TopRank Marketing

What if your most influential B2B marketer isn't on your marketing team?

Too many B2B brands treat influencers as one size fits all. The reality is that influence works more like a team sport. The brands earning the most trust, visibility, and buyer confidence are activating a network of experts, executives, employees, customers, creators, and industry influencers who all contribute to a larger story.

The data is hard to ignore:

📈 75% of enterprise B2B companies are expected to increase influencer relations budgets in 2026. (Forrester)

🎯 48% of B2B marketers say finding the right influencers is their biggest challenge. (TopRank)

🔄 82% of top-performing B2B influencer marketing programs use an always-on approach. (TopRank)

💡 Creative campaigns and unique content are the top ways marketers differentiate influencer programs, cited by 56% and 55% of marketers. (TopRank)

📚 74% of marketers who frequently collaborate with influencers on research-based thought leadership report it as very effective, compared to just 29% of those who don't. (TopRank/Ascend2)

🤖 94% of buyers are now using LLMs, making trusted expert voices and credible third-party validation more important than ever. (6Sense)

The takeaway?

Winning B2B brands aren't asking, "Which influencer should we hire?"

They're asking:

✅ Which experts should play which roles across the buyer journey?
✅ How do we build long-term relationships instead of one-time activations?
✅ How can influencer content strengthen thought leadership, trust, and AI search visibility?

Successful B2B influencer marketing in 2026 is a team sport. The brands building the right team are the ones earning attention, trust, and building decision confidence.

Read the full article by our CEO Lee Odden for the most common questions and answers about B2B influencer marketing in 2026 https://www.toprankmarketing.com/blog/b2b-influence-team-sport/

HUGE congratulations to Ryan Leighty on his 5th year anniversary at TopRank Marketing!

Ryan's contributions to our search marketing practice have helped numerous B2B brands elevate the performance of their organic and paid search visibility.

Ryan brings a strategic outlook to search marketing and has a unique ability to adapt and quickly develop new ways to measure all the tools and capabilities that are surfacing in the search marketing industry.

Ryan is also a team player, making sure that both his peers and clients have the information they need to make data-backed decisions when it comes to planning their content or search visibility programs.

Staying on top of what matters and what works in search whether it's Google AI overviews or AI search platforms, is more important than ever. We are grateful for the role that Ryan plays in helping our clients become the best answer wherever customers are searching.

Thank you for all that you do Ryan!