When you’re evaluating potential B2B influencers, it’s easy to be dazzled by millions of followers, big-name collaborations and regular viral posts. Sure, those numbers all look impressive, but they don’t guarantee the creator can drive real revenue for your SaaS brand.
A qualified influencer for your partner program will be someone whose audience overlaps with your target market, whose values align with your brand and who’s genuinely interested in collaborating. Finding these individuals is what separates partner campaigns that generate a good ROI from those that drain your budget and time.
That’s where a clear partner qualification process comes in. It helps you focus on the right influencers, use your resources wisely and improve campaign results. To show what an effective influencer recruitment process looks like, we spoke with Adam Faber, Senior Customer Success Manager at PartnerStack.
How to recruit partners into your influencer program
There are two major ways to find B2B influencers for your program: inbound and outbound partner recruitment.
Inbound means influencers come directly to you. They reach out by email, submit an application through your landing page or fill out a sign-up form. This approach works well if your brand is already popular in your industry or niche, because you'll attract creators who genuinely want to partner with you.
On the other hand, outbound involves proactively identifying influencers who fit your criteria and directly reaching out to them with a collaboration proposal. This is typically the primary approach for smaller or mid-sized brands that aren’t well-known.
“Unless your brand name is already big, most influencers aren’t going to come directly to you,” says Faber. “So you'll need to actively find influencers. That means searching for the right people and making a strong case for why working with you makes sense.”
You can find potential influencers for outbound outreach through platforms like PartnerStack and LinkedIn. PartnerStack, for example, has a network of over 115K active partners and more than 700 verified B2B influencers. You can easily filter by criteria like industry and preferred commission structure to seek out those who will be a match for your program.
Related: B2B influencer marketing for SaaS in 2025.
Key criteria for identifying partner leads for your influencer program
While every business has unique requirements based on its market, product, goals and sales process, there are still foundational criteria you can use to evaluate whether an influencer is a strong fit. The following three areas are a great place to start.
Audience fit
This is one of the most important factors to consider. If an influencer’s audience doesn't closely match your ideal customers, even the best content won’t deliver results. “When you’re working with an influencer, you want a shared audience," says Faber. "The people who regularly engage with that influencer should closely match the customers whose problems your product solves.”
Audience fit goes beyond a match in industry or job title. It also includes location, company size, seniority and whether the audience actually has the authority or intent to take the desired action. For example, if you’re selling to mid-market CFOs in North America, you don’t want influencers whose audience is mostly freelancers in Europe or early-stage startups in Asia.
Use tools like Sparktoro to get insights into an influencer’s audience, including demographics, interests, search behavior and platforms they use. This type of data helps you confirm whether their audience aligns with your target market before you proceed.
See more: The intersection of influence between B2B influencers, thought leaders and partnerships leaders.
Engagement levels and authenticity
A large audience is practically useless if that audience isn’t engaging with the influencer. “In B2B especially,” Faber notes, “you want an influencer whose followers engage and take real action. If someone has 100K followers but no one’s commenting, liking or sharing their content, that’s a red flag.”
Good and authentic engagement levels are a strong indicator that the influencer has built trust with their audience. That trust makes it more likely their followers will take action when they promote your product or service.
So, what should you look for?
- Consistent likes, comments and shares across multiple posts, not just one viral outlier.
- Relevant, thoughtful comments where people ask questions, tag others or engage in real conversation.
- No sudden spikes in engagement or follower growth that could signal bought followers.
About 49 per cent of influencers engage in some form of influencer fraud, such as buying fake followers or paid engagement, according to Statista. You can often spot this by scanning for generic or bot-like comments, disproportionate engagement (thousands of likes, but very few meaningful comments), comment sections filled with accounts that have no profile pictures or odd usernames..
You can also use tools like Influencer Hero or Grin to detect fake engagement and followers accurately.
You might also like: Critical points of trust within your ecosystem.
Purchase intent and brand alignment
This is about how well the influencer fits your brand in terms of tone, values and the kind of content they create. The best partnerships happen when influencers genuinely believe in your product, not when they’re only in it for the payout. Creators who are already fans or who clearly share your brand values are often easier to work with and more effective in promoting your offer.
Here are a few things to consider when assessing brand alignment.
- Does your product or service naturally fit into their existing content?
If they would need to significantly change their tone, audience or content style to promote your brand, the partnership might come across as inauthentic. - Does their personal brand align with how you want your company to be perceived?
For example, if your brand emphasizes transparency and practical advice, an influencer known for hype-driven or vague content might not be the right fit. - Have they worked with your competitors?
This isn’t always a dealbreaker, but it’s worth reviewing. If their audience has already seen them promote similar solutions, your message could feel repetitive.
Brand alignment isn’t about perfection, but about shared direction. If an influencer already engages in your niche, understands your audience and communicates in a way that feels natural for your brand, you’ll likely see better results.
Related: Choosing the right influencer type for your B2B partner program.
Use a trial to measure partner performance
After you've onboarded an influencer, don’t expect results overnight. Give the partnership a proper trial period so you have enough time to evaluate whether it’s working.
“A lot of brands set their trial periods too short,” says Faber. “They’ll check the results after 30 days and make a decision, but that’s usually not enough time to understand what’s actually happening.”
The right trial length depends on your sales cycle. If your product takes a few weeks or more to convert leads, a one-month trial probably won’t give you a complete picture. You may not see the real value until after your audience has had time to engage, explore and make a decision.
“As a general rule, three months is a good starting point,” Faber adds. “You can adjust based on your sales process; shorter if you're selling something self-serve and simple, longer if you're selling something complex that takes time to evaluate.”
A longer trial also gives you the chance to assess other important factors: how easy the influencer is to work with, how responsive they are and whether their audience is engaging over time, not just during the launch window.
If you need a platform to manage influencers and track influencer performance, PartnerStack has you covered. It helps you stay organized at every stage — from recruiting and onboarding to tracking results and paying partners — so you can scale your influencer program more efficiently.
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