You've got your content themes, you've got your campaign ideas...but how do you create the media and content that will stop thumbs and get your audience to engage?

1. KEYNOTE Breaking Through The
Social Feed: Creativity in
Brand Marketing
NEW YORK, NY ~ APRIL 27 - 28, 2023
DIGIMARCONEAST.COM | #DigiMarConEast
Petra Hailu
SR. CONTENT MARKETING CONSULTANT
LINKEDIN

2. Creating Breakthrough
Content on LinkedIn
April 27, 2023

3. Connect with me:
Petra Hailu
Senior Content Strategist,
LinkedIn
/in/petrahailu

4. Creating
Breakthrough
Content:
1 Embrace Emotional Connection.
2 Be Distinctive, Consistently.
3 Get Personal.
4 Break the Format.
5 Bring Your Value to Life.

5. Embrace Emotional
Connection.
1.

6. Human Brains Remember Emotions, Not Facts.
Whether You Laugh Or Cry, Emotional Ads Are Hard To
Forget.

7. That’s Why Emotional Ads Deliver More Revenue,
Profit, And Market Share Growth Than Rational Ads
Source: IPA Databank, 1998-2019 B2B cases
Emotional Strategies Outperform in B2B
0.0
0.6
1.2
1.8
Rational Emotional
Average
No.
Very
large
biz
fx
1.4
0.2

8. 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Low Brand Connection High Brand Connection
14%
64%
of customers with a high
personal & emotional
connection to a brand
are willing to pay a
premium
64%
Source: Gartner Corporate Brand Survey 2017

9. Appealing to
emotions doesn’t
have to mean
making someone
feel emotional

10. Brands are built by appealing to more than business
Business buyers are humans, and they want to work with businesses that make them feel good
Personal
Stories
Passion &
Aspiration
Diversity &
Equality
Community
& Causes

11. Connect by signaling
understanding
Feeling that a business understands
what you’re going through is a
particularly important emotion

12. Humanize Your
Brand Voice
Don’t be afraid to let some
personality shine through to boost
relatability

13. Be Distinctive,
Consistently.
2.

14. For An Ad To Work, It Must Be Attributed To Your Brand.
That’s Why You Need “Fluent Devices,” Like Logos, Characters, Iconography, Etc.

15. Long-term campaigns with fluent devices are much more likely to achieve profit gain. Business effects data from the IPA’s effectiveness database. Lemon, IPA, 2019
By Strengthening The Link between Your Brand And Your
Content, “Fluent Devices” Increase Your Market Share.
Market Share Gain
0%
20%
40%
Fluent Device No Fluent
Device
%
Achieving
VL
effects
on
each
29.7%
39.2%

16. In the LinkedIn feed, you need to
maximize the most valuable real estate
Assume that your
audience will NOT
consume your
content in a linear
fashion
Invest in
developing the
most prominent
real estate – the
visual space
And you will read this last
You will read
this first
And then you will read this
Then this one

17. Creative Tip: Adopt a
Distinct, Ownable,
Repeatable Look
84% of ads don’t even get associated with or remembered in context of
the brand that produced them.
Ehrenberg-Bass Institute study, quoted in ‘How Brands Grow’

18. Get Personal.
3.

19. Communicating
personal benefits
of your brand to your
clients delivers
The brand helps me achieve my goals
The brand provides me with some emotional
benefit.
The brand helps me present myself to others as
the person I want to be.
The brand makes my life more
meaningful.
3x
based on the values or
achievements of the company.
the brand
connection
of a brand
Source: Gartner Corporate Brand Survey 2017

20. Be helpful and relevant to your audience by
solving their pain points and igniting their
passion points

21. Address customer
pain points
Salesforce for Service uses a
series of real world dating
videos as analogies for
common customer service
pitfalls

22. Creative Tip:
Be concise.
Be compelling.
Be clear.
Aim to keep intro copy <150
characters and offer a clear
value proposition for your
content.

23. Creative Tip:
Call out Your Audiences
LinkedIn LMS has seen a
53% increase in CTR
using audience call-outs

24. Creative Tip: Use
Hashtags to Help
Easy way for members to quickly
discern what they content will be
about
+2.9%
#Campaign
Click-Through
Rate Gain
+1.5%
Viral Action
Gain
#Topic
Use the hashtag as a sign-
off to reinforce your
campaign moniker
Quickly signal what the
content is about
TIP: including hashtags
within middle of copy vs
beginning or end has
proven to be most
effective

25. Break the Format.
4.

26. B2B Customers make it through 70%+ of the purchase process before they reach out, consuming 10+
pieces of content along the way
No matter how great the creative, a single brand touchpoint is
not enough

27. Creative Tip:
Go beyond the static
LinkedIn members spend
almost
compared to time spent
with static Sponsored
Content
3X
more time
watching
video ads

28. Drag and drop your
Samsung screenshot
into this photo
placeholder
Micro-form brand
videos help lift view
rates
Lift in View Rate
for ads 10-15s
Lift in View Rate
for ads 15-30s
28% 16%
10-15 sec 15-30 sec
Source: VidMob Video Research 2020

29. Repurpose and atomize your ‘big rock’ content
Additive content can be assembled
together to form a larger anchor
asset
Anchor assets can get
broken down to maximize
their use

30. ✓ Microsoft Teams
showcases how the Teams
product helped the small
business Priority Bicycles
thrive virtually
✓ A single video shoot was
used to produce the hero
video, as well as “how-to”
videos derived from the
assets. Assets were also
used in ad formats.
Hero Video Carousel Ad
Case Study:
:06 Teaser Video Ad
“How To” Videos Using Hero Assets

31. 5.
Bring Your Value to
Life.

32. Social Proof: We adopt
the opinions and follow
the behaviors of the majority
“I’ll have what she’s
having”

33. Social Proof can
sway confidence
and trust in a
purchase
Q7: Below are some different resources related to purchasing a [PIPE FROM HS5].
Which resources influence your company's purchase and how? (N=5,894)
51%
45%
33%
31%
30%
30%
25%
21%
14%
9%
6%
6%
5%
5%
Professional peer…
Vendor experience
Other users
Case Study
Analyst report
Friend/family reviews…
Consultant
Blogs/forums/discuss…
Company mandate
Agency
Advertisement
Promotion
Prefer not to say
None of the above Resources driving
increased trust in
products among B2B
technology buyers
buyers say that peer
validation is a primary
vehicle for increasing
trust of a product.
1 in 2

34. Leverage Social
Proof & Compelling
Proof Points as
Reasons to Act
Proof Points provide a compelling
reason for someone to act – a
demonstrated benefit that companies
like mine have seen by working with
you.

35. Creative Tip:
Set Clear Member
Expectations
Nobody likes to be surprised
after opting into engaging
“View”
“Watch”
“Download”
“Learn”
“Register”
“Listen”
“Apply”

36. A/B testing
Set your goal
Decide
what to test
Create
variations
Run test
Analyze
your
results
Repeat
Test, test, and
then test again
Create, optimize, iterate,
repeat.
#5

37. Summary:
1 Embrace Emotional Connection.
2 Be Distinctive, Consistently.
3 Get Personal.
4 Break the Format.
5 Bring Your Value to Life.

38. Thank you
Connect with me
on LinkedIn:
/in/petrahailu