All Newsletters
Exit Five Newsletter #155

The Full Framework for B2B Influencer Marketing

June 17, 2025
Exit Five Logo

Presented By

Compound Growth Marketing Logo

Hello and welcome to the Exit Five Weekly Newsletter — read by 42,000 B2B marketing professionals around the world. Exit Five is a membership site designed to help you build a successful career in B2B marketing. Join 5,700 other members at Exit Five.com.

By the way — this email was designed in Knak, which helps you create email and landing pages in minutes without having to write code. Learn more about Knak here.

TOGETHER WITH COMPOUND GROWTH MARKETING

🧑‍🏫 Six Lessons They Don’t Teach You About B2B Marketing

Compound Growth Marketing Guide Preview

You can read the blogs, listen to the podcasts, and still miss the stuff that really moves the needle.

In this free guide , John Short, CEO of Compound Growth Marketing and former VP at Monster, LogMeIn, Yesware, and Workable, has been deep in the B2B trenches: building demand gen teams, aligning with sales, and navigating the politics of reporting up.

In this free guide, he shares the lessons that made the biggest difference in his career, including:

  • How to build good relationships with sales leaders
  • Free templates for reporting, SLAs, and more
  • Stories of both success and failure in his journey
  • How to use the buyer’s journey to generate campaign ideas
  • The foundations of reporting up and getting buy-in
  • The importance of goal setting and how to do it right

If you’re leading marketing, or gearing up to, this is the kind of resource you’ll come back to more than once.

Get the full guide here

🤳 How Storylane's Influencer Program Drives 700k+ Impressions/Month (And Actual Deals)

How Storylane’s Influencer Program Drives 700k+ Impressions

Six months ago, Storylane's Head of Marketing, Madhav Bhandari, had absolutely no clue how to make influencer marketing work.

Fast forward to today, their program generates 700k+ monthly impressions with CPMs between $7–20 (compared to LinkedIn's typical $60–65 CPM).

Here's the exact playbook that’s been crushing it for Storylane:

1. Smaller creators consistently outperform bigger names

They're more affordable, hustle harder, and deliver to hyper-focused audiences. Most bigger influencers charge premium rates for average content.

2. Think "portfolio" not "campaign"

There are way more great creators than your budget can handle. Start small, test various creators, and gradually build a curated portfolio that matches your goals, budget, and audience. This takes time. Don't rush it.

Your reliable "go-to" creators will emerge naturally.

3. The 3-month rule

This gives enough time to assess content quality, audience engagement, and actual business impact before deciding to continue partnerships.

4. Get everything in writing

Getting clarity now is going to save so many headaches down the line. Set expectations up front about:

  • Who owns the content?
  • Can you run ads with it?
  • Will they engage with your company posts?
  • Exactly how many deliverables?

5. Pricing is all over the map

Expect $500–$2,000 per post for creators under 100K followers. Bigger names might quote $5K+ (highest seen: $70K per post). Determine value based on audience quality, not just follower count.

6. Don't skip creator onboarding

Share your knowledge, previous wins, and internal data. Learn about their creative process. Collaboration upfront = better partnerships.

7. This is a full-time job

Managing sourcing, contracts, payments, content review, and feedback compounds with each creator. Don't try to do this on top of other responsibilities. Get outside help if possible.

8. Creative freedom = better content

Over-controlling kills the authenticity that made you want to work with them in the first place. Collaborate on the brief, but let their voice shine through. The results are dramatically better when they feel trusted.

9. Always disclose partnerships properly

Use LinkedIn's brand partnership option. Transparency doesn't hurt results. It builds trust with everyone.

The Bottom Line: Storylane's success comes from treating influencer marketing as a dedicated channel with proper processes, not a side experiment. All creators use or test Storylane before creating content, ensuring authentic recommendations that drive real deals.

P.S. This is the type of content you get in the Exit Five community. Access to Madhav and hundreds of other B2B marketers sharing their secrets for success (and so much more).

📺 UPCOMING EVENTS

📊 [June 24th] SEO in an AI-First World: How to Adapt and Win in 2025

SEO in an AI-First World Webinar Banner

SEO isn’t dead but it is evolving fast.

Large Language Models (LLMs), AI Overviews, and new search behaviors are reshaping how people find (and trust) information online. So what does that mean for your SEO strategy in 2025?

In this live session, Exit Five Founder Dave Gerhardt sits down with Andrei Țiț, Head of Product Marketing at Ahrefs, to unpack what’s happening with search, what you should stop doing, and how to stay visible when clicks are harder to earn.

We’ll cover:

  • How AI is changing SEO and what to do about it
  • Whether SEO still deserves a spot in your marketing budget
  • How to measure brand impact in AI-generated answers
  • Real examples of how marketers are adapting and winning

If your team is wondering whether to double down on SEO or rethink your approach entirely, this one’s for you.

Join Live or Get the Recording

🏢 Open Roles

Who's hiring right now?

🔥 HOT JOBS OF THE WEEK:

The Virtual Hub is hiring a Head of Growth Marketing to lead funnel strategy, run weekly experiments, and scale lead gen across content, paid, and partnerships. The ideal candidate is proactive, data-driven, and knows how to turn B2B service marketing into pipeline that converts.

Quarterzip is hiring a Senior Growth Marketing Manager to build a 0–1 acquisition and monetization strategy, run multi-channel experiments, and turn free signups into paying customers. The ideal candidate is scrappy, data-savvy, and knows how to drive growth in a hybrid PLG + sales-led motion.

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

  • Paramark is hiring a GTM Engineer
  • Paramark is hiring a Marketing Manager
  • Tiugo Technologies is hiring a Senior Web & Brand Designer
  • Ankored is hiring a VP of Marketing
  • Science Interactive is hiring a Producat Marketing Mangager
  • Animalz is hiring a Senior Content Marketer
  • Ceipal is hiring a Director of Content
  • TuMeke is hiring a Senior Marketing Manager (Demand Gen)
  • Boost My School is hiring a Mid-level or Senior Marketing Manager (Demand Gen/Events)
  • Walnut is hiring a Senior Content and Brand Strategist
  • New North is hiring a Growth Marketing Strategist
  • Valence is hiring a Product Marketing Manager

See all open roles

Have an open role and want to make sure the best B2B marketing talent sees it? Just reply to this email and we'll send over more info on how you can post it on our job board + get it in front of 42k+ marketers.

🪪 BECOME AN EXIT FIVE MEMBER

What’s actually inside the Exit Five Membership?

Exit Five Membership Preview

We made you this 131-second video to show you around. Have a peek. 👀

Join 5,700 Other Exit Five Members

Thanks to our friends over at Knak for being our 2025 newsletter sponsor.

Knak Logo

Recent Newsletter Editions

Sponsor the Exit Five newsletter

Want to get in front of 40,000 B2B marketers each week?  Sponsor the Exit Five newsletter.

0 people
are viewing this site
0 people
viewed this page
in the last