THE

MARKETER
Issue 7 Quarter 4 2019 QUARTERLY

t h r o u g h
seeing

MARk e t i n g
m y t h s IT Y D ELUSION,
THE TEN
MOST
FOLLOWED
LINKEDIN
IN AL
THE ORIG K-THROUGH PAGES
THE CLIC ND MORE
RA C Y A
CONSPI Growing with
Evergreen
Content

LESSONS OF
GREAT LEAD GEN
CAMPAIGNS

how to market to
your sales colleagues

THE BRANDS FLAUNTING ANN HANDLEY’S LATEST ALPHAGO AND THE

THEIR FLAWS ADVICE COLUMN AI CHALLENGE
A NOTE TO
SOPHISTICATED MARKETERS
M
arketing has more than its fair
share of received wisdom—
and B2B marketing arguably
has the most of all. We all
inherit assumptions about whom we should
be targeting, what we should be targeting
them with, and how we should measure the
results. The consensus way of doing things
isn’t necessarily wrong—but we don’t know
how right it truly is, because it’s so very rarely
questioned. When you put assumptions under
the microscope, what seemed common sense
can quickly be revealed as a marketing myth.
In this issue, we’re tackling some of the
most pervasive assumptions in B2B. We ask if
marketing really needs to be original to work,
if clicks are a proper measure of success, and
if your goal should always be to target your
audiences with ever-greater precision.
In place of some of these myths, we’ve got
B2B techniques and tactics that drive real
results: unlocking greater value through always-
on content, applying the latest marketing
techniques to transform your relationship
with sales, and taking audience interaction to
the next level with LinkedIn Live. We’ve got
marketing advice from the one and only Ann
Handley, the best wake-up tracks to get you
energized for the day ahead, plus the big digital
trends you should be paying attention to.
It all adds up to a new perspective on B2B
marketing. We hope you enjoy it!

Jane Fleming

I I I
THE TEAM: EDITOR IN CHIEF Jane Fleming EDITORS Grace MacDonald Megan Golden Alex Rynne
I I I I I
Sean Callahan Steve Kearns Kate Mallord Amanda Bulat Lizzy Knights-Ward George Putong
I I I I
CONTRIBUTORS Kelly Farrell John Hall Nate Nicely Keith Browning Christina Newberry
I I I I I
Jennifer Bunting Ann Handley Tatiana Dupond Josh Ritchie Siobhan Waters Caroline Young
I I
Jon Lombardo Peter Weinberg Kevin Ryan lnkd.in/US-Blog
FOR CREAM PUBLISHING: CONSULTANT EDITOR Matthew Cowen lnkd.in/EMEA-Blog
I
ART DIRECTOR Tim Mapleston PUBLISHER Victoria Furness

CreamPublishing
Cream Content, BlueSky Business Centre, 25 Cecil Pashley Way, Brighton City Airport, Shoreham, West Sussex BN43 5FF

Sophisticated Marketer 3
 CONTENTS
40
56

18

74
06 THE REAL INSPIRATION 15 JOHN HALL ON 30 FIVE GREAT APPLICATIONS
IN THE ALPHAGO STORY PERSONALIZATION OF LINKEDIN LIVE
What the ultimate gaming The keynote speaker on customer How to create powerful
machine tells us about creativity. loyalty’s under-used killer app. brand moments in real-time.

08 ASTONISHING TALES: 17 NATE NICELY ON 32 INSPIRATION FROM

DUMB WAYS TO DIE THINKING BEYOND B2B THE TEN MOST
How a train safety message How iProspect is using FOLLOWED PAGES
became a global media LinkedIn for talent branding ON LINKEDIN
phenomenon. and B2C campaigns. The principles of world-class
organic engagement on LinkedIn.
11 WHAT WILL 5G MEAN 18 WINNING WITH
FOR MARKETERS? WEAKNESS 34 THE B2B MARKETER’S
How increasing speed ups the As audiences cry out for GUIDE TO MARY MEEKER
ante on customer relationships. authenticity, the Pratfall The latest edition of the
Effect is becoming a Internet Trends Report is the
13 HOW BIG WILL BLOCKCHAIN valuable strategy. most relevant yet for B2B.
REALLY BE?
The truth about how the new 23 TOOLBOX 38 ASKING FOR A FRIEND
technology could transform Trends, top tips, insights Our superb advice column from
our profession. and inspiration. content pioneer Ann Handley.

4 Sophisticated Marketer
 66

34

62

71
40 WHY LUXURY BRANDS 52 MARKETING TO SALES 66 ALWAYS ON:
NEED A SENSE OF PURPOSE What if we treated sales and EMBRACING YOUR
Aligning traditional values with marketing alignment as a EVERGREEN ASSETS
current social issues could unlock marketing challenge? Designing content assets with
a bright future for luxury. staying power can transform
56 THE ORIGINALITY DELUSION your strategy and ROI.
42 THE DELICATE ART OF Beware of the urge to do
THE REBRAND something completely new. 71 MARKETERS’ TOP
It’s not about the logo: five tips for WAKE-UP TRACKS
making rebrands work. 60 QUANTUM MARKETING Eight groovy tunes to get you in
Why less precision and more the mood for the day ahead.
46 LESSONS OF GREAT probability could be a good thing.
LEAD GEN CAMPAIGNS 73 WHAT’S IN YOUR BAG
From targeting to lead nurture: 62 MEDIA VALUE INVESTING Our Editor in Chief reveals how
the top tips that secure maximum The most under-valued she stays fully charged.
ROI from lead generation. audiences in B2B.
74 CONTENT HEROES:
48 REAL GROWTH HEROES 64 THE CLICK-THROUGH GEORGE MILLER
The sales thought leaders CONSPIRACY The legendary Mad Max director
building relationships Are lots of clicks really evidence proves that similar stories don’t
through insights. that your campaign is working? have to feel the same.

Sophisticated Marketer 5
THE BRIEF
THE REAL
INSPIRATION
IN THE
W0RDS BY KELLY FARRELL
ALPHAGO STORY
What marketers can learn from the human opponents of the ultimate game-playing machine.
y Netflix account categorizes the film
M
AlphaGo as ‘Inspiring’. It is, but not for
the reasons you might expect.
This documentary reveals how
DeepMind spent two years building an
AI system to thrash one of the world’s
greatest players of the world’s most
complex game, Go. It explains how AlphaGo’s three
layers of neural networks interact to replicate the human
brain and help it ‘see’ more outcomes, possibilities and
courses of action than even the best Go players. But is
something being lost in the process? Is Go still the same
game if a machine can almost always play it better than
a human can?
As marketers, we face similar dilemmas. We know
the competitive advantages AI offers, and that we can’t
afford to be left behind. It’s the most exciting step in the
long history of human beings inventing technology that
advances their own abilities. However, as AlphaGo proves
its superiority over even the most remarkable human
brains, it’s hard not to worry. What chance is there of our
ideas and creative contributions being valued over those
of an AI system? Are we relegating ourselves to a support-
ing role in the future of our profession?
Why AlphaGo should inspire
I don’t believe we are. And the reasons why are perfect-
ly captured in the AlphaGo story. In this tale of human
vs machine, the heroes aren’t just the programmers and
computer scientists. Even more heroic are the two Go
players that their machine beats during the course of the
story. In their different ways, they show human experi-
ence, creativity and empathy will never be redundant
when it comes to getting the most out of AI. Even better,
they show how AI can unlock people’s potential—helping
us to become more, not less.
6 Sophisticated Marketer
Interrogating how AIs think
The first of these players is Fan Hui, a European Go champi-
on. Fan Hui is very confident about beating AlphaGo when
the DeepMind team invite him to play a match against the
machine. Instead, he’s crushed by a piece of technology that’s
far beyond the Go-playing simulators he’s encountered before.
This affects him deeply. His sense of self-worth is threatened.
However, he rebounds to help the DeepMind team overcome
a fundamental problem with any machine learning system.
The problem is that AlphaGo knows far more about Go
than any of its creators do. It’s therefore impossible for them
to know how good it really is. Is it reaching new levels of abili-
ty—or is it coming up with flawed ways of playing that will
quickly be exposed by a true Go master? When Fan Hui looks
for weaknesses in AlphaGo, he discovers that the system’s
deep learning is actually very patchy. There are areas of the
game that it’s understood brilliantly, but there are others that
it’s effectively ignored. Without the skill and imagination of a
human expert, AlphaGo would have ended up limiting its own
capabilities, with none of its creators being any the wiser.
As AI systems advance, and do more of their learning
themselves, human interventions will become increasing-
ly important. Without a Fan Hui to challenge it, there’s no
accountability for an AI system—and no guarantee that it is
really producing the best possible results. Other Go profes-
sionals look down on Fan Hui early in the film, but by the way
he rises to the AlphaGo challenge, he transforms the impact
that his own skill and passion can have.
The ultimate test that Fan Hui helps to prepare AlphaGo for
is a five-match series against a 9-Dan Go master: Lee Sedol.
Like Fan Hui, Lee Sedol is supremely confident in his ability
to beat the machine—and as with Fan Hui, that confidence
is badly misplaced. AlphaGo smashes him in the first three
games, settling the series at the earliest possible opportuni-
ty. The expert commentators fronting global TV coverage are
stunned. The Go world is in shock. And Lee Sedol? A gentle,
 dignified man who’s been elevated from his background in
rural Korea by his incredible gift for the game? He seems to
be falling apart on-screen. It feels cruel. It’s painful to watch.
Then something extraordinary happens. Lee Sedol
searches deep within himself. He replays the games with
friends. He somehow finds a way to
get under AlphaGo’s skin. He wins the
fourth game in the series by making
a move that is so unprecedented
it becomes instantly legendary in
the world of Go: the ‘God’ move, as
commentators refer to it. AlphaGo
itself has calculated the probability
of a human being able to make it as
10,000 to one.
By the end of the film, the game of Go
hasn’t been reduced to just another thing
that machines can do better than people.
Instead, it’s been expanded. As one
expert puts it, people have been playing
this game in a particular way for thousands of years. AlphaGo has
revealed whole new ways to think about it. Lee Sedol achieves
a deeper understanding of a game he’s played his entire life.
He remained undefeated by human challengers for years
afterwards. However, his dignity, courage and creativity under
pressure achieve something else just as significant. This highly
publicized contest reportedly led to a shortage of Go boards
worldwide. Those new players weren’t inspired by AlphaGo
itself, but by the spectacle of the man straining every sinew of
his mind to compete with it.

The models for marketers

These are the role models for how marketers should work
with AI. They remind me very much of the ideas in one of my
favorite books at the moment, Hello World: How to be Human
in the Age of the Machine by the mathematician Hannah Fry.
She argues that AI can be a powerful force for good in the
world, but only when working together with humans. If we
put too much trust in something we don’t understand and no
longer push ourselves, the results could be disastrous.
Human ingenuity, craft and skill are essential for keeping AI
systems honest; for ensuring the answers they come up with
fit the questions being asked; that they aren’t missing anything
important. And even the most intimidating AI systems don’t
make human thought redundant. The possibilities they open
up are most creatively explored by human minds.
From top: Lee Sedol DeepMind spent two years developing an AI that could
connects with the AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol—one that he’d never encountered and had no
team; The Go board;
Fan Hui keeps an eye on way of preparing himself for. It took Lee Sedol days to find a
proceedings; Lee Sedol previously unimaginable way to beat that AI at its own game.
puts the ‘God’ move That’s breathtakingly quicksilver creativity. Machines can’t
on AlphaGo; the world
compete with such speed and flexibility. Their value comes in
watches the action; the
proof that even the most provoking and inspiring it.
intimidating AI can drive
more creativity in humans. Get more inspiration from your favorite films and TV
shows in our blog series, The Netflix Test: lnkd.in/netflix

Sophisticated Marketer 7
THE BRIEF
Astonishing
Tales of Content
Marketing:
DUMB WAYS
TO DIE
Sean Callahan explains how a
train safety message became a global
media phenomenon.
There’s a movement underway to add humor and person-
ality to marketing. I’m a major supporter of that movement.
There’s no substitute for human emotion when you’re trying
to connect with your audience.
Surely, though, there are times when humor is strictly
inappropriate. Say you work for a buttoned-down industry like
public transportation. Now imagine your job is to get across
a life-or-death public safety message. You should absolute-
ly avoid humor and personality. Unless, that is, you want to
create a worldwide multimedia phenomenon, like Metro
Trains Melbourne did with their video Dumb Ways to Die.
The video, which features adorable, disaster-prone, animat-
ed beans, became a runaway viral hit in 2012. The soundtrack
cracked The Netherlands’ Top 100 and hit 38 on the UK Indie
charts. Two spinoff games racked up millions of downloads.
So how did a public safety announcement become such a
smashing success?
THE MESSAGE PEOPLE NEED (BUT DON’T WANT) TO HEAR
Metro Trains Melbourne had an important message to get
across: Be safe around trains, whether you’re driving near
tracks or waiting on a platform. In the past, PSAs about train
8 Sophisticated Marketer
safety could be downright grisly affairs. They were live-action,
dead serious morality plays with much implied gore. The kind
of message that made you change the channel, or hide your
eyes when the teacher played it on 8mm film at school.
For their new train safety campaign, Metro Trains
Melbourne decided to do something different. They
wanted to create something people would enjoy watch-
ing, something that would compel them to like and share.
In other words, a Trojan Horse that could sneak in their serious
message to far more people than a blunt approach.
The company had a limited budget, far less than the cost of
a TV ad. So they knew the campaign needed to be memorable
and irresistible to create the viral boost they needed.
GENTLE TUNES AND CARTOONY GORE
Metro Trains Melbourne turned to agency McCann Melbourne
to create the ad. Their concept came from interviews with
platform staff and drivers, who saw first-hand people taking
foolish risks around trains. They quickly hit on a central idea:
Trains are massive, make a lot of noise, and travel predictable
routes in a straight line. Getting hit by one is a (say it with me)
dumb way to die. So why not start with some exaggeratedly
unrealistic other dumb ways to
die? Why not suggest that death
by train is comparable to, say,
donating both of your kidneys to
strangers on the Internet?
The agency sweetened their
gruesome premise with a simplis-
tic, cute animation style. Even
with the gory subject matter, it
looks more like a children’s book
than a horror movie. To further
raise the cute factor, they enlist-
ed two local indie musicians to
play the twinkly, twee tune that
accompanies the ad.

A VIRAL SMASH, AND A LITTLE BACKLASH

The combination of cute cartoons, catchy music, and
gruesome subject matter was an instant smash hit. Just 72
hours after the initial upload, the video had nearly 5 million
views. In the first two weeks, it racked up 30 million.
Metro Trains and McCann had captured lightning in a
bottle. Fortunately, they were quick to react and help the
campaign continue to spread. They released a single of the
song on iTunes, followed by a karaoke version for sing-alongs.
Six months later, they gave the campaign another boost with
the first Dumb Ways to Die game for iOS devices, followed by
TAKEAWAYS FROM METRO TRAINS: a sequel in 2014. And they made sure the campaign’s message
Take Full Advantage of didn’t force them to. They made was getting through with themed materials teachers could use
Rich Media something that was intrinsically in public schools.
The video is a complete entertaining, then brought in the The runaway success wasn’t without its detractors, of
package: funny premise, message after they set the hook. course. Some said the cute packaging wasn’t enough to
great animation, catchy tune. disguise the gory undertones of the campaign. Some claimed
Without any one of those Stay on Message it took tragedy too lightly. But the negative press didn’t have
elements, it might have missed As silly as the video is, it the numbers or the momentum of the initial campaign, and
its viral status. ties directly into the brand’s all it did was feed the publicity engine. All told, over 700 media
central message. There’s no outlets covered the campaign.
Take a Risk non sequitur switch from the
This bold idea looks genius in humor to the message; they’re DEATH BY THE NUMBERS
retrospect—but it must have seamlessly integrated. It’s safe to say Dumb Ways to Die was an unprecedented
seemed like a massive risk at success. Here are just a few of the numbers:
the time. Metro Trains and McCann
Melbourne turned a train safety Over 100 million views of the original video
Use Multiple Channels film into a global hit. Millions Song cracked the top 10 iTunes downloads chart
The campaign built on its early of people who will never ride a Game app hit number one in 17 countries
popularity by expanding into train in Australia liked it, shared Over 14 million downloads of the game app
music downloads, games, even it, and came back for more. Campaign won seven Webby Awards, Best of Show at One
stuffed toys. How good was this campaign? Show in New York, and the Grand Trophy in the 2013 New York
So good that it created Dumb Festivals International Advertising Awards
Put the Ways to Die as a worldwide,
Audience First multimedia brand that What’s more, Metro Trains Melbourne says the campaign got
Metro Trains knew is still going strong its message across. They say it contributed to a 30% reduction
people didn’t want seven years after in “near-miss” train accidents in the first year after the video’s
to watch another the first video: a truly release. And that’s the most important result of all.
dull Metro Trains PSA astonishing tale of
about train safety. So they content marketing. You’ll find more inspiration like this in our Astonishing
Tales of Content Marketing eBook: lnkd.in/astonishing

Sophisticated Marketer 9

What will 5G mean
for marketers?
The exciting part is not what the technology can do, but what else it will enable, explains Grace MacDonald
I
f you’re a tech watcher, you probably noticed that the world is already
rolling out 5G mobile networks. And if you’re a marketer, you’re prob-
ably wondering what this technology means for you. Is 5G just a faster
version of 4G? Or is it a game-changer for digital?
5G technology promises connection speeds up to 400 times quicker than
4G, a reduction in latency (the time it takes a message to go from one device to another) and
the ability to connect far more devices to a network. That opens up lots of new possibilities,
but marketers should be wary of getting caught up in some of the wilder predictions.
Dramatic changes in mobile capabilities are likely to eliminate the need for fixed-line
connections. When you can get 80-100Mbps connections via mobile, why bother with cop-
per wires, fibre or WiFi? Every device will be a mobile device, and there will be a lot more
people connected, as 5G removes the need to install fixed broadband in remote areas.
Greater speed should encourage greater consumption of content, as streaming be-
comes seamless and all downloading happens in seconds rather than minutes. The massive
amount of 5G bandwidth could change the mobile business model, encouraging people to
use their devices more, without worrying about the cost of data.
And these are just what futurists and technologists call ‘first order effects’; those that
can be directly linked to 5G’s properties. Beyond these, 5G will help realize the potential of
many other emerging technologies.
Retailers such as IKEA are already experimenting with augmented reality via mobile to
enable customers to see what products will look like in situ. One 5G version of this idea will be
to allow customers to create an avatar using their measurements, and then use it to try on vir-
tual clothes, giving ecommerce another huge boost. Consumers
in South Korea are already able to visit the supermarket in virtual
reality to do their shopping.
BALANCING OPPORTUNITY WITH
WHAT AUDIENCES WANT
But while 5G will undoubtedly create huge and unexpected op-
portunities, it shouldn’t be seen in isolation. It will be limited
by surrounding technologies and, more importantly, by what
consumers are prepared to accept.
The 5G roll-out will take several years, which means we’ll
be living in a hybrid 4G/5G environment for some time yet. 5G
THE BRIEF
has the potential to remove friction from marketing and deliv-
er better audience experiences, but it won’t serve up advances
such as faster programmatic ads automatically. It depends on ad
serving technology keeping pace with 5G speeds. And although
it removes one source of irritation (ads making pages load more
slowly, particularly on mobile) it won’t make a bad ad less an-
noying when it does arrive.
Future-gazers have imagined a Minority Report-style 5G
world where personalized ads appear to individuals as they
walk past outdoor screens. However, this would require a se-
rious investment in OOH infrastructure. Only 5% of the UK’s
poster sites, for example, have been converted to screens so far.
What’s more, while outdoor advertising can be personalized if
there’s only one person near the screen in question, it breaks
down entirely when there’s a crowd waiting for their morning
train. And there’s also the question of whether people really
want the equivalent of a digital sandwich-board man yelling at
them every few paces as they walk down the street.
Behind all this is the question of data. 5G’s proponents
point out that the technology will allow much more data to be
captured about individuals, their activities and especially their
location. This should mean even better targeting of advertising
messages. But attitudes to privacy are changing, and 5G could
also spark a backlash if consumers feel brands are spying on
them, or if the value they get from such targeting isn’t clear.
Connection speed has tended to be under-rated as a force for
innovation. Each jump forward in fixed line or mobile capabili-
ties has had a profound impact. They’ve enabled new technolo-
gies, ushered in new business models and created new opportu-
nities. 5G has the potential to transform the digital experiences
that marketers can create, potentially even the task of marketing
itself, but none of these things will happen automatically. They
will require investment, careful planning, and above all, aware-
ness of what audiences actually want.
Sophisticated Marketer 11
MARKETING MYTH #673:
Putting dogs and babies in
your video ads will lead to success.

Still relying on
oversimplified insights?

QuickFrame turns your brand’s

videos into data to reveal exactly
what drives performance for every
audience, platform, and product.

How big will
Blockchain be for
marketing
You’ve almost certainly been told that blockchain will
transform our profession. The chances are nobody’s told
you how. Grace MacDonald looks for some answers.
I
bet you’ve been told, at some point in the last year, that blockchain will
transform marketing. However, I also bet that the person telling you this
was pretty hazy on the details of how it’s going to happen.
While 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and virtual and augmented reality
are evolutions of technologies that have existed for more than 50 years in
some cases, blockchain is genuinely new. The first blockchain was only created in 2009 as
part of the development of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. It’s the wild ride of cryptocurrencies
that has generated a lot of heat and noise around blockchain technology. However, once
you move beyond those virtual currencies, that heat and noise is massively greater than
blockchain’s actual use in business—so far, at least. According to Gartner’s 2018 CIO survey,
only 1% of CIOs said they had adopted any kind of blockchain within their organizations,
and only 8% were actively experimenting with it.
THE DEFINITION OF BLOCKCHAIN
A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger, which records a series of transactions as digital
records or ‘blocks’. Its point of difference is that these blocks are
inextricably linked despite not being stored in the same place.
This makes the records secure, unique and permanent. They
can’t be altered without the changes being recorded.
Blockchain was a breakthrough technology for cryptocurren-
cies, because it could be used globally while preventing any-
one spending the same unit of currency twice. For a business,
it creates a way of maintaining a unique, indisputable history
of all its interactions with different parties: suppliers, partners,
customers, and audiences for its advertising.
THE BRIEF
RESTORING TRANSPARENCY
Many people see blockchain as part of the solution to digital ad-
vertising’s problems with transparency, fraud and brand safety.
With customer permissions stored in a blockchain, brands and
their audiences could have an indisputable source of truth when
it comes to who has signed up to receive advertising, and who
hasn’t. Blockchain could allow media buyers to trace the trans-
actions that result in programmatic ads appearing where they
do. This promises to bring transparency to the confused digital
advertising supply chain, clarify who’s accountable when brand
safety issues occur, and increase advertisers’ confidence.
TRANSFORMING DATA OWNERSHIP
It’s not just the management of advertising data that blockchain
could change, though. Potentially far more significant are the
implications of the technology for ownership and control of per-
sonal data. Blockchain could take this out of the hands of brands
and media owners, and put it into the hands of the individuals
whom the data relates to.
The first advances are likely to be around digital identity,
with blockchain letting people prove they are who they say they
are. At the moment, this is mainly seen as a way of improving
the customer experience. Blockchain could remove the need to
re-enter data as you pass from one department’s database to
another, for example, making the whole path to purchase con-
sistent and coherent.
Beyond this though, is the possibility of blockchain enabling
what is known as the Personal Information Economy. If block-
chain can allow verification of personal identity, that could be
extended to include storing your electricity consumption data,
or how you use your mobile phone, so that you can share that
data with other providers when shopping around for a better
deal. You keep your data with you as you travel around the digi-
tal landscape, deciding who can use it, when and how.
In this world, brands wouldn’t collect data about you to try
to make the marketing messages they send you more relevant.
Instead, you would hold your data and allow your chosen brands
to access it when you wanted to make a purchase. Instead of be-
ing widely available for any algorithm to use, your data would
be exchanged only with brands you trust for purposes you’ve
agreed to. Blockchain could build consumer trust by maintain-
ing a robust record of who has used data and for what purpose.
If brands want to use such data to deliver personalized digital
experiences, they have to earn the right to do so first.
Aspects of this huge transformation are already happening.
The UK government’s Midata project, for example, has made
financial services companies and energy suppliers store their
data in a form that customers can access and share with other
providers. One of the major barriers to large-scale adoption of
the Personal Information Economy has been the technology
required to create secure, personal data stores. If blockchain
solves that problem, then the relationship between people and
data could be transformed, and marketing could be on the verge
of a revolution.
Sophisticated Marketer 13
 IT’S ALL IN SCOPE.
Self-service software for brands to
execute video-centric marketing and
optimize business outcomes.

4CINSIGHTS.COM/SCOPE

John Hall ON PERSONALIZATION
In all its many forms, personalization has one consistent effect: increasing customer loyalty.
ast year, I had to buy some shoes. As I
L
was checking out, the cashier asked if
I’d like to sign up for the store’s rewards
program. It was free, so I figured it
couldn’t hurt. I haven’t bought anything
from the brand since. John Hall is
There’s nothing wrong with the shoes. The store the founder of
Calendar.com and
has every type of footwear you could imagine,
a keynote speaker
and the prices aren’t too shabby. So why haven’t I exploring the
returned? It’s because the company doesn’t send nature of audience
me personalized messages. When it emails me relationships.
about a promotion, it’s the same message all of its
reward members receive. There’s nothing special
about it—at least to me.
But what if the brand sent me an email offering a discount on the shoe
brands I’ve purchased in the past? What if the company gave me 10%
off on my birthday? Or what if it pushed certain types of men’s footwear
during specific seasons, such as sandals in the summer or snow boots
during the winter? I’d be more inclined to be a returning customer.
Emotionally connected customers have a 306% higher lifetime value,
stay with a brand 50% longer, and are 57% more likely to recommend it.
The best way to build these emotional connections? Personalization.
WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT PERSONALIZATION?
Personalization can mean many things: products marked with one’s
initials, name, or monogram; a statement that speaks to a core audience;
or tailoring a proposition to meet an individual’s specifications, needs, or
preferences. It could be an email or SMS that uses your first name, or a
coupon for a product based on previous purchases or demographics. The
most important point is that personalization connects products or servic-
THE BRIEF
es with the right audience and sends them the right
messages at the right time.
Customers demand a more personalized experi-
ence, with 81% of consumers saying they want
brands to get to know them better. They want them
to understand when they should be approached—
and when they shouldn’t. More than three-quarters
say they’ll only engage with personalized offers. If
you provide customers with a personalized experi-
ence, they’ll reward you by increasing your revenue,
making more impulse purchases, and returning
fewer items. Most importantly, they’ll become loyal
to your business.
WHY PERSONALIZATION DRIVES
CUSTOMER LOYALTY
Personalization drives loyalty because it builds
trust, demonstrates commitment and the value you
attach to the relationship, and invokes the principle
of reciprocity. Because you’ve gone out of your way
to get to know your customers, they’ll return the
favor by keeping your brand top of mind.
If you want to give customers a personalized
experience, start by moving away from gener-
ic marketing messages. Your swim store may be
having a blowout sale. But how likely is it that a
single man in Tulsa would be interested in women’s
beach attire? Segment him with a similar audience
so he’ll receive more relevant messages.
Next, rethink your loyalty and rewards program.
Rather than offer the same rewards to everyone,
crunch the data to determine which rewards your
customers actually value. The North Face’s VIPPeak
Program allows customers to earn points for a
curated experience, not just discounts on products.
Make sure you’re delivering personalized
content, whether that’s using the customer’s name
in an email drip campaign or directing them to the
correct webpage to solve a problem.
Solicit feedback from customers, encourage them
to get creative using your products and services on
social media, or crowdsource product development
as LEGO has done. And don’t forget to anticipate
customers’ needs through reminders when products
are running low, for example. Share relevant recom-
mendations that can lead to valued experiences.
Personalization may seem like an overwhelm-
ing task, but technology has made it more attaina-
ble. It’s certainly worth the ROI—and the customer
loyalty—in the long run.
Sophisticated Marketer 15
 THE BRIEF

Nate Nicely ON THINKING BEYOND B2B

iProspect’s leaders explain how their use of LinkedIn is evolving.

t iProspect, we recently celebrated the

A
milestone of 100,000 followers for our
LinkedIn Page. It’s a milestone that helps
show how LinkedIn has evolved. It’s
become a key brand and performance
platform for iProspect—both for our agency brand
and for our clients globally. What’s more, LinkedIn
is now a key channel in helping to drive iProspect’s
global employee value proposition (EVP).
LinkedIn doesn’t just enable us to distribute content
to industry leaders. It enables new talent pools to view
life at iProspect’s 94 offices in 56 countries. Our career
pages on LinkedIn get 5,000 views per month. We’re
able to mix different media types, CTA’s, and content
amplification with organic industry distribution.

A CREATIVE SPACE FOR B2C AS WELL AS B2B

LinkedIn’s role in our media mix has expanded
beyond B2B to deliver success for clients in the
consumer space as well. We use it on a daily basis
to maximize performance. Here are two iProspec-
tors’ thoughts on how LinkedIn helps them do
their jobs:
“We’re leveraging the full suite of media opportu-
nities on LinkedIn and finding tremendous success,
especially in the performance space. LinkedIn’s abili-
ty to identify business decision makers is unmatched,
which allows us to target strong performance metrics
across a variety of KPIs, including lead gen, acquisi-
tion and traffic. We’ve recently expanded our use of
LinkedIn into the consumer space, especially for our
travel and hospitality clients as they focus on their
rewards program acquisition.
We’ve seen LinkedIn’s value expand beyond its
B2B targeting capabilities, with a strong product
offering for marketers from a creative standpoint.
Products like natively hosted video and
remarketing capabilities put LinkedIn’s offering
on par with their other social counterparts. The
measurement capabilities have also expanded and
help determine the value of our media placed on
the platform. Lastly, we’ve seen inventory scale
tremendously over the last year as consumers
are spending more time on LinkedIn. They’re no
longer just using it for job hunting. They’re truly
networking with those around them, and that
unlocks more possibilities for our clients.”
Jordan Jacobson
VP, Head of Social Media, iProspect
“LinkedIn’s ability to target at a granular level is
a great way to drive performance whether that be
driving event leads for a B2B client or elongating
dwell time with great content for B2C clients.
We currently use LinkedIn as a lean-in platform
Nate Nicely for B2C clients—whether that’s product updates
is the Senior or a CSR initiative that they want to increase
Global Brand and awareness for.
Communications
Manager for LinkedIn was always seen as the holy grail for
iProspect. B2B marketeers—the best platform for reaching key
decision makers. That’s still true, but what’s also
true is that LinkedIn has started to tap into recent
consumer behaviour and stepped up their game.
First came video ads and more recently, carousel
ads; yes they were behind other platforms but
whenever LinkedIn roll out new ad functionality
there are noticeably fewer ‘teething issues’.
LinkedIn is no longer just a B2B platform—if you have something to
say in an authentic way, LinkedIn should be part of your media mix.”
Catherine Chappell,
Client Partner, Performance Solutions, iProspect UK
Seeing LinkedIn constantly making efforts to evolve its product offering
proves that it is ramping up its advertising solutions at a faster rate than
some of its competitors. New engagement tools like the LinkedIn Live
beta that iProspect has been testing are a case in point. As an agency,
we’re looking forward to seeing continued evolution, as LinkedIn further
blurs the lines between the traditional B2B and B2C audience.
For more on LinkedIn Live, visit lnkd.in/live-video

Sophisticated Marketer 17
LONG FORM

WIN N I N G
WITH
E
W A A K N E S S tfalls’ and flauntin
g flaws
lebrating ‘Pra
city, ce tions.
audie nces cryin g out for authenti looking to build emotional connec
With nds
ct strategy for bra BROWNING
could be the perfe W0RDS BY KEITH

W
hy would a low-budget airline happily publicize the
fact that it refuses to let passengers reserve seats, gives
them little legroom and is shrinking the amount of hand
baggage they can take? What kind of fast food marketer
pays to remind people that their chicken-serving brand
recently ran out of chicken? And why would one of the
world’s largest car rental businesses repeatedly advertise
the fact that it’s not actually Number 1?
If you take any reasonably rational view of how and why people book and buy things, then the marketing
strategy for European low-budget airline Ryanair makes no sense at all. Neither does a hugely popular
recent campaign for KFC in the UK—and neither does the classic 1960s campaign developed by adver-
tising agency DDB for Avis. And yet in both brand and business terms, every one of these campaigns has
delivered spectacular results. Brand tracking showed how KFC turned around the negative sentiment that
resulted from well-publicised delivery problems, after it ran witty ads owning up to them. The Avis ‘We
Try Harder’ campaign turned a $3.2 million loss into a $1.2 million profit in under a year—and remained
a cornerstone of the brand’s identity for half a century. And Ryanair has spent years growing profits while
apparently going out of its way to make passengers’ lives miserable.
These successes are no fluke. They’re the result of one of the most mysterious forces in brand market-
ing: The Pratfall Effect. It’s powerful, it requires courage and skill, but it’s been behind some of the most
creative and compelling campaigns of all time. And with the Pratfall Effect finally tripping and stumbling
its way into the mainstream, it might be time for B2B marketers to start finding ways to flaunt their flaws.

18 Sophisticated Marketer
 FROM EMBARRASSMENT
COMES EMPATHY
The Pratfall Effect was first discovered by the psychologist
Elliott Aronson, who showed in a 1966 experiment that observ-
ers found a smart, clever person who committed a blunder
more likeable than one who didn’t. Aronson’s blunderer was a
student who appeared on film answering 92% of questions in
a college quiz, but then spilled a cup of coffee and got yelled
at by the quiz master, which only some of the students got to
see. His experiments showed that people who saw the coffee
mishap found the student significantly more likeable than
those that didn’t.
Aronson’s work suggested that pratfalls make people more
likeable because they make them more relatable. Mishaps and
mistakes happen to everyone; they’re an inevitable part of life,
of being human. When somebody who’s otherwise demon-
strating how smart and clever they are suffers from one, it’s a
timely reminder of how much they still have in common with
the rest of us. It enables us to identify with them more.
If you subscribe to the view that people buy things for
purely rational reasons, then it’s difficult to see how this effect
could benefit a brand or a product. We may like people more
when we see that they’re fallible and human—but surely, we
like products and services a lot more when they’re faultless?

EMOTIONAL MARKETING’S
SECRET WEAPON
However, if you accept that brands work in different ways; that
they get their strength from being memorable, distinct and
forming emotional connections; then the power of The Pratfall
Effect quickly becomes apparent. At a time when audiences
crave authenticity and can get suspicious of automated and
potentially de-personalized experiences, reminding people
of where you go wrong could become an essential marketing
strategy. It humanizes a brand more than any other tactic can.
Up to now, B2C brands have shown a far stronger willing-
ness to lead with their weaknesses than B2B ones have—a
product of the assumption that people make consum-
er purchases on the basis of emotion and B2B ones
on the basis of logic. However, with new research
from Les Binet and Peter Field demonstrating the
importance of emotion in B2B, it’s time brands
in this space considered the value of flaunting
their flaws now and then.

HOW THE PRATFALL RE-WRITES

The same rules hold true for brands
as for classic comedy characters
like Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp: you’re
more relatable and likeable when
you own up to well-chosen flaws..
CATEGORY RULES
Before famous campaigns for Stella Artois,
Lyons Cakes and Guinness, you’d have
been hard-pressed to find a consumer who
would have told you they wanted “reassur-
ingly expensive” lager, that a cake could be
“naughty but nice” or that they were happy
to twiddle their thumbs waiting for a product
that promised you, “good things come to those
who wait.” However, the power of The Pratfall
Effect comes from persuading an audience that

Sophisticated Marketer 19
LONG FORM

something they’ve always assumed is a weakness might not really be a rity. This isn’t a pratfall, it’s a consistent pattern of
weakness at all. incompetence—and that’s never attractive. Not
Positioning brands this way delivers differentiation, invites people to every mistake your brand makes or every weakness
value different things to those they are told they should value (such as in your product is there to be celebrated. Admitting
speed, low cost, health), and produces a deeper emotional alignment apparent shortfalls only works when your strengths
that’s based on reality. It talks to bits of the human experience that every- are apparent too.
one else is ignoring, or pretending doesn’t exist. Ryanair gets such value from its pratfall-infused
And this perhaps holds the key to B2B marketers finding a way to PR strategy around lack of legroom and cabin
leverage The Pratfall Effect more confidently, unlocking its potential to baggage because for many years it had a very good
humanize their brands and make them distinctive. reputation for reliability and, even more impor-
People know brands can’t be brilliant at everything—just as we know tantly, a faultless one for safety. It’s these strengths
that people aren’t brilliant at everything. Prioritizing one thing typical- that enable it to gain from showcasing an apparent
ly comes at the expense of something else. When a business is honest weakness. If Guinness didn’t have great taste then
about that prioritization it can strengthen its appeal, make it more credi- no amount of surfers, white horses and philoso-
ble and make it feel more fully rounded. We’re seeing how everything phizing could have made waiting around for a pint
adds together; not just being sold just the feel worthwhile. If Lyons Cakes didn’t
best-looking parts of the package. taste sweet enough to feel ‘nice’, there
would have been no point flaunting
BRILLIANT AT THE THINGS THAT how ‘naughty’ they were. You have to
MATTER, HONEST ABOUT earn the right to pratfall.
THOSE THAT DON’T For brands that are confident
That’s the secret behind Ryanair’s trick in their core competence though,
of continuing to sell cheap flights while leading with a well-chosen weakness
going out of its way to stress how awful has more value today than ever.
your experience will be. At the end of the
day, passengers care a lot, lot less about
how much legroom they have or how much extra they have to pay for
their bags than they do about whether they’ll reach their destination
safely. When low-cost airlines first took off, the obvious question that
passengers asked was how they were able to sell flights for so much less.
The low-cost carriers couldn’t afford people to think they were cutting
corners on safety. And the best way to show they weren’t was to point out
all the other things they weren’t spending money on instead. Pointing out
weaknesses in one area implies strengths in others.
It’s not difficult to imagine how this might work in today’s B2B space.
If your app takes slightly longer to load than your
competitor’s, might that be a result of the level of
security you apply? If it takes longer to answer a From top:
customer service call, is that because you’ve got Lyons Cream Cakes, Stella
real experts on the end of the phone rather than Artois, KFC, Guinness.
outsourced call handlers? Does applying for a Opposite: Harold Lloyd
business loan take longer because you’re serious demonstrates the heroic
about responsible lending standards and matching qualities of the pratfall
customers with the right financing package? in the classic 1923 silent
movie classic Safety Last!
HOW TO EXECUTE A BETTER PRATFALL
As with great physical comedy, the power of the
Pratfall Effect is all in the finer details of how you
execute it. An aspect of the original experiment that’s often
ignored is that Aronson’s student had almost completely
aced his general knowledge quiz prior to spilling the coffee.
It was the fact that the subject was set up as being excep-
tionally bright that made the realization that he was human
all the more attractive. Similar experiments have shown that
when someone who appears mediocre pours coffee all over
themselves, they get even less respect than they did before
—as if they are simply revealing new depths to their medioc-

20 Sophisticated Marketer
 In his own study of the types of frustrations. Technology
Pratfall Effect, consumer AS WITH GREAT PHYSICAL delivers against our rational desire
psychologist Adam Ferrier for things to be better, but not
asked 626 consumers which
COMEDY, THE POWER OF THE always against our emotional need
of two cookies they found PRATFALL IS IN THE FINER for a sense of connection. Part of
more appealing—one that was DETAILS OF HOW YOU EXECUTE IT the role of brand marketing is to fill
perfectly round, and another this gap; to make brands distinc-
that had a rough, broken edge. tive by the way that they make you
The messy cookie was the overwhelming winner with 66% of people choos- feel. The sense of empathy that a pratfall generates
ing it. Why? Because it appears inherently more human and hand-made. can play a powerful role in helping to achieve it. As
In the case of cookies, we assume that this means more authentic, less marketers, we’re trained to focus on the things that
mass-produced and better tasting. The history of the Pratfall Effect in we can demonstrate our brand is great at. Now and
marketing suggests that we may want something similar from our relation- then, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the
ships with brands more generally. As marketers, we can signal authenticity occasions when we can be less perfect, more real—
and reliability in the things that matter, by showing vulnerability over the and a lot more likeable.
things that matter less.
Marketers today operate in an era when audiences expect convenience You can explore the role of emotion in B2B in the
and seamless, personalized experiences—but can often feel like their latest research from The B2B Institute and Binet
relationship to businesses is automated and inauthentic, breeding new and Field, available at lnkd.in/B2Binstitute

Sophisticated Marketer 21
Get your OBA guide
You’ll learn:

How objective-based
advertising works in
Campaign Manager

A summary of the
objectives, including
brand awareness,
consideration, and
conversion with
corresponding ad formats

Checklists and
recommendations
to improve campaign
performance based
on objective

Download today: lnkd.in/obaguide

 TOOL BOX
The LinkedIn tools, tips and tricks every sophisticated marketer should have

B2B Marketing Hot or Not

Are you dropping the right subjects onto team meeting agendas? Spending time slotting
the right platforms into your strategy? Making the right cultural references? Leveraging the right
LinkedIn tools and techniques? Decorating your office with the right stuff?
It’s tough balancing on the cutting edge of B2B. Our temperature gauge for sophisticated marketers is here to help:

HOT NOT
Emotional Fast fashion
B2B strategies Optimizing for clicks
Jabra Headphones Mirrored
The Crown on Netflix sunglasses
Expedition Excessive
Campervans packaging
Brand skills Gated brand
Media value assets
investing Political ads
Mulled cider Marketing silos
The Pratfall Effect Bluetooth Fake News
Audio Sunglasses
Self-cleaning Self-driving cars
water bottles Cream-based
Long-view ROI cocktails
The 1990s Hyper-targeting
revival
Blended Celebrity
learning talent shows
Peaky Blinders Animation
Eco-friendly overload
packaging Postal delays

Sophisticated Marketer 23
TOOL BOX

B
oth LinkedIn and Microsoft
offer audiences that are
larger and more powerful
than you might think.
The LinkedIn platform, which has
more than 645 million members,
now combines professional and
user interest targeting options
with its recently released interest
targeting product—which includes
Microsoft Bing search data.
Microsoft Advertising also
reaches a massive audience.
Through MSN, Outlook.com, and
Microsoft Edge—as well as the
Microsoft Search Network (Bing
and Yahoo)—Microsoft Advertising
reaches more than 500 million
Leveraging
people across the globe.
Now, Microsoft Advertising LinkedIn and
Microsoft together
is also the only platform to offer
LinkedIn Profile targeting. This
targeting capability enables you
to reach audiences based on the
target’s company, job function, Sean Callahan explains how to maximize your advertising
industry and more—for search and performance across LinkedIn and Microsoft:
native ads.
More information on how
Microsoft Advertising and LinkedIn Step 1
work together is available in a new
Create a Strong Organic Presence
guide, The Dynamic Duo: How to
Leverage Microsoft and LinkedIn to Both LinkedIn (through its LinkedIn Pages for brands, companies, and
Drive Demand. organizations) and Microsoft Advertising (through its Search and Audience
In addition to advertising Networks) offer attractive opportunities to reach wide audiences organically.
options, both LinkedIn and
LINKEDIN PAGES
Microsoft offer organic pathways— Marketers can expand their organic footprint on LinkedIn Pages. Here you
that are free of charge—to reaching can attract followers and have an ongoing conversation with your target
your target customers. audiences on LinkedIn, all for free. LinkedIn offers four key tips for organic
Read on for a three-step process strategy on the platform:
for maximizing LinkedIn and
Microsoft for organic and paid. Be consistent: We see LinkedIn customers gaining successful
and consistent engagement when they post on their LinkedIn Pages
at least once a day.
Repurpose where possible: Brands can share their story on their
LinkedIn Pages by repurposing infographics, blog posts, videos, links to
events, eBooks, and webinars.
Tap into industry trends and news: @mention people who are
affiliated with a specific piece of content to gain exposure to their network.
Add hashtags to your post to join trending conversations: Keep an

24 Sophisticated Marketer

eye on the headlines on LinkedIn and Bing. These can be a great resource
to see timely stories that are gaining momentum on LinkedIn.
MICROSOFT ADVERTISING
You can also grow your audience organically on Bing at no cost, by using
the Bing search engine to establish your online presence.
Adding your business free of charge on Bing Places for Business helps
establish your online presence for the millions of customers searching for local
businesses on Bing. Accurate and rich business information published on a
search engine drives store visits and more traffic to your website.
Opening a free Bing Webmaster Tools account, helps your business get
indexed quickly and maximizes your website’s performance on Bing, with
site traffic analytics and site optimization tools to create SEO optimized pages.
Step 2
Boost Your Reach and Engagement
via Paid Advertising
In addition to organic, marketers can reach a wider audience with paid
advertising across Microsoft Advertising and LinkedIn platforms.
LINKEDIN
LinkedIn offers marketers data-driven targeting for use with a variety of
formats, including LinkedIn Sponsored Content and LinkedIn Sponsored
InMail, to generate high quality leads. With LinkedIn, marketers
can target decision-makers and other LinkedIn members based on
their company, industry, job experience, education, and interests.
Because LinkedIn’s recently released interest targeting product
now includes Bing search data, you can combine professional
demographic and user interest data to increase the scale of your
marketing efforts, improve your targeting and boost ROI.
MICROSOFT ADVERTISING
Microsoft Advertising reach more than a half a billion people globally
through a range of properties:
MSN
Outlook.com
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Search Network (including Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Amazon and
Apple platforms, and Microsoft services like Windows, Office and Edge)
Microsoft is now the only ad platform to offer LinkedIn Profile targeting on
search and native. This enables marketers to reach audiences based on the
target’s company, job function, industry and more.
Step 3
Measure, Learn and Optimize
to Drive More Impact
Both LinkedIn and Microsoft Advertising offer tracking tools that help mar-
keters determine which programs are working and how to optimize those
programs to deliver measurable results.
LINKEDIN
LinkedIn tools can help marketers quickly assess how their campaigns are
performing and adjust accordingly. For instance, with LinkedIn Conversion
Tracking, marketers can measure how their campaign is producing specific
conversion events, such as members of the target audience registering for
a webinar. Additionally, LinkedIn’s Website Demographics tool enables
marketers to gauge whether the right audiences are visiting their entire
website and even specific web pages.
MICROSOFT ADVERTISING
Intelligent insights provide marketers with data to gauge how their cam-
paigns are performing and how they can optimize them for peak perfor-
mance. Here are four key tools for advertisers:
Opportunity Tab: It offers suggestions to improve campaign performance.
Competition Tab: It tracks competitor performance over time and offers
recommended actions for your advertising.
Performance Insights: It tracks performance changes instantly.
Location Recommendations: It provides suggestions on new areas to
target with estimated audience volume.
Find out more about leveraging Microsoft Advertising and
LinkedIn together in our full eBook guide, available at
lnkd.in/MSA
Sophisticated Marketer 25
TOOL BOX

IS IT TIME TO
REMIX YOUR BIGGEST
MARKETING HITS?
Ever wondered how much value could be hiding in your marketing back catalogue?
Jane Fleming explains how to give your top campaigns a new lease of life.

E
VERY CREATIVE-MINDED MARKETER
KNOWS THE VALUE OF A REALLY
GOOD IDEA: a great insight, a moment
of inspiration, a campaign or a piece of
copy that hits the mark and makes things
happen. Efficient and effective marketing
involves getting the maximum possible value
from the best of these ideas. The frustration is that we
often don’t. Campaigns that we create for one channel
and one moment quickly become yesterday’s news,
no matter how good the results were. It can feel lazy or
unimaginative to keep using the same material.
But have you ever wondered what you’re missing
out on by leaving past successes in the past? Could that
brilliant creative from a year ago still be delivering value
for you today? Do you really have to come up with a new
way of expressing an idea when you’ve already created
impactful copy that captures it perfectly? Do we have
to keep reinventing our marketing, when we could be
getting better results by remixing it?
After all, audiences don’t think twice about musicians,
DJs and producers remixing classic tracks to introduce

26 Sophisticated Marketer
them to a new audience – and generate
another hit. It’s a given that artists are
allowed to borrow from their own back
catalogue, leverage a style and a material
that they already know works, update what
they’ve done, and keep getting value
from it. So why can’t content marketing
be the same?
CAMPAIGN REMIXES HELP
CREATE STRONGER BRANDS
Not only is remixing your best material
commercially savvy, it’s also the essence
of good brand marketing. The likes of
Professor Mark Ritson argue that marketers
are often too obsessed with coming up
with something new and original, when
what they should really be focusing on
is being distinctive. You don’t achieve
distinctiveness by continually saying
different things in different ways. You
achieve it by consistently delivering a
message and a visual brand style that’s
recognizably and distinctively yours.
Remixing existing campaigns has a
definite role to play here. It helps to build
both awareness and familiarity. Just think
how much value Guinness got out of “Good
things come to those who wait,” or look
at the success of Carlsberg’s clever recent
remix of its famous “Probably the best
lager in the world” campaign. Creatively
revisiting ideas helps to make sure that
your audience knows it’s your content
they’re engaging with.
GREAT IDEAS CAN CROSS
CHANNELS
One of the reasons that marketers so
often neglect their previous hits is that
they assume content has to be created
specifically for a channel to drive great
results on that channel. As LinkedIn’s
marketing team, we know that’s not
necessarily the case. We regularly unlock
extra value and ROI by taking campaigns
that have delivered success through other
channels and then remixing them to drive
even better results on LinkedIn, all for
minimal extra effort.
READY TO REMIX? HERE’S
HOW TO GET STARTED
Wondering how to get started unlocking
new value from your previous hits?
Here are six remixing tactics to help:
1. COPY CLICK-TASTIC EMAILS
Emails that are hitting your click-through targets can often
generate an even higher response as the core content for
Sponsored InMails, which benefit from higher open rates and a
prominent position in an uncluttered messaging environment.
2. TAKE A LEAD FROM TOP TWEETS
An impactful tweet of around 140 characters is already the ideal
length for a concise piece of Sponsored Content copy. The same
principles that make for a compelling visual on Twitter also apply on
LinkedIn, including original imagery, infographics and stats.
3. FIND NEW VALUE IN YOUR
FACEBOOK UPDATES
If relevant content gets traction on Facebook, then it’s well worth
amplifying it for a B2B audience on LinkedIn. Keep the hook of your
update for Sponsored Content, rework longer copy as a long-from,
self-published post, and keep the humor and any striking visuals.
4. BORROW YOUR BLOG’S BIGGEST HITS
They’re already driving fantastic engagement among your blog
subscribers, and LinkedIn provides the ideal platform for amplifying
top-performing blog posts to a wider yet still relevant audience.
Re-purpose them as self-published posts from your internal experts,
promote through organic sharing and your LinkedIn Page, and
monitor comments to keep the conversation going.
5. LEVERAGE SEARCH MARKETING
KEYWORDS FOR SKILLS TARGETING
The insights you’ve generated to guide your paid search
campaigns can deliver extra value as the basis for skills targeting
on LinkedIn. Start by typing your keywords into the Skills box
within our self-serve Campaign Manager platform and the tool will
suggest relevant skills to match. Using a keyword-based skill to
target a LinkedIn campaign means that you’re reaching people for
whom that term has real relevance.
6. UPLOAD YOUR SUBSCRIBER
DATABASE TO TARGET PERFECTLY
PRIMED AUDIENCES
The email targeting option within LinkedIn Matched Audiences
enables you to use your existing blog subscribers as a bespoke, custom
audience for your LinkedIn campaigns. Doing so means your marketing
reaches a relevant, opted-in audience that’s primed to respond.
You’ll find detailed tips for each of these remixes in our Remix this
Campaign eBook , available for free download at lnkd.in/remix
Sophisticated Marketer 27
TOOL BOX

B2B MARKETING

11 CONFERENCES YOU
CAN’T MISS IN THE
NEXT 12 MONTHS W0RDS BY
SEAN CALLAHAN

WOULDN’T IT BE COOL IF ALL THE BIG MARKETING CONFERENCES

HAD A HUGE ANALYTICS DASHBOARD HANGING OVER THE EXPO
FLOOR? I have no idea how it would work, but I imagine big lights flickering
with every new promising connection, or fresh perspective, or game-changing
idea—kind of like the scoreboard at a Golden State Warriors game.
You could even compare data across conferences to help you choose
which ones to attend. Though, comparisons aside, I imagine all of the
following conferences would boast analytical data that makes attending
a no-brainer anyway. Here are the eleven marketing conferences B2Bers
can’t go wrong with over the next 12 months:

B2B MARKETING EXCHANGE

WHERE: SCOTTSDALE, AZ
WHEN: FEBRUARY 24-26
FOMO Alert: The Exchange features CMO Mentors, a program to connect
up-and-coming sales and marketing talent with established leaders.
FUN FACT: The event’s “Killer Content Awards” are a fan favorite. The
LinkedIn marketing team was honored to win a “Finny” in the Best Video
Content category last year.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING WORLD
WHERE: SAN DIEGO, CA
WHEN: MARCH 1-3
FOMO Alert: San Diego. Early March. And if that’s not enough, the event packs
a wallop each and every year. SMMW has earned a reputation as the premier
social conference, providing opportunities to have one-on-one conversations
with more than 100 of the industry’s foremost social media experts.
FUN FACT: With your pass, you can participate in pre-event networking
to really ramp up your relationship-building efforts. Choose from private
networking groups, live online meetups, or both.
ADVERTISING WEEK EUROPE
WHERE: LONDON, UK
WHEN: MARCH 16-19
FOMO Alert: The Europe edition of Advertising Week is a massive event in
its own right that consistently pulls in A-list thought leaders. In 2020, it will
feature a key focus on the science of advertising.
FUN FACT: Past speakers include Al Gore, Emma Stone, Venus Williams and
Arianna Huffington, in addition to marketing’s own big names.

28 Sophisticated Marketer
CONTENT TECH SUMMIT
WHERE: SAN DIEGO, CA
WHEN: APRIL 20-22
FOMO Alert: When the action centers on the latest, greatest, and most proven
marketing technology in the enterprise space, the FOMO generates itself.
FUN FACT: LinkedIn’s Head of Global Content Marketing, Megan Golden,
is among the featured speakers this year. Get to know Megan and you’ll
understand why we filed this under “Fun Fact.”
CONFAB
WHERE: MINNEAPOLIS, MN
WHEN: MAY 17-20
FOMO Alert: If content strategy is your focus, you’ll be happy to know that
it’s the focal point of this event. That doesn’t mean you need to be a content
strategist to attend. You just need to be okay with arriving home with a
clearer, more informed vision about your approach.
FUN FACT: Minneapolis can be quite lovely in May.
CANNES LIONS
WHERE: CANNES, FR
WHEN: JUNE 22-26
FOMO Alert: It’s The International Festival of Creativity! It takes place
on the Croisette! It features legendary lashings of pink wine, late night
entertainment in scores of pop-up bars and beach houses, plus the world’s
most sought-after creative awards. What more do we need to say?
FUN FACT:Big B2B Cannes Lions winners include Volvo Trucks and State
Street’s Fearless Girl statue.
INBOUND
WHERE: BOSTON, MA
WHEN: AUGUST 18-21
FOMO Alert: Great speakers, fantastic parties and Boston is a great place to
spend a few summer weeks. The 2019 event featured a star-studded line-up
including Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, and actress and Once Upon
a Farm co-founder Jennifer Garner.
FUN FACT: Not sure how to persuade your boss to spring for your trip? Just
click “convince your boss” on INBOUND’s “why attend?” page and the clever
marketers at INBOUND will generate a custom message for you to send.
Just answer a few quick questions first.
ADVERTISING WEEK
WHERE: NEW YORK, NY
WHEN: OCTOBER 5-8
FOMO Alert: It’s almost a year out and the big names and big brands are
already signing up. At the daddy of all advertising conferences you’ll find
Gary Vaynerchuk, digital prophet David Shing, big guns from eBay, Unilever
and the Premier League, and that’s just the start. TLC were the opening music
act in 2019. Who will it be next time around?
FUN FACT: The 2019 event crammed in more than 98,000 attendees.
CONTENT MARKETING WORLD
WHERE: CLEVELAND, OH
WHEN: OCTOBER 13-16
FOMO Alert: With 4,000 marketers expected from more than 60 countries
and over 125 sessions and workshops, Content Marketing World is a must
for both networkers and knowledge-seekers. It can also pull in a big name.
No details of the headliners for 2020 yet, but Mindy Kaling of The Office and
The Mindy Project was a great star turn at this year’s event.
FUN FACT: Mindy didn’t just star in The Office. She wrote more episodes of
the show than any other writer.
MARKETINGPROFS B2B FORUM
WHERE: SAN FRANCISCO, CA
WHEN: NOVEMBER 3-6
FOMO Alert: Great content, great people and a B2B conference like no other,
just as you’d expect from our own advice guru Ann Handley, who’s also the
Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs. She says, “we don’t believe learning
and fun are mutually exclusive.” You’ve been promised!
FUN FACT: Known for its quirkiness, this is the only conference where you’ll
find the “B2B Neighborhood Block Party” and “B2B After Dark.”
DREAMFORCE
WHERE: SAN FRANCISCO, CA
WHEN: NOVEMBER 9-12
FOMO Alert: Salesforce’s annual conference knows how to draw in the big
music acts. While the headliners for 2020 haven’t been announced yet, past
bands at Dreamfest have included U2, Bruno Mars, Metallica, and Alicia Keys.
FUN FACT: Dreamforce has raised over $73 million for community causes.
Sophisticated Marketer 29
 Microsoft used LinkedIn
Live to stream CEO Satya
Nadella’s keynote from the
Inspire partner conference.

GREAT
APPLICATIONS
OF LINKEDIN
LIVE W0RDS BY CHRISTINA NEWBERRY

LinkedIn Live is an exciting new format that brings together

professional audiences in a real-time, interactive environment.
Live enables organizations to create powerful brand moments, deepen
relationships with followers and increase their engagement on the
platform. In fact, broadcasters are seeing 7x more reactions and 24x
more comments on average for live streams compared to regular video.
Here are some of the most impactful applications that we’ve seen so far:

30 Sophisticated Marketer

1. TRANSPORT YOUR
AUDIENCE TO EVENTS
Events are a major pillar of any content
strategy. They are ephemeral, happening in a
special moment in time, and can create powerful experiences and
brand associations. With LinkedIn Live, you can transport audienc-
es to your events and connect to your community in real-time, no
matter where they are. Here are some of our favorite examples:
Microsoft streamed CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote from
the Inspire partner conference.
The European Commission streamed its Economic Forecast.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) streamed its
commencement ceremonies.
2. GET INTERACTIVE
Live video has a powerful ability to foster
real-time engagement with your audience.
Think creatively about how to incorpo-
rate such interaction into your stream.
Pro tip: Make sure that someone on your end is ready to respond
to comments, ideally during the stream.
Emirates NBD went live with an Ask Me Anything (AMA) format.
Thrive Global hosted an AMA with Ariana Huffington about careers.
Workday conducted #wdaychats spotlighting healthcare trends, with a
chat room moderator on hand to answer members’ questions.
3. SHOWCASE INNOVATION
“Live video feels bold,” says Sarah Staley,
Head of Employer Brand at Realtor.com
“Very few things seem to be live, so doing it
shows that you’re confident.”
Many of our beta participants feel the same way, which
is why using live video to announce products or new ways
of doing things is helpful for building an innovative brand
perception.
Audible live streamed the opening of their #InnovationCathedral, a
historic Newark landmark that they rehabilitated into an innovation center.
Hootsuite went live to discuss how to make your “Google My Business”
listing stand out and announce news around their partnership.
National Geographic (below) live streamed from their Explorers
Festival, gathering some of the world’s most innovative scientists,
conservationists, and storytellers to share their solutions for
creating a more sustainable future.
LONG FORM
4. PROMOTE YOUR
TALENT BRAND
Do you think your company is an awesome
place to work? LinkedIn Live is a powerful
tool that helps you authentically showcase why. We’ve seen
clever examples of companies using LinkedIn Live to stream
their coolest office spaces, interview hiring managers about
open positions and hear from employees themselves.
Inter-American Development Bank live streamed a
conversation between HR and Communications leaders,
answering audience questions about what it is like to work at IDB,
what is needed to apply, and the application process.
BCG streamed advice for the graduating class from the leader
of Pride@BCG.
5. START A SERIES
With serialized content, your followers can
come to expect a regular hit of live content
on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Cisco (above) goes live every few weeks with a #LoveWhereYouWork
stream where employees speak about why they love working at Cisco.
GroupM conducts a weekly stream featuring expert discussions on
subjects like the impact of blockchain on marketing and media.
We’re currently testing the LinkedIn Live feature, so only a
select group of members and Pages have access. If you’d like
to be considered for access, you can  apply to become a live
video broadcaster using the details below.
You can apply to participate in the LinkedIn Live beta
program at lnkd.in/linkedin-live
Sophisticated Marketer 31
 INSPIRATION FROM
THE TEN MOST FOLLOWED
PAGES ON LINKEDIN
The foundation of a successful LinkedIn Page is a robust and active community of followers.
Growing this community is one of the top aspirations for many organizations on the platform.
o understand what makes
T
a LinkedIn Page appeal-
ing and follow-worthy for
members, we analyzed
the organizations that are
leading the way. Here are
the strategies and characteristics of the
ten most followed LinkedIn Pages:
1. TED Conferences
(followers: 12.5M)
Inspirational thought leadership is a
prime attraction for professionals on
LinkedIn, and that's what the TED brand
hub delivers. Aside from the general
allure of its content, this Page thrives
with a solid mix of video, owned articles,
and customized imagery.
2. Google (followers: 12.1M)
Google’s brand name alone is a major
asset, but the tech giant keeps its
LinkedIn followers engaged with a
32 S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r
steady cadence of new content that
showcases corporate social responsibil-
ity initiatives, new innovations, compa-
ny culture, and more. Recognizing the
relatability of its employees, Google
makes a point of leading with its people.
3. Amazon (followers: 8.6M)
Much like Google, Amazon places a
heavy emphasis on lifting up its employ-
ees, with frequent posts highlighting
the stories of individuals throughout
the organization. Amazon also provides
followers with exclusive inside looks at
company events, shares insights about
its customers (aka “Amazonians”), offers
job interview tips, and more.
4. LinkedIn (followers: 8.2M)
Who are these guys? Never heard of ‘em.
In all seriousness, we try to practice what
we preach on our Page with a stream of
useful content for employees, employ-
ers, and job-hunters. We ask open-end-
ed questions to spark conversations, and
we try to draw in new, curious members
through relevant hashtags.
5. Microsoft (followers: 7.8M)
LinkedIn’s parent company keeps things
fresh with plenty of content spanning
a diverse variety of formats, infusing
personal interest angles with company
news and analysis. In addition to owned
articles, it shares plenty of third-party
pieces, and amplifies content created by
its own employees and executives.
6. IBM (followers: 6.4M)
IBM's Page is very much that of a
technology company—focusing on AI,
cloud, blockchain and IoT—but it also
connects with its followers through
human-oriented content. It rallies its
community around diversity and inclu-
sion messaging, spotlights employees in

the news, and showcases the innovation
being driven by IBM teams. Of course,
there’s plenty of creative coverage of
tech as well.
7. Unilever (followers: 6.2M)
Unilever shares quick-hit videos that
deliver concise messages. Socially
responsible content calls attention to
refugees, environmental issues and
bullying. Unilever maintains a consist-
ent level of visual appeal with colorful
photo collages and branded graphics.
8. Nestlé (followers: 6.0M)
Nestlé promotes its culture and varied
career paths, inviting potential employ-
ees to take part in the “future of food.”
Content focuses on innovation, diversity
and inclusion and sustainability efforts.
Nestlé substantiates its own content with
plenty of credible third-party support.
9. Accenture (followers: 4.4M)
Accenture delivers short videos and
links to episodes of its podcast. The
company’s visual branding is on point,
with the signature purple hue appearing
prominently.
10. Facebook (followers: 4.4M)
Facebook’s LinkedIn Page features
plenty of employee showcasing and
behind-the-scenes sneak peeks. Values
are front-and-center, with frequent
posts about its international commu-
nity, charitable causes, and commit-
ment to inclusion. The Page's engage-
ment and growth shows the audience is
responding.
1 6
2
LONG FORM
COMMON THEMES OF THE MOST FOLLOWED
All of these Pages have their own distinct methods for delighting and growing an
audience, but there are plenty of common themes too:
Driving views and engagement with video. Video posts feature strongly and
consistently rank among the top performing updates on these Pages. They have short
runtimes, attention-grabbing hooks, and captions for those viewing without sound. Many
are also using LinkedIn Live to stream live video to followers.
Socially responsible initiatives. LinkedIn members are real people with real
emotional investments. Featuring corporate social responsibilities, sustainability, and
other socially beneficial practices can drive powerful human connections.
Diversity and inclusion. People want to follow, and do business with, organizations
that share their values. Equality is top-of-mind for many in this regard, and top performing
Pages showcase enlightened stances continually.
Spotlighting talent and elevating employee voices. People don’t identify with
companies; theyidentify with the people in those companies. This is why sharing
employee stories tends to be so effective. It's also a great way to attract talent.
Showcasing innovation. LinkedIn members want to learn how leading companies
are changing the game in their respective industries. These Pages find creative and
compelling ways to share progress and plans.
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
Because they have so many resources, these enterprises are able to produce a ton of
first-party content. Not every organization is going to have the same capability, which is
why identifying and sharing relevant third-party content can be very advantageous (the
LinkedIn Pages Content Suggestions feature is an excellent way to find trending topics
your audience is already engaging with).
Never underestimate the authenticity and reach of your own employees. When they
connect their personal profiles with your Page, and re-share your content, it places your
brand in front of new networks and can rapidly bolster follower growth. You can also find
employee posts to re-share using the Content Suggestions feature, or invest in a more
robust employee advocacy tool, like LinkedIn Elevate.
TAKE YOUR LINKEDIN PAGE TO NEW HEIGHTS
Whether your company is an established enterprise, or a budding brand carving out
its place in the world, LinkedIn is the premier place to build a community. By following
these examples, and adding your own unique twists, you’ll be well on your way.
8
Top performing Pages (from
left): TED Conferences, Google,
IBM and Nestlé.
Sophisticated Marketer 33
 The B2B
marketer’s
guide to
MARY MEEKER If you're an informed marketer, you've definitely heard of her
iconic Internet Trends Report. However, if you work in B2B, you
might be left wondering how this massive, 333-slide, annual
presentation is relevant to you. Here are the answers:

W0RDS BY JENNIFER BUNTING

D 1
oes the fact that half of the world's
population is now online make a differ-
ence to your strategy? Should you be
responding to the fact that interactive
gaming experiences like Fortnite are
emerging as the new social media?
Should you be worried about the rise of
encrypted messaging platforms, or the
freemium model of online services?
If you glanced at the coverage of Mary
Meeker's 2019 Internet Trends Report
in the marketing press earlier this year, Meeker's 2019
then you probably assumed that this is Internet Trends
content primarily for B2C marketers (not
to mention the venture capitalists it was
Report is the most
originally designed for, before media relevant yet for
and marketing audiences discovered it).
However, that would be a real mistake.
B2B marketers.
Beneath the surface, this is the most
relevant of Meeker's reports yet for B2B marketers. It’s packed
with insights on changing audience expectations that are
hugely relevant for your B2B marketing strategy. And it throws
up some genuinely big ideas that could inspire new propo-
sitions, new business models, and new approaches to the
buyer journey.
Here are the seven key Meeker findings that B2B marketers
should be paying closest attention to:
ALL COMMUNICATION IS BECOMING MORE VISUAL
One of the biggest ideas in Internet Trends 2019 is that
we’re seeing a fundamental shift towards more visual
communication online. Meeker points to two decades of growth
in the number of images captured and created via smartphones
—and the explosion of image sharing that’s now taking place on
social platforms.
This trend is more than just a case of people taking and
sharing pictures, though. It’s the rapidly diversifying function-
ality around images that makes things
really interesting. On Instagram and
Pinterest, users are increasingly accus-
tomed to image-driven commerce, with
a shopper journey that’s based around
discovering new products from pictures.
Applications of Artificial Intelligence
(AI) like Google Lens open up new
possibilities by capturing information
from images (by image recognition
or visual text translation) and communicating information
through images via augmented reality. Meanwhile, the growth
of platforms like Snapchat and Canva is teaching users to
tell their own stories via edited images rather than through
words. They are becoming graphic designers rather than just
photographers and writers.
How do B2B marketers respond to a more visually driven
world? By treating imagery as more than just illustration. If our

34 S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r

audiences are creating images that talk
to people on different levels, then it’s
important to reach out to them through
visuals that do the same. If you needed
any more of an argument for moving
beyond standard stock photography, and
investing in illustration, infographics,
and design time, then the 2019 Internet
Trends Report is it.
2
THE VOICE REVOLUTION
“You had the time, you had the
power, you’re yet to have your
finest hour…” Okay, so Freddie Mercury
was singing about radio rather than
podcasts and virtual digital assistants,
but as a prediction about the comeback
of audio communication, Radio Ga Ga
is pretty much bang on the money as
far as Meeker is concerned.
She points to how Amazon Echo’s
installed base within the US has almost
doubled in just a year, with the number
of available Skills on the platform
growing even faster. The growth in
Podcast listeners is almost as spectac-
ular, with 70 million monthly listeners
LONG FORM
02
03
04
in the US alone, twice the number four
years ago. A glance at Apple’s Top Ten
most downloaded podcasts shows the
rich variety of content that listen-
ers are engaging with, and the
very real appetite for high-end
thought leadership delivered
via voice. There’s never been a
stronger argument for build-
ing podcast strategies for B2B
brands.
3
ONLINE VIDEO IS
GROWING, AND
DIVERSIFYING
Meeker doesn’t just pick up on the fact
that communication as a whole is becom-
ing more visual. She’s keenly aware
that more and more of those visuals are
moving. Online video is another big story
in her report—because of the speed with
which it’s growing and because of the
interesting new forms it’s taking. In the
US, 28% of all viewing time is now spent
online, with time spent engaging with a
mobile predicted to overtake time spent
watching TV this year.
Sophisticated Marketer 35
LONG FORM
This is more than a case of people
watching shows on YouTube rather
than TV. A growing share of online video
viewing is taken up by short formats
such as Instagram or Facebook Stories.
The definition of video has broadened.
It includes ideas that are expressed in a
few seconds as well as those expressed
in a few minutes. And this diversifica-
tion applies to B2B video just as much as
peer-to-peer video sharing. Within the
LinkedIn feed, we’re already seeing a rich
variety of video lengths and formats.
4
FREEMIUM DRIVES THE
CUSTOMER JOURNEY
Zoom, Dropbox, Slack, Wix,
Google G Suite… Meeker’s slides are
filled with examples of enterprise appli-
cations that have grown through the
Freemium model originally associated
with online gaming. It’s having a huge
impact on the B2B tech buying journey,
and could reshape expectations of B2B
buying more generally, as audiences get
used to the idea of trying services for free
before they upgrade to a paid version.
Network effects are a big part of the
Freemium story. Just as with the growth of
multiplayer gaming through social media,
it’s the recommendations of existing users
that often drive others to try a new video
meeting platform or file sharing service
for free. Employee and customer advoca-
cy has never been more important to B2B.
Marketers need to think beyond tradition-
al case study formats when it comes to
encouraging and amplifying these voices.
Meeker’s analysis shows how
Freemium B2B brands are succeeding
in growing both their user base and
their percentage of paying users: proof
of the effectiveness of this go-to-mar-
ket strategy. In the case of Zoom and
Google G Suite, the percentage of paying
subscribers is skyrocketing. All in all,
she concludes, the Freemium business
model in B2B is just getting started. In
several sectors, the notion of paying for
something before your business starts
using it, could soon seem quaint.
36 S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r
5
CUSTOMER DATA IS
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE in the use of real-time data and AI.
Customer insight has always
underpinned the most successful
businesses, from IBM leveraging the
customer understanding of its B2B
sales teams in the early 20th centu-
ry, to Nike employing people from its
target audience of runners, to Chrysler
pioneering focus group research in the
1980s. Today, customer insight comes
through a growing array of what Meeker
calls, “data plumbing tools.” She charts
the growth of software from the likes
of Qualtrics, Twilio, Salesforce and
Slack, all of which enable companies to
capture and organize customer experi-
ence data like never before. Packages
and platforms like this make real-time
data analysis more accessible, and
they’ll lead the integration of AI and
data-driven decision-making into sales,
marketing and other areas of operations.
6
CLOUD IS TRANSFORMING
THE TECH LANDSCAPE
Underpinning the growth of
Freemium and the accessibility of
customer data is the Cloud. The growth
of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft
Azure and Google Cloud is freeing
businesses from worries about integrat-
ing new technology into their opera-
tions, and driving greater trial of new
services. These platforms are also storing
the data that is increasingly integral to
how businesses make decisions—and
market to their customers. Meeker’s
report shows how the volume of data
stored on the Cloud is about to overtake
the volume stored on in-house servers.
This will help drive exponential growth
7
EVERYONE NEEDS THE
ABILITY TO LEARN FASTER
Meeker concludes that the speed
of tech development is already outpac-
ing the ability of businesses, employees,
regulators and governments to adapt.
However, this gap can be closed by a
conscious effort to develop skills that
enable faster learning and experimen-
tation. Meeker identifies online learning
platforms as a massive growth oppor-
tunity with a vital role to play in the
future of work. LinkedIn’s own research
shows how soft skills like creativity and
adaptability are becoming increasingly
valued by businesses. Nowhere is this
more true than in sales and marketing.
Prioritizing the ability to learn is argua-
bly the most significant source of advan-
tage in B2B going forward.
ADVICE

To Infinity... and Respond!

ANNOTATED I work in PR. How can I get journalists, clients, and
(sometimes) my boss to respond to my
MARKETING email pitches?
AND CAREER Can’t Hurry Love

ADVICE (WITH THE Dear Hurried Love,

OCCASIONAL PUN) We open 80% of what lands in our email inbox, yet
we find just 59% of it to be useful, according to recent
FROM ANN research by Adobe, published by MarketingProfs.
HANDLEY (Interestingly, we spend 209 minutes each day
checking and sorting through our inboxes—a
whopping 3½ hours!)
So maybe the question is not: How do
we get people to respond?
Maybe the question might be: How
can we make our emails more valuable?
And how can we more clearly indicate
the response we need?
Writing in email (and Slack
messages and texts and quick-
hit memos) lends itself to being
misinterpreted, misunderstood,
misconstrued, ignored—more so than
most writing.
Why? I have a few hunches.
Ann is a
Wall Street Journal Hunch #1: Email, messages, memos
tend to be ambiguous because of their
bestselling author and immediacy: Most of us dash off an email
the Chief Content Officer without a lot of forethought.

of MarketingProfs
www.annhandley.com Get mor
e
Ann-tast
for more marketin
ic B2B
ga
in the m dvice
fortnigh u st-read
tly news
AnnHan letter
dley.com ,
Newslett /
er

ASKING
FOR A FRIEND
38 Sophisticated Marketer
 Hunch #2: Nuance is often impossible to convey. Sure, tossing in a
winky emoji might help convey that you’re joking. But still, when you
write like you talk (common advice I don’t agree with, by the way),
what you can easily communicate face-to-face gets lost in writing.
Hunch #3: WE DON’T PAUSE BEFORE WE HIT THE SEND BUTTON.
It’s so important, I’ve Shouty-Capped it. Take a beat. Re-read.
So what’s the solution? Before you hit SEND: Read as the recipient.
Swap places with your reader: Be a skeptic of your own words. Get out of
your own head. Step into your reader’s. Read your email/Slack message/
text through his or her eyes—from the recipient’s point of view.
As you do so, ask yourself 5 simple questions:
1. Is my point clear?
2. Could I make this point more simply?
(Am I making it too hard to figure out what I’m trying to say?)
3. Could I make this point in fewer words?
4. What question would I have after reading this?
5. What do I want the reader to do?
(Nothing? Fine. But is the “FYI only” clear?)
Finally: make your Ask crazy-clear. One uber-practical suggestion is this:
Use Action Words in your subject line. Instead of: “Agenda for Tuesday”
Use: “PLEASE COMMENT: Agenda for Tuesday 1 PM meeting”
Why? Tell your recipient what you need them to do. If they need to read
and comment on an agenda before a Tuesday afternoon meeting, tell
them. Otherwise, you risk them missing the crucial ask—at least until you
send a frantic follow-up on Tuesday morning.
Plea Jargon
We sell highly specialized and complex products.
How can we make our B2B content less boring,
jargon-filled, and technical?
The Fun One at the Office
Dear Fun One,
According to author and psychologist Steven
Pinker, the root cause of so much bad writing is “the
Curse of Knowledge”: our difficulty in imagining
what it is like for someone else not to know what
we know.
That’s in part why jargon, buzzwords, and
thick, dense, flat-out un-fun-to-read writing is so
rampant in business.
And that’s in part why the Curse of Knowledge is
doubly a curse in marketing, because often writers
Want more top tips for getting the most from
LinkedIn targeting? Join our Sophisticated
Marketer’s Session on Finding your Ideal Audience
have to translate subject-matter expert-speak.
Here are two antidotes to break the spell of the
Curse of Knowledge in B2B marketing, with a goal
of creating more engaging yet still-relevant content:
Antidote 1. Add back-up singers: a few words
of explanation for big words, technical phrases
and acronyms.
Why? So you use a word, jargon, or technical
term some readers might not know. The solution
isn’t always to NOT use that word, or to dumb the
writing down.
Instead, add a few words around your phrase to
support it, just like back-up vocals support a lead
singer. Back-up singers make any vocalist stronger,
more nuanced, and more powerful. So too these
few extra, supporting words will give a technical
word or jargon context—making it stronger, aiding
reader understanding.
Here’s an example of great backing up from Mel
Magazine: “Ricki was released in the final phase of
guide-dog training for having ‘hackles,’ or a shark-
fin-like fur on the ridge of her back that sticks up
and can be seen as a sign of aggression.”
Antidote 2. Be your reader’s wingman.
Why? Your job as a writer is to be a wingman,
or advocate, for your reader. Translate cursed
language into a simple, direct, forthright approach
that elevates the reader’s knowledge—without
making them feel stupid. Or confused by jargon.
Here’s an example from The New Yorker: “The
‘marmorated’ in its name means ‘marbled,’ but
‘mottled’ is closer to the truth. Entomologists, who
have a color palette as elaborate as Benjamin
Moore’s, describe the underside of its body as
‘distinctly pale luteous’ and the topside as ‘generally
brownish cinereous, but also greyish ochraceous,
ochraceous, testaceous, or castaneous.’ To everyone
else, it looks as dull brown as its own frass, the
technical term for insect excrement.”
See how writer Kathryn Schulz beautifully
interprets for the audience without making herself
the center of the story? Your product might be
technical. Your readers might be highly educated.
But they’ll still appreciate your ability to produce
readable, engaging marketing.
Keep an eye on the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Page for our next call for questions at
lnkd.in/linkedin-marketing-solutions
Sophisticated Marketer 39
LONG FORM
WHY LUXURY
BRANDS NEED
A SENSE OF
PURPOSE
The future for luxury brands looks bright—but only if they can
align traditional values with new buyers’ demand for purpose.
W0RDS BY TATIANA DUPOND
M
y young daughter’s favorite story
is a Japanese children’s book called
The Tomato Party. It’s about Hana, a
young girl who takes care of a tomato
plant, growing and picking the fruit,
so that she can use the tomatoes to
organize a surprise dinner for her
parents at the end of the summer.
When I say favorite, I really mean
favorite. Not only do we read this story every night, it’s also
inspired her to grow her own tomato plant—and start planning
how we’re going to sit down and eat the tomatoes as a family.
Why is she so obsessed with this particular story? Why does
it resonate with her far beyond any of the others that we read
together? The answer is simple: it’s the first story that has connect-
ed Sofia to a sense of purpose. And that sense of purpose is
something she can empathize with like nothing else. Even when
it’s as simple as growing tomatoes to bring a family together.
The fascinating thing is that this connecting power of
purpose in stories doesn’t decline as we get older. It’s just as
powerful for adults as for children; it’s just as powerful for
brand stories as for children’s ones; and it’s especially impor-
tant, at this point in time, for luxury brand stories.
WHY PURPOSE IS ESSENTIAL FOR LUXURY
Bain Consultancy predicts an exciting future for the luxury
market, forecasting growth of between 3% and 5% per year
between now and 2025. However, in order to earn a share of
that growth, brands must successfully engage Generations Y
and Z, who will represent 55% of the entire luxury market by
40 Sophisticated Marketer
the end of that period. This will be impossible without a
clearly expressed sense of brand purpose.
Just as with my daughter, it is purpose that forges a connec-
tion between a new generation of luxury consumers and any
brand story. In recent research, 64% of millennials and Gen
Z’s say they are influenced by sustainability when making a
purchase. What’s more, 81% percent of millennials expect
the brands that they buy to be transparent in their marketing
and actively talk about their sustainability impact.
Purpose takes luxury brand values that have traditionally
been secretive, mysterious and timeless—and applies those
values to the real-world issues and situations that shape
this new generation’s mindset. It makes those values newly
relevant in a way that sticking to traditional cues around quali-
ty, exclusivity and craftsmanship won’t necessarily do.
Purpose drives the stories that millennials want to hear, but
it also provides the proof that the wider
range of stories a brand tells are authen-
tic. A brand with purpose doesn’t just
claim craftsmanship. It expresses what
craftsmanship means in the context
of workers’ rights or scarce natural
resources—by relating it to a commonly
understood purpose, it gives the concept
greater meaning.
Millenials and Gen Z like storytelling
but what they want is storyproving. More
than any other generation, they seek out
evidence of authenticity in everything
they buy.

64%
of millennials and
Gen Z’s are influenced
FROM BRAND by sustainability
ATTRIBUTES TO STORIES
As a luxury brand, Cartier has always when making a
celebrated power and elegance in women. purchase.
When this story is told with a sense of
purpose today, it becomes a story of champi-
oning female entrepreneurs , and solving contem-
porary global challenges through the Cartier Women
Initiative Awards launched three years ago.
Gucci owes its existence as a brand and a business to its
founder’s vision of scaling the skills and expertise of Florence’s
artisan craftsmen to reach a wider audience—and doing so
using high-quality, natural materials. That links the label
intrinsically to the people working for it and the environ-
ment that it exists in. Today that takes the form of Gucci’s
Equilibrium Manifesto, formalizing the need for balance
between these different elements: gender equality, diversi-
ty, empowerment of employees and environmental respon-
sibility. In Gucci’s own words, it’s an online platform that
connects the planet, purpose and people. And the impact of
this purposeful positioning? It’s coincided with sales growth
of 36.9% in 2018, with 62% of all the brand’s
sales coming from millennials.
The most important characteristic of
these senses of brand purpose is that
they never feel manufactured. Once
again, it’s a case of storyproving
over storytelling.
The inherent authenticity of a
true brand purpose brings stories
into the present, demonstrating a
brand’s instincts in action. It made
absolute sense that LVMH and
Kering should move quickly to
donate to the rebuilding of Notre
Dame, for example. It showed
their instinct for valuing heritage
and craftsmanship as well as their
powerfully French identity.
WHAT HAPPENS IF
BRANDS DON’T HAVE A
SENSE OF PURPOSE?
Luxury brands could once earn fame and
desirability by being enigmatic, but over
the years I’ve witnessed a definite transi-
tion towards telling more purposeful stories
during my time in luxury marketing.
This has been happening from my first experi-
ences, where the creative focus was mostly
around products, through to my time working
in advertising for the New York Times,
when brands started marrying breath-
taking imagery with compelling stories
about their purpose as a company.
Now, at LinkedIn, I’ve seen this
journey move on further. I’m watching
purpose go from one potential market-
ing tactic to the single most important
tactic: the cornerstone of brand and
economic value.
HOW DO BRANDS DO THAT?
They break silos of communications, they bring
together corporate, product and HR messages. They get
closer to their audience and build a strong sense of belonging
in being authentic and transparent.
LinkedIn used to be a place you’d come to look for a job.
Today 85% of members come to LinkedIn to engage with
content and follow trends related to their interests.
It’s not just that I’m seeing more (in fact most) luxury
brands integrating purpose into their messaging on LinkedIn.
It’s that this content exploring brand purpose is often among
the most popular content on our platform.
I don’t know whether luxury brands will be able to inspire
millennials to start growing their own tomatoes... but cultivat-
ing future revenues and brand value will depend on amplify-
ing the sense of purpose within their DNA.
Sophisticated Marketer 41
LONG FORM

42 Sophisticated Marketer
THE DELICATE ART OF THE
Rebrand
W0RDS BY JOSH RITCHIE
A good rebrand is like making
a meal. The more you prep up
front, the easier it will be down
the road. This is especially true
in a rebrand because many
people think the “real” part is
the design: the fresh logo, the
updated website, and so on. But
design is only one aspect. The
most important work happens
much earlier. These crucial
steps set you up for long-term
success—and make your design
much more effective.
If you’re ready to dive into a
rebrand, here are five things
you should do to save your
sanity and achieve your
brand goals.
1. Clarify your
brand strategy
A rebrand doesn’t start with a logo; it starts with your
brand strategy. Your strategy is the foundation upon which
everything is built. It helps you identify who you are, what your
brand goals are, and how you plan to achieve them. Elements
like your visual identity (aka design, logo, colors, fonts, etc.)
and brand messaging are really just tools to help you execute
your brand strategy. Therefore, when you tackle a rebrand, the
order of priority should be:
BRAND STRATEGY (GENERAL BLUEPRINT)
1. Core identity (purpose, vision, mission, and values)
2. Internal audit (what works, what doesn’t)
3. Competitive analysis and market research
4. Personas (who you’re trying to reach)
BRAND MESSAGING
1. Brand guidelines
2. Positioning
3. Value proposition
4. Messaging architecture
VISUAL IDENTITY (DESIGN)
1. Brand guidelines
Sophisticated Marketer 43
LONG FORM

understanding your identity, and

2. Know who communicating that identity. As such,

you are you need to gather as much infor-

Identifying and articulating your core
identity is the first step of your brand
strategy. Your core identity is the essence
of your brand, composed of your
purpose, vision, mission, and values:
Purpose: Why do you exist?
Vision: What future do you want
to help create?
Mission: How do you create
that future?
Values: Who are you? How do
you work?
Some brands breeze over this step of
brand strategy because they assume they
have it covered in some dated, wordy
mission statement. But it’s important to
take the time to re-evaluate everything,
starting with your reasons for existing.
These core principles influence every
part of your brand, from the way you talk
around the water cooler to your tagline,
so they will play a huge role throughout
the rebrand process. Gather your leader-
ship to talk through these elements,
then articulate them in simple, clear,
and concise language. Make sure they
are also distributed to your team—and
understood by them.
3. Research,
mation as you can to see the bigger
picture. The main areas of research are:
1. Your brand. Take a comprehensive
look: How do people feel about your
brand (both internally and externally)?
What works? What doesn’t? What needs
improvement?
2. Your customers. Who are they? What
do they need? How can you help them
get it? Call, chat, email, and survey them
to find out. The insights you uncover will
help you create personas and vet ideas.
3. Your competitors. What is your
market position? How do your
competitors present themselves? What
does their branding communicate?
Do as much research as you can to
understand exactly who you’re up
against.
4. Write a
strong creative It’s impossible to be
brief over-prepared for
A rebrand can be a complicated project
a rebrand, but it’s
with a lot of moving parts. Clear commu- surprising how many
nication is crucial to help you save time,
money, and energy. When you’re ready
brands don’t do
to move into design (after having done thorough research.
your research and fleshed out your strat-
egy), a well-written creative brief will

research, make everyone’s life easier—and make

research
It’s impossible to be over-prepared,
especially when it comes to your
rebrand. The more you know, the
stronger your strategy, and the more
effective your creative execution will be.
Still, some brands are too overwhelmed
(or too lazy) to do research thoroughly.
Remember that a rebrand is basical-
ly about positioning your brand well,
your creative output stronger.
Your brief should include the info
your team needs to understand the
problem and execute the best creative
solution. This usually includes:
Overview
Objective: why are you rebranding?
Budget
Deadline
Audience, including your current
customers, and your ideal new ones
Brand perception
Brand Goal
Primary message
Value proposition
Tone/Voice/Personality
Success metrics
Competitors
Important insights from
past experiences
Relevant references or inspiration
In a sense, you are asking your design
team to start from scratch, so assume
they know nothing, and take it back to
basics. Highlight the problem you’re

44 Sophisticated Marketer

trying to solve without drowning your
team in data and tangential detail.
It’s also worth remembering that a
rebrand is a communication challenge.
Make sure that communications
considerations are front and center in
the brief.
5. Get buy-in at
every stage
Buy-in is crucial both to help the process
go as smoothly as possible, and make
sure the work you’re creating is solid.
There are many stages of a
rebrand, each of which builds on the
last. You need strategy before messag-
ing, messaging before design, and so
on. That’s why it’s important to get
sign-off at each stage. If any of these
elements doesn’t resonate with the
people closest to the brand, then it’s
unlikely to work with those outside
the brand.
Sign-off also helps save time,
energy, and money along the way,
as any late-stage changes throw
timelines off and soak up more
resources. To avoid miscommuni-
cations and make sure everything is
above board throughout the rebrand
process, identify a project point
person who:
Creates a comfortable timeline
(with built-in approval at each
stage).
Knows who needs to sign off on what.
Collects and consolidates feedback.
Confirms approval before the
project moves on.
A few more tips:
A rebrand is a stressful but exciting
process. There are a lot of cooks in the
kitchen, so it’s important to keep every-
one on the same page. Here are a few
extra tips that can help:
Sophisticated Marketer
1. Know exactly why
you’re rebranding
And make sure everyone else does too.
Change for the sake of change—or just
because there’s a new CEO, Creative
Director or CMO—isn’t a reason to
change. You need to justify exactly
why it’s necessary. Was your visual
identity created flippantly before, and
now you have the time, resources, and
focus to approach it in a thoughtful
way? That makes sense. Was your
visual identity created pre-Internet,
and therefore struggles to translate
to digital/mobile delivery? That’s
good, too. Remember: A rebrand is a
business decision; make sure it stays
tied to the business.
2. Think about the future
Your goal is to create a brand built
to last forever—or at least the next
50 years. Consider ways to future-
proof your rebrand in all areas. That
means building something flexible
enough to adapt to market changes,
while still remaining timeless. For
example, there are a lot of trends in
logo design. Don’t pick something just
because you think it looks cool today,
or because all of the new millennial
brands are doing it. The logos of
brands like NASA, IBM, BMW, Apple,
Nike, Patagonia, and The Los Angeles
Dodgers haven’t changed in years.
That’s because they’re timeless.
3. Test everything
A rebrand isn’t a one and done deal. As
much as you research beforehand, you
should meticulously test to make sure
your work resonates with people and
is accurately communicating what you
intend it to. Always test internally first.
4. Keep your ultimate goal
front-and-center
It’s the True North of your rebrand
process: the best way to resolve issues
and discussions and keep all of your
stakeholders aligned on what you’re
trying to achieve and why.
45
LONG FORM
LESSONS OF GREAT
lead gen
campaigns
Inspiring tales of businesses
that smashed their lead gen
targets on LinkedIn.
W0RDS BY KELLY FARRELL
I
t tops almost every B2B marketer’s
agenda: how can we meet
our lead generation targets?
However, as marketers, we don’t
just want impressive lead generation
performance. We need impressive and
measurable revenue performance.
If we can demonstrate the value of
leads as well as the quantity and the
cost, we find ourselves in a far stronger
position. That’s why the most effective
lead generation strategies don’t just
optimize around generating more leads.
They optimize around generating the
leads that are most likely to convert
to valuable customers. They integrate
with and support sales to help those
conversions happen. Here are the
lessons from businesses excelling at
building these types of lead generation
strategies on LinkedIn.
46 Sophisticated Marketer
LESSON 1: BUILD ON AWARENESS AND ENGAGEMENT
Lead generation is a lot easier when people know who you
are, and are familiar with what you do. That’s why many of
the strongest-performing lead generation campaigns have
two elements. They drive awareness through targeted video,
ads and content in the feed, and combine this with a direct,
personalized call to action, often through Sponsored InMail.
When the engineering materials platform Matmatch
needed to increase the number of its enrolled suppliers, it
started by distributing strongly branded, animated videos that
showed how signing up could provide access to new custom-
ers. It then followed up by targeting the same audience with
Sponsored InMail offering a free demo of the platform.
For the launch of SNSR Expo, its new risk and securi-
ty conference for the Middle East, Reed Exhibitions used
engagement with thought-leadership content as the starting
point for the lead nurturing process. It used LinkedIn conver-
sion tracking to identify the businesses whose employees were
engaging, and then used LinkedIn Sales Navigator to reach out
to the most likely decision-makers at those businesses.
LESSON 2: TRY DIFFERENT ROUTES TO THE AUDIENCE
To generate quality leads, B2B marketers need the ability to
reach a relevant audience at scale. They can reduce cost per
lead (CPL) when they are able to develop distinctive approach-

es to targeting that audience. By building bespoke segments,
and defining their audience in different ways, they can avoid
bidding on the same targeting characteristics as other market-
ers, and reduce the amount they have to pay.
Audi realized that targeting traditional luxury parame-
ters like age and seniority wouldn’t align with its Middle East
market’s younger luxury buyers. It focused on another indica-
tor of buying power by targeting those working in govern-
ment-related jobs.
Matmatch mixed different approaches to reaching relevant
engineering materials suppliers, using LinkedIn profile data to
target at scale, and account targeting to reach out to specific
businesses attending trade shows.
LESSON 3: PERSONALIZE CONTENT TO PRIORITIES
The ability to call out a specific target audience in Sponsored
Content delivers a measurable uplift in engagement and
click-through rates—and by tailoring campaigns to different
segments, marketers can also personalize the ongoing journey,
and increase the chances of leads converting to revenue.
The IT solutions business Comarch researched the specific
1
3 a similar approach to optimizing around lead value. The
2 location and function that enable personalized lead nurtur-
LONG FORM
value of digital transformation for retail businesses. By releas-
ing eye-catching data at key moments in the retail calendar,
it was able to increase engagement around its content, and
increase the flow of leads.
Templafy is one of the fastest-growing software businesses
in Scandinavia, offering a software-led solution to the problem
of keeping documents on-brand and legally compliant. The
addressable audience for these solutions is broad and varied,
which has enabled the business to take different approach-
es to targeting and engaging its prospects. It targets general
BUILDING BESPOKE TARGETING
SEGMENTS REDUCES COST PER LEAD
SIGNIFICANTLY
campaigns at IT and marketing functions in enterprise-lev-
el businesses—people who will instantly understand the
problem of brand consistency. However, Templafy also creates
tailored content for insurance businesses, to take advantage of
a sector with a large amount of customer documents.
LESSON 4: OPTIMIZE AROUND LEAD VALUE
“I’d far rather have one lead from the right kind of prospect
than 100 less relevant ones,” says Templafy’s Traffic Manager
and Growth Hacker Casper Emil Rouchmann. “We evaluate
our lead gen channels in terms of lead quality, sales oppor-
tunities and lifetime customer value, and LinkedIn comes out
on top by a very wide margin.”
By optimizing around lead value rather than cost, Templafy
has been able to generate massive ROI. LinkedIn targeting
has reduced CPL by 55%—and the quality of those leads has
also reduced cost per sales opportunity by 43%. Overall, the
projected value of Templafy’s LinkedIn-sourced pipeline
represents an ROI of over 475%.
Other top-performing lead generation campaigns take
approach that Reed Exhibitions took to qualifying leads and
planning follow-up through Sales Navigator led to a conver-
sion rate from leads to signed exhibitor contracts of over 30%.
LESSON 5: REMOVE FRICTION FROM THE JOURNEY
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are common to many of the most
successful lead generation campaigns, removing friction
from the process. For Templafy, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
play a critical role in helping to capture the telling details like
ing. For Matmatch, Lead Gen Forms generated over 1,000
leads and grew the business’s pipeline of suppliers by 10x.
Sophisticated Marketer 47
LONG FORM

REAL GROWTH

Heroes
THE REAL FACES OF SALES BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH EXPERTISE

W0RDS BY SIOBHAN WATERS AND CAROLINE YOUNG

They are the relationship builders, the business consultants, the sector experts
– and the growth engines for their customers and their business. Modern sales
professionals take business strategy and make it happen; they take awareness
and demand and turn it into revenue; and they take opportunities and turn them
into relationships that deliver benefits all round.

For LinkedIn’s first Real Faces of Sales
Awards, we set out to find the everyday
sales heroes who embody the opportunity
that modern sales represents. We did
so by asking their colleagues and
customers to nominate the sales
professionals that make the biggest
difference to their businesses through
their ability to build trust, demonstrate
value, and negotiate effectively.
Real sales heroism comes in many
different forms. The styles and strategies
of our award winners reflect the many
different ways that sales professionals
can contribute to growth – and the
different stages of the journey that
customers take with a business. In our
last issue, we celebrated the winners
of our Prospecting Stars awards: sales
people whose deep marketing insight
helps to identify relevant opportunities
and match needs and solutions. In this
issue, we’re looking at the crucial ability
to build trust through expert consultancy.
We’re picking out the sales people who
have established themselves as thought
leaders for their sectors, and who
apply their expertise to add value for
clients by understanding and solving
their specific needs.

48 Sophisticated Marketer
 BRIAN MOONEY
GENERAL
MANAGER AT
NEXTWAVE HIRE
When Brian Murphy made the
switch from a career in Corporate
HR to employer branding and
recruitment marketing startup,
NextWave Hire, he brought every
element of his 10 years’ client-side experience to bear. “Even
with zero experience, his natural acumen for sales meant he
was naturally doing discovery and lead triaging on day one,” says
NextWave Hire’s founder and CEO Phil Strazzulla, who nominat-
ed Brian for our Super Sleuth Salesperson award. “He naturally
bonds with our customers, whom he has incredible empathy for.”
That empathy is expressed through the selling brand that
Brian has established on LinkedIn. His LinkedIn profile
expresses his passion for employer branding succinctly and
emphatically, in a way that likely clients can identify with.
His activity backs this up. Brian posts regularly on the role of life. “Sales at a startup is one of the hardest jobs you can do,”
employer brand in recruiting, mixing practical advice with says Strazzulla. “There is no demand generation engine, no
creative visuals to command attention in the feed. He excels marketing team, no standard operating procedures or training.”
in the use of video too, putting a human face to NextWave’s Despite this, Brian has swiftly established himself as the type of
proposition and bringing the concept of a talent community to expert his sector needs—and that his clients make time for.

Sophisticated Marketer 49
LONG FORM

GAURAV SARIEN
NATIONAL ALLIANCE MANAGER AT
TVS CREDIT SERVICES
The winner of the Asia Pacific region’s Modern Seller of the Year
award has a real commitment to consultative selling, and a flair for
engaging, entertaining and empathizing on LinkedIn. Gaurav is
quick to get behind stories of the successful Indian businesses and
entrepreneurs that TVS Credit Services supports. It helps that he
wears his own passion for sales and driving growth on his sleeve, BOUDEWIJN POSTHOUWER
with posts on the success factors in modern sales and links to TEDx CLIENT DIRECTOR KEY
talks he’s given on more effective communication. For Gaurav’s ACCOUNTS AT KPN
customer base, these are valuable, actionable insights that signal
they are dealing with a growth partner rather than just a supplier. Boudewijn introduces himself, not as the Client Director
for Key Accounts at Dutch mobile and telecommunications
business KPN, but as a Digital Transformation Coach for
his clients. It’s a distinction that epitomizes his approach to
sales. His role is focused on win-wins, securing ongoing value
for KPN by exploring how digital technology and data can
add value for its enterprise customers. He’s earned trust by
sharing heartfelt views about the importance of anticipating
digital disruption, and regularly sharing thought leadership
on the digital transformation journey.

SANGITA
PATEL
LISA COWAN AREA VICE
DIRECTOR OF GROWTH STRATEGY PRESIDENT
FOR EQGLOBAL AT EQUINITI OF SALES AT
PEGASYSTEMS
If you want evidence of
the depth of relation-
ships that Sangita Patel
builds, look no further
than the guest list for
her wedding. It includ-
ed many long-standing
customers who value
the unique expertise
and depth of knowledge
that she brings to solving
As a sales leader for the cross-border payments service, their business challeng-
Equiniti, Lisa models the importance of using data and sales es. Sangita spent 20
tools to identify the right prospects, the right moments, and years at Forrester, many of them in Senior Vice President
the right insights to lead with. As a panellist on LinkedIn’s roles, before joining Pegasystems to drive growth for its
video streaming series, Live with Sales Leaders, she recently cloud-based customer experience solutions. Her thought
spoke about the importance of incentivizing sales teams to leadership is insightful and empathetic, bringing an intel-
deliver value-adding experiences—providing them with the ligent, human perspective to the use of AI and showcasing
right tools to do so: “Sales Navigator helps to build stories her understanding of the impact of each customer touch-
around the use-cases of our solutions for different businesses point on her clients’ businesses.
and different roles. It’s about knowing your audience, knowing
your sector and developing the clients that want to speak on
your behalf.”

50 Sophisticated Marketer
MVP Content Partner Award, 2017
Best Strategic Partner Award, 2019

a decade of firing it up

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LONG FORM

MARKETING
TO SALES
The missed opportunities
What if we started to treat sales and marketing alignment as
a marketing challenge, and not just an organizational one? W0RDS BY LIZZY KNIGHTS-WARD

s B2B marketers today, we spend most of our time

thinking about strategies for engaging external
audiences, and how we can apply the latest trends
and best practices to doing so. It’s our job. It’s how
we contribute to the business bottom line.
However, there’s another engagement
challenge that data shows can have an
equally significant revenue impact for our
business, but which we often complete-
ly ignore. Breaking down the barriers to
more effective collaboration between
sales and marketing is now a priority for
every B2B business. However, we very rarely train our marketing
skills in this direction. We treat it as an organizational challenge:
something to be solved by how we structure our days, whom
we have meetings with, what targets we set and what skills and
roles we have in each team.
What if we started treating it as a marketing challenge as well?
I believe we’d start to see some real differences if we start-
ed to apply the latest trends in B2B marketing to the way that
we engage with our sales colleagues. In fact, every B2B trend
that’s working its way onto marketing department agendas at
the moment represents a two-fold opportunity for engage-
ment with sales. Any new initiative represents an opportuni-
ty to integrate sales into your marketing planning. And every
new trend should involve a challenge as to whether we’re
applying the same principles to engaging our sales audience.

52 Sophisticated Marketer

Trend 1: VIDEO
You only have to glance at your LinkedIn feed to see how video
is exploding as a B2B marketing tactic. It’s being used through-
out the funnel from building brand awareness to communi-
cating product details, driving in-depth consideration, and
providing customer support. And it’s playing these roles as
everything from short, six-second teasers to longer brand
documentaries of minutes or more.
So what happens when we apply the principles of a video
marketing strategy to our sales audience? And what happens when
we start to build our video strategy in collaboration with sales?
Planning video content throws up several opportunities for
closer collaboration with sales: from pooling insight on the
customer decision journey and where video can make most
difference, to supporting new launches with intro and how-to
films. Try to identify relevant experts within your sales team
and incorporate them into brand documentary-style content.
There’s also the opportunity to offer support to sales in devel-
oping video selling strategies, which use video content as a
way to introduce reps and build their personal brands.
Just as important though, is applying the principles of effec-
tive B2B video marketing to engaging your sales audience.
Let’s consider some of the characteristics of the most effective
B2B video:
It engages and tells stories visually
It respects the audience’s time and communicates concisely
It takes attention seriously, capturing and maintaining it
It often uses emotion to cut through: humour, drama, tension
It benefits from familiar formats and content brands
Now what would happen if we started integrating video and
the principles of video marketing into how we communicate
with sales? We’d think about whether we could communicate
our points with more impact if we did so visually rather than
just through long emails. We’d force ourselves to prioritize
messages, distil what we need to communicate, and find a
creative and impactful way to get the key messages across.
Let’s imagine you’re launching a campaign and you want
to raise awareness among sales. What if you asked the Head of
Sales to interview the team behind the campaign on camera,
throwing in some hardball questions about what difference
this initiative can make for the sales
team? How about a monthly
game show that tests sales
and marketing on how well
they’re aligned with one
another’s priorities?
Sophisticated Marketer 53
LONG FORM
Trend 2: ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING
It goes without saying that sales should be engaged with your
ABM program—after all, that’s a big part of the purpose of ABM.
However, it’s a trap to assume this happens automatically.
A lot of ABM programs are still very M-led. They are initi-
atives that are driven by marketing, and involve marketing
planning and executing activity in the same way that they
always have—but then targeting it at an account level.
If you want to engage sales properly in ABM, it’s vital to
respect the essential first-steps and foundations, before you
leap into execution. This involves consciously and intention-
ally engaging sales with the ABM strategy.
You’ll find ABM planning a lot easier if you’re already
applying the principles of an ABM programming to the way
that you build and engage with sales in the first place.
An effective ABM strategy depends on your ability to
profile your target accounts, understand the role of differ-
ent stakeholders in those accounts, figure out how decisions
get made, and deploy marketing content that addresses
each stakeholder’s priorities. How many of us can honest-
ly say that we’ve devoted the same level of planning to how
we understand and communicate with our sales teams:
Have you met and spoken to every member of the sales team?
How well do you understand their different roles?
Do you know how the sales team is structured?
What additional or hidden responsibilities does
each person have within the team?
How do your sales colleagues make decisions?
Who sets and influences the priorities?
What are the major challenges and barriers faced ty media environments are
by each team member and the team as a whole?
What are different people’s personal pain points?
Just as with ABM, this is about identifying the
key influencers and developing a personalized
engagement plan to fit their priorities.
Trend 3: PODCASTS
Do you remember when podcasts were
declared dead as a content format
and a marketing tactic? It’s got to
be one of the worst diagnoses ever.
Podcasts are growing
exponentially. In the US, the
number of listeners has doubled
in the last four years. Podcasts’ role within
B2B marketing is growing spectacularly too.
In last year’s Demand Gen Survey of B2B
Buyer content preferences, 64% of buyers
said podcasts were a content format they valued
in the early stages of the marketing journey.
54 Sophisticated Marketer
Podcasts work because of their sense of rhythm and their
sense of value. They encourage people to check in regular-
ly because they are confident in what they’re going to get. A
big part of that value comes from the fact that podcasts are
built around guests—external experts, which research tells us
add important authority to thought leadership content. And
another source of strength comes from their accessibility. This
is content that can be consumed in people’s own time, offline
or online, often on the move.
The strengths of the format hold some real lessons for how
we engage sales colleagues. Can you give sales a compelling
reason for setting aside 15 or 20 minutes to hearing from you,
either as a video or audio podcast? Can you build something
that’s easy for people to download and listen to offline, on their
commute? And can you find a way to promote it internally?
Besides using podcast-inspired principles to
engage sales directly, you’ll also have several oppor-
tunities to integrate sales colleagues into the planning
of any external-facing podcast programme you run:
Are there experts within your sales team that you could bring
insight and value to your podcast episodes?
Are there clients who would make insightful guests ?
Are sales facing barriers to adoption that you could address?
Trend 4: QUALITY ENVIRONMENTS
Concerns about ad fraud and brand safety have led marketers
to re-focus on the value of quality media environments and
the signals they send to audiences.
Newsworks data shows that quali-
42% more cost-effective.
JPMorgan Chase recent-
ly slashed the number of
online sites it advertises on from
400,000 to 5,000—and delivered the
same results.
The message is clear: don’t prioritize
bombarding an audience anywhere you
can. Focus on the quality of each opportu-
nity and the signal that opportunity sends
about your brand.
The same principles apply when it comes
to a communication plan for sales. Don’t
bombard your colleagues with quickly dashed off emails.
Don’t prioritize hammering a message home so that you can
get it off your to-do list.
The way you communicate with sales sends extremely
strong signals about how you really see the relationship—
more so than what you actually say. If you really do value their
time and their attention, if you really are committed to enable-
ment, if you really have invested in their priorities, then this
needs to come across in your choice of communication.
There’s a real focus
on using data
to predict and
optimize, collecting
it with a purpose
Trend 5: DATA SCIENCE
B2B marketers are increasingly focused on how to use data
more effectively—and find new sources of data to use, often
with a focus on how we can incorporate Artificial Intelligence
(AI) effectively into our strategy.
This has led to some really valuable developments in
marketing strategies. We’re being more intentional and more
imaginative in how we conceive of data, how we identify the
insights that we need and the best way to generate them.
There’s a real focus on using data to predict and optimize,
collecting it with a purpose, and trying to do more with it
rather than just gathering more of it.
I believe there are huge advantages to be gained, if we
apply just a fraction of this type of thinking to the way that we
approach engaging our sales audience.
A DATA SCIENCE-INSPIRED PLAYBOOK
The most valuable AI systems are prediction machines. They
are focused on detecting rhythms and patterns in data that
are significant because they are replicable. We may not have
the same technology available when it comes to studying
engagement with sales, but we can use the same principles:
Identify the best metrics available for tracking successful
engagement and alignment with sales: Can you track open
and response rates for your emails? The proportion of the
sales team that your marketing team is connected to on
LinkedIn? How often your sales colleagues engage with, ty and the latest thinking on B2B marketing is the least they
like, comment on and share marketing content?
DATA TARGETS REACHED
What data are you tracking on outcomes? Your target may
be defined in MQLs but you don’t have to make those the
only metric you monitor. What about the rate at which
MQLs become SALs? The rate at which they convert?
The speed of conversion compared to leads that sales
source for themselves?
Once you’re armed with relevant data sources, what
significant patterns can you find? Which styles / lengths /
formats of emails engage best? Which sales reps engage
most often? What to those reps have in common? Which
content engages and enthuses sales most consistently?
We have no excuse for not studying our sales teams with the
same level of interest that we apply to external audiences—
because we should have more potential data sources available
to us. We just need to be more imaginative about what we use
and how we use it.
A final thought. Applying marketing best practice to
communicating with sales is a challenge—and it’s a challenge
that we grapple with at LinkedIn as well. I’d be misleading you
entirely if I claimed that we’ve got all of this worked out, and
that we’re already applying best practice in all of the areas I’ve
mentioned here. However, what I would say is that setting out
these challenges, being open about them, and acknowledging
where we’ve failed to value our internal audiences’ attention
in the past, is a really important first step.
As marketers, a brief to engage an audience that’s hugely
valuable to your business is something we live for. Our sales
audience is no exception. Applying imagination, creativi-
deserve from us.
Sophisticated Marketer 55
56 S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r
 LONG FORM

THE
ORIGINALITY
DELUSION
Marketers have an obsession. A deep, dark, self-destructive obsession.
What is the object of this obsession, you ask? In a word: newness.

M
W0RDS BY JON LOMBARDO

arketers are absolutely obsessed A few years ago, the marketing minds over at Tropicana got
with new things. New platforms. New tired of their old, familiar packaging —the iconic orange skewered
products. And, above all else, new ideas. by a straw. And so, like many clients, the Tropicana marketers
If I had a nickel for every time a client decided to try something new, and change the packaging. You
asked me for a never-been-done-before can guess what happened next.
“big idea,” I could buy a one-bedroom Sales plummeted 50% in five weeks, the company lost $60
apartment in Manhattan. Clients Are million dollars, and Tropicana was forced to revert back to its
Obsessed With Newness. That’s why we get asked for original design. Tropicana had re-learned a well-worn
a “never-been-done-before idea.” adage: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In other words,
But at the core of this obsession, you will don’t take the risk of replacing an old idea that
find a delusion. And the delusion is that new, Only one in works with something unproven.
original, untested ideas are superior to old, If that example is too anecdotal for
familiar, battle-tested ones. Unfortunately,
five new ad you, consider the more “data-driven”
the opposite is often true: old ideas tend to campaigns argument laid out in a recent article
outperform new ideas. outperform old in The Drum: “Why Research Shows
Why? Well, although marketers fetishize campaigns You’re Better Off With Your Existing Ad
newness, their customers usually have the Campaign.” Jeri Smith of Communicus
opposite reaction: generally speaking, people examined 81 marketing campaigns and
are terrified of new things. And that’s very
much by design—fear of novelty is an evolutionary
adaptation.
The caveman who insisted on trying the new, colorful berry THE ORIGINAL PROFIT SQUEEZE
died of food poisoning. The cavewoman who tried petting the
new, fluffy cat got mauled to shreds by a saber-toothed tiger. Marketers for Tropicana
Humans who weren’t scared of new things went extinct. The gave into The Originality
cautious cavemen survived, and the paranoid inherited the earth. Delusion, replaced their
iconic packaging, and
The lesson is simple: watched sales plummet by
50% in just five weeks. They
new ideas can be dangerous. learned their lesson quickly,
It turns out this is as true in the world of marketing as it is in changed tack—and reverted
the world of berry eating. Consider the classic example of the BEFORE AFTER back to the original.
Tropicana Case Study, or rather, the Tropicana Anti-Case Study.

Sophisticated Marketer 57
LONG FORM

THREE NON-DELUDED
MARKETING MINDS:
Henry Ford called his new invention the “horseless carriage,”
to ground the scary, new idea of an automobile in the old, safe
idea of a horse-drawn carriage.

Steve Jobs called his revolutionary invention an “iPhone,” even

though “phone” is actually the least popular function of the device.

George Lucas couldn’t secure the rights to Flash Gordon, so he

made Star Wars, effectively Flash Gordan with a few clever twists.

found that newly introduced creative outperformed

pre-existing creative only 20% of the time.
Marketers want new things.
We at LinkedIn have seen this in our own research. In collab- Clients want relevant things.
oration with Edelman, we surveyed 1,200 CXOs to determine if Our research with Edelman shows that nobody cares if your
and how sharing thought leadership drives business impact for ideas are original. At this point, you might be thinking, “Ok,
companies. In one question, we asked CXOs what makes for good great, but what if I must introduce a new idea? What if I’m
thought leadership. At the top of the list? Relevance. You had to introducing a new product or a new company, or the old idea
travel much further down the list to find Originality. isn’t working?” Great question. For answers, I would
Marketers think ideas need to be original or direct you to an incredible new (!) book, called
new in order to be good, but customers routine- Hitmakers: The Science of Popularity in an Age
ly disagree. Buyers like useful ideas that of Distraction.
work—they don’t care whether the insight is
Forget about Written by Derek Thompson, Senior
hot off the press or four thousand years old. “never been done Editor at The Atlantic, this book is about
before” ideas and why certain ideas catch on while other
re-invest in your don’t. Mr. Thompson’s thesis is simple:
the most successful ideas are “surpris-
old creative ingly familiar.” In other words, if you want
customers to like your new idea (movie
script, washing machine, television commer-
cial), make it seem like an old idea.

How can you apply this to

your marketing?
Well, the first step is to rid yourself of the originality delusion. If
your old marketing is working, keep running it until it doesn’t
work anymore. Try your hardest to do the same thing every
year, until it becomes familiar in the minds of your audience.
Some say the most successful piece of thought leadership of
all time is Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report. Is that a new
piece of creative, or is it an old franchise that launched over
30 years ago?
If you must introduce a new idea, try to ground it in your old
idea. If you look around, you’ll see that “surprising familiarity”
is an ingredient in every great blockbuster, from Edelman’s
Trust Barometer to The Avengers. Make minor modifications to
keep the creative fresh, but remember that old things are old
for a reason—they still work.

You'll find more challenging thinking on markeing

myths and assumptions on our B2B Trends microsite:
lnkd.in/trends

58 S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r
LONG FORM
MARKETING It's a theory. A grand, unified theory. A way of seeing the world (of marketing).
And it's a theory best explained by a story—the story of the atom.
W0RDS BY PETER WEINBERG
F
or centuries, scientists believed that the
atom consists of a nucleus and a bunch
of adorable little electrons, making neat,
predictable circles around that nucleus.
Scientists called this the planetary model
of the atom, and they loved it because it
mimicked the physics at work in outer space.
It seemed to explain the entire universe
top to bottom. It was a very happy time in
Scientist Land. Then, in the 1920s, a clever new clique began
to argue that the planetary model of the atom was all wrong.
The electrons in the atom were not making neat, predictable
circles around the nucleus at all. Instead, they seemed to move
around at random in a messy electron cloud. It was impos-
sible to predict where an electron would be at any precise
moment in time. Scientists could only speak in probabilities:
“the electron has an X% chance of being here.” And then came
the strangest finding of all: sometimes an electron behaved
as though it were in two different locations at the exact same
time, in a so-called “quantum state.”
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
The quantum model was perhaps the most contrarian idea in
the history of science. Einstein refused to believe in it. Scientists
discovered certainties, not uncertainties,
and science was meant to make sense.
“Quantum states” did not, but that didn't
stop them being right.
What does this have to do with B2B
marketing? When I talk to our market-
ing clients at LinkedIn, I find that many
believe in what could be called a plane-
tary model of B2B buying, in which
everything is totally predictable. There
is a single buyer, a decision-maker. And
that decision-maker travels through a
60 S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r
“buying journey” or down a “funnel” in an orderly, sequential
path, never deviating from the course charted by the marketer.
However, the more we learn about B2B buying, the less it looks
like a planetary model, and the more it looks like a quantum
model.
For starters, there's no decision-maker. Instead, there's
a distributed network of decision-makers and it’s hard to
say who is calling the shots at any particular time. New
decision-makers dip in and out, offering their opinions.
Some of those opinions carry influence, some do not.
And the needs of this network arise and disappear at
random—sometimes it seems like a decision will be
made tomorrow and then it’s pushed back a year.
INTRODUCING QUANTUM MARKETING
If you believe the planetary model of marketing,
then you commit to managing a predictable buying
process with precision. And 99% of marketers have
chosen that path. The unofficial mantra of the industry
is “right person, right message, right time.”
But what if, as in sub-atomic
science, the quantum model is
closer to the truth? Then you would
need a very different approach.
You'd need quantum marketing.
Quantum marketing is all about
broad, probabilistic thinking. You
don’t aim to reach exactly the right
buyer. You aim to reach anyone who
could potentially buy, in either the
short-term or in the long-term. You don’t
design specific creative for specific buyers.
You design creative that’s potentially relevant to
a massive set of customers. And you don’t deliver
a message at a specific moment in time. You deliver
it all the time, so that you never miss a moment. That’s
quantum targeting, quantum creative, and quantum timing. quantum targeting? If you understand people’s tastes on a
Let's start with quantum targeting. If you don’t know exactly personal level, then you can meaningfully personalize your
who is going to buy, you reach all the people who might poten- creative to those people at a granular level. The problem is that
tially be able to. For Colgate, that means anyone with teeth. you usually don’t know that.
For IBM, it's anyone who might weigh in on an IT decision. Here, I find it instructive to take a look at Disney, a compa-
Every four years, around 40% of LinkedIn's members ny that knows a thing or two about monetizing creativity. Is
change their industry, seniority, function, company size, and Disney making personalized creative? Are movies like Wall-E
company. That means the marketing directors who will influ- designed to resonate with 8-year-old boys in San Diego? No.
ence buying decisions tomorrow probably work somewhere Movies like Wall-E are designed to resonate with all children.
else today: in an agency or an ad sales role, perhaps. The IT Kids in San Diego and Singapore and Santiago. And not just
managers of tomorrow are today junior IT specialists. The kids, but grown-ups, too. Disney only knows what works at the
future CFO hasn’t gone in-house yet; she works at a bank. broadest level—angsty superheroes, lost animals, and the like.
People change jobs—and that's why hyper-targeted B2B The biggest movies, books, and songs all speak to universal
tactics are inevitably short-term. They exclude future buyers. experiences that resonate with everyone.
You still need targeting, but you need to target anyone Finally, we come to quantum timing. Imagine for a second that
who has a decent probability of becoming a buyer. So you don’t know exactly when the buyer is going to buy. What
don’t use LinkedIn to hyper-target CMOs. Use would you do in that scenario? You'd hedge your bets by
LinkedIn to identify and reach future CMOs. being present all the time, by being always-on.
In short, target current buyers and future WE CAN Financial advisors will tell you not to try to
buyers at the same exact time. That’s SUCCEED time the market; just buy lots of stocks all the
quantum targeting. time and wait a long time for compound
So what should your quantum
DESPITE interest to make you rich. Particle physicists
creative look like, to align with your UNCERTAINTY BY will tell you not to try to time the atom; just
STAYING RELEVANT assume the electron is in all locations at once.
TO ALL POTENTIAL If bankers know they can’t time the
market and physicists know they can’t time
BUYERS AT ALL the atom, we marketers should maybe be
TIMES a little sceptical about our ability to time the
customer. “Buying funnels” and “buying journeys”
are useful mental models, but keep in mind that the
funnel is actually a thought process taking place in another
human’s brain. And mind-reading ain’t easy. It's important
to see tools such as intent data in context. They can't capture
the full market opportunity because so much buying behav-
ior is untrackable.
Instead of timing your marketing to coincide with
specific phases of the funnel, you're often better off with
an always-on approach to both brand and demand.
I recently watched a FinServ marketer get 10X
higher conversion rates on LinkedIn by doing
exactly that: running brand and demand ads
at the same time to the same audience.
The marketing industry faces a choice.
We can put our trust in predictions and tell
ourselves that uncertainty will be squeezed
out by better data or tech.
Alternatively, we can admit that uncer-
tainty is hard-coded into the universe and that
human behavior will never be predictable. Like
the scientists who built quantum computers,
we can learn how to manage uncertainty
with flexible thinking. We can succeed,
despite uncertainty, by staying relevant to
all potential buyers at all potential times.
I can’t predict what choice you’ll
make, but I certainly hope you’ll
make the right one.
LONG FORM

TARGET THE FUTURE WITH

Media value
investing
Jon Lombardo of the B2B Institute argues for marketers taking a second look
at one of the most under-valued of all audiences on LinkedIn.

T
he world of media buying
borrows a lot of termi-
nology from the world
of finance. At many
agencies, for instance,
the Media Buying
Teams have rebrand-
ed themselves as “Digital
Investment Teams.” And this
got us thinking: if we’re going
to borrow vocabulary from the bankers, maybe we
should also borrow some of their ideas. After all, for
better or for worse, many of the smartest people on
our fair planet work in financial services.
So, where to start? Well, why don’t we start with
the smartest investor of all time, Warren Buffet.
Warren Buffet earned $81 billion dollars with
a very simple idea called “value investing.” Value
investing basically means buying assets that are
undervalued by the market. Warren Buffet buys
companies or stocks that he believes are under-
priced according to his analysis, and then he waits
for the market to realize its mistake, sells at a higher
price, and makes oodles of money.
In the world of advertising, we don’t buy
companies or stocks. We buy audiences. So if
Warren Buffet were a media buyer, he’d be asking
himself: Are there are any under-valued audiences? We’re so glad you
asked, Warren, because the answer is YES.
Individual Contributors (aka ICs) are the most under-valued audience
in all of media. By Individual Contributors, we mean “junior” profession-
als in an organization. Think IT Specialists, Account Executives, Software
Engineers. These are the foot soldiers of the corporate world, the ones
who don’t manage big teams but end up doing a lot of the actual work.
The vast majority of B2B marketers are hell-bent on never reaching
Individual Contributors. Most of our clients go to great lengths to exclude
these types of audiences from their media buys, focusing instead on the
C-Suite or Senior Managers. Among all the impressions served by our
enterprise technology clients, for example,
only 24% of ads are served to ICs.
HOW B2B TARGETING MISSES VALUE
This relentless focus on senior professionals is
often mistaken, though. Junior professionals
are hugely undervalued, for two reasons.
First of all, Individual Contributors are
undervalued based on their present revenue
potential. If you look at the latest research
on buying committees, you’ll find that junior
professionals actually play a critical role in
most buying decisions. In IT, for instance, 55%
of the professionals on the buying committee
are Individual Contributors.
And if you don’t believe the research, just

62 Sophisticated Marketer
think of your own every-day experience in advertising. Junior media VALUABLE TODAY, EVEN MORE VALUABLE
buyers might not write the final check, but they’re the ones meeting with TOMORROW
all the vendors, putting together the original draft of the media plan, and As an added bonus, junior professionals have
handling the implementation post-purchase. “impressionable minds” and higher lifetime
customer value. That’s why in B2C, 18-25 year-olds
YOU DON’T BUY STOCKS, BUT YOU DO BUY AUDIENCES are the most in-demand audience segment. Junior
In other words, Individual Contributors are not procurement specialists don’t
nearly as useless as marketers seem to think. know if they should buy wind
And if ICs are valuable today, they’ll be even Young people turbines from General Electric
more valuable tomorrow. Because guess what? eventually become or Siemens. These folks are
Today’s “useless” junior professionals are tomor- open-minded and willing to
row’s “useful” senior professionals, and they old people. consider new vendors.
become so much faster than you might think. Amazing, right? All we’re really saying is
As you can imagine, LinkedIn has the most relia- this: Consider making a “value
ble data on career development, and this is what investment” in Individual
our data shows us: It takes only three years for a junior professional to Contributors. You can either stop explicitly target-
become a senior manager. The number of years varies by industry, but ing by seniority, or you can explicitly target junior
it’s never far from three—in IT, it takes three years; in finance, it takes four audiences. Either tactic is fine by us.
years; in HR, five. Remember, you’re not just trying to close deals
How’s this for a revolutionary consumer insight: Young people eventu- today; you’re trying to close deals many years
ally become old people. Amazing, right? from now, so take a long-term view with your
Meanwhile, are B2B sales cycles long or short? The correct answer media plans. Warren Buffet will be proud of you,
is LONG. We talked to a seller the other day who just closed a deal that and so will we.
started three years ago. So, by the time someone is ready to sign that
multi-million dollar cloud computing contract, it might just be that same LinkedIn’s B2B Institute is a think tank exploring
Individual Contributor who you’ve been deliberately excluding from all new ideas in B2B marketing. Find out more at
of your marketing. lnkd.in/media-value

Sophisticated Marketer 63
LONG FORM
THE
CLICK-THROUGH
CONSPIRACY
There’s a great big lie at the heart of digital
marketing. Here’s how to avoid falling for it.
W0RDS BY PETER WEINBERG
M
ulti-touch algorith-
mic attribution,
eye-tracking, MRI
brain scans: it
feels like every day
there’s a nifty new
measurement technique. You could
be forgiven for thinking that we’re
living through a glorious revolution in
marketing measurement. But we’re not.
In fact, all of those nifty solutions
obscure a simple truth: the most common-
ly used metric in marketing is clicks. How many
clicks did I get? What was the rate at which people clicked?
What’s the cost of those clicks? If a campaign gets lots of cheap
clicks, it’s considered a success.
However, there’s one group of marketers that knows better:
lead gen marketers. They’ve learned to ignore the click-
through rate since it rarely correlates with conversion rates,
cost per lead, or revenue per lead. But brand marketers are in a
much tougher spot. Brand marketing is notoriously difficult to
measure and click-through rate is delightfully easy to measure.
So brand marketers made a convenient assumption: that CTR
must be a reliable indicator of brand lift.
Oh, how I wish that were true. Our jobs would be so
much simpler.
But unfortunately, click-through rate is not a reliable
indicator of brand lift. At all. Researchers have been pointing
this out for almost 20 years. A study from Nielsen found that
the ad that generates the most awareness, the most recall, and
the most purchase intent is almost never the ad that generates
the most clicks. Clicks don’t correlate with brand lift.
64 Sophisticated Marketer
If you don’t believe Nielsen, that’s cool
because Nielsen is not alone. That study
has been replicated dozens of times by many
different measurement vendors, for many
different channels, and the findings are always
the same: clicks are a meaningless metric.
This makes sense, if you think about it. Ads can
work without clicks. An ad can generate an exposure
(like an impression), or it can generate an interac-
tion (like a click), and both can drive results. You can
see an ad—in the feed or in between TV shows—and
the simple act of seeing it can raise your awareness of a
brand without ever triggering an interaction.
Remember: ads used to work before clicks
In fact, that’s how advertising worked for a hundred years.
Almost every brand you know—Coca Cola, Apple, Nike—was
built in a world of exposures, not interactions. If an ad has to
generate interactions in order to work, all marketing before
1995 was a failure. And all ads since 1995 must also be a flop,
because almost no one seems to click on ads.
Smart marketing minds have been making this point for
decades. The IAB even has a new campaign out called “don’t
be a clickhead.” Despite this though, we still hear about CTRs
and engagement rates on a daily basis. Until about a year ago,
I spent all my time optimizing campaigns for clicks.
This is why I’d like to prosecute the case with a little more
vigor. In fact, I’d like to raise the stakes. You see, I don’t think
click-through rate is a meaningless metric. I think it means
something. It just means something bad. I believe CTR is
potentially a negative indicator. If you have a very high one, it
may be a sign that your marketing isn’t working.
The danger signs in a high CTR Let’s call time on the conspiracy
I’ve discovered a magical formula for getting more clicks. First, I know this may be a tough pill to swallow. It’s awkward to
you develop some truly awful creative. And then, you run that admit that the metric we’ve been optimizing for all these
creative in the most disreputable media channels of the inter- years doesn’t actually mean anything. But the good news
net. In my formula, bad creative + bad distribution = high CTR. is that we are all in this together. I call it a click-through
Let’s start with creative. There is a word in the English conspiracy because there is plenty of blame to go around.
language for creative that gets clicked on a lot. The word is The platforms put click-through rates in their dashboards.
“clickbait.” Now let me ask you, would you say that “clickbait” The agencies report on click-through rates. The clients cut
is generally a compliment or an insult? Have you ever insisted budgets based on click-through rates. We’re all guilty.
that your friend watch some inspiring clickbait? But it’s time to swallow our pride and start ignoring
Of course not. Clickbait is an insult. And that’s because click-through rates. Instead, let’s focus on metrics that
the type of creative that gets clicks actually matter; metrics
on the internet is usually awful. It’s that have been proven
stuff like: “You Won’t Believe What
A HIGH CLICK-THROUGH in serious econometric
Brad Pitt Looks Like Now.” Or the RATE MIGHT ACTUALLY research to correlate with
LinkedIn equivalent, “72 Tips To business growth; metrics
BE A NEGATIVE INDICATOR:
Getting A Promotion.” Researchers like reach and share-of-
have found that blank banner ads get A SIGN THAT YOUR MARKETING voice, which the IPA has
much higher click-through rates than ISN’T ACHIEVING YOUR shown to be the single
real ads. Will clickbait or blank white most important predictor
boxes build your brand? Of course REAL OBJECTIVES. of market share growth.
not. But if you chase clicks, that’s I realize that reach and
where you’ll wind up. share-of-voice are not perfect metrics either. Not all exposures
Now let’s talk about audiences and the types of people who are equal. There can be duplication. There can be fraudulent
click on ads. Well, it turns out a lot of those people are actual- impressions. But I would rather track an imperfect metric
ly… robots. That’s right, a high click-through rate is considered a that means something (reach) instead of a perfect metric that
leading indicator of ad fraud. You’ve heard of clickbait, so I’m sure means nothing (clicks). I’d rather be imprecisely right than
you’ve also heard of clickbots. Some say that 85% of the clicks on precisely wrong.
the internet are fraudulent. If you run your ads in garbage media The truth is, marketing measurement will never be perfect.
channels, like Babaganoush.com, where no kind of sign-on is We are trying to influence fleeting thoughts in another human’s
required and the site itself might be fake, you’ll meet all kinds of brain. That’s probably not quantifiable. Maybe not ever.
wonderful robots who will be happy to click on your ads. But marketing can still work without perfect measurement.
If you run on premium media channels, you will reach real In fact, it always has.
humans, like IT decision-makers who are hardwired never to
click on an ad. That doesn’t mean the ad doesn’t work on IT You'll find more insight from the B2B Institute, including
decision-makers, it just means you have to optimize for the groundbreaking new research on the role of brand at
exposure instead of the interaction. lnkd.in/click-through

Sophisticated Marketer 65
THE DEBRIEF

ALWAYS
ON YOUR
EMBRACING

EVERGREEN
W0RDS BY
JANE FLEMING ASSETS
CONTENT MARKETING CAN OFTEN SEEM TIME-SENSITIVE,
BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY.

M
arketers create content to address the specific issues
that audiences are focusing on at particular moments
in time. We react to events, trends, opinions and
industry debates. We also develop content campaigns
to fit immediate business priorities: a quarterly target
for Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), for example, the launch of
a new product, or the need to support an event.
However, just because content can talk to hot-button issues in
the moment, doesn’t mean that it always has to. A lot of content
marketing’s best work can take place over a longer timeframe,
with a strategy that keeps working for months and even years.
Always-on content that stays visible, and keeps reaching and
engaging new audiences, can play a vital role as part of the growth

66 S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r
Sophisticated Marketer 67
THE DEBRIEF
engine for your business. It can continue to introduce
people to your brand, drive demand for solutions and
generate leads, long after it was first produced.
A business’s proposition and products can
change, the audience segments that it’s targeting
can change—and so can the needs and priorities
of the people in those audiences. However, they
don’t change all that often or all that much. When
you design your content assets around what you
stand for as a business, and the fundamental value
exchange between you and your audience, they
can be as relevant to the buyers of tomorrow as
they are to the buyers of today. And that means they
can maximize the return you get from the time and
resource you invest in producing them.
Think of all the great thought leadership content
that you’ve produced in the last three years. Then
ask yourself how visible that content is right now.
Is it hiding somewhere around page seven of your
blog? Did it drop out of your Sponsored Content
campaigns long ago? When did one of your sales
colleagues last share it with a relevant prospect?
Then consider how much you’re currently invest-
ing in producing content that’s designed to do the
same job: replacing something that didn’t neces-
sarily need to be replaced.
An always-on content strategy runs on content
that is always relevant and always impactful; content
that feels alive in any season of any year. Here’s how
to consciously plan, create and distribute it:
EVERGREEN CONTENT HAS
ENDURING AUTHORITY
If you want content to feel relevant and compelling
years into the future, aim to give the definitive and
most authoritative take on an issue. Don’t be afraid
to go deep—and go long. At LinkedIn, we’ve been
able to generate continuous engagement through
‘big rock’ content assets that involve us literally
writing the book on how to market on our platform:
assets like The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to
LinkedIn, which is still one of our most impor-
tant touchpoints for lead generation, more than
68 S o p h i s t i c a t e d M a r k e t e r
AN ALWAYS-ON MEDIA BUYING STRATEGY
MAXIMIZES THE VALUE OF EVERGREEN CONTENT
BY PLAYING THE LONG GAME
five years after it was first published.
Research that we conducted with
Buzzsumo confirms that long-form
blog posts of 2,000 words or more
generate significantly more sharing
and backlinks than shorter posts. These
posts remain prominent in search
results for years. Audiences continue
to share them organically long after
marketers stop actively promoting
them. When you develop an always-
on content strategy, you’re recognizing
this ongoing appetite for authorita-
tive takes on subjects, and leveraging
it more consciously by promoting this
content rather than leaving people to
find it for themselves.
EVERGREEN CONTENT HAS
ANTI-AGEING EXECUTION
It’s not usually the ideas in a piece of
content that makes it feel old or out-of-
date. Instead, it’s the time-sensitive
details that remind audiences when
it was produced and why. One of the
easiest ways to produce more evergreen
content (and get greater value from it) is
to train yourself to edit out these details
when it’s not strictly necessary to include them. If you’re filming interviews
with influencers at an industry event, for example, try to avoid too many
questions that reference the event specifically. You can then create short
video clips based on the ideas that people share, which will feel fresh long
into the future. Similarly, if you’re creating a post to wrap up key insights or
learnings from an event, try organizing it around the insights themselves
rather than a list of the different sessions you attended.
EVERGREEN CONTENT CAN STAGE A COMEBACK
If you keep a close eye on the analytics for your blog, you will often
find that content you created for a specific moment is still generat-
ing traffic long after that moment has passed. A great example are the
posts that thought leaders create at the start of the calendar year, with
predictions for the next 12 months. If audiences are still finding valua-
ble insight in these archived pieces then that’s the signal to give them
an evergreen makeover. Go back over previous
posts, update time-sensitive details, and give
them a new lease of life.
EVERGREEN CONTENT HAS A MEDIA
PLAN TO MATCH
An always-on media buying strategy maximiz-
es the value of evergreen content by playing the
long game. If you’ve targeted a relevant audience
for a piece of evergreen Sponsored Content, you
can afford to bid low, leave the campaign running
in the background, and reach your audience over
a longer period of time while paying less for each
impression or click. If the content isn’t time-sen-
sitive, there’s no need to throw money at auctions
in order to spend budget quickly. It’s fine to reach your audience in the
moments that others aren’t bidding for. Doing so enables sustainable,
always-on promotion of your consistently valuable, always-on content.
One of the most common mistakes that marketers make is to assume
that there are certain points in the year that they need to avoid in their
media schedule. It feels sensible to pause campaigns during the holiday
season or the summer months, for example, when we assume that people
have other things on their mind and will be too busy to engage with us.
However, while it might not add up to create lots of fresh content specifical-
ly for these periods, it most definitely does make sense to keep promoting
evergreen content assets. LinkedIn data shows that addressable audience
sizes and click-through rates both remain relatively high during the holiday
period, for example. What does drop off is the level of competition for these
audiences. That can make these moments a great opportunity for new
audiences to discover the value in your evergreen content.
Sophisticated Marketer 69
B2B brands should balance their budget
between long-term brand building
and short-term sales activation
with a 50/50 split.

Learn strategies for growth by downloading

“5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing,”
the new report from Les Binet & Peter Field.

Download report:

lnkd.in/b2bprinciples

The B2B Institute


MARKETERS’
TOP WAKE-UP
TRACKS
The eight best songs for marketers to wake up to—as chosen
by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions’ social media community.
W0RDS BY STEVE KEARNS
B
eing a brilliant marketer
requires motivation.
Intuition. Focus. The
ability to chill out,
funk out and rock out.
Because more often than
not, marketers love and need music
throughout their working day.
You see, the right song can be the
key to getting that to-do list ticked off.
The right track can inspire that nugget
of thought that turns into a great
marketing idea. Music improves the
mood, sharpens the mind and
gets your physical and mental
performance soaring.
Which is why we asked marketers
the simple question: “What’s your
favorite song in the morning?” Here
are your top eight choices:
1. Thank U, Next –
Ariana Grande
It’s the song that launched a thousand
memes. It’s also where Ariana Grande
name-drops her former flames in a way
that is by no means a diss track. It’s all
about staying positive and learning
from failed relationships. A strong
message for an uplifting day ahead.
2. Tightrope – Janelle Monae
Here’s an anthem for championing a
healthy work-life balance. As Janelle
Monae so rightly sings, ‘you gotta keep
your balance or you fall into the gap.’
So, sure, if there’s a major deadline or
launch coming up, do whatever it takes
(within reason) to get it done. But,
remember, spend time looking after
yourself too.
THE DEBRIEF
3. Nice for What – Drake
Social media can help keep us more
connected, but too much of it can also
impact our mental health. And despite
working in the industry and seeing what
goes on behind the scenes, marketers
aren’t immune. This song reminds us to
stay grounded, work hard and be nice
to the people we work with.
4. Levels – Avicii
There’s no real analysis for this one. It’s
just an infectiously catchy track. Perfect
for getting energy levels up and the
creative brain buzzing.
5. Rise – Jonas Blue
ft. Jack & Jack
Having a bad week? This song is the
soundtrack to your ‘bouncing back’
moment. It’s what you listen to as you
neaten your hair, adjust your collar and
strut out the door.
6. Focus – H.E.R.
Struggling to reach a certain target
audience? This song might resonate. It’s
all about feeling a bit neglected while
yearning for the attention of someone
else. Here, this someone else is too
engrossed in their devices to realize
you’re even there. Ouch.
7. Power Over Me –
Dermot Kennedy
This song begins with choppy guitar
strums, before quickly diving into raw,
emotional lyrics. The chorus is layered,
upbeat and powerful. And Kennedy’s
Irish accent adds a layer of authentic
folksiness to the track. It’s a beautiful
song about wanting someone to be
totally enamored by us—or our brand.
8. Toast – Koffee
A song named after that delectable
morning beverage, coffee? An artist
whose name evokes memories of
simple breakfasts with jam, butter or
eggs? This pop-reggae fusion delivers a
unique sound to wake up to. Marketers,
get the kettle on a pop a fresh cut of
sourdough under the grill. It’s going to
be a good day!
Sophisticated Marketer 71
 Your 2020 Vision
Requires Perfect Insight

Ignore myths and focus on real digital growth disruptors.

Download Our Guide >

 THE DEBRIEF

What’s in your bag?

SHADES/ UMBRELLA
Our magazine editor and Content Marketing Manager at LinkedIn,
Living in Ireland can
Jane Fleming on the secrets of staying fully charged. mean four seasons in
one day, so I always have
shades and a storm-proof
POWER BANK
umbrella to hand.
I am never without a power backup!
I won this at a Facebook training session,
and the flat size is so pocket friendly.

MACBOOK PRO
I joined the Mac nation last
year and haven’t looked
back! Lighter than my old PC
too, so that’s a major plus.

PERSONALIZED NOTEBOOK
My manager gave me this
personalized notebook. I usually
SHAKER/PROTEIN BAR
use my Notes app, but sometimes I started weightlifting
nothing substitutes picking up a during the summer, and
pen and scribbling away. subsequently have upped
my protein intake with two
protein shakes a day.
The protein bar is survival
food if I miss a meal. Very
TOYS rare in my case!
I always find toys in my bag.
My son is a Hot Wheels fanatic,
but it could easily have been
bugs or a toy lizard!

EARBUDS
The Jabra earbuds
are unreal for sound
WIPES/HAND
WORK PASS SANITISER
quality. I now save
Security first, and hours a week not The Mucky Mitts wipes
it works in all our having to untangle
TRAVEL BRUSH / LIP BALM and hand sanitiser never
global offices. headphones! Essential items for surviving the commute. leave my bag #momlife

Sophisticated Marketer 73
GEORGE MILLER
What do a cute talking piglet and a
If you think all
psychotic, near-silent road warrior have
brand stories have in common? Or a coven of bored witches
to feel the same, and a father desperately seeking a cure
then you need to for his sick son? Or a dancing penguin
study the career and a damaged former cop? On almost
every level, these iconic movie characters
of legendary writer couldn’t be more different. They certainly
and director couldn’t have audiences that are more
George Miller. different, or deliver film experiences from
different places on the emotional register.
In the mind of the man who brought all
W0RDS BY KEVIN RYAN of them to life on-screen though, they are
fundamentally the same.
George Miller is a content hero of mine.
He’s also one of the most original and
most unpredictable people working in
cinema today. He’s created Oscar-winning
family films and utterly shocking, violent
blockbusters. He’s never once slipped
into a stereotyped style, or produced lazy,
cliché’d work. And yet Miller regularly
insists in interviews that all of his films,
from the Mad Max series to Babe, Happy
Feet, The Witches of Eastwick and Lorenzo’s
Oil, all follow the same journey.
That’s why George Miller is a content
creator with a vast amount to teach
brand marketers. He shows how we
can adopt the common structures of a
powerful story while staying distinctive.
He shows how style is often more
important than substance when it comes
to bringing meaning to life. He’s a living
74 Sophisticated Marketer
demonstration of differentiation in action.
And he should be an inspiration for any
marketer worried about how to tell a
compelling story around their brand.
After he hit the jackpot with Mad Max,
Miller set out to try and understand what
had made his debut film so successful. He
discovered Joseph Campbell’s The Hero
with a Thousand Faces, which explained
the Monomyth: a common sequence of
events that underpins all epic tales. Miller
realized his character of Max tapped into
this ancient narrative. In his next two Mad
Max films, he put his hero through more
of Campbell’s journey, and delivered two
more global commercial smashes.
When you discover a formula that
works, it’s easy to end up constraining
your creativity. But that’s not what Miller
did. He isn’t a great storyteller because he
discovered one story and kept repeating
it in the same way. He’s a great storyteller,
because he was determined to create as
many different stories as he could from
the same core plot. How far could he push,
subvert and vary the hero’s journey, while
still tapping into themes that resonate?
In B2B marketing, it’s tempting for
every brand to set itself up as the same
type of hero, overcoming the same
antagonists, delivering the same benefits.
Brand stories can quickly feel formulaic as
a result. George Miller reminds us that it
never has to be this way.
Creating
content for
LinkedIn has
never been
easier.
We’ve partnered with industry-leading
content creators for your marketing on
LinkedIn. From developing narratives to
generating white papers, videos, posts,
and more, you can trust these professionals
to set your organization apart on the
world’s professional community.

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Marketing Partners:
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