B2B decision makers show the highest commitment to high-quality information about their business opportunities and challenges, according to recent studies by LinkedIn, Edelman and the Financial Times, among others. Therefore, tame your inner toilet duck, share your high-quality expertise on LinkedIn and expand your organic reach with Thought Leader Ads. And capitalize on your new relationships with social selling.
It is clear that B2B decision makers show the highest commitment recent research among 3,500 European C-level professionals by LinkedIn and Edelman. Nine out of ten respondents indicate that they are more interested in companies that consistently produce high-quality thought leadership content.
The challenges of thought leadership
When these decision makers look for new partners or suppliers, proven thought leaders are often at the top of their shortlist. Anyone who wants to benefit from this faces two important challenges.
Lack of distinction
The first challenge is distinctiveness. According to from Financial Times more than half of all B2B decision-makers give so-called thought leadership content a high grade, and 73% (!) of the 2,000 respondents take the responsible producer less seriously as a result.
Lack of reach
The second major challenge is reach. Both Google and the new ‘AI answer machines’ are answering more and more search questions themselves (zero-click searches). Traditional SEO is less effective and the blogs on your own website therefore generate less and less traffic. Anyone who wants to continue to reach their target group must therefore publish their content in the places where that target group spends their time.
Differentiate from your competitors? Start on LinkedIn
With more than 800 million members, business networking site LinkedIn is a logical first choice if you want to distinguish yourself from the crowd with high-quality knowledge content. Not brands, but authentic experts are increasingly in the spotlight here. People prefer to listen to other people and are also more likely to trust them. Respond effectively with the following 7 steps:
Step 1: align your thought leadership goals with your overarching (content) strategy
Open door? I still regularly encounter organizations that have not recorded in black and white what exactly they want to achieve with their content. Sometimes they don’t even have any messagestructure based on a clear analysis of their distinctive value.
The result: an endless series of ‘content projects’ connected like loose sand, of which no one knows exactly what their bottom-line contribution is to the company’s goals. And therefore do not offer any tools to improve your content effectiveness.
Step 2: tame your inner toilet duck and focus on the information needs of your customers
B2B decision makers are looking for well-founded insights that can help them sharpen their business vision and strategy. According to the Financial Times research, the fact that this often does not work is partly due to ‘insufficient real information’, ‘predictable conclusions’ and, last but not leastthe salt-y content’.
The solution: have your customers surveyed regularly. Preferably by an experienced content professional who is really familiar with the subject and can ask sharp follow-up questions.
Step 3: find and activate valuable experts within your own organization
Involve your own experts in putting together one topical map of the topics of conversation that are really important to your target group. Use a keyword tool to complete this overview, but be selective: stuffing content with keywords no longer works. Ask motivated (!) internal experts if they would like to help distribute that content via their own LinkedIn profile. However, don’t expect your experts to suddenly become content experts after a workshop or course.
Step 4: Invest in quality content, organic reach, authority and brand equity
Success on LinkedIn comes naturally if you consistently share information that is truly valuable to your target group. This requires attention, thorough research and therefore a budget. See this as a long-term investment in the distinctive value of your brand (especially crucial in this new AI era). You also see the Return on Investment (ROI) immediately: in growing organic reach, more engagement and increasing authority. This also immediately sets you apart Google and the EEAT guidelines.
Step 5: Increase the impact of your posts with Thought Leader Ads
Advertising on LinkedIn is relatively expensive. This is mainly because you can target your B2B target group extremely accurately. The new Thought Leader Ads give that opportunity a whole new dimension.
Select the post from you or your experts that generated the most engagement, and give the reach a huge turbo boost. Just like your regular posts, these ‘ads’ simply appear in the feed of your target group. The average engagement and CTR are therefore much higher than other forms of advertising. And the icing on the cake is that the costs are also lower than other ads.
Step 6: develop your target group with effective retargeting options
With your high-quality knowledge posts and ads you build an audience with proven interest in your expertise. Thanks to LinkedIn’s effective engagement retargeting capabilities you can easily approach that target group again with additional information and insights. Organically move potentials to your website and receive them there with well-thought-out follow-up information, insights and a call-to-action. By adding the right (LinkedIn and UTM) codes, you can now also retarget this valuable target group cheaper and more widely via GDN or Meta.
Step 7: get to know your target group better and optimally capitalize on the relationships you have built up
Tracing conversions to specific content and/or campaigns is becoming increasingly difficult. Attribution by Google and Meta is common a wash. Thanks to the codes placed in the previous step, your CRM efficiently links conversions to specific LinkedIn interactions. This increases your insight into the effectiveness of your content and the needs of your target group. You can also use that knowledge for direct sales via LinkedIn. It is not without reason that social selling is becoming increasingly popular. After all, people are more likely to trust proven experts and therefore buy from them more easily.
Reaching the right business decision makers is still possible
Like Google, B2B decision makers focus on high-quality information produced by proven experts. Information without a clearly identifiable sender is a redeemable commodity that ends up in the digital bin.
Start positioning on time
LinkedIn is the perfect place to position yourself as an authentic expert. Reach your target group at an early stage and strengthen your reputation. Get more attention for your services and products. Claim important new tech or market developments. Analyze pain points of your target group and provide practical starting points for a successful sales conversation.
Invest in unique content
Reaching the right business decision makers is becoming increasingly difficult. If you succeed, you only have a short time to convince them. Therefore, invest in unique content that really adds something for your target group. And don’t forget that creating and producing thought leadership content is also a real specialty.
Source: www.frankwatching.com
