Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
OK, so here's what I learned after watching dozens of SaaS launches crash and burn while chasing the "influencer dream." You know what I'm talking about - that fantasy where some big-name creator posts about your product and suddenly you're swimming in qualified leads.
The reality? Most SaaS founders are approaching influencer marketing completely backwards. They're treating it like a product launch when it should be treated like a distribution strategy. And there's a massive difference.
Through working with B2B SaaS clients and observing what actually moves the needle, I've discovered that the most successful "influencer" campaigns don't look like influencer campaigns at all. They look like genuine expertise sharing and relationship building.
Here's what you'll learn from my contrarian take on SaaS influencer marketing:
Why chasing follower counts is killing your launch budget
The distribution-first approach that actually works
How to identify "invisible influencers" in your niche
My framework for building authentic relationships, not transactions
Why founder-led content beats influencer posts every time
Industry Reality
What every SaaS founder has already heard
The conventional wisdom around influencer marketing for SaaS launches follows a predictable pattern. Every marketing blog, growth guru, and startup accelerator preaches the same approach:
Step 1: Identify influencers with large followings in your target market. Look for creators with 10K+ followers who talk about SaaS, productivity, or your specific niche.
Step 2: Reach out with collaboration proposals. Offer free access, affiliate commissions, or flat fees in exchange for posts, stories, or mentions.
Step 3: Create "influencer packages" with branded assets, talking points, and specific CTAs to drive traffic to your landing page.
Step 4: Track metrics like reach, impressions, and click-through rates. Measure ROI based on immediate signups and conversions.
Step 5: Scale by working with more influencers, increasing budgets, and optimizing your outreach templates.
This approach exists because it looks like growth marketing. It's measurable, scalable, and follows the playbook that works for consumer brands. The problem? B2B SaaS isn't consumer products.
Your prospects aren't impulse-buying a $20 gadget because their favorite YouTuber recommended it. They're evaluating business software that could impact their entire team's workflow. The buying cycle is longer, the decision-makers are different, and trust works completely differently.
Most importantly, the "influencers" your prospects actually trust aren't the ones with the biggest follower counts. They're the practitioners, the operators, the people actually solving similar problems in similar companies.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I learned this lesson the hard way while working with a B2B SaaS client who was convinced they needed "influencer marketing" for their product launch. They came to me after spending months trying to get productivity YouTubers and LinkedIn thought leaders to promote their project management tool.
The results? Crickets. Not because the product was bad - it was actually quite good. But because they were solving this like an e-commerce problem when they were dealing with a trust and expertise problem.
Here's what I observed: The company's founder had built a small but engaged following on LinkedIn by sharing honest insights about project management challenges. His posts regularly got meaningful engagement from actual project managers, CTOs, and operations people. But instead of doubling down on this organic traction, they wanted to "scale" by paying external creators.
The disconnect was obvious once I dug deeper. Their ideal customers - mid-market companies with complex project workflows - weren't following productivity influencers for software recommendations. They were reading industry publications, participating in professional communities, and most importantly, trusting recommendations from peers who actually used similar tools.
This experience taught me that most SaaS founders are approaching influencer marketing backwards. They're trying to find shortcuts to trust instead of building genuine expertise and relationships in their space. They want the reach without the credibility, the audience without the authority.
The breakthrough came when we completely flipped the strategy. Instead of chasing external influencers, we focused on making the founder the go-to expert in project management for mid-market companies. Instead of paying for posts, we invested time in providing genuine value to the community.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's the framework I developed after seeing what actually works for SaaS launches - and it's probably not what you're expecting.
The "Anti-Influencer" Approach
First, forget everything you know about traditional influencer marketing. We're not looking for people with big followings who'll post about your product for money. We're looking for expertise networks - the interconnected groups of practitioners who actually influence buying decisions in B2B.
Step 1: Map Your Expertise Network
Start by identifying the 20-30 people your ideal customers actually listen to. These aren't influencers in the traditional sense. They're:
Industry operators sharing lessons learned
Consultants solving similar problems
Former executives from target companies
Authors of industry-specific content
Speakers at niche conferences
Look for people who get quoted in industry publications, whose content gets shared by your prospects, and who have credibility in your specific problem space.
Step 2: Become a Valuable Contributor First
Before you ever mention your product, spend 2-3 months genuinely contributing to these people's content and communities. Comment thoughtfully on their posts, share their insights with your network, and add valuable perspectives to their discussions.
The goal isn't to "get noticed" - it's to become a recognized voice in the conversation. When you consistently add value without asking for anything, you build the kind of credibility that can't be bought.
Step 3: Create Co-Creation Opportunities
Instead of asking for product promotion, propose content collaborations that provide mutual value. Offer to:
Co-author an industry report or white paper
Participate in their podcast or webinar as an expert
Contribute case studies to their content
Joint-host an educational event for the community
This approach builds genuine relationships while positioning you as an expert, not a vendor.
Step 4: Let Your Expertise Sell
When you've established yourself as a valuable contributor, product mentions become natural extensions of helpful advice. Instead of "Here's my SaaS tool," it becomes "Here's how we solved this exact problem for similar companies." The difference is massive.
Step 5: Scale Through Network Effects
The beauty of this approach is that it creates compound returns. When you help one expert solve a problem or create valuable content, they naturally introduce you to others in their network. Your credibility transfers through trusted relationships.
Relationship Building
Focus on providing value before asking for anything. Spend months contributing to conversations and building genuine connections with industry experts.
Expert Positioning
Position yourself as a practitioner and expert in the problem space, not as a vendor trying to sell software.
Network Mapping
Identify the 20-30 people your prospects actually trust and listen to - they're rarely traditional "influencers" with big followings.
Co-Creation Focus
Propose content collaborations and joint initiatives that provide mutual value rather than one-sided promotional requests.
The results from this approach were dramatically different from traditional influencer campaigns. Instead of short-term traffic spikes that didn't convert, we saw sustained engagement from highly qualified prospects.
The founder's LinkedIn following grew from industry practitioners who actually cared about project management insights, not random productivity enthusiasts. More importantly, the quality of inbound leads improved significantly.
Instead of tire-kickers who clicked through from a promotional post, we started seeing demo requests from companies that had been following the founder's content for months. These prospects came in pre-qualified and pre-sold on both the problem and the solution approach.
The compound effect was remarkable. As the founder's reputation grew within the project management community, industry experts started referring opportunities naturally. We didn't need to chase partnerships - they started happening organically through genuine relationships.
Perhaps most importantly, this approach created lasting value beyond any single product launch. The expertise and relationships built through this process continued driving business long after the initial "launch" period ended.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons I learned from completely rethinking influencer marketing for SaaS:
Trust beats reach every time. A recommendation from someone your prospects genuinely trust is worth more than exposure to thousands of unqualified followers.
Expertise is the best influence. Your ability to solve problems and share insights influences buying decisions more than any promotional post ever could.
Relationships compound, campaigns don't. Every genuine relationship you build creates ongoing value. Every paid campaign ends when the budget runs out.
Your prospects' influences aren't who you think they are. The people who actually influence B2B buying decisions rarely look like traditional "influencers." They're practitioners, operators, and subject matter experts.
Co-creation beats promotion. People are more likely to authentically recommend solutions they helped create or validate than products they were paid to promote.
Value-first always wins. When you lead with genuine value and expertise, product recommendations become natural extensions of helpful advice.
Network effects are real. In B2B, one genuine relationship often leads to multiple others through trusted introductions and referrals.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to build authentic influence:
Map your expertise network, not follower counts
Build founder credibility through consistent value delivery
Propose co-creation opportunities over promotional partnerships
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce brands seeking authentic partnerships:
Focus on micro-influencers with engaged, relevant audiences
Prioritize long-term relationships over one-off campaigns
Create authentic product integration opportunities