The B2B world is shifting beneath our feet. Channels that once drove growth-like SEO, outbound, and paid ads-are becoming more saturated, expensive, and ineffective by the day. Buyers have evolved, but most companies haven’t evolved with them.
Today’s buyer doesn’t want another polished case study or a gated eBook. They want recommendations from people they trust. They follow creators, they listen to peers, they lurk in Slack groups and niche communities, and they buy based on credibility-not conversion funnels. They're no longer influenced by traditional corporate marketing. They’re influenced by ecosystems.

And yet, most brands are still trying to force-fit buyers into outdated journeys, optimizing for attribution over authenticity. It’s time for something different. It’s time to surround your buyers with trust-before your competitors do.

This session will break down the modern blueprint for influencer marketing in B2B-not the B2C-style, vanity-metric-driven version, but a methodical, strategic approach designed for complex buying cycles, multi-threaded deals, and long sales windows. You’ll learn how to activate the hidden power of your market by tapping into the voices that already have your buyer’s attention.

Jay McBain famously stated that there are 28 moments of influence along the buyer journey-and companies only control four of them. The rest are controlled by partners, communities, customers, creators, analysts, influencers, and ecosystems your buyers already trust. That stat should terrify you. But it should also excite you-because it reveals where the real opportunity lies.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. Go-to-Market WITH the Market

Instead of marketing at people, co-create with them. This session will show you how to identify creators, experts, and ecosystem voices already engaging with your ideal customers-and how to partner with them for content, campaigns, and distribution. We’ll show you how to reverse-engineer your target accounts’ social activity and connect the dots between them and the people influencing their thinking.

2. Go-to-Network

You already have a network. The question is: Are you activating it? From your C-suite and internal champions to advisors, investors, and customers, you’re sitting on a goldmine of potential influence. We’ll show you how to build repeatable workflows to tap into that social capital, without being cringey or salesy.

3. Stop Obsessing Over Attribution

You can’t track every point of influence, and you don’t need to. Instead of chasing clean attribution, we’ll walk through smarter ways to gather influence data from your customers and use it to inform your campaigns. (Spoiler: simply asking “who influenced your decision?” will get you further than another tracking pixel ever will.)

4. The GIVE-FIRST Playbook

Real ecosystem influence starts with generosity. This isn’t about transactions-it’s about value exchange. You’ll learn the “Give, Give, Give, Ask, Give” approach that AudienceLed uses to build trust at scale, create net-new content assets, and get a 90%+ response rate from even the most aspirational partners.

This isn’t a trend. It’s the new foundation of GTM. The fastest-growing brands in B2B-Crossbeam, Commsor, Catalyst, Reveal, and yes, AudienceLed, are all using these tactics to create surround-sound influence across the buyer journey. They aren’t trying to out-shout the competition. They’re getting invited into trusted conversations.

If you're a founder, CMO, partnerships leader, or marketer feeling stuck in a crowded market, this session will give you clarity and a modern playbook to move forward.

Marketing isn’t dead. But it has evolved.

Learn how to meet your buyer where trust already exists.

Areas Covered  

• The collapse of traditional marketing trust: Why buyers are tuning out SEO, ads, and outbound—and what to do instead
• Understanding the 28 moments of influence: Breaking down Jay McBain’s framework and what it means for your GTM
• Identifying ecosystem influence around your ICP: How to uncover the creators, partners, and voices your buyers already trust
• Reverse-engineering social signals: Tactical walkthrough for mapping who your prospects engage with (based on your target account list)
• Co-creating with credibility: The new rules for partnering with niche influencers, thought leaders, and customers to drive reach and trust.
• Designing influence-first content campaigns: Examples of how to structure campaigns around voices outside your company
• The “Give, Give, Give, Ask, Give” playbook: A proven value-first framework to get high-value collaborators to say “yes”
• Action plan to activate your own ecosystem: Step-by-step, next moves you can implement immediately after the session
  

Who Should Attend    

• CMO
• Chief Marketing Officer
• VP of Marketing
• VP of Ecosystems
• VP of Partnerships
• Director of Partnerships
• Director of Content Marketing
• VP of Channel Marketing
  

Why Should You Attend

Buyers don’t want to hear from you—they want to hear from people they trust.

Today’s B2B buyer is more skeptical than ever. Corporate content is ignored. Branded messages are filtered out. Trust in institutions is declining. And with AI accelerating the rate of noise, your window to stand out is shrinking fast.

If your go-to-market strategy still relies on traditional demand gen, it's not just inefficient—it’s dangerously outdated.

According to Jay McBain, a leading voice in channel and ecosystem strategy, there are 28 moments of influence in a buyer's journey. The average company only controls four of them. The other 24 are shaped by your partners, your community, your advocates—and the wider ecosystem your buyer already listens to.

Think about that.

While you're investing heavily in ads, email sequences, and product-led growth loops, your buyer is being influenced by analysts, niche creators, Slack groups, podcasts, consultants, forums, review sites, and peers. You don't own those channels, but you can earn a place in them.

McBain also notes that over 70% of global trade flows through indirect channels. Translation: If you're not activating influence through partnerships and ecosystem touchpoints, you’re missing the majority of the market.

This event is designed to help you fix that.

We'll walk you through how to map your buyer’s real-world sphere of influence, then show you how to engage and scale trust through modern influencer marketing that’s purpose-built for B2B. Not the hype-driven kind, but credible, measurable strategies rooted in the relationships that actually move deals forward.

Whether you're a GTM leader trying to scale, a founder seeking differentiation, or a marketer watching performance plateau, this session is your wake-up call.

Buyers are listening, just not to you.

Let’s change that.

Topic Background

Buyers are increasingly tuning out corporate media. There’s less trust in establishments than ever, and it’s easier than ever to create a competitive solution with AI speeding things up. To stand out, you need to activate your ecosystem of those who already have the ear of your buyer.