OST (B2B influencer frameworks)
B2B influencer marketing rarely looks like its consumer cousin, and the people who matter often do not call themselves influencers. In this Influencer Strategists session, host Gordon Glenister talks with Luke Brynley-Jones of OST, a specialist B2B social agency focused mainly on LinkedIn that has been running creator programs for over a decade. He explains why lead generation through influencers does not work, how long-term brand programs for clients like Salesforce and Dell come together, how to find and measure the right voices, and where the discipline is heading. The highlights below capture the practical lessons.
Key highlights
Luke argues lead generation through influencers did not work years ago and still does not, so OST grew with the clients who used creators to build brand instead, treating it as a long-term relationship rather than one-off paid posts.
The Salesforce program for the UK and Ireland started from a list of around 400 tech and digital-transformation influencers, whittled down by both sides to 20 to 30 long-term relationships built through events, takeovers, and a world tour.
In a pan-European campaign across 6 countries and 5 languages using LinkedIn Live, OST found leaders who did not see themselves as influencers at all, such as Spanish professor Enrique Dans, who has more than 120,000 LinkedIn followers.
The most valuable and hardest-to-secure B2B voices are internal leaders like CIOs and CTOs at major brands, who bring real credibility but need contracts that still let them do independent work, while conflict-sensitive US campaigns lean on independent consultants free to discuss multiple solutions.
Sourcing blends data and manual research, since LinkedIn data is hard to pull, and creator-to-creator referrals work especially well in tight niches like food safety management where the experts all know each other.
Measurement maps each influencer to a funnel role, amplifiers for brand awareness versus niche specialists who drive clicks and conversions, tracked on a dashboard from engagement signals through to CRM conversion, with large numbers of micro-influencers proving very effective.
The biggest performance unlock is pairing subject authority with creator craft: experts who also understand and create content get the strongest results, so OST coaches non-creators, factors video support into budgets, and repurposes creator content into paid in place of traditional ads.
On trends, Luke expects the legal and structural side to grow as B2B influencer marketing moves central to marketing, including contracts and insurance across the UK and varying US state laws, plus B2B-specific tooling that barely exists today because of limited LinkedIn data access.