Your buyers decide before they ever talk to you.
B2B buying decisions are shaped by independent analysts, operators, and creators your buyers already trust — in podcasts, communities, and conversations you can’t see and can’t track. We help B2B software companies and service firms earn the backing of those voices, so they’re on the shortlist before the first sales call.
The part of the deal you’re not in the room for
of the buying journey is complete before a buyer ever contacts sales.
of deals go to a vendor on the buyer’s Day-1 shortlist.
of buyers trust what vendors say about themselves. That’s all.
So the question that decides your pipeline isn’t “is our marketing good?” It’s this: when your buyers ask the voices they trust, does your name come up?
For most companies, the honest answer is no — not because the product is weak, but because the twelve people their buyers actually listen to have never heard of them. That gap doesn’t show up in any dashboard you own. It just shows up as deals you never knew existed.
Sources: 6Sense · PwC / Forbes
Attention can be bought. Standing has to be earned.
Standing is whether the voices your buyers trust would vouch for you. It can’t be purchased with ad spend and it can’t be faked with content volume — it’s earned with the analysts, operators, and creators who shape opinion in your market, over time, through work they choose to put their name behind.
Building standing deliberately — as a revenue discipline, not a communications tactic — is what I call Trust-Led Growth.
A system, not a campaign
Every engagement runs in the same order: evidence before strategy, strategy before execution. Never the reverse.
Intelligence
Every engagement starts with an Influence Intelligence Brief: a map of who actually shapes your buyers’ opinions, where competitors hold standing you don’t, and where the gaps are.
Program
A Trust-Led Growth program runs on a monthly operating rhythm: priority decisions with you, relationship work with the voices that matter, earned and co-created content moving through their channels, and measurement built for the parts of the funnel attribution software can’t see.
Compounding
Standing accumulates. Voices who vouch for you attract others. Buyers arrive pre-informed. Your name starts coming up in rooms you’re not in — which is the entire point.
What the voices themselves say
“Our team greatly benefited from Tom’s Influencer Relations training. It was not only helpful to carve out time as a team to address some gaps but also hear from Tom’s experience and expertise. Tom was also fun to connect with and very well prepared for every session. We walked away with plenty of ideas and next steps. Thank you!”
“Tom was an early student of Influencer Marketing, and has truly become a master and leading expert in this field, which is testament to his tenacity and dedication. His approach is always fact-based, tuned to meet the specific needs of a customer or company, such that the programs ultimately implemented have definitive influence on ultimate end users. He is an extremely savvy influence marketer, and a true professional in every sense of the word.”
“Tom is an extremely astute marketing expert who can adeptly identify which areas to focus on to maximise client engagement. Everything I thought about or previously learned about marketing was enhanced by Tom’s expertise and guidance, which has resulted in increased business within an extremely short amount of time. Tom understood what my needs were and built a roadmap that accelerated my business growth.”
“Tom is an authority and thought leader in the B2B influencer domain. He understands the nuance, strategy, and performance frameworks needed to position and implement best-in-class influencer programs that deliver real results. He has a keen eye for the right talent and how to position the right message to evangelize and share a company’s ‘why’ using the latest advances in digital media and marketing strategy. I have tremendous respect for Tom, his forward-looking point of view on industry trends, and his ability to translate vision into engagement. If you’re looking for demonstrated leadership in the B2B influencer marketing space, he is one of the best.”
Questions buyers ask
Isn’t B2B influencer marketing just the B2C version?
No — and the confusion is costly. B2C influencer marketing is paid reach: a personality posts, you pay per post. B2B influence is different in kind. It runs through independent analysts, operators, and content creators who hold real standing with your buyers — people whose recommendations get sought out, not purchased. Influencer programs are one instrument. Trust-Led Growth is the discipline around them: knowing who holds standing with your buyers, earning their backing, and measuring what changes.
Why can’t your PR agency handle this?
Good PR is genuinely valuable — it earns coverage, shapes narrative, and manages reputation with real skill. But it’s a different discipline with a different job. A PR agency can run outreach and land placements. What it isn’t built to produce is the intelligence about who actually moves your buyers, or the long-term relationships that give that knowledge any weight. To most PR firms, a media contact is a transaction — a pitch, a placement, a hit, then on to the next. B2B influence works differently. It compounds through genuine, lasting relationships with the content creators and specialists your buyers already trust — the kind you can’t spin up for a campaign or fake. It’s not that PR falls short; it’s that this was never PR’s job. Fold it into a comms retainer and it simply won’t get done.
How do you measure influence you can’t attribute?
By the standards of the dark funnel: branded search growth, shortlist appearance, self-reported attribution, share of voice among the voices that matter — and what AI assistants say when your buyers ask about your category. Attribution software can’t see the rooms where decisions happen. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make those rooms any less real.
How do you decide who actually has influence?
Audience size tells you almost nothing. Plenty of people with big followings move no one, and some of the most influential voices in a category have a modest audience that happens to be exactly the right people. What we look for is a combination. Do the decision-makers you’re trying to reach actually reference this person in how they think and talk about the problem? Does the person help shape the conversation in the category — the way it’s framed, the language buyers use, how the problem gets defined? And have they earned that standing through a real track record and genuine expertise, not just a knack for posting? When those things line up, you’ve found someone who can actually move a buyer. When they don’t, you’ve found reach — which isn’t the same thing, and won’t do the job. That’s the work most companies skip — they chase the biggest name and wonder why nothing shifts. Influence in your market is more specific, and quieter, than that.
What does an engagement with 551 Media look like?
It starts with a conversation — enough for us to understand your business, your market, and where influence actually plays in your industry. Everything flows from there. Usually the first step is an Influence Intelligence Brief: a fixed-scope map of your market’s trust landscape, delivered in about two weeks. The brief ends with a roadmap. If that roadmap warrants a program, we talk about it then. No engagement starts with a retainer pitch.
Who is this for?
Primarily CMOs and senior marketing leaders at PE-backed and venture-funded B2B SaaS companies who sell considered, committee-decided products — and who suspect their buyers are making decisions in places their marketing can’t reach. If you’re optimizing ad spend, I’m the wrong call. If you’re wondering why great pipeline quarters follow no visible cause, I’m the right one. If you’d rather build the capability in-house than have it done for you, that’s what the Impact Intensives are for — whatever your size.
Find out who’s shaping your buyers’ decisions
The Influence Intelligence Brief maps the voices, the gaps, and the moves — in about two weeks. The findings are yours either way.
Get my Influence Intelligence BriefWe take on a small number of programs at a time.