At the NAED Marketing Summit, VP of Marketing Jeanette Abrahamsen hosted a session about influencer marketing. So many people submitted questions that we didn't have time to answer them all during the Q&A. So, Jeanette answered them here:
Yes, but swag is usually a spark, not a strategy. Sending creators useful gear, product samples, or branded items can generate goodwill and occasional organic mentions, especially when the item is actually relevant to the trade. The strongest swag programs are not random mailers. They are built around a clear ask: try this product, show how you would use it, share honest feedback, or participate in a giveaway.
The key is to avoid treating swag as a substitute for a creator relationship. If you need guaranteed deliverables, usage rights, launch timing, or specific messaging, that should be handled through a paid agreement. If the goal is organic awareness, treat the swag bag as low-cost product seeding and expect mixed results. Some people will post, some will not. That is not failure. It is the nature of organic seeding.
Read More: Trade Hounds, How to Get More ROI from Influencer Marketing in the Trades; FTC, Endorsements, Influencers, and Reviews.
Put real people using real products in the strategy. That includes employee advocates, customers, creators, counter teams, branch teams, product experts, and installers. A Trade Hounds survey with Siemens found that tradespeople responded strongly to ads showing real workers and real jobsites, with practical product information and visible safety gear. That is a strong signal for electrical marketers: polished product shots alone are not enough. People want to see the product in context.
If I had to pick one non-negotiable, it would be educational short-form video supported by long-form, searchable content. The short video earns attention. The longer YouTube video, blog, FAQ, or product page captures the explanation and gives search engines and AI systems something to understand. That combination creates both human trust and durable discoverability.
Read More: Tradespeople Tell All: How to Make an Ad that Makes Them Buy
I would start with employee advocacy because it’s the lowest hanging fruit. Salespeople, branch leaders, counter teams, product specialists, and executives already have context, credibility, and customer relationships. They can teach, answer questions, show behind the scenes moments, explain code changes, highlight product applications, and make the brand feel human. That is especially valuable for smaller B2B companies that may not have large paid media budgets.
External creators play a different role. They bring peer credibility, fresh reach, and a level of trust that a brand employee usually cannot manufacture. The best answer is not either/or. Build employee advocacy first so your company learns how to create useful social content, then use external creators to extend reach, add jobsite proof, and validate your message with the audience you are trying to influence.
Read More: How to Get More ROI from Influencer Marketing in the Trades
In the Trade Hounds app, about 50% of our users have purchasing authority. In medium and smaller contractor companies it’s common for the installers to also be the key decision maker, especially when it’s last-minute spend. Installers can also influence planned spend in larger organizations.
In the trades, installers influence decisions even when they are not the final signer. They are the people who know what works, what fails, what saves time, what causes callbacks, and what they would actually prefer to install again. A purchasing leader may approve the spend, but field adoption can shape brand preference, substitutions, repeat purchases, and how confidently a contractor bids or specs a product.
The ROI shows up when influence moves upstream. If installers already trust a product before the contractor talks to a distributor or rep, the sales conversation changes. You may see more branded searches, more distributor requests, more quote activity, more product page visits, more conversations at the counter, more UGC, and stronger preference in categories where alternatives exist. Do not measure only the last click. In this space, creator content often works as pre-sales education and social proof.
Read More: 6 Ways Manufacturers Can Reach the Next Generation of Tradespeople on Trade Hounds
Yes, and that concern is legitimate. Many commercial, industrial, utility, government, healthcare, and data center projects have strict filming rules. That does not mean influencer content is impossible. It means the content plan has to respect permission, safety, confidentiality, customer privacy, and facility rules from the start.
A smart workaround is to separate technical credibility from restricted access. Creators can film in approved training centers, prefab shops, labs, manufacturer facilities, booths, branch locations, or mockup environments. They can also discuss the application without showing sensitive details. If a data center, utility, or industrial facility allows filming, get approvals in writing, define what can be shown, and avoid job identifiers, screens, badges, client names, floorplans, and security-sensitive equipment unless explicitly cleared.
Influencers can also still talk about the products without actually performing the install in the sensitive location.
Read More: How to Get More ROI from Influencer Marketing in the Trades; FTC, Endorsements, Influencers, and Reviews.
Electricians watch educational content and funny content. They hate corporate fluff. They care about whether something works, whether it is safe, whether it saves time, whether it solves a field problem, and whether the person talking understands the work. They can spot stock-photo marketing instantly. That is why real tools, real PPE, real jobsite context, and practical details matter so much.
They also have a lot of pride in the craft. The message should respect their expertise, not talk down to them. The strongest content usually starts with the problem they already feel: a code change, a nuisance trip, a supply run, a safety issue, a callback, a difficult install, or a way to make the job cleaner and faster. Then the product or service becomes the answer, not the opening pitch.
Sources: Tradespeople Tell All: How to Make an Ad that Makes Them Buy
This is such a good question. ROI is becoming easier to quantify but there are so many valuable aspects that are admittedly challenging to put in your report to your boss. With the economy making conversion more of a priority than brand awareness, sales metrics are the clearest form of ROI. Trackable URLs are great. But one problem here is that manufacturers are left with Amazon links because tracking spend with distributors is still a challenge.
This is why we’re launching a new material ordering tool inside of Trade Hounds. This will make it easier for you to track the buyer journey down to sales at branches. This is similar to what we’re seeing in B2C in TikTok Shop, for example, but for a manufacturer’s two-step go-to-market. This infrastructure, at Trade Hounds and across other social platforms, is still in its infancy. Eventually it will be easier. For now, vanity metrics still count for something.
We measure influencer video views, reach, video completion, clicks, promo code use, landing page visits, quote requests, form fills, product page traffic, and demo requests. Long-term trust ROI is harder to capture but extremely important: increased brand preference, more searchable proof, more credible product education, and repeated mentions from real tradespeople.
I recommend defining the campaign objective before choosing the creator. If the goal is awareness, measure reach, views, and branded search. If the goal is education, measure video retention, comments, and saves. If the goal is demand, use trackable links and custom forms on custom landing pages that you create for each influencer.
Read More: How to Get More ROI from Influencer Marketing in the Trades
The tradeoff is control versus credibility. We had a great conversation about this at the roundtables this week. Lawyers are unfortunately defining what marketing teams are allowed to do. Brands in our industry look inauthentic like they’re walking on eggshells because the culture is defined by the leaders and/or lawyers that think control is more important than authenticity.
I personally feel like brands risk so much more by playing it safe than trusting authentic creators to speak in their own language. The tradeoff is that the influencer won’t follow all of your brand guidelines. That’s kind of the point though. Trust in carefully curated messaging is declining because younger buyers have grown up being skeptical of polished brand marketing. That’s not to say polished brand marketing doesn’t work. It still does in some cases with some audiences. But when we’re looking at targeting younger installers, influencer marketing is a great way to showcase your brand in a way that resonates with this specific persona.
A traditional campaign gives you precision. Influencer content gives you credibility, but only if the creator is allowed to sound like themselves. If you over-script them, you pay for authenticity and then accidentally remove it.
Bought trust is not inherently bad as long as it is transparent. The best creator work is not fake enthusiasm. It is a paid opportunity for a real expert to explain, demonstrate, or review something honestly. Give talking points, product truth, guardrails, and required disclosures. Do not give them a corporate script and expect jobsite trust.
More polished marketing content tends to perform better with a different persona like an office buyer or an executive.
For traditional B2B decision makers, LinkedIn is still important, especially for executives, thought leadership, hiring, industry credibility, and professional conversation.
For the trades specifically, do not stop at LinkedIn. Electricians, contractors, technicians, and installers are watching YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, and Trade Hounds. The right answer depends on the audience and the content job. LinkedIn is strong for executive credibility. YouTube is strong for searchable product education. Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are strong for short-form awareness and creator personality. Trade Hounds is built specifically for skilled tradespeople and is where brands can reach a concentrated trade audience instead of hoping general social algorithms find the right people.
There are creators and experts connected to industrial, utility, and data center work, but they are usually harder to activate than residential and light commercial creators. The reasons are practical: access is restricted, safety rules are stricter, filming may be prohibited, and the people with the deepest expertise may not think of themselves as creators.
My recommendation is to broaden the definition of influencer. In data center or utility contexts, the best influencer may be a field engineer, safety expert, project manager, product specialist, trainer, application engineer, commissioning expert, or respected contractor, not a traditional TikTok personality. Use approved environments, technical explainers, panel discussions, event demos, YouTube interviews, and LinkedIn clips. You can still build influence without showing sensitive facilities.
Start with audience fit, not follower count. Look for creators whose followers match the trade, geography, application, job type, and product category you care about. Review their comments, not just their views. Are actual electricians asking questions? Are contractors discussing the product? Are other tradespeople tagging peers? That is usually more useful than a large but vague audience.
Trade Hounds can help because the platform is already organized around real skilled tradespeople. For broader discovery, search within Trade Hounds, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, trade events, apprenticeship programs, training centers, manufacturer partner networks, distributor branch communities, and your own customer base. Then vet for credibility, safety, communication style, work environment, disclosure practices, and whether they can explain the product clearly.
Trade Hounds helps manufacturers build awareness, preference, education, and demand with skilled tradespeople. Manufacturer opportunities include company profiles, sponsored posts, targeted ads, giveaways, creator or user-generated-content programs, community engagement, product education, peer reviews, and insights from the audience using tools and materials in the field.
The bigger value is that Trade Hounds connects content with a concentrated trades audience. Manufacturers can introduce products, answer questions, learn what users care about, generate authentic content, and support distributor partners by creating demand before the buyer reaches the branch or quote process.
Read More: 6 Ways Manufacturers Can Reach the Next Generation of Tradespeople on Trade Hounds
Question the cost when the creator cannot clearly connect to your target audience, application, or objective. A high follower count is not enough. If the followers are homeowners and you need commercial electricians, the campaign may look successful on views and still miss the business goal.
A simple test: would you still pay this amount if the post underperformed but the content could be used on your website, sales enablement, distributor training, paid ads, and AI-visible educational content? If the answer is no, negotiate usage rights, change the format, choose a smaller creator, or split the budget across multiple nano creators. It does not make sense when you are paying for reach you cannot use, trust you cannot verify, or content you cannot repurpose.
One great piece of advice that I didn’t get into in my session is to consider a commission structure. This removes the risk of paying a flat fee and hoping you get the ROI. If an influencer is incentivized by commission, they’re also more likely to work harder. Some influencers will require a small flat fee plus commission. You can negotiate this with them depending on whether you’re also planning on asking for video licensing rights, or if you’re just asking them to publish the content on their own social platforms.
Commission will depend on the value of the product. Smaller value products will require higher commission percentage, sometimes as much as 50%. Expensive products might only come with a 5% commission. The standard influencer commission rate tends to be about 15 to 20%.
We can run your influencer marketing from beginning to end. Or we can identify the influencers who are a good fit and act as more of a referral service. We’ve worked with brands in a variety of ways and we’re super flexible. For example, one company asked us to find 100 nano influencers that fit their inclusion criteria and manage contracts. Once the influencers signed the contracts, we passed them off to the company to manage the deliverables and payments.
When we run full campaigns, we can do everything from finding the right influencer/s, managing their video deliverables and timelines, taking care of their W9 and taking on the 1099 responsibility, paying their invoice and providing KPI reporting.
Some companies have us manage one influencer. Others have us manage many influencers. Feel free to email me if you want to brainstorm ways we can help. I can jump on a Zoom call too: Jeanette@tradehounds.com.
Make it easy, specific, and low-pressure. Do not ask coworkers to "be influencers." Ask them to answer one question, show one product, explain one jobsite problem, capture one behind-the-scenes moment, or share one practical tip. People freeze when the ask is too big. They do much better when the ask is clear and small.
Give them formats they can repeat: "three things to know about this product," "what I wish customers knew," "a common mistake I see," "behind-the-scenes at the branch," "what this code change means," or "why this feature matters in the field."
Give them permission to not be perfect. The point is not corporate polish. It is human expertise. Film vertically for quick social clips, capture captions, use natural language, and lead with the problem the audience cares about.
Trade Hounds is built specifically for the skilled trades. General platforms make brands compete with everything in the feed: entertainment, politics, family updates, beauty, sports, DIY, memes, and a million unrelated distractions. Trade Hounds concentrates the audience around work, tools, materials, jobsites, pay, product discovery, and trade conversations.
That focus matters for B2B marketers. Trade Hounds is not just a place to post content. It is a community where tradespeople showcase their craft, find products at nearby supply houses, compare pay, access resources, and connect with manufacturers, distributors, contractors, and peers. For manufacturers and distributors, that means better audience fit, more relevant conversations, and a clearer path from awareness to product discovery and buying behavior.
The biggest surprise is how much the industry still underestimates the audience. Electricians and tradespeople are not behind on digital. Many are ahead of the companies trying to reach them. They are already using social content to learn, compare, troubleshoot, evaluate products, and form opinions about brands.
The second surprise is how much less polished content can outperform the beautiful content marketers love to make. A shaky jobsite video from a credible tradesperson can feel more believable than a perfect studio ad. That does not mean quality does not matter. It means relevance and trust matter more. The audience would rather see the truth than a brochure come to life.
It can be both or either, but those are two different buys. If you are paying for access to the creator’s audience, you care about who follows them, where they post, how the audience reacts, and how well that audience matches your target. If you are paying for content creation, you care more about the asset itself: can you use it on your website, in ads, on Trade Hounds, in sales enablement, on branch screens, at events, or in product pages?
Many B2B brands should think of creator work as a content engine, not just a one-time post. A creator video can become a short clip, a YouTube demo, a website quote, a product FAQ, a sales enablement piece, a distributor email asset, and an AI-readable blog post. That is how one creator relationship can create value long after the original social post fades.
It often skews residential and commercial because those jobsites are easier to film, the products are easier to show, and creators have more freedom to capture their work. Industrial content exists, but it requires more planning, more approval, and often more technical framing.
For industrial applications, I would use a more expert-led model. Think application engineers, technical trainers, power quality experts, safety specialists, product managers, and contractors with approved access. The content may be less "day in the life" and more educational: how a product solves a problem, where it fits, what conditions matter, what mistake to avoid, or how to think about safety, uptime, energy use, or compliance.
Absolutely. Companies can start creating employee advocacy programs now. Not every employee needs to post publicly, and not every expert should be forced into the same format. But every company has people with knowledge the market would value: sales reps, product managers, trainers, executives, branch teams, service teams, and technical specialists.
The goal is not to turn everyone into a personality. The goal is to make expertise visible. Build a simple framework: identify willing people, give them topics, provide filming support, create light guidelines, review for accuracy, and repurpose the best content across brand channels. Employee content also pairs well with external creator programs because it lets the brand educate in its own voice while creators validate the message in the field.
As for creator communities outside of your company, start with your customers. You can offer customers product in exchange for their videos. You can create an application on your website and ask customers or other influencers to complete a form that gives you information about who they are and the type of work they do so you can match the creator with the product campaign.
Yes. Trade Hounds content can support a broader digital strategy beyond the Trade Hounds app. The app creates access to a highly relevant trades audience, but the strongest campaigns often extend across LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, websites, partner content, distributor channels, paid amplification, and sales enablement.
A product demo may start on Trade Hounds, get clipped for short-form social, become a YouTube video, fuel a blog post, support an email, give sales reps a talking point, and help AI systems understand the product through crawlable content. That is how brands turn a single moment of influence into a system.
Trade Hounds is a big fan of the omni-channel approach. We have a presence on all social platforms.