LinkedIn influencer marketing: Untapped opportunity

Investment in influencer marketing is expected to exceed $10 billion in the U.S. this year, surpassing previous projections. But doing it right requires more than money — it requires marketers to constantly evaluate which platforms offer the most impact. While Instagram, TikTok and YouTube have been the go-to platforms for influencers, LinkedIn has emerged as an incredibly viable channel for brand-creator partnerships. 

Matthew Derella, LinkedIn’s vice president of marketing solutions, recently said this is a goal for the platform: “The thing that is coming to LinkedIn is the rise of the B2B creator. … We want to build a really thriving ecosystem for B2B creators.”

With its large professional audience and recent creator-friendly updates to the platform, LinkedIn uniquely supports authenticity, credibility and measurable business results that are perfect for influencer activations for B2B and B2C brands alike. 

Here’s why marketing leaders should leverage influencers on LinkedIn and how to do it effectively:

LinkedIn influencer marketing works

LinkedIn’s reputation as a hub for professional insights gives it a distinct role and immense value in the influencer marketing environment. According to the Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey, credibility and trust top the list of influencer marketing goals for B2B and B2C marketers. LinkedIn’s professional ecosystem is tailor-made to support these goals as the platform’s emphasis on expertise, peer validation, and credentials helps creators establish authentic authority in ways other platforms often don’t

Beyond its audience, new enhancements to LinkedIn’s platform have made it much easier to execute and measure influencer campaigns. Most notably, LinkedIn’s launch of vertical video and a dedicated video tab earlier this year aligns seamlessly with the growing appetite for influencer-made, short-form video content. 

Now, video consumption on LinkedIn is up 36% year-over-year, according to Derella, and the company recently announced it will share advertising revenue with creators because of this growth. This move places LinkedIn among the few social platforms, alongside YouTube and Snap, to do so – further solidifying it as a hub for creators.

Marketers may currently overlook the power of LinkedIn influencer marketing, but they shouldn’t. We’re seeing brands use influencer content on the platform to drive mass awareness and deliver impact at every stage of the funnel. 

LinkedIn in practice: a strategic approach to influencers

Last year, we at Sprout saw firsthand how powerful LinkedIn influencer activations could be, especially for engaging marketing decision-makers and practitioners. We evolved our strategy from social-only influencer campaigns to fully integrating influencer activations across our marketing channels, which involved everything from branded dinners – such as our recent collaboration with Jayde Powell during an event in Las Vegas — to partnerships with thought leaders like Vin Matano, Brendan Gahan, Tameka Bazile and Josh Rangel to help bolster our brand awareness and credibility among core audiences.

We’ve also seen enormous value in some “unexpected” partnerships, like the one we did with Corporate Erin, who brought humor and relatable corporate culture insights to her collaboration with us, which included a faux all-hands meeting during a real webinar.

In total, our creator campaigns engaged over 33 unique creators in 2024, which generated 125 pieces of content and drove more than 4 million impressions and 100,000 engagements. 

We also saw 500 leads generated from influencer activations, showcasing the direct bottom-line impact influencer campaigns can have through LinkedIn.

However, LinkedIn isn’t limited to B2B brands. Consumer-facing brands like Lyft and Sweet Loren’s have successfully used LinkedIn influencers and reshaped how B2C marketers perceive the platform. Lyft, for instance, effectively used LinkedIn to enhance its brand perception, engage a professional audience, and drive deeper, more authentic conversations with potential customers, while partners of Sweet Loren’s encouraged their LinkedIn followers to take a #cookiebreak to help boost their moods and productivity. 

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, here are three tips for maximizing influencer impact on LinkedIn: 

1. Align your influencers with your business goals: Influencer marketing on LinkedIn should directly tie back to your broader strategic objectives. Choose creators whose audience and expertise naturally complement your brand’s business goals, whether that’s brand awareness, lead generation or increased industry credibility.
2. Prioritize cross-functional collaboration: Maximize the impact of LinkedIn influencer activations by moving beyond social and breaking down departmental silos. Ensure your influencer efforts are integrated across marketing, sales and product teams to create a consistent and cohesive brand experience.
3. Leverage content across channels: Amplify influencer-generated LinkedIn content by repurposing it across multiple touchpoints. As long as you have approval in your creator agreements, you can reuse the creator content in email marketing, events, webinars and advertising to extend your influencer partnerships beyond LinkedIn and maximize its value.

Looking forward

LinkedIn represents an exciting frontier for influencer marketing, one where credibility, strategic alignment, and measurable outcomes converge. We’ve seen firsthand the benefits it can bring to brands across market segments, allowing brands to reach their audiences in new, refreshing, and highly impactful ways.

With social becoming such a crowded and competitive space, we as marketers need to shift our perceptions of what’s possible on LinkedIn. Now is the time to leverage the platform’s unique capabilities to drive significant and measurable impact through influencer marketing. Those who seize this opportunity will stand apart, not just as thought leaders, but as brands capable of genuinely influencing their industries.

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