Live Webcast: LinkedIn's Jon Lombardo and Mathew Greenlay from Aberdeen Asset Management highlight best practice for generating leads using LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: Loan Stars - Tech Forum 2024
How Aberdeen Asset Management create awareness and generate sales leads on LinkedIn
1. Jon Lombardo
LinkedIn,
Content Marketing Lead
Mathew Greenlay
Aberdeen Asset Management,
Director of Integrated Marketing
HOW ABERDEEN ASSET MANAGEMENT
CREATE AWARENESS AND GENERATE
SALES LEADS ON LINKEDIN
3. AGENDA
1. SETTING-UP OUR STRATEGY
2. CREATING OUR DESTINATION
3. PRODUCING COMPELLING CONTENT
4. DISTRIBUTING ACROSS SOCIAL
5. ACHIEVEING AMPLIFICATION WITH LINKEDIN
6. WHAT ARE SPONSORED UPDATES?
7. CREATING GREAT CONTENT TO ENGAGE THE LINKEDIN AUDIENCE
8. TURNING YOUR CONTENT INTO COMPELLING SPONSORED UPDATES
9. TEST, LEARN AND OPTIMIZE
10.CONCLUSION
AGENDA
6. AGENDA
Offer an innovative, valuable and rewarding
route to your audience
“We need to differentiate, and offer value-add experience
to our clients and prospects.”
1/STRATEGY – WHY?
7. AGENDA
Take the whole business on a journey
Educate as you go – be the evangelist
- Compliance
- Marketing
- Legal
- HR
- Customer Service
- Communications
1/STRATEGY – WHO?
8. AGENDA
Do your research – internal and external
Know where the opportunities are
• Competitor research
• What systems and processes do you need to align with?
• Where are your audience?
• What makes you unique?
- What channels will work best for you and how will you use them?
1/STRATEGY – HOW?
19. AGENDAWHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
“This whole series of videos is outstanding. Much like Aberdeen’s global
brand campaign and social sites, stellar in the category of global finance –
refreshing for its Simplicity.
Patti Boyle, LinkedIn user (2015)
“Aberdeen effectively owned the UK audience on LinkedIn over
the period of the campaign”
LinkedIn Account Manager (March 2015)
20. AGENDA
• Take your business on a journey – be the evangelist
• Find out what best works for you
• Agree what can be achieved
• How to maintain quality
• What frequency can be sustained
• Who is responsible
• Test, learn and evolve
IN SUMMARY
25. THREE FEATURES THAT SET SPONSORED UPDATES
APART
ACCURATE PROFILE-BASED TARGETING
PROFESSIONAL MINDSET CREATES A FAVORABLE
CONTENT MARKETING ENVIRONMENT FOR BRANDS
PREMIUM AUDIENCE AT SCALE
26. THREE REASONS TO INCLUDE SPONSORED
UPDATES IN YOUR MEDIA MIX
MOBILE-OPTIMISED ADS AT SCALE
USEFUL FOR BRAND BUILDING, CONTENT ENGAGEMENT
& LEAD GENERATION
PERFORM 3X-5X BETTER THAN TYPICAL DISPLAY ADS
28. Content Matters:
10
74%
90%
Number of pieces of content buyers engage with to
research their purchase.
-Source: Google, Zero Moment of Truth Study
Of B2B buyers choose a vendor that’s first to help
them with useful content.
-Source: Inside Sales
Amount of purchase process that buyers complete
before making contact with vendor.
-Source: Forrester
PEOPLE BUY YOUR PERSPECTIVE FIRST AND
YOUR PRODUCTS SECOND
29. Keys to Great Thought-Leading ContentYOU NOW SHARE YOUR PERSPECTIVE
THROUGH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
PRO TIP: FOR THE 8 CRITERIA OF THOUGHT LEADERSHIP,
CONSULT THE BLOOM GROUP’S BLOG POSTS.
30. On LinkedIn, Speak to the Professional Mindset
-Source: The Mindset Divide: Revealing the Emotional Differences
Between Personal and Professional Networks
LINKEDIN MEMBERS WANT THOUGHT
LEADERSHIP FROM BRANDS
31. On LinkedIn, Speak to the Professional Mindset6 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF WHEN
PRODUCING CONTENT FOR LINKEDIN
32. Build a Sturdy Campaign FoundationDEVELOP AN ‘ALWAYS-RELEVANT’ CONTENT
CALENDAR
47. 5 steps to achieving content maturity
• Strategy
• Destination
• Content
• Social Distribution
• Amplification
48. 1/ Strategy
Why?
Offer an innovative, valuable and
rewarding route to your audience
“We need to differentiate,
and offer value-add
experience to our clients
and prospects.”
49. 1/ Strategy
Who?
Take the whole business on a journey
Educate as you go – be the evangelist
- Compliance
- Marketing
- Legal
- HR
- Customer Service
- Communications
50. 1/ Strategy
How?
Do your research – internal and external
Know where the opportunities are
• Competitor research
• What systems and processes do you need to align with?
• Where are your audience?
• What makes you unique?
- What channels will work best for you and how will you use them?
61. “Aberdeen effectively owned the UK audience on
LinkedIn over the period of the campaign”
LinkedIn Account Manager (March 2015)
What people are saying…
“This whole series of videos is outstanding. Much like Aberdeen’s
global brand campaign and social sites, stellar in the category of
global finance – refreshing for its Simplicity.
Patti Boyle, LinkedIn user (2015)
62. In summary
• Take your business on a journey – be the evangelist
• Find out what best works for you
• Agree what can be achieved
• How to maintain quality
• What frequency can be sustained
• Who is responsible
• Test, learn and evolve
Notas do Editor
Ok, let’s start our journey down the funnel. And, content marketing plays a huge role in driving prospects from one stage to the next. Especially in B2B, it’s key to get relevant, helpful content in front of your target prospects throughout the buy process to build brand credibility and educate prospects.
LinkedIn Sponsored Updates let’s you do this directly in the world’s only professional feed – get your content in front of 300M+ professionals as they’re consuming content in the LinkedIn feed on desktop, tablet and smartphone. You’re essentially capturing people’s attention when they’re most engaged – while reviewing information shared in the feed.
As reflected in the funnel graphic, Sponsored Updates is arguably our most versatile product in that you can design your program to serve upper funnel branding and awareness objectives….or lower funnel, direct response, leads goals, depending on your content approach
Ok, let’s start our journey down the funnel. And, content marketing plays a huge role in driving prospects from one stage to the next. Especially in B2B, it’s key to get relevant, helpful content in front of your target prospects throughout the buy process to build brand credibility and educate prospects.
LinkedIn Sponsored Updates let’s you do this directly in the world’s only professional feed – get your content in front of 300M+ professionals as they’re consuming content in the LinkedIn feed on desktop, tablet and smartphone. You’re essentially capturing people’s attention when they’re most engaged – while reviewing information shared in the feed.
As reflected in the funnel graphic, Sponsored Updates is arguably our most versatile product in that you can design your program to serve upper funnel branding and awareness objectives….or lower funnel, direct response, leads goals, depending on your content approach
Ok, let’s start our journey down the funnel. And, content marketing plays a huge role in driving prospects from one stage to the next. Especially in B2B, it’s key to get relevant, helpful content in front of your target prospects throughout the buy process to build brand credibility and educate prospects.
LinkedIn Sponsored Updates let’s you do this directly in the world’s only professional feed – get your content in front of 300M+ professionals as they’re consuming content in the LinkedIn feed on desktop, tablet and smartphone. You’re essentially capturing people’s attention when they’re most engaged – while reviewing information shared in the feed.
As reflected in the funnel graphic, Sponsored Updates is arguably our most versatile product in that you can design your program to serve upper funnel branding and awareness objectives….or lower funnel, direct response, leads goals, depending on your content approach
Well for one thing, content matters, it creates conversation that leads to long-term customer relationships.
In their Zero Moment of Truth study, Google found that buyers engage with up to 10 pieces of content when researching to decide on their purchase.
But what’s even more surprising is that 74% of B2B buyers tend to choose a vendor that’s first to help them with useful content. So there is such as being as calling dibs on a potential buyer, at least in content marketing.
Not to add pressure, but on top of that the customer is done with as much as 90% of the purchasing cycle before making contact with their vendor.
If there’s one thing we can agree on, the marketer’s job has gotten harder and we are fighting to be a part of that magic number of 10.
So let’s talk about some great ways to develop thought-leading content. There’s many ways to do this, for example:
Relevance- Addressing a burning issue for your target audience is crucial. . If the content isn’t relevant, the reader will immediately shut down and disengage from your content.
Novelty- Having a fundamentally new way to solve a problem could be something the reader may be interested in.
Depth- Possessing substantial knowledge about the problem and how to solve it could be great way to establish yourself as an expert in the field, especially early on in the process when the prospective buyer is just beginning to ramp up and learn more about your solutions.
Validity- Proving your solution works through real examples of companiesthat have solved it your way, especially with measurable benefits. A great example? A case study of a customer who has recently been successful with your solution.
Practicality- Demonstrating you have a well-thought-out approach to overcome the obstacles to adoption.
Rigor- Having hard-to-dispute logic about the problem and the best way to solve it.
Clarity- Communicating the point of view in words your audience understands
Coherence- Having frameworks or models that simplify the problemand/or solution
All of these are great ways to command the attention of your prospective buyers– the common thread? Being helpful and sharing genuine, useful insights for the customer so they have a better understanding of your method of approaching the problem that your product or service aims to solve.
So what sort of content you ask?
While on personal networks they’re looking for information on friends, personal interests, and entertainment updates,
On professional networks they’re looking at career info, updates on brands (26% more so than on personal networks), and current affairs.
Again, we see the theme of members investing time into either themselves or their career.
So now that you have this information, let’s talk about how to actually create the sort of content a member investing time into their professional lives would be looking at.
Does it present new knowledge or assist in decision making? How does it help the buyer
Will it spark conversation? Is it thought-provoking, or are you looking to take a strong stand on an issue?
Would sharing it benefit their professional network? Think not just about the immediate buyer, but their first-degree connections or even their second-degree connections. Leverage the six degrees of separation to tap into everyone’s networks.
Likewise, will it enhance their professional brand?
Does it feed their desire for professional accomplishment? Or, put differently, how does it help the member reading aspire to become better, or learn something to inspire them?
Is it formatted for mobile? I’ll talk about this more later, but as mobile consumption of content becomes more prominent, it’s become not just a convenience but a necessity.
Start by building a sturdy campaign foundation. Here’s some tips you can use.
If you look on the image on the right, that’s an example of a content calendar. You should launch your content in waves, and keep top-performing posts from each wave running into the next week. So for example, if you look at the top line starting on week 1, you’ll see that the it runs into week 2. This is because top-performing posts tend to be useful for multiple audiences, and should be kept in rotation to be exposed to as many of the members included in your target audience. Usually, this is foundational content that we referred to before as Big Rock content, or evergreen content.
It’s also time to think about bidding strategies as well–
If you’re driving leads or content downloads, start with CPC (cost-per-click) bidding. This will help optimize your views for clicks.
If you’re aiming for brand awareness, be sure to bid on CPM (or cost per thousand views). This aims to optimize for impressions to maximize views.
So now that we’ve talked about writing like a journalist, let’s talk targeting.
Targeting is great but there’s some strategies you should familiarize yourself with.
Don’t hypertarget: you should stick to two or three main targeting criteria. Typically, we recommend having a minimum of 500,000 members, but that’s just a guideline. Experiment with what audiences work best for you, and don’t be afraid to change based on your learnings.
Start with a broad target and then after experimenting, refine it over time. More often than not, you think you know who you want to target, but depending on how members respond to your ad, you may discover that certain segments, functions, or seniorities tend to respond better to your content.
Ask yourself if the audience is a good fit for the content you’re publishing, especially after experimentation. (If not, considertargeting new audiences or refining your content to match the needs of the audience you are trying to engage most).
Write brief, compelling headlines. Keep it short so that the audience can easily consume the content.
Use numbered lists, surprisingstatistics and figures, or stake astrong position on an issue.All of these are great ways to command the attention of your readers and even better, incite conversaion.
Share posts or words of wisdomfrom your executives or notablethought leaders within your company. Leveraging the expertise of influencers can be powerful and helps lend credibility to your position.
Call out your audience in your postand headline– it’s the cocktail party effect. Depending on the context, audiences are up to twice as likely to engage with your content if they are called out or fit into the demographic In the article.
What’s in it for the audience if they click on your content? Why should they engage? What will they learn? And I’ll give you a hint– it’s not just how great your product is, but a profound insight that can help educate the reader to become better professionally or personally.
Get Visual– always be sure to include a thumbnail image in your updates. It’s always better to look at, and is definitely more attention grabbing than a wall of text.
So I told you that I would repeat this over and over again in this webinar: Make your pages mobile ready.
You should explain why the content is valuable. Include more on your page than just a lead form. There’s nothing more disappointing than expecting to learn more only to be faced with a daunting lead form. Include context, and materials like videos to help give a taste of what your audience will learn.
Keep your lead forms short to increase conversion rates. This can help increase the number of people who actually read and engage with your content, and actually make it into your leads pipeline if that’s your marketing objective.
Lastly, make sure to take advantage of responsive design. Small text is hard to read on smaller mobile screens, so make sure they’re optimized and ready for both mobile and tablet. Remember, over 75% of Sponsored Updates engagement comes from mobile.
So now that you have this information, let’s talk about how to actually create the sort of content a member investing time into their professional lives would be looking at.
Does it present new knowledge or assist in decision making? How does it help the buyer
Will it spark conversation? Is it thought-provoking, or are you looking to take a strong stand on an issue?
Would sharing it benefit their professional network? Think not just about the immediate buyer, but their first-degree connections or even their second-degree connections. Leverage the six degrees of separation to tap into everyone’s networks.
Likewise, will it enhance their professional brand?
Does it feed their desire for professional accomplishment? Or, put differently, how does it help the member reading aspire to become better, or learn something to inspire them?
Is it formatted for mobile? I’ll talk about this more later, but as mobile consumption of content becomes more prominent, it’s become not just a convenience but a necessity.
So now that you have this information, let’s talk about how to actually create the sort of content a member investing time into their professional lives would be looking at.
Does it present new knowledge or assist in decision making? How does it help the buyer
Will it spark conversation? Is it thought-provoking, or are you looking to take a strong stand on an issue?
Would sharing it benefit their professional network? Think not just about the immediate buyer, but their first-degree connections or even their second-degree connections. Leverage the six degrees of separation to tap into everyone’s networks.
Likewise, will it enhance their professional brand?
Does it feed their desire for professional accomplishment? Or, put differently, how does it help the member reading aspire to become better, or learn something to inspire them?
Is it formatted for mobile? I’ll talk about this more later, but as mobile consumption of content becomes more prominent, it’s become not just a convenience but a necessity.
Always be optimizing your campaign. The most successful campaigns, are those that adapt to the learnings from the campaigns.
Add click trackers to your landing pages. This can help you gain a better understanding of who’s interacting with your content.
Use analytics on your Company page, or on the Campaign Manager to measure performance by post or, by audience.
Shift budget away from low-performing content or audiences, to ones that are performing better or react better with your content.
Try Direct sponsored content to test at scale. It’s a great way to A/B test your content, and see what resonates most with your audience before doing a Sponsored Update.
So now that you have this information, let’s talk about how to actually create the sort of content a member investing time into their professional lives would be looking at.
Does it present new knowledge or assist in decision making? How does it help the buyer
Will it spark conversation? Is it thought-provoking, or are you looking to take a strong stand on an issue?
Would sharing it benefit their professional network? Think not just about the immediate buyer, but their first-degree connections or even their second-degree connections. Leverage the six degrees of separation to tap into everyone’s networks.
Likewise, will it enhance their professional brand?
Does it feed their desire for professional accomplishment? Or, put differently, how does it help the member reading aspire to become better, or learn something to inspire them?
Is it formatted for mobile? I’ll talk about this more later, but as mobile consumption of content becomes more prominent, it’s become not just a convenience but a necessity.
So now that you have this information, let’s talk about how to actually create the sort of content a member investing time into their professional lives would be looking at.
Does it present new knowledge or assist in decision making? How does it help the buyer
Will it spark conversation? Is it thought-provoking, or are you looking to take a strong stand on an issue?
Would sharing it benefit their professional network? Think not just about the immediate buyer, but their first-degree connections or even their second-degree connections. Leverage the six degrees of separation to tap into everyone’s networks.
Likewise, will it enhance their professional brand?
Does it feed their desire for professional accomplishment? Or, put differently, how does it help the member reading aspire to become better, or learn something to inspire them?
Is it formatted for mobile? I’ll talk about this more later, but as mobile consumption of content becomes more prominent, it’s become not just a convenience but a necessity.
A good headline goes a long way – it’s the hook, and the more challenging and intriguing you can be, the more chance you will have of engaging
Challenging the traditional business by supporting the content writing team and taking them on a journey to develop the skills to write for digital and social.