We Spent >$1 Million Sponsoring Creators. Here’s What We Learned About B2B Influencer Marketing

We’ve spent over one million dollars and sponsored hundreds of creators, educators, and influencers, even including big names like Linus Tech Tips and Lenny Rachitsky:

All of this work is done by our tireless Partnerships Manager, Igor Gorbenko. I spoke to him to extract everything he learned about partnerships.

The first time we sponsored podcasts, we spent $14,000 on five podcast campaigns. Like any good data-driven marketer, we set up landing pages and tracked visits and signups.

Our results were horrendous:

The truth is that nobody’s rushing to buy your product just because they heard about it on a podcast. And one that costs thousands of dollars to boot. So, sponsoring creators and expecting immediate impact is a fool’s errand.

But spending that much money and banking on improved brand awareness is a game not many companies are willing to play. We can’t throw money at creators and hope that one day Ahrefs will become a household name. Let alone one with a name that gets the SEO world debating how it’s supposed to be pronounced.

So, even for a company notorious for not measuring marketing ROI, we wanted to see some results. That’s why Igor settled on a sweet spot for all our creator campaigns: promoting Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT).

AWT is a free version of Ahrefs that allows you to audit your website for technical SEO issues, shows who’s linking to you, and what keywords you’re ranking for. While not everyone needs a complex tool like Ahrefs, anyone with a website can instantly benefit from AWT.

It has everything we’re looking for in a campaign: it promotes our brand, showcases our product, and is free to sign up, making it an attractive offer.

The best part about doing this is that it also expands our audience. Since we’re now targeting website owners, we don’t have to narrow ourselves to SEOs. We can partner with any creators who have audiences that work with websites: content marketers, affiliate marketers, entrepreneurs, tech professionals, and more.

Just because you’re willing to spend some money doesn’t mean people are rushing for you to sponsor them. Creators and influencers have audiences, so they care about their reputations. They don’t want to be seen promoting a shady product or be associated with a company of disrepute because that also hurts their brand.

For example, when Igor first approached Linus Media Group (i.e. Linus Tech Tips) to work with them, they asked him several questions about any controversies or negative opinions surrounding our brand. Like many others, they wanted to ensure they were associating with someone reputable. Fortunately, we were clear.

Here’s how you can prepare for creator vetting:

Document your brand’s positive reputation points — Gather testimonials, reviews, case studies, and press mentions that highlight your credibility. You can also point to review sites like G2, Trustpilot, and Google Reviews.Address potential controversies head-on — Be prepared to discuss any historical issues transparently and explain how you’ve resolved them.Prepare specific talking points about your brand values, community involvement, and product quality that creators can feel confident sharing with their audience.

A strong brand perception makes it easier to work with creators. Since we’ve spent years building our brand—making great content, listening to our community, and building a must-use product—we don’t face many challenges in finding influencers willing to work with and promote us.

This is not always the case for others. For example, a company like Wix may find it difficult to get influencers who’ve built their entire career on WordPress to promote them. Or a new company might find that influencer outreach is harder because there aren’t many people who can speak with authority about their product.

Scammers are rare, but bloated numbers are common. For example, if a YouTube video has 500,000 views but only 5 comments, did people actually watch it? Or even worse, did actual people watch it?

This is why you should always be evaluating the creators you work with.

A lot of the work comes down to sitting in a chair and hand-vetting each creator.

Here’s what Igor looks out for YouTube and LinkedIn:

Subscriber/follower count and number of views/engagement on their contentHow many comments there are and whether they’re from real people, bots, or AI-generatedConsistency in uploading content as the number of views may be inconsistent if content is only published a few times a year

For websites and blogs, he uses Ahrefs. He enters their domain into Site Explorer and look at their estimated search traffic, their history, and the keywords they rank for.

You can also simply reach out to the creator and ask.

In the end, there is an element of trusting your gut. No matter how hard you vet, sometimes all you have to do is to run a smaller-scale campaign with the creator and check the results.

You should expect a lot of price variability in the influencer world.

The cost of a post can depend entirely on how a content creator values their time and how much effort it’ll take. An influencer with a massive following may only ask for $500 for a post, while someone else with a much smaller following might ask for $2,000.

Some may even ask you to help them decide on the price, especially if it’s the first time they’re getting sponsored.

However, following benchmark guides based on the number of followers or engagement rates doesn’t work. These benchmarks are typically geared towards B2C products and don’t work for B2B.

For example, a micro-influencer in the B2B space might only have 2,000 followers, but those followers could all be CEOs, making that influencer’s audience far more valuable to us than someone else with 500K in a general field.

One thing’s for sure: You’ll never know the final price until everything is discussed.

That said, from Igor’s experience, he’s seen three main price ranges for influencers:

$500 - $2,000 — This is the baseline for influencer posts. It’s often a reasonable investment for a LinkedIn post or similar.$3,000 - $9,000 — This is a tricky area. The results often don’t justify the cost and social media algorithms make it uncertain whether the post will reach a significant audience. You may end up paying double the price of the baseline but with only a slight improvement in reach (sometimes not even an improvement.)$10,000 and above — Posts in this range tend to provide better returns, especially when dealing with large influencers with a track record of high engagement and fixed audience numbers (e.g., YouTube videos, newsletters)

Igor tends to skip middle-tier pricing because you’re simply paying for marginal returns. If you have the budget, it’s better to go big and choose the high-value influencers who provide a clear return on investment.

Since the quoted prices are never final, you should always negotiate.

This is uncomfortable. Nobody likes to ask for a discount. For Igor, it’s one of the most challenging parts of his work, but he forces himself to negotiate all the time.

Igor doesn’t ask for discounts without stating his offer upfront. So, rather than asking, “Can we get a discount?” he’ll say something like, “Can we bring the price down to $ XXX so it fits my budget?”

If you leave it up to the creator, you may end up with just a 5% discount. From there, you’ll have to either accept it or (sheepishly) ask for a bigger one. The latter is not a good look if you’re representing a company, especially one that’s well-known.

As long as your request is reasonable, most people are flexible and will agree. Especially if you’ve booked more than one placement or are interested in a long-term deal. They may also offer additional placements to justify the reduced price. If you’ve worked with them for a while, they may offer discounts to keep you on as a sponsor too.

Asking directly for a discount isn’t the only way to negotiate.

Most of your influencer campaigns will be custom and involve cross-promotion or multi-platform efforts. For example, when we worked with Ashwinn Krishnaswamy, he posted across four platforms: Instagram, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn.

Since they’re custom, you can always adjust the deliverables to fit your budget. Simply ask them if they can do more for the same amount you’re paying, e.g., adding an extra ad placement, shoutout on social media, etc.

Igor is lucky that he’s a marketer marketing to marketers. So, since he follows industry leaders and interacts with content related to marketing, he naturally comes across influencers and creators. Finding potential partners is a piece of cake.

But that’s not to say he hasn’t tried any influencer discovery tools. But the one that has surprised him the most is ChatGPT.

For example, he wanted to follow the trail of Shopify’s sponsorships. So he asked ChatGPT for YouTube channels that had them as sponsors using a relatively simple prompt:

“Share some Youtube channels that had Shopify as sponsor, I need channels related to marketing, business, entrepreneurship, education and etc.”

Another one he tried was asking ChatGPT for LinkedIn influencers. As he says, “Very few discovery tools have LinkedIn and those that have usually find the same people over and over, like GaryVee.”

Here’s his simple prompt:

It found even more when Igor asked ChatGPT to narrow it down to only people with 20,000 to 80,000 followers:

Pretty nifty.

We’ve been banging on the personal outreach drums for years. Still, even looking at my inbox, I’ve been getting irrelevant emails with fake personalization that’s been formatted for scale.

Igor has never used automated outreach tools or lists for compiling potential partners. He only uses a personalized approach. It makes sense after all; in partnerships, the scale is smaller, open rates are higher, and responses are typically positive.

You just need to find a way to contact the right person and make sure they see your message.

After working with so many partners, Igor has some outreach tips.

First, keep it short. Like really short. Just send a brief introduction followed by explaining what you want. Your goal is to start the conversation. You can discuss everything else later on.

Second, always start with the best communication channel. Igor’s first choice is email. Yo can find their personal email address or find one that’s dedicated to partnerships/sponsorships, typically found in the “Contact Us” section of a website.

His second choice is LinkedIn, as they allow you to add a short note to the connection request. There is a 300 character limit and the preview doesn’t display the full message. So, make sure your intention is clear from the start.

To keep it short, you can skip your introduction. Your LinkedIn profile should make it clear who you are anyway.

X and Facebook DMs are less ideal, as they send your messages to the “requests” folder. These may sit anywhere a day to a year (or never), depending on how often it gets checked. Comparing between the two, X is still better as you can tag the person you want to contact in a post.

Website forms are the least efficient. Response rates are low and it takes ages to get a reply. It’s also difficult to track as most websites do not send a confirmation email. Igor only uses them as a last resort.

Finally, ask for introductions. Creators often know each other. So, the more partnerships you have, the higher your chances of knowing someone who can make the necessary introduction. Look for mutual friends or followers, and you should be able to find a person you can ask for an intro.

Some partners have a process for reporting and will send you updates on a schedule. Others will need a few reminders.

Generally speaking, the smaller the budget, the fewer the reports you’ll be receiving. This is why Igor recommends discussing this early on with every partner.

Igor likes LinkedIn campaigns because LinkedIn posts provide immediate, trackable results: views, reactions, comments, etc. Likewise for YouTube, where metrics like views and engagement are clear. This allows us to gauge campaign performance.

For newsletters, we are solely reliant on the data our partners provide. While we can double check clicks with analytics, it’s not foolproof. So it’s an area where we don’t have as much visibility.

Igor is still unsure about podcast sponsorship. The main reason is simply due to our name and its pronunciation. Podcasts often rely on brand awareness. Since Ahrefs is not a widely recognized name, and the pronunciation differs from person to person, it can be difficult for listeners to remember or search for it.

The only exception is if it’s a video podcast, such as the WAN Show on YouTube where listeners/viewers can see our logo and associate the name visually.

Ultimately, the reports sent by our partners help us evaluate the campaigns we’re running. But creating these reports also lets our partners check if the campaign went how they planned. There were several occasions where we got free placements because our partners were dissatisfied and wanted to deliver better results.

Analyzing these reports also makes it easier to evaluate future partnerships. They help you compare prices and understand what results you can expect from a certain type of campaign.

The constant responsibility of making decisions is the most exhausting part of sponsoring creators.

In Igor’s own words:

Igor’s solution for this fatigue was a mental one. Recognizing and accepting that it was part of the role made the job easier. The other step he took was to change his thinking from “How do I respond to this email?” to “What decision do I make here?”

While nothing changed (in practical terms), it gave him more agency and made him feel more in charge.

Final thoughts

Like most budgets, our partnerships budget is limited. So, we want to get the most out of it.

That’s why we constantly try different things and change our approach several times a year. We’ve tried different price ranges, different mediums, and different messaging.

But we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg. There’s still a lot to explore:

Do long-term partnerships perform better than one-off campaigns?Is a pre-roll ad in a video about AI tools better than a dedicated video explaining how Ahrefs works?Will people in France engage with swag giveaways more than people in Germany?

The answer to these questions lies in trying different things and checking the results. No matter whether your experiments fail or succeed, you’re still improving your brand awareness as long as you manage to reach your target audience.