The importance of LinkedIn to B2B content strategies means that it’s vital to ha
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The importance of LinkedIn to B2B content strategies means that it’s vital to have a plan for making the most of given platform. And it pays to keep that plan updated and capture new opportunities as they emerge.
Market and customer trends require that we change the way we communicate and interact with our customers The Market Demand personalization Informed and in control Expect superior service Loyal to the next best thing Increasingly social and connected Digital dominance. Digital is no longer just a channel, it is THE channel. Data rich with powerful capabilities to personalize engagement and anticipate needs Customers “Buyers will find nearly 70% of the content they need on their own, with only 15% sent by marketing and only 15% delivered by sales.”
Engage the right customers Targeted to strategic segments and subsegments Intelligence based on behaviors and needs Integrated Go-to-Market’s intent is to drive a customer-centric approach in order to deliver market-leading business results Formatted for the channel yet consistent across channels Responsive to customers needs and behaviors Via the right channel Streamlined and personalized with relevant and actionable insights and solutions True to the brand Deliver the right content and experience Digital Transformation + Content Evolution.
1. Create a Mission Statement & Strategy- Without a mission statement the business can not grow as it is the first impression of any business in digital world. Too many marketers take a similar approach to B2B content marketing. They start with the content, then add strategy when it’s too late. So it’s no surprise that 60-70% of B2B content goes unread.
Before you write one word of content, define your goals and establish measurable objectives. Start with a mission statement. Use your mission statement as a guide for the kind of content you will create, where it will be published, and what business goals it is meant to drive.
Content at different stages of the funnel will have different objectives, so each stage will have its own subset of key performance metrics.
2. Identifying Buyers - The best content comes from a place of empathy with the target audience. Most of the top marketers we interviewed for the Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to Content Marketing said empathy was the most important trait they were looking for in a content marketer.
For B2B content marketing, it makes sense to start at the company level. First identify your ideal company, then map the stakeholders you need to target. Most B2B purchasing decisions involve multiple stakeholders at different levels in the organization.
To really identify your buyers, you will need to ask:
Who is in the buying committee?
What motivates each member?
How do they interact with each other?
How does each member consume content?
For example, software decisions usually involve the ultimate decision-maker in the C-suite, their direct report manager, and the IT staff who will actually use the solution. The executive might be concerned more with cost and reluctance to change, the direct report with increasing efficiency, and the IT staff with making their day-to-day easier.
Once you have mapped the buying committee, you can begin to build personas for each member. Personas are an abstraction meant to represent your “typical” buyer, but they should be based on real information from potential and current customers.
Get the info you need to build personas by:
Asking the sales team who their prospects and customers are
Using LinkedIn to explore roles and hierarchy within an ideal company
Asking existing customers directly through surveys and email
3. Identification of Topics- With a clear picture of your target audience(s) in mind, you can begin to research potential topics. Fedex must have all the answers for the questions buyers may ask. Keep the entire funnel in mind while you research. What does your audience search for at each stage of the funnel? What topics are they researching, and what words and phrases do they use to find information?
Find the questions your content can answer by:
Asking the sales staff for prospect FAQs
Asking customer service to CC you when they answer questions in email
Interviewing existing and potential customers
4. Create Content- Once you have identified your audience and topic, you can make strategic choices about what kind of content you will create and how it will be published.
Use an editorial calendar to guide your planning. It will help ensure you address the most crucial topics, have a good mix of upper and lower funnel content, and create a variety of content types (infographics, videos, blog posts, etc).
Once you have identified your audience and topic, you can make strategic choices about what kind of content you will create and how it will be published.
Use an editorial calendar to guide your planning. It will help ensure you address the most crucial topics, have a good mix of upper and lower funnel content, and create a variety of content types (infographics, videos, blog posts, etc).
5. Amplify Your Content-
The next step in creating stellar content marketing is making sure people see the content you so carefully crafted. Here are a few ways you can promote your content, both organically and with paid promotion:
SEO: Since you created quality content based on your buyers’ burning questions, your content has SEO built in already. As people like and share your content based on its quality, your search engine rankings will rise. Add these features for even more SEO boost:
Keywords in your title tag and meta description
Keywords in your content, including header tags
Crosslinks to and from the post and your other content
Schema markup to help search engines understand your content
Targeted Updates: When you publish on LinkedIn, you can select a targeted audience for each post. This free feature lets you focus updates for each of your audience segments.
Influencer Promotion: Influencer marketing gives content baked-in amplification potential. Realize this potential by making it easy for your influencers to share:
Send the content for their review before it publishes
Let them know in advance when it will publish
Send a reminder on the publication date
Include social messaging templates they can copy and paste
Employee Promotion: Employees are an often-overlooked, but powerful means of amplifying content. Make sure to keep them in the loop when you publish content, and give them template social messages and incentive for sharing. You can also involve employees early in the content creation process. Treat them like influencers (they are), or even encourage them to create their own content for publication on your Company Page.
Native Advertising: Native ads are a paid solution that places your content in the context of what your audience is already consuming. Relevant, highly-targeted content performs well in native ads, because it feels like a natural extension of the reader’s feed. Here’s how b2b brands use Sponsored Content, one of LinkedIn’s native ad formats, to get results.
6. Analyze and Improve- Make sure to use the right metrics for assessment. If Fedex has a goal to generate leads, a post with a lot of traffic but low lead capture didn’t meet its purpose, even though it had high views. In that case, you would identify why the post was popular to use for future content, but also examine why the CTA failed to convert.
Explanation / Answer
For FedEx's B2B Business, provide the following:
1. A LinkedIN Content Marketing Strategy. Describe the strategy in 2-4 paragraphs.
2. A sample post title and description of content.
3. A link you would share (along with what you would say about it in the post.)
4. Which paid LinkedIN product would you use and why?
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