depends largely on the substance of the post – not just the creator's following or average engagement.  
• Select a creator with experience in short-form content and allow them to guide the concept: If you want to create comedic shorts, ensure the creator has experience in that content format and that their audience responds well to it. Then, ask them to help you brainstorm the video concept while incorporating.

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How to Further Improve Your B2B Influencer Marketing Results

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We discussed the campaign concepts, creators, and nuanced differentiators that made these concepts exceptionally effective, though LinkedIn is a particularly challenging platform to discover and contact creators on.

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Additionally, most traditional influencer marketing platforms don’t provide LinkedIn influencer data, because of LinkedIn’s strict data scraping limitations. 

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We built Favikon to solve this problem. It’s an all-in-one influencer marketing platform that allows you to discover, contact, and manage creator partnerships.

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In addition to all of the traditional influencer marketing platforms, like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and even Pinterest, Favikon’s key differentiator is its LinkedIn and X data. 

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This makes it easy to identify B2B influencers and contact them directly inside the platform.

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You can also filter by engagement rate, minimum total engagement, followers, industry niche, total posts, and more.  Here’s an example:

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You can try Favikon today to see for yourself how it can help you scale a B2B marketing program.

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