Webinar: Developing the Best Content for B2B
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This document discusses developing effective content for display and social advertising. It emphasizes taking a full-funnel marketing approach by mapping content to different stages of the buyer's journey. Top-funnel content should be educational and shareable, while middle-funnel content addresses specific interests and bottom-funnel content helps close deals. Case studies show how targeting different audiences with relevant content at each stage can boost website traffic, ROI and lead generation. The document also provides tips for creating successful sponsored updates on LinkedIn, such as offering value, answering questions, and including clear calls-to-action.
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Webinar: Developing the Best Content for B2B
- 2. 2 Developing the Best B2B Content for Display and Social Ads Deanna Lazzaroni Manager, Global Content Marketing LinkedIn Jen Agustin Group Manager, Marketing LinkedIn
- 3. 3 • Got a question? Submit it in the Q&A box. • Tweet along with #Succeed2015 • Follow us for more: @LinkedInMktg How to Engage with Us
- 4. Let’s Talk About 4 • The B2B Buyer’s Journey • Understanding Your Prospects’ Needs • Display, Social, and the Full-Funnel Marketing Approach • What Works for Display Advertising • What Works for Paid Social • Q&A
- 5. Through the buying cycle 90% The B2B Buyer’s Journey 5 Q: How will this gap be filled? A: Relevant content via the right channels
- 6. Great Content Starts With Knowing Your Audience 6
- 7. Prospects Have Different Content Needs 7 To meet their needs, you need to understand: Know these things, and you’re one step closer to knowing where they are in their buyer’s journey—and what content they need. • Who they are • What they’re doing online and buyer intent
- 8. Mapping Content to the Top Funnel 8 Typical top-funnel buyer needs: • Do I have a business challenge? • Who can solve my challenge? • What should I be looking for in a solution? Education Evaluation Proposal Purchase AwarenessAwareness Education Evaluation Proposal Purchase
- 9. Mapping Content to the Top Funnel Meet top-funnel needs with content that is educational, “ungated,” and addictively shareable: • Blogs • Infographics • Videos
- 10. Mapping Content to the Middle Funnel Typical mid-funnel buyer needs: • I’m ready to start learning about this product/service. • How does this compare to other products? • What other companies have used this solution? Awareness Education Evaluation Proposal Purchase
- 11. Mapping Content to the Middle Funnel Mid-funnel content begins to address specific interests and questions around the product/service : • eBooks • Webinars • Demos • Case Studies
- 12. Mapping Content to the Bottom Funnel Typical bottom-funnel buyer needs: • How much does this cost? • Do I need to get buy-in from others? • I need customer references to make a decision. Awareness Education Evaluation Proposal Purchase
- 13. Mapping Content to the Bottom Funnel Bottom-funnel content is the “deal-closer”: • Evaluation guides • ROI calculators • Free trials • Case Studies
- 14. The Beauty of Full-Funnel Marketing 14
- 15. Direct-Response Addiction • Marketers are overfishing in the bottom funnel via SEO, SEM, email • Relatively few of your prospects are actively on the hunt for a solution today • Not enough prospects – impact can’t scale
- 16. 16 Display & Social Ads Impact Every Stage of the Journey CONVERT ANONYMOUS VISITORS Nurture and convert the 95% of visitors that leave your website ENGAGE YOUR KNOWN PROSPECTS Engage the 80%+ prospects who never open your email GET TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE Reach with precision the people that matter most to your business
- 17. 17 Success Story: MyCorporation Top-Funnel Objective: Reach target audience at scale Tactic: Broadly targeted display offering ungated content
- 18. 18 Success Story: MyCorporation Mid-Funnel Objective: Educate, nurture, and build prospect relationships Tactic: Targeted display based on demographic profile and website visitation patterns
- 19. 19 Success Story: MyCorporation Bottom-Funnel Objective: Get users started with the product Tactic: Incorporate product-oriented offer with a clear call to action
- 20. 20 MyCorporation: Driving Results from Top to Bottom 4000+ new website visitors from display ads 140+% ROI
- 21. Getting to the Right People Via Social Media GET TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE Reach with precision the people that matter most to your business
- 22. Using Sponsored Updates To Deliver Relevant Content In the feed 7x – the amount of time professionals are spending with content on LinkedIn vs. job-related activity Across devices Over 45% of total traffic coming from mobile; 70% clicks from Sponsored Updates via mobile
- 23. Tactic: Promote Adobe thought leadership to marketing DMs Result: After exposure, decision makers were: • 50% more likely to agree that “Adobe is shaping the future of digital marketing” • 79% more likely to agree that “Adobe can help me optimize my media spend” Success Story – Adobe (Brand Awareness)
- 24. Tactic: Promote gated content offers to marketers Success Story – HubSpot (Lead Generation) Result: Delivered 400% more leads – and higher quality leads – within target audience than lead generation efforts on any other platform
- 25. Offer value to your audience The Best Sponsored Updates Give to get: Position your messaging to demonstrate you want to help (e.g. “free”, “easily”) Answer a question for which they have been seeking a solution
- 26. Get personal by calling them out The Best Sponsored Updates (cont.) Use strong messaging to create a sense of urgency Get personal: call out “you” or the specific audience you’re targeting to help messages connect
- 27. Include a clear call-to-action and visuals The Best Sponsored Updates (cont.) Rich media image commands attention in the feed Use first-person language and include a clear call-to-action
- 28. • Case Study Hub: http://lnkd.in/marketingcasestudies • LinkedIn Marketing Blog: http://marketing.linkedin.com/blog/category/linkedin-sponsored-updates/ • New eBook: Featuring six stories of success More helpful examples of what works on LinkedIn:
- 29. Create content for your professional audience Publish organically via your LinkedIn Company Page Amplify to the right people via Sponsored Updates Bonus: A/B test using Direct Sponsored Content Use Company Page Analytics to track & optimize Repeat what works! Five Steps to Sponsored Updates Success
- 30. A Few Final Thoughts • Before you write anything, consider who your audience is, what they care about, and where they are in the buying process. • Take a full-funnel approach to your content mix. • Content marketing is not just about content—channels matter, too. • Deliver value to your audience through relevant content that helps solve problems. • Remember – on the other end of your content is a person. Get personal & make it worth their while.
- 31. ©2014 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved.©2014 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Editor's Notes
- Thanks Jen. Hi everyone, my name is Deanna Lazzaroni and I help lead global content marketing and oversee our social media strategy here at LinkedIn, specifically focused on helping marketers like yourself take best advantage of the opportunities LinkedIn offers to achieve your marketing objectives and reach the people that matter most to your business. Really what my team is focused on here at LinkedIn is creating this full-funnel marketing content Jen has talked to you about and ensuring it reaches the right audience across our social channels, especially LinkedIn. We like to think we “drink our own champagne” here at LinkedIn, so using our own products is certainly integral to our marketing strategy. Today, I’m thrilled to share some best practices we have learned in using our products for our marketing, as well as best practices from other brands finding success with marketing on the platform. So, Jen shared with you about the buyer’s journey and examples of display ads that work harder for you at each stage of this journey, driving your prospects further and further through the funnel. As many of you likely know social media can also play a pivotal role in moving people – the right people -- along this journey. Through social channels like LinkedIn, you’re able to understand who someone is based on the information they provide on their social profile and target relevant content to them based on this information. In the next few slides, I’ll talk about how B2B brands are using social media to effectively reach their audiences and convert buyers through the funnel – and how you can do the same.
- The key to success is relevancy. Think about the content that you’ve seen in your LinkedIn feed lately – updates from people in your network, and it’s likely you have also seen updates from brands. Some of these brands you already follow on LinkedIn – perhaps because you like the company culture or you enjoy the thought leadership content they publish from time to time. But there are also probably brands you are not yet following who’s updates you have seen in your feed. These are called Sponsored Updates. Sponsored Updates provide a native solution to brands looking to reach professionals in the feed, where they are investing time every day consuming content that helps them be great at what they do. In fact today, professionals on LinkedIn are spending 7x the amount of time with content vs. engaging in a job-related activity. And they are doing this across devices – desktop, tablet and mobile. We’ve seen mobile only continue to climb, with over 45% of total traffic on LinkedIn now coming from mobile and we also see upwards of 70% of clicks on Sponsored Updates coming from mobile. Since launching Sponsored Updates in July 2013, we have seen B2B brands leverage this product to reach their key audiences on LinkedIn with great success -- driving awareness, shaping perceptions and ultimately driving lead conversion. Let’s dive a bit into the specifics of how they are doing this.
- Let’s take a look at this success story from Adobe. Adobe had goals of increasing awareness and preference with marketing decision makers, so they looked to LinkedIn Sponsored Updates to deliver relevant content to this influential audience. Here is an example of an update they ran during their campaign. As a result of their efforts on LinkedIn, they saw significant branding results. Specifically, they saw that after exposure to the Sponsored Updates, the marketing decision makers in their target audience were 50% more likely to agree that “Adobe is shaping the future of digital marketing” and 79% were more likely to agree that “Adobe can help them optimize their media spend” Adobe was pretty happy with these results. Here we have a direct quote from Maria Poveromo saying not only did Sponsored Updates allow the company to reach the right audience on the right channel, but it ultimately helped move the needle on a primary objective – to inform and educate marketers that Adobe is an industry leader in providing digital marketing solutions.
- This next success story features a campaign run by HubSpot with the goal of converting quality leads. The decided to promote gated content offers through LinkedIn Sponsored Updates to reach this goal, and here you can see two examples of the content they promoted on LinkedIn. As a result of their efforts, HubSpot saw that LinkedIn delivered 400% more leads within their target audience than lead generation efforts on any other platform during the campaign. And the leads were of higher quality, which is important when thinking about how to shorten the sales cycle. Mike Volpe, CMO at HubSpot shares how for him LinkedIn Sponsored Updates made sense because it’s the perfect marriage between LinkedIn’s professional audience and HubSpot’s promotional content. He loves how Sponsored Updates don’t just bring him leads, but quality leads in their B2B market at a cost per lead that he’s happy with.
- So we’ve seen these examples of success, but what about these Sponsored Updates made them successful. I thought I would break down a few best practices using these examples as a guide. One of the most important best practices from a content marketing perspective overall and certainly as it relates to social media content is offering something of value to your audience. Social media is not the place to make the hard sell. Focus on providing value in the feed using a CTA that drives people to click, and let your landing page do the converting. Here in this HubSpot example we see they have done a great job of providing that value by positioning how they want to help ease a pain of many marketers – offering up a free template to use to create infographics in PowerPoint. By answering a question in the body of the copy, they showcase how they are solving for that problem and entice the reader to go download the solution.
- Keeping a conversational tone on social media is also important to success. Take a look at this second example from HubSpot – the company gets personal by calling out “you” in the copy and creates a sense of urgency with the reader, again wanting to be helpful – in this case, helping ensure they don’t get left behind and are prepared for the major shifts ahead in social media. Take note of the shortness of this copy, too. For Sponsored Updates, an image, title and meta description will automatically pull in when you share a link on LinkedIn – so you don’t need to add much text to the share description. Providing a bit of context and personalizing this to your audience is good, but try to keep it under 140 characters. We’ve seen that’s the sweet spot for sharing content on LinkedIn, especially as we think about keeping things snack-able for mobile consumption.
- Finally, it is a good idea to be direct in your copy to point your audience towards the action you want them to take. Include a clear call-to-action. You can also use compelling rich media to stand out in the feed, as Adobe has done here. Again, when you share a link on LinkedIn it will automatically pull in the image thumbnail, but you can also upload a larger image to grab attention – this is especially great if you are aiming to drive awareness and branding objectives and we have seen many brands who leverage rich media see stronger engagement with their content as a result.
- My final slide for the paid social section of this webinar is a quick five-step checklist to help you be successful as you go back and launch Sponsored Updates campaigns on LinkedIn. It all starts with great content, crafting that for your professional audience and keeping in mind how your content can help them succeed. We recommend you start promoting this content organically by publishing as a regular update on your LinkedIn Company Page, then watch to see how it performs. Typically, I look for updates that have an engagement rate above 1% -- and when I see they are succeeding like this, that is when I will have our team put paid support behind the content to ensure it reaches the right people. So this is the amplify through Sponsored Updates step. As a bonus, for those of you who like to tinker and test – we launched a new feature called Direct Sponsored Content earlier this year, which essentially allows you to sponsor an update direct to a specific audience without it first needing to appear on your Company Page. This comes in handy for marketers who want to A/B test content before they put greater support behind it. We do offer some analytics to help you track the progress of your campaigns, so if you are an admin of your Company Page, right from the dashboard you can see how specific updates are performing in terms of engagement. We know that a lot of marketers running social media campaigns want to look in one place for all of their social media analytics, a central dashboard if you will, and so we work with many partners to allow you to run your campaigns, track & optimize performance – AdStage, SHIFT and Salesforce are a few of these partners. As you do test more content and launch more campaigns, keep tabs on what’s working and what’s not – that is one of the great things about digital and social marketing, the ability to gather data and leverage that data to inform better decisions. So as you learn what works, repeat it – and share your own success stories with us. We’d of course love to hear them!
- I’ll turn it back over to Jen to recap things for us.