Episode #322:
Cristy Garcia, Chief Marketing Officer at impact.com, explains how influencer marketing can build trust and drive measurable B2B growth. She explores buying committees, ABM, performance-based partnerships, UGC, and customer communities. Cristy shows why authentic third-party voices can become powerful assets across the entire revenue funnel.
“Customer obsession doesn’t happen because you have a transaction. Customer obsession happens because you believe in a brand, you refer business to them because you trust them, and a brand has to show up in different ways to be considered customer-obsessed.” – Cristy Garcia
Cristy explores how influencer marketing can help B2B organizations build trust before buyers reach the sales conversation. She explains how creators can influence complex buying committees, support ABM programs, create reusable social proof, and contribute across the revenue funnel. The discussion also examines how performance-based partnerships connect influencer activity to measurable outcomes and revenue growth.
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[Transcript]
[00:00:10] Steve MacDonald: Welcome, everyone, to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host, and today we’ve got a very special guest on with us, Cristy Garcia. Now, Cristy, you’re the Chief Marketing Officer at impact.com, and you’ve been there for between four and five years, which, congratulations, because most of us CMOs do not last that long.
[00:00:30] Steve MacDonald: You’re a big builder of teams and processes, and good leaders bring in great people and then organize that team in a way that it can be most productive and most effective. What we’re gonna talk about here today, I think that’s really important because what you’ve brought together is something that the world of B2B needs to really learn, and you play a lot in B2C and B2B, but in influencer marketing, and it’s just not as known in the B2B world. We live in the world where we have our channel, right? We have partners, and that’s not foreign to us. But how you’re gonna be talking about it and how you’ve seen it play out in the world of B2B is phenomenal, and that’s why it’s really interesting. We’re recording today here, part six of our Revenue Logic of Customer Obsession.
[00:01:22] Steve MacDonald: Influencer marketing and how that plays into our obsession with customers, our North Star, how that plays directly into revenue growth, is a big part of what we’re gonna be talking about. But what I’d love to do is give you a few minutes just to explain a little bit more about your background before we dig in.
[00:01:40] Cristy Garcia: Sure. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me, Steve. Excited to be here. Coming to you live from New York City, and just wanted to share, to your point around leadership and sort of qualities in marketers, I really do believe the best part of my job is being able to find the right talent, bring them in, teach them the things that they need to know, and watch them thrive and excel. I really believe that’s the best part of my job, and I think I’ve been able to attract the right talent within the right culture on the team to be very successful.
[00:02:07] Cristy Garcia: But to your point around B2B and influencer, I talk to a lot of companies that just have not leaned in yet. They believe that it’s easy for a D2C brand, or maybe it’s better for consumer products because that’s what influencers are known for, right? Makeup tutorials and things, which is a generalization. That could be part of why people tend to think of it as more of a consumer-based thing than a business thing. But I’m very happy to share that there are plenty of businesses and verticals and industries you may not think of that are successfully implementing B2B as a core revenue driver for their business.
[00:02:41] Steve MacDonald: Well, here’s what I’d love to do. I’d love to start out with, in the world of B2B overall, but in B2B, trust is more important than ever to build. And I always like to say this one stat. It’s very current out of the Edelman Trust Barometer: of 32,000 respondents worldwide, 67% think that business leaders like you and me are being intentionally misleading, and that’s significant. Obviously, it’s a big trend in B2B: they’re waiting longer and longer to even want to talk to us because they’re doing all their homework. They don’t trust us the way that they used to, and this has been a trajectory that’s been going in the wrong direction for a long time decades.
[00:03:25] Steve MacDonald: But what it means is that trust, before the shortlist is formed, you need to have awareness and trust built, and there’s a whole pillar that we’re not using to help build trust behind our voice, behind our brands. Tell me a little bit about how trust is built differently, and credibility through influencers.
[00:03:47] Cristy Garcia: Yeah. I think we’re all aware that advertising is probably not as effective as it used to be. I think the primary reason for that, and I blame marketers for it, is how we’ve been inundating people with advertisements, targeting them, following them around the internet, which most people find really creepy, and brands can say whatever they want. Your website can claim you’re the number one this or that. Obviously, there are sometimes legal implications if you’re a publicly traded company and so on, but a lot of businesses can say that they’re the best or they have this technology that does X, and they actually don’t.
[00:04:16] Cristy Garcia: What’s happening to trust is it’s being eroded every time we’re pushing marketing messages in front of people’s faces that they can basically see through as advertisements. That’s what makes influencer and partnerships so important because whenever you’re about to check out a new restaurant, what do you do? You look at the reviews. You want to know from people who have eaten there what the restaurant’s like. You don’t go to the website. Maybe you look at the menu, but then you always go and check out their reviews. Same with new products that are released.
[00:04:43] Cristy Garcia: The same is true for influencers across business products. If you want to see what an actual product is like, you have to go to YouTube potentially and see someone showing themselves using it and saying, “This is what this tool does.” You’re joining a conference and someone on stage is talking about it, but they’ve actually tried the product, they’re promoting the product, and that’s automatically an authentic recommendation over an [00:05:05] advertisement. They’ve already done it. You trust them for whatever reason, because they’re an expert, because you follow them, because they have a huge audience, and so you trust that it’s coming from a place of authenticity and an endorsement, whereas advertisements are intentionally meant to cause you to click on them and download content or fill out a form.
[00:05:22] Cristy Garcia: I think that there’s just this natural inclination for humans to trust other people who have tried products over the content that the brand is writing because the brand can say anything, whereas someone who uses the product is usually pretty spot on about it.
[00:05:36] Steve MacDonald: Now, it’s really easy to understand in the world of B2C that an influencer is using the product. And in the world of B2B, we can have very complicated products and services. Explain how then, and so that we can understand that it translates well into the world of B2B and all that complexity.
[00:05:57] Cristy Garcia: Sure. I’ll use our company as an example. We’re not super simple. We’re an affiliate marketing platform. We’re also an influencer marketing platform. We’re also an advocate platform where brand ambassadors can refer business and get paid for that business. It is complex, and it can take an entire six months to fully understand what we do here. We just threw a conference, and a lot of creators came because we were gonna talk about how much they should be charging for posts and how to build relationships and partnerships with brands. So we were able to drive some of that. But we also had this session where we were talking about the product and why it’s good for creators to use it.
[00:06:32] Cristy Garcia: So what we did is we hired these creators who were at the conference to talk about the product that we were promoting at the conference, and then we put it on social, whereas they put it on their social channels. We used it as UGC to put it on places like LinkedIn to reach the business audience. But that is a perfect example of how to use it in B2B. Any product can be explained by a creator or a partner. It doesn’t take a PhD or years in your company to explain something that you make very simple to them, and they can then customize to put it in their own words, make it ring true and authentic to their audience.
[00:07:06] Cristy Garcia: So I would say there are really very few businesses that this would not work for. And I think just like in B2C, we’re all consumers. I certainly care about a brand’s positioning, and I care about what they stand for, but I also care that they have happy customers, and hearing those reviews from happy customers is what’s gonna drive me to purchase.
[00:07:24] Steve MacDonald: I was reading a study recently that we trust our peers the same level that we trust scientists, right? And so we’re constantly looking for others that we can trust to help us make the decisions that are very important. What I wanted to bring up is that in the world of B2B, many times the decisions that we’re making are significantly more important, significantly higher risk for us, our own careers, right?
[00:07:51] Steve MacDonald: Do you find that we even are leaning heavier to look for outside indications that we’re making the right decisions at the right time and checking with the right people, because this is a very considered process. This isn’t an impulse purchase that I saw an influencer talk nicely about a purse online. How does that translate over? Is it more meaningful? Is it more meaty? How do you think about that?
[00:08:16] Cristy Garcia: I think, first of all, there’s buying committees in B2B. Yes. So we don’t just sell to one person; we sell to five or six or seven, 10 people, depending on the size of the business. Every person in that buying committee needs to feel confident that this is the right product to purchase, and they can all be influenced by different things. The more touch points you have online, whether that’s through, you wanna be written about by The New York Times Wirecutter that lists the top 10 business products for marketers, or you wanna be in an unboxing video where someone’s trying your product for the first time and you’re seeing them, like, type on the computer, whatever the case is, or maybe they’re just, like I said initially, just talking at a conference about a product that they’ve tried. You need every single touch point that it takes to get from the path to purchase, from the beginning awareness all the way down to conversion.
[00:09:04] Cristy Garcia: And then I would say the next part is advocacy. But the more people that are involved, the longer the sales process, the more you need something like influencer marketing, repeated across multiple influencers talking about your product in a way that makes it interesting for the audience that they’re appealing to.
[00:09:21] Cristy Garcia: But I would say the longer the deal, the more complex, the bigger the buying committee, the more you need an army of influencers, micro-influencers, probably even better than macro for a number of reasons. But I would say that would be the strategy to roll out, and frankly, a lot of other B2B companies are doing it and successfully, as I mentioned.
[00:09:38] Steve MacDonald: Talk a little bit about, is this a marketing thing? Is this something the marketing department’s gonna be really interested in? What about sales? What about customer success? Usually, in a sales environment, if you get really good endorsements or reviews, you wanna use those. The good news about all of this is public, right? These are influencers doing things that are very public, so they can be used in any part of the go-to-market strategy. I love the impact, you’re the biggest B2B example, right? Tell us a little bit about how it has more than just a marketing component of the go-to-market strategy, but how it extends out.
[00:10:16] Cristy Garcia: Yeah, for sure. Depending on where you sit in the business, you have different objectives and needs, obviously. For marketing, it’s awareness and, ultimately, driving leads and conversions for your sales team. And for sales, and building trust. But for sales, they really have to build trust. That impetus on sales is much higher than it is on, like, marketing, who starts the journey maybe through automated means. So when you’re in a sales process, it is critical that you have customers, references, people online talking about you as a business and what you offer.
[00:10:49] Cristy Garcia: Legal, same thing. They’re human beings, so they’re gonna look at something and say, “Okay, what is the risk associated with this?” You could have an influencer talking about the legality of it and why it’s great for legal teams or why it doesn’t really inhibit anyone from doing what they need to do. It’s not just marketing, and creators don’t just fit in the marketing department either. They are outside. They are salespeople. They are introducers.
[00:11:13] Cristy Garcia: They are all over the funnel. It’s very important that you are catering to every different type that you’re selling into, but trying to put it into a bucket, probably not smart, because every day there are new changes in influencer marketing, there are new ways to do it, which is really interesting, and technology has finally caught up. So it’s allowing brands to pay, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this later, but pay creators in a way that’s additive instead of a risk, which has been traditionally thought of in the past.
[00:11:40] Steve MacDonald: So that’s a really good segue. You talked a lot before in our conversation about performance-based partnerships and how we make sure that we’re getting ROI, and that’s still, even today, with all the tools we have, from a marketing perspective, it can be very difficult. We’re all trained. We know we have to have direct impact on the funnel. We have to have direct impact on revenues, the pipeline. It’s measurable. You’ve got to stand in front of the board, your CFO, right? Everyone is looking for that direct attribution to revenue contribution. So is that easier? How does that work in the world of influencer marketing?
[00:12:20] Cristy Garcia: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, historically, it’s still a bit of the Wild West. It’s new as a marketing channel. It’s been around for a while, but it’s new compared to paid search, paid social, or email marketing, for example. What’s really interesting is creators have historically charged what they call a pay-per-post. So they’re saying, “I wrote the content. You owe me money, and I’m putting it on a story, so it’s gonna cost you this versus a post, which is this.” And brands have said, “That’s great because I know that this works, but I can’t prove that it works because I’m paying for the content. I don’t know what happens after people see the content.”
[00:12:54] Cristy Garcia: And that’s where affiliate marketing and partnerships and influencer marketing really play a big role because now what’s available and what’s possible, and what a lot of brands are leaning into, is what we’re calling a post plus hybrid payment model, where, yes, you’re gonna pay an upfront fee for the content. They are working, so they deserve to be paid for that. However, you’re actually paying them more through what we’re calling a performance bonus or affiliate marketing, which is a link that they’re promoting, discount link or free shipping or buy one, get one type of link. People click on it, and then when they buy something, the creator gets a commission.
[00:13:29] Cristy Garcia: So as a creator, would I rather have an upfront payment or would I rather have payment in perpetuity, and while I’m sleeping, a post could potentially raise thousands of dollars or millions of dollars for me in commission. So it helps brands, also creators; it’s a no-brainer, but brands are like, “Okay, finally, I’m only paying commission. I’m only paying based on performance on this one thing happening.” The creators know that there’s a relationship ahead of time where it’s established what the goal of the activation is, and they can then turn back to leadership to say, “Yeah, I paid this amount of money for the post. However, it’s driven this amount of money in sales for us.”
[00:14:06] Cristy Garcia: And because the technology has caught up and because people are leaning into it, it just drives more trust in the channel from a, from an overhead perspective, because, as we know as marketers and others, you know, in business, it’s about the return on the investment, and so this is just a surefire way to be able to prove that it worked or it didn’t work, right? But you’re only paying if it does work. It’s also very foolproof in a lot of ways. I think it’s great.
[00:14:29] Cristy Garcia: Obviously, I think every brand, there’s nothing to lose by trying it. People have concerns around brand, brand protection. What are these creators gonna say? And so some brands wanna script them, and they wanna say, “This is what you say about our brand, and this is how you talk about it, and it has to be in this.” You get very prescriptive with these creators and influencers, and they don’t like that because that’s not how they normally talk, and so it doesn’t sound authentic.
[00:14:53] Cristy Garcia: Again, they know how to talk to their audience. They know how to drive engagement. If a brand is telling them, “This is what I have to say,” they’re gonna sound like a script, and it’s not gonna work. I’d say it’s about trust on both sides: the brands and the creators. But creators, as I said, could stand to make a lot more money through this channel, and brands have a lot more confidence in the channel as a result.
[00:15:16] Steve MacDonald: So do you use influencers to not only link that are there for a purchase, but in the world of B2B, appointment setting, right? Yep. Is, is very, very important. Does it work well on both sides? Sometimes it’s not gonna be a true online purchase, right? You’re gonna have to talk to somebody. It’s a very considered purchase.
[00:15:35] Cristy Garcia: Absolutely. So yes, it’s a trackable event, essentially. So it’s a conversion of some sort. It doesn’t have to be a purchase. It could be that you drove traffic; it could be the result, or that you introduced them to a new audience could be the result, or they clicked on something to download something, or to fill out a form. Anything can be trackable as an event, not just purchase. I sort of lean into purchase because I think of it as, it would be great if this created a sale for me. But it does more than that too, in addition to, it also drives awareness, and I think that awareness is so underrated, especially in B2B marketing, where we’re all held to this very finite line of this is how you must return, and this is, the channels must be trackable, and all of those things.
[00:16:16] Cristy Garcia: Some things just make sense, and I think this is one of the things that just makes sense. If someone is looking for you and looking for your product or service, they’re gonna be looking for other people who have used it. And the more, yeah, in your face, the more authentic, the more types of creators and partners you work with, the easier they’re gonna find that content online. Yeah, definitely.
[00:16:38] Steve MacDonald: So it makes sense to me, right? And the reason I ask is that the people who are listening today are in an account-based marketing mode, right? So they’re not selling to thousands and thousands of small businesses. They’re selling on a more considered basis, and so the model still works. We still have to build trust, right? We still have to make the shortlist.
[00:16:58] Steve MacDonald: This additional voice that is bringing your brand up, I was talking to a four-time B2B CRO the other day, and he said, “Steve, if we’re not known and trusted, we’re not on day one shortlist. If we’re not on the day one shortlist, we’re out.” What I’m really gaining is that being known and being trusted are two different things, but being trusted is the hardest part.
[00:17:22] Cristy Garcia: It is. It is the worst, but the most trusted.
[00:17:24] Steve MacDonald: Yes. Yes. So, are there influencers that work in the world of ABM, that work in terms of higher-end purchases, million-dollar deals, things like that?
[00:17:39] Cristy Garcia: Yeah. Absolutely, and they’re in the same channels as the B2C influencers. They’re on social, but they may be on LinkedIn instead of TikTok, or they may be on YouTube instead of Instagram, because what they’re doing is they’re talking, and they need a video, or they’re showing how something works, and they need a video for that that’s not two seconds. So, I think you have to go where your audience is. But yes, there are plenty of influencers that are part of an ABM motion, and it’s not difficult. ABM is all about understanding your audience and marketing to them, right? And collaborating with, hopefully, a small group, including sales, on how to reach that prospect.
[00:18:13] Cristy Garcia: But it’s just like anything else. If you know that they enjoy drinking wine, you do a virtual wine tasting. Maybe you have an influencer who talks about different types of wine that you can send them to, and later there’s a connection that draws out more of a usage-based conversation. There are plenty of ways to leverage them across the funnel in any type of marketing campaign, including ABM or broad marketing, because, as I said, ABM is also about awareness and trust. If they’re not aware of your product, if they don’t see you show up online, if they don’t hear people talk about you, it doesn’t matter how great your marketing is; you’re probably not gonna win the deal.
[00:18:48] Steve MacDonald: So, this is a good problem to have, but I just wanted to understand how you think about it. If you have all these marketers or influencers that are working on your behalf, there is a library, a collection of posts and things that they have said about you, and one of the hardest things in marketing is we have very diverse teams that all need to use all of this. Yet, almost as the library accumulates, it’s almost harder and harder to utilize the library.
[00:19:20] Steve MacDonald: Because getting access in and not forgetting, not letting what’s in there decay, and things that were said six months ago from a powerful influencer are just as useful today. How do you help your clients maintain that library of trust and awareness that you’ve created for them so that it doesn’t get lost, it doesn’t decay?
[00:19:44] Cristy Garcia: Yeah. I think that boils down to what I talked about earlier: UGC. The best for B2B marketing, I think, is to show on your website that you’re trusted and to show social proof by having videos of partners and creatives talking about you on your own website. When you work on UGC, there’s a different cost for that. That means you’re allowed to take the content and own it for six months or a year. Your work is not done once you sign the contract and a creator posts for whatever. It’s then that you have to take that and turn it into what can be considered a marketing or a sales asset for the next few years, even if it would remain relevant, if it has that longevity to the post, which oftentimes it might in B2B.
[00:20:22] Cristy Garcia: It’s about collecting that library of content, using it across your owned and earned media channels, and just like a good piece of, a good reporter, a good piece of data, you know it can move the needle. The same is true for this content that you’re gonna put out there, that other people are talking about you. So, I’d say that’s one of the benefits of B2B influencers, that you have the ability to do UGC.
[00:20:46] Steve MacDonald: So, I want to make sure that I ask this question and didn’t run out of time, and that is that customer-obsessed organizations in the world of B2B do much better, and the direct correlation with revenue is, it was highlighted by Forrester. They did a customer obsession report a couple of years ago, and they found that customer-obsessed organizations had, I think I remember this correctly, 41% faster revenue growth, 49% faster profit, and retained customers 51% better. So, customer obsession and direct revenue connection are so closely tied, yet they found that only 3 to 5% of companies are actually customer-obsessed.
[00:21:29] Cristy Garcia: That’s concerning.
[00:21:31] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, it’s absolutely amazing, right? So, how does an influencer network help, and you called it a customer-obsessed ecosystem when we were talking before? How does influencer marketing help our goal to be customer-obsessed, and therefore our goal to grow in revenue and connections?
[00:21:51] Cristy Garcia: Yeah. Customer obsession doesn’t happen because you have a transaction. Customer obsession happens because you believe in a brand, you refer business to them because you trust them, and a brand has to show up in different ways to be considered customer-obsessed. It doesn’t surprise me that customer-obsessed organizations generate faster revenue, and it doesn’t surprise me that so few companies are customer-obsessed. But influencers play a role because they can show and create a sense of belonging, and build a community of people who enjoy your brand. Once you’re part of that community, you feel more connected to the brand, and therefore more likely to talk about them as if you know them.
[00:22:31] Cristy Garcia: I think that community, building that community piece, is something that B2B companies are talking about, but they’re probably not leveraging and using as much as they should. It’s about talking to this group and sharing new updates with them, and through influencers, that’s exactly what they do. There’s a direct correlation between people feeling a part of a community, a part of a brand, and being considered customer-obsessed. I think influencer marketing plays a big role in that because they create that community.
[00:22:56] Steve MacDonald: So, here’s the last question, okay? ‘Cause we’ve covered so much territory here that if there was one thing that you wanted the B2B, ABM, go-to-market executives, CROs, CEOs, CGOs, CMOs that are gonna be consuming this podcast, one thing that you wanted them to take away from our conversation today, what would that one thing be?
[00:23:21] Cristy Garcia: Yeah. Consumers are not gonna change how they trust and who they trust. These trust signals have to be there. If you’re not leveraging influencer marketing, you are missing out. The only way that you will create that customer obsession internally is to fully understand your customer, but to also speak to them in their language.
[00:23:41] Cristy Garcia: And, yeah, 70% of, exactly, consumers, or 69%, let’s say 70, actually feel more inclined to trust a creator than they do an advertisement. I think the two just naturally make sense. It’s really important that if you thought maybe it wasn’t for you because of brand safety or brand protection, or maybe you’re in a financial vertical or insurance, which is heavily regulated, there are ways to work with influencers.
[00:24:03] Cristy Garcia: So, I would just say get curious. They’re not going away. They’re only getting bigger. You can look at the projections on things like eMarketer and so on in terms of the billions and billions of dollars that this channel is generating. So, I would say jump on board before you get left behind.
[00:24:17] Steve MacDonald: I love that, and what I wanted to do is I wanted to translate that. When you talked about consumers, the trend is that we all act as consumers. We are buyers. I think that’s a really important thing to say because the way consumers in the B2C world are acting is exactly the way our B2B buyers are acting.
[00:24:39] Steve MacDonald: The other thing is that the mission of this podcast is to bring unique perspectives and experiences and insights together and challenge us to think differently about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. If we can do that collectively, then that’s the rising tide that lifts all boats, and you were an amazing part of that rising tide today, and I just wanted to say thank you for coming on.
[00:24:59] Cristy Garcia: Thanks, Steve. I really enjoyed talking with you, and thanks for having me.