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The Problem of Many

The B2B marketplace is ever-evolving. There’s an overload of content available online and buyers are constantly bombarded with ads, webinars, blogs, etc. As a result, marketers are challenged to stand-out and make their mark with their target audiences.

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For B2B marketers, this issue is exacerbated because of the fact that Sales Cycles can stretch over several months and often involve multiple (on average, seven) stakeholders across various departments as part of the buying committee. All these factors come together to render targeted social media marketing a convoluted task.

What Makes Linkedin Inventory Special?

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In three words: First party data. Linkedin is the only platform where professionals build their digital profiles around their role, company, skills, pro-networks, and aspirations. There’s this palpabile pressure to stay relevant and constantly be on the lookout for your next opportunity — whether that be a new job, brand building, or your next big lead. 

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Leveraging this pool of first-party data on decision-makers at scale is what makes Linkedin a unique social platform. Of course, the trust and safety around data and information plays a big part too.

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Executing your LI Marketing Strategy:

Plan for Objectives: There’s a lot of homework that goes into a campaign before it’s launched. Clearly plan out your objectives from this campaign — what are you looking to achieve with a specific budget, what KPIs you want to measure, etc.

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Find Audiences: Determine who you’re looking to target and what the best approach to targeting them is. Questions to ask include  “what particular roles constitutes my ideal audience, should my campaign be based on seniority? On title? On function? Or on a combination of all three.

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Launch campaign: Here, decide your formats, copies, metrics, and more before launching your targeted campaigns. Ensure your metrics are meticulously maintained to enable incremental improvements down the line.

Investing in the long AND short term is critical

Brand marketing: Creates a memorable link between your brand and relevant buying situations to drive long term growth. This includes thought leadership posts, mission statements, and more.

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Demand marketing: Involved urgency-creation and short-term demand for your product or service. These are commonly targeted or retargeted ads, offers, demos and more.

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A robust Linkedin campaign would involve an 8-10 month window that starts with brand marketing — paid and unpaid marketing, and a pivot to a demand generation phase in the latter half of the campaign period to drive quality leads that actually convert.

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Linkedin Marketing Best Practices:

Reach qualified audience with first party targeting: This could be based on company size, contact title, seniority, interests, and more.

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Determine whether you want to cast a wide net or go niche:

• Audience expansion: Use lookalike audiences to reach new members who look like your most valuable targets
• Matched audiences: Use retargeting to narrow in on your audiences and contact list across CRM and ABM lists
• Linkedin audience network: Extend your reach beyond Linkedin and into other trusted platforms

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Develop a content strategy for your target audience:

• Follow topics and trending hashtags to join relevant conversations
• Leverage content suggestions on pages to inform your content strategy
• Monitor industry activity by following competitor LI pages
• Of course, posting and engaging with content on a regular basis will always help — whether that’s thought leadership, company culture, product updates, etc.
• Linkedin Live and Events is likely to pick up this year with improved video streaming solutions, third party broadcasting tools, etc. This is also a great channel for live engagement.
• Video, Sponsored content, Sponsored messaging continue to remain effective formats to drive conversion.

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Validate results against your objective: Use Campaign manager or other marketing analytics tools to manage campaign performance and iteratively improve KPIs.

What would a successful 8-month Linkedin campaign and customer journey look like?

1) Leverage Pages to grow your presence and brand amongst audiences

2) Use First-party targeting to garner info and reach potential customers

3) Contact buyers where they’re most comfortable to discuss business — whether on or off LI

4) Invest in video ads to share business story and thought leadership 

5)Intermittently share white paper, case-studies and other valuable content to your audience

6) Showcase product features in a carousel ad 

7) Provide lead gen form for easy registration and data collection

8) Invite targets to a webinar through message ad

9)Visualise the benefits of your product using a spotlight ad

10) Followup post-webinar with conversion ads (white-paper, case study, etc)

11) Resurface relevant resources to the appropriate audience using engagement retargeting 

12) And finally — customer acquisition!

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