Life moves differently during the festive season. You do less, but it counts for a whole lot more. That’s true of time spent with friends and family, brisk walks in the great outdoors, long meals where you can savour every course and conversation, and the games you’d never play at any other time of the year. It’s also true of the way people engage with marketing on LinkedIn.

The weeks around Christmas and New Year deliver some of the best results for LinkedIn ad campaigns – but a lot of marketers miss out on the opportunity, because they’re thinking about their audience’s time and attention in the wrong way. They rightly assume that people will engage with less content overall as they set aside time for other things. They wrongly assume that this means they won’t engage at all – or the engagement that does take place is somehow less valuable. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. LinkedIn audiences engage more deeply and purposefully during the festive period – and this gives campaigns a unique opportunity to increase reach and influence at a significantly reduced cost.

What really happens to engagement during the festive period

LinkedIn data shows that the engagement rate for campaigns on the platform does indeed dip from mid-December onwards, as audiences spend relatively less time with their phones and laptops – and more time hanging decorations, going to parties and wrapping presents. However, engagement doesn’t disappear altogether – and the engagement that does take place has greater value.

At the same time as the average engagement rate for LinkedIn campaigns in Europe goes down by 19.6%, the average click-through rate for those campaigns actually increases – by 19.2%. How is this possible? There may be fewer people engaging overall, but those that do engage more deeply. They read in depth. They take action. These are the people using some of their quieter moments over the festive season to think deeply and productively about the year ahead. And that adds up to a powerful opportunity to build brands and influence choices.

The key to gaining reach and influence at lower cost

Not only is there real value in the engagement available over Christmas – there’s also a lot less competition for it. All those marketers who assume that campaigns should shut down when the stockings and tinsel go up means fewer people bidding for impressions and clicks from your target audience. In LinkedIn’s second-price auction model for buying impressions, that quickly brings down the cost of a campaign. In fact, the average cost per click for a LinkedIn campaign drops by 16% during this period. Cost per lead comes down by 13.9%. Plot the net impact of all this on a graph and it becomes clear that a period with reduced engagement overall is actually one of the best opportunities to drive engagement for less.

The festive period isn’t just a wonderful time of the year. It’s also one of the most wonderful illustrations out there of the value of always-on marketing; the principle that campaigns do their best work over the long-term. Leaving a campaign to run and run means build up reach and frequency over a longer period, bidding less for impressions and making your budget go further. Always-on campaigns find opportunities to add value – opportunities that you’d miss out on by second-guessing when your audience is ready to engage, and when they’re not.

Marketers know the value of increasing their share of voice (SOV) in order to grow their share of market during the recovery. They know the importance of reaching and influencing the kind of senior decision-makers that use downtime to research their buying choices. The challenge we all face is finding a way to do these things on potentially limited budgets. One of the best opportunities to do so is coming up. It’s a festive gift you don’t want to miss out on.

 

What does it take for marketers to be able to connect their brand marketing investment with their demand generation efforts? How can they ensure that the awareness and mental availability they’re building flows through into interest and action when the time is right? How can they maximise the ROI of performance marketing by zeroing in on the people they’ve already primed to respond?

Connecting brand and demand effectively depends on your campaigns having access to four critical advantages.

The building blocks of brand to demand marketing

Firstly, you need the ability to reach the right audience. For brand campaigns that means all of the potential current and future buyers in your category. For demand activity, it means those with a need and an interest they could be ready to act on. If your objective is to link brand and demand and target the full funnel, then you want to be able to reach both with confidence, narrowing and broadening your audience as required.

Secondly, you need a trusted environment: one that reflects positively on your brand, and one in which people feel confident acting on the content and ads that they encounter. The effectiveness of both brand and demand activity depend on meeting your audience in an environment where they’re primed to pay attention to your creative and your calls to action.

Thirdly, you need the right type of engagement; a mindset that’s aspirational, purposeful and active. It’s a mindset that’s open to both rational and emotional responses, ready to form brand memories – and ready to act on them when relevant.

Finally, and most importantly, you need the data and the tools to be able to leverage these advantages. If you want to connect brand and demand, you’ll need to reach potential buyers and influencer at scale – but you also need the ability to get more specific when you need to. If you can identify and respond to signals of engagement and intent, you’re able to meet your audience where they’re at in the buyer journey. When you have access to multi-dimensional data on those engaging with your campaigns, you have a strong signal of the type of interest they’re likely to have – and what the next step should be. Do all this and you’re marketing to the full funnel and generating value at every stage.

Why LinkedIn is the home of brand to demand

These advantages come together most powerfully on LinkedIn. It combines the world’s largest professional audience with social media’s most trusted environment – and a uniquely purposeful mindset. It also provides the most in-depth data and targeting capabilities for reaching and engaging that audience. On LinkedIn, campaigns are able to reach your full set of current and future buyers and all of the different members of buying committees. They’re also able to respond to robust data signals that confidently indicate when there’s potential interest you should act on.

The second in our series of infographic guides on connecting brand and demand explains why LinkedIn offers so much to full-funnel marketing strategies. It also explains the toolset that LinkedIn provides for leveraging those advantages. Scroll down to explore how to bring audience, environment and engagement together – and meet your future buyers where they are right now:

For as long as marketers have distinguished between brand and demand, they’ve wrestled with the dilemma of which to prioritise at a given moment – and within a given budget. Lately, that juggling act has become trickier, because both types of marketing activity can make a strong case for why they should be the main focus, right now.

On the demand side, marketers are faced with the task of rebuilding revenues in the aftermath of the pandemic. That puts them under pressure to get calls to action in front of everyone who might consider buying from their category. Add in the fact that B2B sales teams are adjusting to remote buyer journeys, with many desperate for more marketing support, and the case for focusing on demand looks pretty strong.

Over on the brand side, though, the evidence is mounting that loading budget into performance marketing without a brand strategy to support it, risks diminishing returns. Research by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) shows the impact of demand marketing declining quickly over time while an investment in brand keeps on giving. That’s why IPA data suggests that the optimal marketing mix gives 60% of budget to brand, compared to 40% for demand.

It’s brand salience that ensures your solutions come to mind first in any buying situation – and that potential customers listen to what your content and ads have to say. In changing times, buyers of all types seek out brands they can trust, with values that align with their own. The chances are that new customers with new needs are coming into your category – and marketers who’ve invested in wider awareness and building perceptions have a valuable head-start.

Marketing for today’s revenues – and tomorrow’s

All marketers have to be realistic about which types of marketing investment will deliver results in the timeframe they’re dealing with. If sales teams are crying out for leads this month and there are immediate revenue holes that need filling, then it’s very difficult to bet most of your budget on a big brand campaign that will deliver results over the next three years. If short-term metrics are the priority, then demand generation will need to be a big part of your plans.

It’s just as important though, to be realistic about how short-term your timeframe can afford to be. Getting through a given quarter or year matters – but being able to gain market share and post sustainable growth over a longer period matters too. Businesses don’t just want to survive day-to-day. They need a robust growth strategy that secures an ever-larger share of revenues in the future. They want to thrive.

Recent research from the Ehrenberg Bass Institute shows that only 5% of buyers in the average B2B category are in-market and ready to buy at any given time. In other words, the audience open to demand generation marketing today is a lot smaller than the audience that could be influenced to buy you in the future through brand marketing. Even with the most effective targeting imaginable, there’s a limit to how much future value you can create just by focusing on demand. You can create a lot more by connecting brand and demand marketing together.

A new approach to brand and demand

This is what a growing number of marketers are choosing to do. Rather than separating out brand and demand as distinct priorities with their own competing strategies, they’re exploring how to multiply value by investing in both – and connecting them more effectively. They want brand and demand – and they want to design them to work better together.

These marketers understand that their audiences don’t switch off from brand marketing when they start considering products – and they don’t refuse to engage with demand marketing just because they’ve been watching a brand ad. Rather than trying to second-guess which type of marketing someone should be engaging with, they make it easier for that person to move between brand and demand experiences as their interest directs them. That way, there’s far less risk of missing out on the awareness and interest any of your marketing investment generates.

In a recent LinkedIn survey, more than 50% of marketers said that they want to run brand and demand campaigns together, addressing the entire buyer journey. IPA data backs them up. It shows that brand and acquisition marketing running together is 6x more effective than acquisition campaigns running alone.

Connecting brand and demand – the infographic guide

How do you choose between brand and demand? The smartest solution could be to find a way not to. Explore the this infographic and connect up your marketing strategy to deliver value throughout the funnel. Scroll down to view the inforgraphic.           

The shift to a digital, distributed workforce creates important opportunities for a global leader in professional audio equipment. It also creates a challenge. Jabra needed to build a pipeline of potential customers that understood how it could help power the transition to remote, digital working. Within its target accounts, the business needed to convince all of those influencing hardware purchase decisions: IT decision-makers, but also the many employees who have a say over which headphones or other equipment they use.

In other words, Jabra needed a way to bring together brand building and demand generation when it mattered: for high potential accounts and those with an active interest in equipping employees for remote working. Fortunately, its marketing team knew the ideal platform for this type of sophisticated brand-to-demand approach: LinkedIn.

Over the last three years, Jabra has built a powerful Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy on LinkedIn, using Sponsored Content and Message Ads to target IT decision-makers at over 100 top global accounts. At the same time, it engages employees at those accounts more widely through ads promoting employee discount programmes. As Senior Marketing Manager Morten Friburg Jensen explains, “we run 300-400 campaigns on LinkedIn each year. There’s simply no way to hit an audience so precisely anywhere else.”

We’ve created an Infographic that tells the story of how Jabra built on this activity to create a multi-dimensional brand-to-demand campaign. It’s a visual guide to how to deliver a relevant brand message and translate that engagement into quality leads:

• How video ads brought Jabra’s support for digital transformation to life
• Retargeting strategies that segment audiences based on the pages of Jabra’s website that they visit
• Tactics for using single image ads and Lead Gen Forms to move prospects through the funnel
• The value of retargeting based on engagement with Lead Gen Forms, increasing CTR by up to 3x and boosting the qualification rate from MQLs to SQLs

Jabra is mastering the art of combining brand and demand on LinkedIn, building out its pipeline and transforming the quality of its leads. Scroll down for inspiration and tactics to help you do the same.

Want more inspiration for connected marketing strategies? You’ll find it in our full brand-to-demand playbook. And to discover how Jabra leveraged its LinkedIn strategy to engage LinkedIn’s own employees, download our full case study.

There are times when the world’s professionals feel like a globalised community, responding to common stories, themes and issues that resonate in every region – and drive shared conversations at the world’s Watercooler that is LinkedIn. There are other times when it becomes clear just how powerfully local events and context shape the agenda. At these moments, the mindsets of professionals diverge – and so too does the content they share on our platform.

This month’s edition of The Watercooler captures how attention is being drawn in different directions as audiences grapple with the huge issues raised by local headlines. It’s a rare occasion when our rankings feature a completely different top ten most shared posts in each region. There is no global theme that unites the content driving the most conversations in France with the content dominating attention in Brazil, or the most shared posts in Germany with those in South Africa. During July, each region responded to content with a distinct flavour. All are feeling the impact of change – but whereas some feel able to look for opportunity, others find themselves swamped with social tensions and worrying about unpredictable futures.

The Middle East is where we find the greatest continuity in tone. Here content remains focused on the fast-growing tech start-ups that dominated attention across most regions in last month’s Watercooler. This is a region still motivated by the opportunities created as the world starts to emerge from the pandemic. In Latin America, audiences are still attuned to the vision of the future put forward by business influencers and tech innovators. However, in both Europe and Africa, this continuity disappears. Attention is dominated by worrying recent developments: devastating heatwaves and flooding that brought the realities of climate change home to Europe even before the IPCC report released by the UN in August; a long and difficult national debate about COVID-19 vaccination in France; disorder and chaos in South Africa that has called into question the stability and future of The Rainbow Nation.

During these locally disrupted times, there are fewer common themes in the subjects that audiences are sharing on LinkedIn. However, there are clear trends in the content formats that professionals turn to when engaging with these stories. Podcasts and videos represent 17.5% of the most shared content across our four regions, the highest proportion in our Watercooler analysis yet. They are present in every top ten, in the form of news reports, in-depth discussions of emerging issues – and user-generated footage. Wherever the conversation on LinkedIn turns next, it seems likely that video and audio will continue playing a more prominent role in it.

The Watercooler for Europe:

1. Four-day week 'an overwhelming success' in Iceland

From The BBC

2. Euros 2020: What all of us can learn from Gareth Southgate

From The BBC

3. À lire si vous ne savez pas quoi penser des vaccins COVID19

From Atoute.org

4. Inondations en Europe : comment le réchauffement climatique est passé de "menace pour les générations futures" à danger imminent

From FranceInfo

5. Climat : "Nous sommes aux prémices du réchauffement climatique"

From TV5 Monde

6. L’industrie automobile appelle Emmanuel Macron à l’aide face à une transition énergétique « dévastatrice »

From Le Monde

7. Nucléaire : la Chine lancée à toute vitesse dans la course technologique

From Les Echos

8. Les records de chaleur signifient qu’il faut changer le discours sur l’urgence climatique

From The Conversation

9. Student designs device that stops blood loss from stab wounds

From The BBC

10. "Nous sommes passés de Socrate à Francis Lalanne" : le discours cinglant d'un sénateur contre les anti-vaccins

From LCI

Lessons from Europe’s Watercooler:

Nowhere is the sense of a world in flux more apparent than in Europe. The most shared posts in July are dominated by two issues that force societies to look closely at themselves and ask how much they can change in the face of crisis. In France, that issue is vaccination against COVID-19. In early August, the country introduced a controversial measure requiring people to show a ‘pass sanitaire’, with proof of either vaccination or a negative test, in order to access restaurants, cafés, transport and public venues. During the month beforehand, debate intensified about the need for vaccination – and the ethics of requiring it of people. Two of the ten most shared posts on LinkedIn address this debate directly. They suggest a consensus among professionals in favour of vaccination – and they show the different types of authority that resonate in this debate.

The third most shared post on LinkedIn is written by Dominique Dupagne, a doctor who founded medical blog Atoute.org two decades ago and has been an outspoken voice on healthcare issues since. As Dupagne points out, he’s no automatic supporter of vaccines or France’s healthcare establishment, having criticised the roll-out of a swine flu vaccine in the past. However, he argues that the case for vaccinating entire countries against COVID-19 is very different and he deploys a wide range of evidence to support this. His case for vaccination draws its authority from the person making it and the detailed, long-form way in which it’s made.

The authority of the other pro-vaccine post in our top ten works slightly differently – and shows the power of video content on LinkedIn. It shares a film of a speech by Senator Claude Malhuret that mocks anti-vaccine protestors with a series of snappy soundbites – and which racked up more than half a million views online in just a few hours.

Despite the vaccine debate, COVID-19 is not the crisis drawing the greatest attention on LinkedIn. July witnessed devastating floods across Northern and Central Europe that has focused the region’s attention on the immediate reality of climate change. Half of our top ten are made up of posts discussing the dangers of global heating or the technologies that will be involved in addressing it. These include the French auto industry’s demands for support in making the transition to electric vehicles – and the advance of nuclear power as China considers potential strategies for cleaner energy. A post on The Conversation connects the two crises – and argues that governments need to learn from the simple, action-oriented messaging used during COVID when it comes to tackling climate change.

Professional audiences can’t afford to ignore disruption. However, the evidence of content sharing on LinkedIn shows that their natural instinct is to attempt to draw positive lessons from it – and to put forward proactive strategies where possible. This is evident in the two most shared posts in the region. At a time when the world is rethinking working practices, news of a successful experiment with a four-day week in Iceland drew huge attention. So too did the opportunity to learn from a widely admired figure from earlier in the summer: the England football team manager, Gareth Southgate. Matthew Syed, a former Olympian who is part of an advisory committee assembled by Southgate, took readers inside the preparations for the tournament. He explained the role that diversity of thinking played in improving the England team’s performances. It’s a case for tackling problems through new perspectives that feels particularly relevant right now.

The Watercooler for Latin America:

1. Flying to space onboard Virgin Galactic

From Richard Branson

2. Nubank revela cartão ultravioleta com Apple Pay

From Link Estadão

3. Simone Biles: o desabafo da campeã olímpica ao desistir de final em Tóquio: ‘Preciso cuidar da saúde mental’

From BBC News Brasil

4. Groundbreakers: entrepreneurs on the inside

From Holly Branson

5. Zema anuncia o fim do parcelamento dos salários de servidores do governo de Minas

From Hoje Em Dia

6. Rock the rooftop: Up at The O2 with Virgin Money’s Emerging Stars

From Virgin Blog

7. Cinco conselhos de gestão de Luiza Helena Trajano

From Vogue Negócios

8. Magazine Luiza fecha acordo para comprar KaBuM!; pagamento será de R$ 1 bilhão

From UOL

9. It’s time to inspire a State of Hope

From Richard Branson

10. Vem aí o real digital

From Istoé Dinheiro

Lessons from Latin America’s Watercooler:

The last two months of content sharing in Latin America has been a story of the rapidly advancing influence of the Branson family – and consequently, of the Virgin brand. Almost half of the ten most shared posts in the region come from either Richard Branson, his daughter (and Virgin’s Chief Purpose and Vision Officer) Holly or the Virgin corporate blog. It’s one of the most powerful examples around of the value of high-profile executive influencers on LinkedIn – and contains some useful clues as to how raising a brand profile in one area produces a halo of attention in others.

The most shared post in the region is Richard Branson’s report (and pictures) from his inaugural flight on the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, a story which generated widespread media attention worldwide. It seems likely that the number of eyeballs drawn to this post helped to increase sharing and attention for others related to it. This includes Holly Branson’s discussion of the value of ‘intrapreneurship’, and the role that Virgin employees’ autonomous initiatives played in different aspects of the Galactic venture. A wider halo effect helped to propel interest in brand initiatives like the Rock the Rooftop tie-up with emerging musicians – and Branson’s long-running Elders project, launched by Nelson Mandela, which gathers former world leaders together to help tackle global issues.

The Branson family are far from the only influencers active in Latin America, however. Another of the region’s most prominent business figures helped to launch a new content venture between Vogue magazine and the Globo radio network. Luiza Helena Trajano, chair of retail giant Magazine Luiza was the guest for the launch edition of the Vogue Negócios radio talk show, and drove this piece of audio content up the sharing charts.

‘Magalu’ also contributes to another ongoing trend in Latin American content sharing: the importance of tech and innovation. Audiences paid close attention to the retailer’s acquisition of the tech and gaming platform KaBuM! However, this wasn’t the tech business responsible for the most shared content during the month. FinTech is one of Brazil’s fastest-growing industries – and Nubank one of the highest-profile exponents of it. After dominating the ten most shared posts last month, Nubank drew attention again for its launch of a new concept in credit cards: one containing no card number that’s designed to work exclusively with Apple Pay. It’s a concept carefully pitched to millennials that’s designed to lessen the risk of fraud.

FinTech innovation isn’t restricted to the private sector, however. Over recent months, there’s been growing discussion in financial circles of the possibilities for governments launching their own digital currencies. Reports that Brazil’s central bank is already in discussions about a digital Real produced an immediate return in terms of audience attention.

The Watercooler for The Middle East:

1. UAE to grant golden visas to 100,000 global coders

From Gulf News

2. Forward Thinking on technology and political economy with Daron Acemoglu

From McKinsey Global Institute

3. Swvl, a green-focused mass transit company, is going public via an all-female SPAC

From CNBC

4. Amazon to Launch 'Amazon.eg' in 2021

From Ahram Online

5. UAE unveils coder training campaign with tech giants Google and Amazon

From The National

6. Raising $55.5 Million, iAngels Helps Transform Israel Into Scale-Up Nation

From Forbes

7. SoftBank Leads Funding to Vault Kitopi Past $1 Billion Value

From Bloomberg

8. Hong Kong-based ADM Capital invests $25 million in Square Yards

From The Economic Times

9. Saudi Arabia ‘holds 10 times more fintech companies than planned’

From Arab News

10. Half of Hospitality Workers Say They Won’t Return To Their Old Jobs

From Travel Pulse

Lessons from The Middle East’s Watercooler:

In last month’s Watercooler, The Middle East most embodied a trend towards professionals focusing on investment opportunities and tech start-ups. In July, that trend accelerated further. Eight out of the top ten most shared posts in the region tell the stories of potential or actual ‘unicorn’ tech businesses – or of government initiatives to promote them.

The tech businesses from the region generating headlines include two based in Dubai that are now valued at over $1 billion: Swvl, which brings the ride-sharing concept to mass-transit in emerging markets, and the cloud kitchen start-up, Kitopi. There’s news of new investment for the Indian tech-led real estate platform, Square Yards, and of the launch of Amazon in Egypt following the acquisition of souq.com – a move which could presage a wider roll-out for the Amazon brand in the Arab world.

Forbes takes an in-depth look at a venture capital firm supporting Israel’s transition from the start-up nation to the scale-up nation, arguing that the country’s entrepreneurs are increasingly inclined to stay in place, take funding and expand to achieve unicorn status. In the United Arab Emirates, attention focused on another form of support for the tech ecosystem, with the government seeking to train 100,000 coders via a partnership with Google and Amazon.

Amid the excitement around start-ups and growth opportunities resulting from new technology, McKinsey created the second most shared post in the region by striking a different tone. Its podcast interview with MIT Professor of Economics Daron Acemoglu featured an in-depth discussion of the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation on inequality. It provides more evidence of the shareability of audio content on LinkedIn – especially when accompanied by a written transcript that makes the content easily visible.

The final entry in our top ten provides interesting context for the focus on tech – and why there may be a ready availability of talent keen to train for the sector. It’s a research report from the US that suggests more than half of hospitality workers won’t return to their old jobs – and quotes a chef trading in his job in the kitchen for one in software development. For a region with a strong hospitality industry and a fast-growing tech one, these are insights with wide-ranging implications.

The Watercooler for Africa:

1. From The Desk of The President - Monday, 26 July 2021

From The President, Republic of South Africa

2. From The Desk of The President - Monday, 19 July 2021

From The President, Republic of South Africa

3. Soon-Shiong Sees His Shot as a Universal Booster

From Bloomberg

4. Food Shortage Set to Grip South Africa After Rioters Rampage

From Bloomberg

5. How to make entrepreneurship a viable option in SA’s recovery

From CNBC Africa

6. Tobacco firm Philip Morris calls for ban on cigarettes within decade

From The Guardian

7. WATCH: Chaos in KZN, shopping centres close in wake of violent protests

From Midrand Reporter

8. Former President Barack Obama joins NBA Africa as strategic partner

From NBA

9. elmenus raises $10 million in pre-Series C round

From Wamda

10. CDC: The coronavirus could be 'just a few mutations' away from evading vaccines

From Insider

Lessons from Africa’s Watercooler:

Africa epitomises the growing influence of video on LinkedIn, with three of the ten most shared posts built around video content. However, the two most shared posts of all show that format isn’t everything when it comes to influence. They both consist of simple text with deliberately straightforward headlines – however those headlines told their audience everything required to make them essential reading.

During the second half of July, the South African provinces of Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu Natal experienced organised violence on a scale never seen in the post-apartheid era. Following the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma, shops were looted on an epic scale, trucks carrying essential supplies were burned, communities armed themselves and violence spilled over with tragic consequences. The two statements shared by President Cyril Ramaphosa on LinkedIn were a response to this dangerous situation. The sharing they generated showed the value of the platform in helping to get such messages out.

In all, these events were the subject of half of the ten most shared posts in Africa in July, including a video report on Bloomberg exploring the threat of long-term food shortages as a result of the riots – and a compilation of video footage from bystanders showing the looting underway. However, it’s not the only crisis dominating professionals’ attention. Concerns about future coronavirus mutations also make it into the top ten, balanced with reports of the potential to create universal booster vaccines that could prove crucial in a region where the supply of shots is an ongoing challenge.

The content shared on LinkedIn in Africa often balances a sense of challenge with a sense of optimism. In July, the challenges predominated – but a determination to look forward remained. In one frequently shared video segment, CNBC Africa examined the question of how to unlock the potential of entrepreneurialism to tackle widespread inequality in South Africa – a key underlying cause of the recent troubles. News of investment in the continent through the NBA and Barack Obama captured attention as well, as did the story of an innovative food discovery start-up in Egypt. At a time when the future felt particularly fragile, Africa retains faith in the value of innovation for navigating through it.

Growth. Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone’s making plans for it. Every business expects their marketing function to deliver it. But does growth really mean the same thing as it did before the arrival of COVID-19? Are the ways that businesses used to think about the concept really fit for purpose in 2021 and beyond? Can marketers deliver the growth their businesses need if they still define growth in the same terms as before?

These are the types of questions that the Institute for Real Growth was established to answer – and those answers have never felt more pressing and compelling than they do today. That’s why it was fantastic to have the Institute’s founder, Marc De Swaan Arons address LinkedIn’s Big Minds Collective, for the final session of the Collective’s first season. LinkedIn is one of the Institute’s founding partners, and a supporter of its research into the real nature of growth. As Marc explained to our audience of agency leaders last month, that research has firmly established that not all forms of growth are equal.

The era of humanised growth

Prior to the pandemic, most businesses thought of growth in terms of customers and capital markets: if you expanded your share of the market and delivered revenues that kept shareholders happy then you were a healthily growing business; no other numbers really mattered. Since the arrival of COVID-19, the perspective has started to shift. Businesses have come to recognise that growth also has to create value for colleagues and communities in order to be sustainable. If an organisation fails to convince these stakeholders that it has their interests at heart, its ability to operate – and the size of its effective market – are severely reduced.

The Institute for Real Growth describes this multi-stakeholder approach as humanised growth. It’s more sustainable and more sustained because it sees growth in terms of benefits delivered to all of those involved in the business – not just those that exist in terms of numbers in the annual report. And although it’s an idea that resonates more widely in a post-pandemic world, it’s really nothing new. The most successful businesses have been pursuing humanised growth for years – and doing so has put marketing at the centre of their strategies.

Marketing – what top performing businesses do differently

The Institute’s research has established that out-performing businesses, those that have grown faster than their direct competition for the last three years, consistently apply humanised growth principles. Their wider perspective on what growth involves drives characteristic behaviours: defining markets more inclusively, having the flexibility to work with different business models, leading with people rather than processes. Their determination to remove friction from people’s lives acts as an evolutionary force that keeps them moving forward.

Marc argues that a humanised view of growth enables strategic leaps such as Mars moving from a role as a pet food provider to one as a pet care provider, now the largest operator of veterinary practices worldwide. It’s led Coca-Cola to think beyond a narrow product portfolio and embrace coffee, and Pepsi to think of different drinking experiences and revitalise SodaStream. It’s why Cisco now sees its primary product as people rather than servers; the promise of being a Cisco customer isn’t owning a large piece of hardware, it’s having ongoing access to the technical support and expertise that your business depends on.

Just as significantly, a humanised growth approach leaves a recognisable imprint on corporate structures – and the role and influence of marketing. At a time when the average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer has shrunk to half that of a CFO, these outperforming businesses stand out for keeping marketing at the centre of business strategy. Not only do they remain committed to the CMO as a role, but their CMOs are notably better connected to the organisation, with 5.5x more connections to other senior leaders and 3.5x more connections to other functions. This reflects a different view of how marketing drives strategy. As Marc puts it, “this is an opportunity for CMOs to play a much bigger role in business growth – and it comes at a very opportune time when many CMOs fear they’ve been losing influence. CEOs and other functional leaders feel that CMOs have been too focused on the table stakes of marketing, the ‘how to win’ part of their job – and not focused enough on where to play, which is the overall business strategy. This is an opportunity to rectify that.”

Introducing the Da Vinci Growth CMO

Humanised growth is marketing-led growth. A moment that calls for redefining what growth means is also a moment to reinforce and reinvent the contribution that marketing can make to it. However, this won’t happen automatically; it takes the right type of marketing leader. The Institute’s latest research project, in combination with the specialist recruitment agency, Spencer Stuart, aims to build a profile of the ideal humanised growth CMO by identifying the characteristics that top-performing businesses look for in the role. The picture that emerges is of a whole-brained thinker that aligns very strongly with one of the most famous figures of the Renaissance.

If anyone has demonstrated the sort of broad, cosmos-wide perspective that humanised growth demands, it’s Leonardo Da Vinci,” says Marc. “He was both an artist and a scientist, right brain and left brain, and he was also one of the founders of the humanism movement, exploring mankind’s impact on the world. He embodies the type of leader that organisations now need: creative, analytical and empathetic.”

Watching the conversation play out between Marc and the Big Mind Collective’s line-up of agency leaders, it’s clear that this concept of the ‘Da Vinci CMO’ doesn’t just resonate within marketing departments. It’s a standard that agency partners and business leaders in general are just as interested in holding themselves to.

So what does being a Da Vinci leader involve? Which capabilities do marketers need to dial up if they are to steer their business towards a sustainable, humanised growth strategy – and reclaim their influence in the organisation? The Institute for Real Growth and Spencer Stuart list 10 elements of expertise and experience that enable leaders to build a humanised growth strategy – and five attitudes that are essential for applying these skills in the right way.

The 10 Da Vinci Growth CMO Experiences:

1. Decoding the world through human-centric understanding of market developments and the needs and wants of all key stakeholders. This expertise enables top CMOs to bring the outside in, and help businesses develop cohesive growth strategies around a single source of truth.

2. Partnering with executive committee peers on growth strategy, which builds important shared language, influence and an opportunity to frame all marketing activities within the overall business strategy.

3. Strategic brand development, ensuring that the overall brand strategy is supported by purposeful brands and portfolios, and clear, relevant value propositions.

4. Product and service innovation, which stems from a broader view of where a business can play and translates into value propositions that can evolve from product to service to experience. Adobe’s evolution from software company to marketing partner is a great example.

5. Breakthrough content and engagement from the ability to translate analytical insight into creative, inspiring solutions.

6. Expertise in delivering creative customer experience, which is vital for differentiating brands in a digital landscape that Forrester Research describes as increasingly subject to sameness.

7. Integrated stakeholder engagement, expanding the scope of marketing beyond a focus on customers alone. Da Vinci Growth CMOs deal in reputation management across all touchpoints and stakeholders.

8. Revenue and channel leadership is now an essential element in growth strategies, and one which marketing leaders must be ready to own. Experience of P&L responsibility is a valuable point of difference for Da Vinci Growth CMOs, which enables them to commit to eCommerce, and compete in a world where buyer journeys no longer distinguish between marketing and sales.

9. Building marketing capability within the organisation as a whole is an essential component of humanised growth. Da Vinci Growth CMOs are often educators; they’re prepared to commit significant time to upskilling their marketing teams and building recognition for the value of branding outside their department.

10. Media and performance provides a natural showcase for the creative and analytical skills of Da Vinci Growth CMOs. It’s where human-centric insights come together with technical skills to drive growth.

These areas of expertise and experience represent something of a menu, on which CMOs can draw in order to deliver humanised growth strategies. Marc stresses that not every area of expertise is required for every business situation. Things are different when it comes to the attitudes that the Institute for Real Growth and Spencer Stuart identified as fundamental for Da Vinci Growth CMOs. Each of these five attitudes is essential if marketing is to take on the lead role required of it in a post-pandemic world.

The 5 Da Vinci Growth CMO Attitudes:

1. The mindset of a curious and agile learner, balancing understanding of marketing’s foundations and fundamentals with an active interest in the way that it evolves. After all, it’s not just marketing capabilities that change with the flow of technology – changing too are the stakeholder needs that a humanised growth strategy must address.

2. A connected and collaborative approach, which accesses the broad range of marketing expertise now required to execute big ideas through an expanding ecosystem of agencies, consultancies and outside partners.

3. The attitude of a servant leader, appreciating and elevating the diversity within an organisation to generate new ideas and address the interests of multiple stakeholders.

4. Being speed and impact obsessed, decisive in giving direction rather than settling for vanilla compromises – and willing to embrace agility, iterative improvement and design thinking.

5. Acting as a courageous and inspiring storyteller, speaking to both head and heart and bringing purpose, vision and strategy to life for all of a business’s stakeholders.

The concept of humanised growth doesn’t just require a whole-brained, strategically engaged CMO. It also rests on partnership – on the connected ecosystem that a marketing leader is able to build around their business. The appetite that organisations have for such partnerships right now, is part of the reason that this emerging, post-pandemic moment represents such an opportunity. As marketers, agencies, customers and communities, we’ve never been more aware of our connected roles. And there’s never been a greater opportunity to connect those roles in a way that delivers value for all.

A recent headline offers a message today’s marketers are wise to take to heart: 95% of B2B buyers are not in the market for your products. 

This takeaway comes from a recent study carried out by Ehrenberg-Bass for the LinkedIn B2B Institute. The math isn’t all that complicated: Companies change providers of B2B services every five years or so; therefore, only 20% are in the market for those services in a given year, and just 5% in a given quarter. 

That leaves 95% who are not actively looking to buy. And yet, so much sales and marketing outreach assumes the opposite. Short-term sales activation messages aimed at a non-receptive audience are not only ineffective, but sometimes counterproductive. 

The key lesson here is one we explore in our new pocket guide: Modern B2B marketers need to play the long game.

Striking a Strategic Balance Between Brand and Demand

We’ve seen a number of changes and shifts take place since the onset of last year’s pandemic. One of them is the recommended ratio of marketing investment into long-term brand vs. short-term demand objectives.

Previously, marketers were investing an estimated 45% of budget into brand marketing. Today, the recommended split is 60/40 in favor of brand. This doesn’t mean demand generation tactics should be left behind, but generally speaking, marketers should really be leaning into brand-building as a central complement and precursor.

In our new guide, Brand to Demand: Harmonizing Long-term Brand Strategy with Short-term Activation Tactics, we offer advice on finding your best balance with a full-funnel approach that aligns with evolving buyer behaviors and market realities.

Learn how and why to play the long game by understanding and leveraging these concepts:

• The Availability Heuristic. A majority of buyers in your audience are not ready to move at the moment, but they will be at some point. When that time comes, will your brand be the first to come to mind? 
• The Affect Heuristic. Beyond simple awareness, does the thought of your brand trigger positive thoughts and associations within your audience? This heuristic basically states that if someone likes a brand, their views of that brand’s solutions and benefits will be positively impacted.

Accounting for these mental shortcuts, it’s easy to see why imprinting your brand in the minds of buyers in a favorable way should be an utmost priority. 

Improve Your Brand’s Future Position, Today

In the guide, you’ll find tips for better brand-building on LinkedIn and beyond. We address important questions and challenges, such as:

• How can you accurately measure the impact of brand campaigns when the cause-and-effect is not as straightforward as direct response? (Hint: Give your campaigns time to play out and do their jobs!)
• What’s the right targeting balance for branding efforts: narrowly focused or broader?
• How can you integrate organic and paid tactics to maximize brand marketing effectiveness on LinkedIn?
• What’s the right mix of rational vs. emotional ads?

Neither brand nor demand strategies can thrive in isolation. When done right, each side feeds the other, creating a “virtuous loop” that drives sustained brand growth. Our research finds, for example, that audiences exposed to both brand and acquisition messages on LinkedIn are 6x more likely to convert.

As Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute puts it: “There aren’t that many business clients that will say ‘You know what, I’m comfortable signing a contract with a company that I’ve hardly ever heard of before.’ That plainly isn’t the way the world works. People operate using their memory. Overcoming that familiarity disadvantage does take years to do.”

Needless to say, there’s no time to waste. Create your own virtuous loop. You’ll find a blueprint in our pocket guide, which includes a practical five-step framework to get you heading in the right direction. Download Brand to Demand: Harmonizing Long-term Brand Strategy with Short-term Activation Tactics.

Last month’s edition of The Watercooler showed audiences responding to content that explored a new workplace ethos for a post-pandemic world. This month, the focus is on a different aspect of the future: the start-up and investment opportunities created by the disruption of last 18 months.

From the rapid growth of digital banking in Latin America to innovative logistics solutions in North Africa, thrifty fashion in the Middle East and a payments app in Nigeria: audiences in almost every region are sharing the stories of local or regional businesses that are thriving rather than merely surviving. These are stories that show opportunity is out there, and that reaffirm the innovative potential and entrepreneurial spirit of the region itself.

The future of work still resonates as a theme, with discussions of flexible working and workplace culture featuring among the ten most shared posts in Europe, Latin America and The Middle East. There’s interest across regions in Deloitte’s announcement that its 20,000 employees can choose to work from home permanently. It’s an interesting contrast to the approach of several other big consulting firms, which have mandated at least two days of working in the office each week. Deloitte’s own internal research suggests it will achieve the same outcome by a far more popular route: 81% of Deloitte employees say they intend to spend two days out of every five in the office – but 96% say it’s important for them to have a choice whether to do so or not.

The female-empowering dating app Bumble is another business capturing attention across borders for its approach to worker wellbeing. The business closed its offices for a week to tackle the problem of employee burnout. It was a story widely shared across both Europe and Latin America, drawing attention to an issue that many professionals can identify with.

June was a month when the return of major sporting events brought a welcome distraction for many. Football’s European Championship, delayed by a year during the pandemic, produced one of the most widely shared stories of the month when Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo provocatively moved bottles of Coca-Cola from the table at a press conference, and recommended that people drink water instead. The news that Coca-Cola (a Euro 2020 sponsor) had lost billions of dollars in value as a result spread rapidly across both Europe and Latin America. However, there was a twist to come. A day or so later, those clicking on the link shared by The Guardian would have found a correction acknowledging that the fall in share price mostly came before Ronaldo’s bottle rearranging. If anything, the company’s share price actually increased following the press conference.

Ronaldo is far from the only influencer driving engagement on LinkedIn. June was a month that reinforced the status of three of the platform’s most established thought leaders. Richard Branson features in the Watercooler round-up for the third consecutive time, making the top ten in Latin America with his post arguing that the G7 summit should pay more attention to the plight of the world’s oceans. Philosopher and educator Mario Sergio Cortella’s radio shows are becoming a fixture among the most shared posts in the same region. Fadi Ghandour, the executive chairman of investment platform Wamda Group, regularly shares updates about the innovative businesses that Wamda invests in – and these have become some of the most widely shared posts in the Middle East.

The Watercooler for Europe:

1. Deloitte tells staff they can work from home forever

From The Telegraph

2. Morgan Stanley will bar workers without Covid vaccinations from most New York offices beginning July 12

From CNBC

3. Tourisme spatial : Jeff Bezos annonce le premier vol de sa fusée Blue Origin

From franceinfo

4. 'Five-day office week will become the norm again'

From The BBC

5. Dear England

From Gareth Southgate on The Players’ Tribune

6. Cristiano Ronaldo snub wipes billions off Coca-Cola’s market value

From The Guardian

7. Materie prime, salgono i prezzi: frena la transizione ecologica e digitale. Il ruolo della Cina

From Corriere Della Sera

8. Is Apple In Trouble With Its Hybrid Work Model?

From Forbes

9. Onderwijs kweekt vmbo’ers vol zelftwijfel en arrogante gymnasiasten – en dat is slecht nieuws voor de democratie

From de Correspondent

10. Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

From The BBC

Lessons from Europe’s Watercooler:

Europe is something of an outlier in this month’s Watercooler: the only region without a post focused on innovation and investment opportunities in its top ten. It’s also home to the most intense debate about what form the future of work should take.

Deloitte’s announcement was the region’s most shared post – but it represents just one of several competing visions for how businesses should be run following the pandemic. The second most shared post picks up on a different model, with Morgan Stanley encouraging workers back into the office – but only if they are fully vaccinated. It’s a strategy that assumes investment bank employees will want to be where the action is happening, provided they can be confident it’s a safe environment. Commercial property investment and city centre policy groups told The BBC they were confident that the UK would return to working in the office five days a week as standard. However, this isn’t a view shared by all employees – as Apple discovered when it announced a hybrid working plan mandating which days of the week employees should come in. This triggered a letter from Apple employees to CEO Tim Cook, demanding greater flexibility.

Culture isn’t just about the workplace – and two of Europe’s most shared posts take on wider social issues. England team manager Gareth Southgate wrote an open letter to the country’s football fans urging them to respect his team’s commitment to taking the knee before matches, in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The need for greater social unity is also the theme of a blog post from De Correspondent, which represents a rare appearance for a Dutch language post in Europe’s Top Ten. It warns of the damage done by an education system that classifies children too soon, defining their future career paths and their sense of themselves.

Another warning for the immediate future comes from Corriere Della Sera, with a multi-media feature exploring how limited supplies of essential commodities could constrain innovation and clean-energy technologies in Europe. It picks up on a theme that’s recurred in several editions of The Watercooler for this region – a concern that the raw material needs (and potential environmental impact) of clean technology isn’t fully understood.

The Watercooler for Latin America:

1. É penta! Brasileira ganha destaque pela 5ª vez em desafio mundial da Apple

From UOL

2. Atitude de Cristiano Ronaldo causou prejuízo de R$ 20 bilhões à Coca-Cola

From Esporte

3. Os danos provocados por uma pessoa incompetente no poder

From Globo Radio

4. Bumble closed all its offices for a week to help staff with their 'collective burnout'

From Business Insider

5. La Invención de Pigmalión: “Yo No Soy tu Galatea”

From Revista Level

6. Anitta entra para Conselho de Administração do Nubank

From G1 Globo

7. Painel S.A.: Anitta terá primeira reunião como conselheira do Nubank nesta quarta, em Miami

From UOL

8. Berkshire Hathaway to Buy $500 Million Stake in Brazil’s Nubank

From The Wall Street Journal

9. Warren Buffett investe US$ 500 milhões no Nubank

From Valor Investe

10. Let’s think blue on World Ocean Day

From Richard Branson

Lessons from Latin America’s Watercooler:

Latin America’s largest digital bank accounts for four out of the ten most shared posts in the region, through stories that focus on two corporate leaders with very different backgrounds. Taken together, they reflect Nubank’s flair for innovation and disruption – and the growing global influence of Brazil’s FinTech sector.

The most shared Nubank story focuses on Anitta, the 29-year-old Brazilian pop star who has become the seventh member of the bank’s board – an appointment that’s designed to provide a source of innovative marketing thinking. That news came a fortnight after the announcement that Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway had invested $500 million in Nubank, the largest single investment in the business so far.

Nubank’s rise isn’t the only story that reinforces Latin America’s sense of itself as a burgeoning tech hub. The most shared post of the month shines a light on the next generation of talent, celebrating Brazilian student Karina Tronkos, who is among the winners of Apple’s Swift Student programming challenge for the fifth consecutive year.

Political, social and environmental concerns fill out the rest of the region’s Top Ten. Mario Sergio Cortella’s radio show ponders the dangers of leaders reaching positions of power without having to demonstrate competence on the way. Richard Branson returns to Latin America’s top ten with a post drawing attention to the need for action on World Ocean Day. Audiences paid close attention to the dangers of burnout highlighted by the Bumble story, while a post on Revista Level pointed out the deep roots behind the cultural objectification of women.

The Watercooler for The Middle East:

1. Getir valuation triples to $7.5bn as investors chase grocery app craze

From The Financial Times

2. Center looks to boost support given to Saudi dates sector

From Arab News

3. Egyptian Trucking Marketplace Trella Raises $42M From Investors, Including Maersk VC

From Forbes Middle East

4. First glimpse of Sharjah's high-speed electric sky pod

From The National UAE

5. Luxury Meets Thrift for Dubai Startup Raising Funds to Go Abroad

From Bloomberg

6. Group CEO Of Etisalat, Hatem Dowidar, Is Plowing Capital Into Digital Investments

From Forbes Middle East

7. World’s Third-Biggest Wealth Fund Grows Quant Team With New Hire

From Bloomberg

8. The perfect number of hours to work every day? Five

From Wired

9. Israeli shares traded on Wall Street reach massive $300 billion valuation

From The Times of Israel

10. Why Mumzworld is a unique story for the Arab region

From Wamda

Lessons from The Middle East’s Watercooler:

Latin America isn’t the only region with a rapidly growing tech sector. Exactly half of the top ten most shared posts in The Middle East tell the story of start-ups from the region that are tapping into global opportunities – and the range of businesses involved testifies to how diverse and dynamic The Middle East’s tech hubs are.

Investors seeking businesses well-positioned for growth can choose from rapidly growing Turkish grocery app Getir (with a valuation that has trebled to $7.5 billion as it explores new markets), the digital trucking marketplace Trella (founded in Egypt by former Uber employees and part-funded by Maersk), second-hand luxury platform The Luxury Closet, Mumzworld (an online marketplace for mothers) and WalkMe, the digital adoption support platform whose IPO took the value of Israeli-owned companies on Wall Street to over $300 billion.

The Middle East’s appetite for innovation stories and investment opportunities isn’t limited to the tech sector, though. There’s widespread sharing for news of additional investment in Saudi Arabia’s dates industry, for the development of a new high-speed skyrail system to avoid congestion in the UAE, for an interview with the CEO of telecoms giant Etisalat that focuses on investments in digital infrastructure, and for a new hire at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Amid this confident outlook, there’s still room for thought-provoking posts discussing how working life should change following the pandemic. A widely shared article from Wired discussed the pros and cons of shorter working days, and compared the experiences of different businesses to try to find the ideal balance of wellbeing and productivity.

The Watercooler for Africa:

1. Deloitte tells its 20,000 UK employees they can work from home forever

From The Independent

2. The Sad End Of Jack Ma Inc.

From Forbes

3. Egyptian Trucking Marketplace Trella Raises $42M From Investors, Including Maersk VC

From Forbes Middle East

4. Standard Bank Partners with Microsoft to Boost Agility, Resilience and Innovation and Drive Africa’s Growth

From Microsoft

5. Nigerian Payments App Paga May Be Africa’s Next Unicorn

From Bloomberg

6. South Africa Sells State Airline to Private-Equity Venture

From Bloomberg

7. Ahmed Dalal elected president of the American University in Cairo

From Shorouk News

8. Kenyan family business turned multinational conglomerate

From CNN Video

9. Supporting startups and SMEs in Africa

From Google Africa blog

10. Tech in Africa

From The Generalist

Lessons from Africa’s Watercooler:

As with The Middle East, the most shared content in Africa reflects an appetite for looking forward – and a desire for greater investment to unlock the potential of the region.

There was strong interest in Microsoft’s announcement of a partnership with Africa’s largest financial institution, Standard Bank, which the tech company predicted would enable more responsive lending across the continent. Google also announced a range of investment initiatives to support African start-ups, including its Black Founders Fund and a grant for entrepreneurs in low-income communities.

The potential for innovative African businesses is highlighted through Bloomberg’s report on Nigerian payments app, Paga, which is predicted to be the continent’s next billion-dollar tech business. CNN used video to tell the story of The Chandaria Group, a Kenyan family firm that started out making tissues and is now a major multinational conglomerate.

Africa has been a major focus of investment from China in recent years – and so it’s no surprise that an in-depth piece analysing the apparent downfall of Jack Ma should be the region’s second-most shared post. Forbes’ examination of China’s moves to break up the billionaire’s empire resonated in a region where Ma has been seen as a role model and potential source of investment for tech entrepreneurs. It resonates all the more given misgivings about heavy-handed state intervention in business. The bankruptcy of South African Airways will be seen by many as an example of this.

Growing interest in Africa’s potential for innovation makes The Generalist’s briefing on the state of tech in the continent particularly timely. It provided a detailed breakdown of trends and opportunities – and made a point of tackling persistent clichés in much media coverage of the region. After all, when the world is seeking the next opportunity, it can’t afford outdated perceptions and prejudice to get in the way.

The move to remote working hasn’t changed the skillsets all great salespeople need, but the proliferation of data and new technology means access to new insights and buying signals. We spoke to sales industry experts from Citrix and Tact.ai to discuss to how organisations can interpret the vast amount of data at the fingertips on our recent Sales Think Tank video series.

According to McKinsey, 97% of decision-makers are happy to make purchases through a wholly digital journey, so these new ways of working are here to stay – pandemic or no pandemic.

But are we tuning into the most important data, and how can technology help us to understand buyer intentions and signals? Let’s take a look at the key points to bear in mind.

1. Make sales data your companion

There’s a lot of data about, but if you can’t act on it, it’s probably not very useful. But armed with the right technology, sales teams can sift through data to identify who to approach and when. Sales Navigator’s buyer interest alerts, for example, let sellers know when employ- ees at your target accounts are researching your company or what types of content they’re sharing.

Sorting the genuine buying signals from the digital noise in the post-Covid world will be important: just 20-30% of B2B buyers globally say they will need to interact with sales reps in person again in the future.

2. Deep-dive into your buyer's needs

Using data can not only identify which prospects to reach out to, it can also help you identify problems that customers have right now, thanks to the sophistication of today’s artificial intelligence-based CRM systems. For example, the CRM may take a number of sources of information to provide contextual nudges or alerts to the seller about the needs of the individual buyer.

Using technology in this way allows you to approach the customer with the right solution, at the right time. For our clients, this use of data ultimately makes for a richer experience.

3. Playing the numbers game

As a rule of thumb, talking to 100 clients might mean two or three becoming qualified opportunities, so putting the right data at the centre of the client engagement process can mean spectacular results. For example, Think Tank panellist Barry Magee of Citrix Systems reports a qualified lead rate of 20% and a 10X improvement in conversion rates over the last year-and-a-half using relevant insights from data. That’s meant enormous improvements in productivity.

Not only that, but Citrix’s strategy has also helped build a bigger short-term sales pipeline. New customers tend to require immediate assistance, rather than in a year’s time, shortening the sales cycle and boosting revenue.  

4. Make the most of limited face-time

Remote working means that some of the more informal opportunities for interaction with the buyer – a coffee break, or the walk to and from reception, which often yielded insights into their needs and built trust – are no longer available. Online calls do provide the chance to record the proceedings, which can be great for follow-up, but they also mean some of the opportunities to pause and think about the conversation (on the journey, for example) are lost as diaries fill up with back-to-back meetings.

Clued-up sales reps will now do more research than ever before a sales call. Buyer behaviour has also changed, with a greater emphasis on hard facts. But this is no bad thing. Buyers being well-informed saves time, and in some markets, the sales cycle is shorter as a result.

Discover what the sales experts had to say for yourself with our on-demand video. Or click here to find out how LinkedIn Sales Solutions can empower your sales team in 2021.

Strengthening existing relationships has been crucial during the pandemic, but the changing landscape we’re all operating in has also raised the question of how to generate opportunities without the undoubted benefits of meeting face-to-face. We tackled how businesses can keep their sales pipeline full in our Sales Think Tank video series alongside industry experts from Oracle and JB Sales Training, read on to discover their perspective. 

As we move further into the era of remote selling, we need to know how best to engage with buyers and initiate new relationships – without ever sitting down for a coffee with them.

So, when it comes to building the pipeline virtually, what’s the game plan? Here are four ideas to help generate sales success.

1. Cutting through the noise

According to Hubspot, the volume of sales emails has increased four times during the last year, and response rates are lower than ever. Your messaging has to be relevant to cut through the noise.

To do this, it’s important to figure out exactly who you should be targeting and when, and tools like LinkedIn Sales Insights can help you figure out which accounts to prioritise.

With target customers identified, it’s time to introduce yourself. Send a LinkedIn request so that the person you’re trying to reach can put a face to a name. Then follow up with an email or a short video clip to introduce yourself.

2. Think like your customers will

According to LinkedIn research, 80% of decision-makers are unlikely to engage with a salesperson who doesn’t understand their pain points, meaning it’s more important than ever to research your customer before you reach out. Have you assessed who is buying on the CRM, or the length of the sales cycle? Is the prospect following your company on LinkedIn? Have you connected with them prior to sending an email?

A personalised message is more likely to stand out in a customer’s inbox. The more thoughtful you are, the more success you’ll have. Learn how to craft the perfect InMail here.

3. Maximise the value of your dicovery time

Great news! The customer wants a meeting. But what we may think of as a sales discovery call is often a test of our credibility, too. This calls for a team-based selling approach, so reach out within your company and draft in experts with similar experience to the clients you’re meeting with. As well as doing your research, it’s also useful to have customer stories to hand so you can show how you’ve helped other clients in the same sector achieve success using your products.

It’s also important not to forget to reach out to senior management at the potential customer who may be responsible for facilitating the sale such as the CFO or CTO. They could be critical to signing-off the final decision. Showing you understand their business and its challenges will make you more credible.

4. Position yourself as a trusted advisor 

Trust in a salesperson is the most important factor for 90% of buyers, according to research by LinkedIn. That means it’s more important than ROI and price in influencing their decision. A face-to-face meet- ing, even on Zoom, is the most effective way of building trust, which is why video clips can also be a great tool – especially if you use Sales Navigator Smart Links to track who’s watching.

You can also generate trust and demonstrate your market expertise by sharing useful information with the prospect. Do some of the heavy lifting for the client by providing synopses of information they’ll find interesting.

In the brave new world of virtual selling, your role is changing to become more well-rounded and holistic – that of a trusted partner.

Click here to hear from the sales experts themselves on how to build sales pipeline virtually, or learn more about what LinkedIn Sales Solutions can do for you and your organisation.