by Francois Muscat | Sep 16, 2020 | Digital Media Marketing, LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing
LinkedIn recently published an incredibly helpful guide for the marketing industry. It aims to help businesses to create growth in this challenging time and prove their ROI from marketing spend. There are six key areas in the guide, and each area contains strategies, tips and information that could help your business get on track post-COVID-19. This post will focus on the first three areas, so be sure to subscribe to our blog so you don’t miss part 2.
LinkedIn’s key steps to showing the impact of your marketing activities: Part 1
1. Understand the role of marketing in the organisation
Marketing covers a range of aspects within the organisation. As a business owner, you need to be well versed on the role that marketing plays and the impact it can make in building the brand, creating a strategic plan, and managing change in the organisation as well as the media and message planning that needs to be undertaken in the business.
The LinkedIn guide has a run-down of each of these aspects that were just mentioned. If you want to learn more about activities you should be paying attention to (such as creating human connections through your brand) and potential pitfalls you need to be aware of (such as restructuring without losing key employees in your department), it would be a good exercise to work through the guide. It will help you to understand how to use data for brand building and strategic planning. There are actionable tips for the immediate changes you can implement to protect your business, and explains how to apply the latest media findings to tailor your media strategy for the current circumstances.
Understanding the current market situation (through the findings mentioned in the guide) can help you to pivot your digital strategy to be more effective, especially if you have been neglecting your strategy recently.
2. Assess your business position
If you’re creating a strategy for the way forward, you need to be fully informed about the current state of the business before heading off in a specific direction. Whether your budget has been eliminated, reduced or maintained, there are steps you should be taking to move your marketing activities forward as best possible.
The guide has recommendations based on each of these scenarios (eliminated, reduced or maintained budgets) that will help you to aim your post-COVID-19 planning in the right direction for your organisation. The recommendations are aimed at understanding how to strengthen your organic strategy by posting organic content consistently; how to follow best practices for paid campaigns (especially in lead-building) and how to effectively create new brand campaigns if your budget has not shrunk over the last few months.
Implementing drastic changes may not even be necessary, but it is important to understand the data from your operations and to use this information to make accurate decisions that are suited to your current business position. Being flexible and proactive is key in surviving the COVID-19 era in business and learning from previous recessions may help business owners to prepare for the possible financial hardships that could be down the road.
3. Assess your customer base
As business owners who want to connect with our target audiences and grow our brands online, we believe in studying your customers continuously. If you have neglected this, you need to find out what your customers want and how the market has changed. Shifting priorities might provide you with new opportunities to serve your market, but you need to understand any new tendencies and assess if there are viable opportunities to pursue.
Check out the eBook now to start refocusing your digital strategy and remember to keep an eye out for part two of this post where we will unpack more of LinkedIn’s marketing strategy for post-COVID-19 recovery.
If you need help with your marketing, digital marketing strategy, or LinkedIn content, contact WSI OMS for assistance during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
by Marianna Muscat | Sep 15, 2020 | Digital Media Marketing, Social Media Marketing
With over 800 million active users worldwide, billions of downloads, and a highly engaged audience, TikTok is a digital marketing dream. It’s interactive, collaborative, and undeniably addictive. Recently, TikTok also outshined Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Snapchat in the App Store and Google Play downloads.
Does this mean B2B marketers should be taking note? Possibly yes, considering the enormous success seen by the World Economic Forum. The WEF recently garnered over 3.5 billion views of one of their TikTok hashtags at this year’s Annual Meeting and has amassed over 1,5 million followers on the platform.
Based on the demographics alone, TikTok does not seem like the most intuitive choice for B2B marketing. We continue to see growth in the popularity of TikTok with B2C brands as they look to reach their audiences in new ways but as the majority of the audience on TikTok is Gen Z, this means that it may not provide the results a B2B brand would hope to expect. Although, we do need to take into consideration that B2C and B2B buyers both want to experience content that is inspiring, engaging, or helpful that adds value to their lives. After all, much like your B2C buyers, B2B buyers are just regular people too with many studies indicating that B2B purchasing decisions aren’t as rationally driven as we might have previously thought.
When you think about it that way, TikTok’s ability to deliver bite-sized entertaining pieces of content makes it a great tool for B2B businesses. It has allowed B2B brands to have a more flexible and engaging approach to video as an additional way to educate their audiences.
Digital marketing advice: is TikTok good for B2B?
It appears that TikTok could be an interesting new opportunity for B2B brands and businesses. That’s not to say that TikTok will replace LinkedIn as the B2B marketers go to and for many, it probably won’t be a good fit. But whether or not you should try TikTok has less to do with the platform itself and more to do with your brand, the demographic your looking to reach and your resources available to create content.
Learn more about the TikTok phenomenon and find out if whether or not you should include it in your digital marketing strategy. Need help with your digital marketing and social media? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Marelise da Silva | Sep 9, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on social media marketing as brands adapt to the changes in the way that people are engaging with them online.
The unique pressures that brands face have forced some key changes such as the dramatic drop in sponsored content from 35% to just 4% on Instagram, but this also presents an opportunity to optimise digital marketing efforts.
All about engagement in social media marketing
While the volume of social media posts from brands has decreased by an average of 1,8 per day on Facebook, 1,9 per day on Instagram and 2,3 per day on Twitter, there are 7.3 more engagements per post per day on average across all networks and industries, which shows consumers are spending more time online and craving social interaction.
The adage of never letting a crisis go to waste rings true in the digital marketing space, as brands who have duly adjusted their social media marketing content to focus on digital sales have reaped rewards such as the surge in e-commerce, with consumers preferring to order online rather than visit stores. Given the changes to daily routines, the ideal times for brands to post have shifted, with the hours of engagement starting and ending later.
While the situation surrounding the pandemic for businesses and consumers remains fluid, digital marketing strategies should also be agile and ready to adapt to any opportunities that may arise, by using relevant data and insights into consumer behaviour online.
Similarly, there have been several key changes to the various social media platforms themselves, which have also impacted how they should be used to extract value from a digital marketing campaign. You are now able to send marketing emails on Facebook and the new ‘Shops’ feature on Facebook and Instagram allows businesses to highlight their products and services more effectively.
With the landscape itself constantly changing and evolving, effective social media marketing strategy should be continually evaluated and adjusted to be effective.
by Marelise da Silva | Sep 4, 2020 | LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing
The ultimate goal of your social media marketing strategy is your bottom line. So who better to take advice from that Warren Buffet: “An idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan!” LinkedIn themselves share that marketing with a documented plan results in greater overall content marketing success than working from a verbal plan only or even no strategy at all.
LinkedIn marketing is no different despite 43% of marketers agreeing that they have sourced a client from LinkedIn. Can you imagine how much higher that percentage would be with proper planning?
Let The Planning Begin – 4 Easy Steps
- Set up an editorial calendar. Based on your ideal target audience, create a list of topics, events, product launches that will help them reach their goals or overcome their struggle. Organise your content into categories or themes and start filling in the dates with content.
- Create and adhere to brand guidelines. To maintain a consistent look, voice, and tone, use content guidelines and communicate them to your team.
- Delegate. Assign someone (or a group of people) to be responsible for each of your channels. Using the standards set above, empower them to monitor and respond to engagement from your readers.
- Look further afield to source content.With a dedicated curator of content, you can encourage the regions and verticals in your organisation to submit content.
Consider enlisting the services of a digital marketing agency to add credibility to your profile with powerful content, craft strong headlines and a summary that motivates people to read your entire profile, and include visuals and multimedia to illustrate your expertise.
Award-Winning Solutions
Leveraging LinkedIn for business purposes is easy once you have a compelling and bullet-proof content. For more information on how WSI can help you, contact us today.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 2, 2020 | LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing
As a social media marketing platform, LinkedIn is not necessarily the first to come to mind. It has a reputation (unfairly assigned) as a tad stuffy and conservative. However, LinkedIn marketing is a powerful means of driving awareness of your brand and increasing your revenue precisely because the content on LinkedIn is more professional and industry-related. When it comes to digital marketing, 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn.
LinkedIn’s Seven Marketing Opportunities
Whether your goal is to increase your brand awareness or to generate fruitful leads, there is a range of features built into LinkedIn to drive these results.
- Pages– Engage with prospects and existing customers using text, links, videos, and images relating to company news, blogs and vlogs, industry news, research, case studies, etc.
For every promotional-type post, you should share four pieces of relevant content.
- SlideShare– Presentations such as webinars, product how-tos and tips, and infographics can be shared with over 70 million monthly unique visitors to SlideShare.
Link your SlideShare presentations to your website to create credible inbound links.
- Groups– Network and boost your standing as a thought leader in your industry by contributing to conversations in Groups.
- Publishing– Stand out as a trustworthy source in your field by publishing your expertise, experiences, and lessons learned as well as pieces on industry trends.
Publishing is available in 20 languages!
- Sponsored Content and Direct Sponsored Content– While both types of ads may be a single image, carousel, or video formats which appear in the feed of targeted LinkedIn members, Sponsored Content Created is visible on your organization’s LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page; and Direct Sponsored Content is not.
- Sponsored InMail– Used to send personalised content marketingmaterial to your target audiences via LinkedIn Messenger.
- Text Ads– These ads appear on the right-hand side or top of the LinkedIn desktop feed and are charged as PPC (pay per click) or CPM (cost per impression).
WSI
Contact WSI OMS for more information on how to use LinkedIn in your networking and marketing campaigns.
by Francois Muscat | Aug 28, 2020 | LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing
LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, offers a variety of features to help you reach your ideal customers – LinkedIn Pages, LinkedIn SlideShare, LinkedIn Groups, Publishing on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Sponsored Content and Direct Sponsored Content, LinkedIn Sponsored InMail, LinkedIn Text Ads. But, as with all social media marketing aimed to drive brand awareness and revenue, you need to test and measure your results. Only through actively testing, measuring, and refining can you reach the level of success your input deserves.
LinkedIn has built-in features that are designed to filter your audience, measure campaign results, and help improve your ROI.
LinkedIn Website Demographics
To maximise the impact of your LinkedIn marketing efforts, target your strongest prospects. Use the free Website Demographics tool for useful audience insights – industry, job title and seniority company name, size, and location. Use this data to customise and share content which resonates with those most likely to become leads and customers.
LinkedIn Audience Network
You want your Sponsored content and ads to reach more professionals on LinkedIn and all over the web, right?
Get in front of the right people, block the bad matches, and still stay on budget using the LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN – not to be confused with the lawn dressing or a local area network!)
LinkedIn Conversion Tracking
Having used the tools above to make sure you reach your ideal prospects and influencers, you will want to measure the impact of your LinkedIn Sponsored Content and Text Ads.
LinkedIn Conversion Tracking – part of Campaign Manager:
- Records conversions on your website or landing page.
- Measures leads and sign-ups, purchases and page views, installs and content downloads.
- Identifies the demographics (industry, company location and size, job function and seniority) of people who are becoming leads.
WSI
WSI OMS offers award-winning solutions to all your digital marketing challenges. Contact us for more information on how to use LinkedIn in your networking and marketing campaigns.
