From lead to Link: Using LinkedIn and other social tactics to convert B2B customers

With 400 million professional members globally, LinkedIn is hard to rival for scale and audience targeting. Allan Blair, head of strategy at Tribal Worldwide, says the platform enables marketers to create a dialogue with business customers.

“LinkedIn offers B2B businesses the opportunity to target specific industries, job titles and even individuals with detailed product content. It’s a great opportunity to create a dialogue with their customers around job related issues.”

Producing content quickly, in an agile manner, is something marketers have had to grapple with in recent years, and nowhere more so than in the B2B space where providing insights, generating relevant case studies and setting forth solutions to potential buyers’ business problems is central. Whether organic or paid, social content is playing an increasingly essential role in building that dialogue.

“It’s been a very sudden swing. The chief executive now consumes content from a brand on a mobile, so writing content in a format that can have impact in a relatively short amount of time, rather than something that is printed and consumed over many hours, is one of the key adaptions B2B marketers have had to make,” explains Henry Clifford-Jones, director, marketing solutions at LinkedIn.

This perhaps explains the growth of LinkedIn’s sponsored content updates. Clifford-Jones puts this down to the fact marketers are targeting users with sponsored content while they are in a “professional mindset”, adding that “you have to be able to reach somebody, that decision maker or chief marketing officer, but you don’t want to reach them when they’re thinking about their family – you want to reach them when they’re thinking about work.”

‘Work mode’

Though by far the biggest social network globally by numbers, Facebook’s effectiveness as a B2B platform has been questioned by marketers. Rob Blackie, director of social at OgilvyOne Business, says LinkedIn trumps it for organic reach. Research commissioned by the agency suggests a brand with 100 followers across LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook will get 95 views on LinkedIn for one of its posts, but just 10 on Twitter and one on Facebook.

However, Blair argues, it shouldn’t be overlooked. “Facebook is a much richer platform for speaking to a broad audience at scale. B2B audiences are on Facebook, but usually aren’t using it in ‘work mode’. Nevertheless it is a chance for businesses to create more emotional content around their products and services – things professionals will engage with and share in their personal lives because they say something about them and their industry.”

Laurier Nicas Alder, head of social at TMW Unlimited, argues that Facebook’s keen media targeting means B2B brands shouldn’t overlook its potential. “With a current base of 1.59 billion monthly active users, all catalogued with specific professional interests and behaviours, you’re dealing with a massive database that can be drilled down to very specific audience; that’s hard for any brand to ignore. B2B is just marketing to people like B2C is, but in a different context.”

This idea is echoed by Blackie, who says more of his clients are rejecting the view that B2B is fundamentally different. “We’re marketing to human beings, which means we have to be relevant, human and interesting to keep their attention. That doesn’t mean everything has to be tweet length, but being serious doesn’t mean you have to be boring. However, recognising this doesn’t mean that we should simply dumb everything down and act as if we are selling chocolate.”

Are we seeing a swing to B2B content becoming more emotional and less focused on capabilities? Possibly, argues Blair, who suggests we’re witnessing a shift in tone. “In some ways B2B marketing is becoming more emotional, pulling on the levers that make people feel proud and happy to do their job, but in other ways it’s becoming less like marketing and more like a service. B2B brands are producing content and tools that help people be more effective at their job, and explaining why their products are integral to them. It’s a new way of thinking and a smarter way to talk to this audience.”

Helpful gestures

What’s for sure is that business buyers want to be understood. 68 per cent value vendors that understand their business issues and can clearly articulate how to solve them, according to Forrester.

Clifford-Jones argues that because LinkedIn users are trying to get better at what they do, marketers can succeed by helping them achieve their individual goals on the way to tackling business goals. “Content that is not only cognisant of what the marketer wants to achieve, but also cognisant of what the member is trying to achieve, is the stuff that tends to generate the best results.”

The shift to mobile is one of the biggest challenges facing B2B marketers in the social domain, often leaving them struggling to connect the dots when it comes to buyers moving through the sales cycle. According to Blackie, small gestures can make a big difference in ensuring the user stays engaged with content across various platforms.

“Offering simple solutions such as ‘email yourself a link to this’ work best because they enable readers to move content across devices – typically from their personal mobile to their work laptop. Small gestures and tools like these significantly increases engagement and conversion levels.”

Control

The ability to measure, track and attribute results has moved front of mind for all marketers and as such many businesses are turning to the control and agility that self-serve platforms offer. This is a significant area of growth for LinkedIn.

Despite closing its lead accelerator ad business after just one year, saying it “required more resources than anticipated to scale,” sponsored content updates are the company’s fastest area of growth. Furthermore, it is planning to improve its self-serve capabilities, according to Clifford-Jones, by building on the realisation that there are a large number of companies who want to access the platform in a more “scaleable” way.

“Our strategy is to build one unified platform,” he says, adding that self-serve is “vital” to LinkedIn ensuring it is servicing all types of B2B marketers.

“We realise there are a relatively small number of larger customers who have sophisticated agencies and marketing departments that can work directly with us to invest in campaigns on an ongoing basis. There are many more companies who also have B2B marketing goals who want to access the platform in a more scaleable way than they can do themselves.”

So, do self-serve tools level the playing field for B2B? Clifford-Jones believes so, saying they open up opportunities usually only afforded to large brands. “In days of old there were only a certain number of clients of a certain size who could afford to invest in the Financial Times or buy a TV spot, so to a certain extent, self service gives the power of social marketing tools to all types of companies.”

This feature was first published in The Drum's special B2B issue.