B2B's next major growth channel is taking shape inside the creator economy. A growing creator middle class is building audiences around specific industries, professions and problems.
A recent Bloomberg report showed how people with small audiences are earning midlevel salaries through brand deals, affiliate links and personal content. One creator signed her first four-figure partnership with only 8,000 TikTok followers. Another, with roughly 33,000 followers, made about $140,000 from content last year.
This changes the economics of creator marketing for B2B companies. Large companies can work with groups of creators who reach different industries, roles and buyer segments instead of concentrating most of their budget on a few well-known names. Smaller companies can test the channel with creators whose fees fit smaller budgets. Increasingly, those creators aren't just traditional influencers. They're consultants, technical educators, independent analysts, operators and industry experts who have built trusted audiences around specific topics. Both large and small companies can reach buyers through people they already follow and trust.
Advertisers are already moving in this direction. The Interactive Advertising Bureau expects US creator advertising spend to reach $44 billion in 2026, up from $37 billion in 2025. Nearly half of ad buyers now consider creators a must-buy channel, behind only social media and paid search.
Why Creator Marketing Works Differently
B2B buying rarely begins with a sales conversation. Buyers spend weeks or months researching vendors, comparing alternatives and looking for people who have already solved the same problems. By the time they speak with a salesperson, many have already formed opinions about which companies they trust.
Creator marketing fits naturally into that process. Instead of interrupting someone's research, it becomes part of it. Buyers increasingly follow practitioners on LinkedIn, subscribe to specialist newsletters, listen to industry podcasts and watch technical explainers as they evaluate new ideas. A creator can explain a complicated topic using familiar language, answer questions from their audience and demonstrate how a product fits into real work. That creates a level of context and credibility that traditional advertising often struggles to provide.
That lines up with what we've observed at RAD Intel. Our audience insights show that revenue-focused marketing leaders actively seek perspectives from industry experts, practitioners and peers as they evaluate strategic decisions, making specialized creators an increasingly important part of the B2B buying journey.
The Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report also reflects this shift. It found that 73 percent of decision-makers consider thought leadership more trustworthy than traditional marketing materials and product sheets. It also found that 86 percent would be more receptive to outreach from a company that consistently produces high-quality thought leadership.
Creator marketing works alongside paid search, industry publications and other advertising. It helps buyers understand a company before reaching a landing page or speaking with sales.
The Economics of Smaller Creators
Brands have long treated follower count as a proxy for influence. The economics challenge that assumption.
Bloomberg cites an average engagement rate of 3.2 percent for microinfluencers, nearly triple the 1.1 percent rate for macroinfluencers. A TikTok partnership with a creator who has around 50,000 followers can cost more than $3,500, while a creator with ten times the audience might charge approximately $10,000.
Smaller creators offer benefits beyond lower partnership costs. Their audiences often gather around a specific interest, profession, identity or problem. This can help brands reach buyers who would ignore a broad advertising campaign, especially when the creator has direct experience with the issue being discussed.
More Creators Make Selection Harder
More creators also mean more opportunities to waste money. Brands need to know who follows each creator, whether those people match the intended customer, how they respond to recommendations and whether several creators are reaching different groups or the same people.
The challenge is understanding which audiences they actually reach and how those audiences align with the business you're trying to grow.
One poor match can consume a meaningful part of a smaller company's budget. Managing hundreds of partnerships creates a different problem for global brands: how to compare performance and avoid repeating the same mistakes across markets.
Expanding a program requires a repeatable process. Companies need to identify the audience first, evaluate creator and brand fit, track qualified traffic, leads or sales and apply that information to the next campaign. Without that process, every campaign starts from zero.
What This Means for B2B Companies
Smaller creators are earning full-time incomes because more brands are investing in specialized audiences. That makes creator marketing more accessible for companies that once assumed the channel required celebrity-sized budgets.
As the creator middle class continues to grow, finding creators will become easier. Understanding which audiences creators actually influence will become increasingly important. As the creator middle class expands, selecting creators becomes less about finding talent and more about understanding audiences.
Companies that consistently identify the right audiences, measure what works and carry those lessons into future campaigns will build stronger creator programs over time.
