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One of the hot takes that Alex shared is the growing recognition that B2B marketing can be just as creative as B2C marketing.
According to a study conducted by LinkedIn, around 82% of B2B marketing leaders believe that creative confidence is on the rise, and 81% say they are seeing B2B campaigns that rival the best of what B2C has to offer.
This shift is driven by the increasing demand for innovative experiences from B2B buyers and the growing understanding that creativity is a powerful competitive differentiator.
Alex emphasized the importance of investing in creativity, especially during challenging times like an economic downturn
B2B buyers are looking for valuable thought leadership and innovative solutions, and marketers who can deliver on these fronts will stand out from the competition.
By creating compelling content and maintaining a consistent brand voice, B2B marketers can ensure that they continue to attract and engage their target audience, even when budgets are being cut.
In a post-pandemic world, B2B buyers have become more emotional and compassionate.
There is a misconception that B2B buying is purely rational and devoid of emotion, but the truth is that emotions play a significant role in the decision-making process.
Alex shared insights from a study conducted by LinkedIn and Edelman, which revealed that thought leadership has a significant impact on purchase decision-making during an economic downturn. In fact, 50% of C-suite executives stated that high-quality thought leadership has a greater influence on their decision-making in challenging times.
Furthermore, 61% of decision-makers believe that thought leadership is more effective than traditional product-oriented marketing in demonstrating the potential value of products and services.
This highlights the importance of investing in top-of-the-funnel content that showcases expertise, builds credibility, and establishes a strong brand presence. B2B marketers should focus on creating thought leadership content that addresses the changing needs and challenges of their target audience, as this will help them build lasting relationships and drive business growth.
Understanding customer lifetime value (CLV) is crucial for B2B marketers.
CLV is a metric that offers insights into how much revenue an individual or organization will contribute over the lifetime of their relationship with a business.
Alex highlighted the importance of tracking CLV effectively, as it can inform marketing efforts and drive revenue growth.
y leveraging CLV data, B2B marketers can identify high-value customers and target them with personalized and relevant content.
Alex emphasized the power of machine learning and AI in customer segmentation and targeting.
By augmenting segmentation with CLV data, B2B marketers can identify personas that are more likely to become loyal customers and drive long-term revenue.
This data-driven approach allows marketers to optimize their campaigns and focus their resources on high-value opportunities.
While digital marketing has become the norm, Alex highlighted the importance of building real relationships in B2B marketing.
In a post-pandemic world, there is a renewed appreciation for in-person interactions and genuine connections.
LinkedIn is actively fostering these relationships through events like the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, where industry leaders come together to network and discuss the latest trends and insights.
Alex also mentioned the power of thought leader ads, a new format that LinkedIn will be launching soon.
This format allows individuals to showcase their expertise and thought leadership directly on the platform, further enhancing personal branding efforts.
By combining digital strategies with real-world interactions and relationship-building, B2B marketers can create a holistic and impactful marketing approach.
In conclusion, B2B marketing is far from boring, and creativity is a powerful differentiator in today's competitive landscape.
B2B buyers are seeking innovative experiences and value thought leadership that addresses their unique challenges.
By investing in creativity, nurturing real relationships, and leveraging customer lifetime value, B2B marketers can drive growth and establish a strong brand presence.
As the world continues to evolve, B2B marketers must adapt and embrace new strategies and formats.
LinkedIn provides a powerful platform for B2B marketers to connect with their target audience, share valuable insights, and build lasting relationships.
By staying ahead of the curve and leveraging the latest tools and technologies, B2B marketers can position themselves as industry leaders and drive business success.
Follow Tara Robertson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taraarobertson/
Follow Alex Rynne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrarynne/
Check out LinkedIn’s B2B Marketing tools: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions
Follow LinkedIn Collective: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/linkedin-collective/
Read the LinkedIn-Edelman B2B Thought Leadership Report: https://www.edelman.com/expertise/Business-Marketing/2022-b2b-thought-leadership-impact-report
Check out the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity: https://www.canneslions.com/
Read the Linkedin-Ipsos Research “The Global State of B2B Marketing”: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-benchmark
Watch the LinkedIn Live at Cannes Lions 2022 featuring Emily Graham on Juneteenth: https://www.linkedin.com/events/juneteenth-thejourneytowardequi6942158723423354880/theater/
Read the CMO Council report on Customer Lifetime Value: https://www.cmocouncil.org/about/media-center/press-releases/new-report-finds-opportunity-to-re-think-customer-lifetime-value
Follow Bozoma Saint John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bozoma-saint-john-0305441/
Read Bozma’s book “The Urgent Life”: https://www.amazon.com/Urgent-Life-Story-Love-Survival/dp/0593300173
Read LinkedIn’s Marketing & Advertising Blog: https://www.linkedin.com/business/marketing/blog
For even more marketing tips…
🌶️ Sign up for the spiciest newsletter in B2B: https://www.chilipiper.com/email-signup
🌶️ Check us out on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chilipiper/
0:00:00 Introduction to the episode and guest, Alex Rynee, from LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.
0:02:06 B2B marketing leaders are recognizing the importance of creativity.
0:03:08 Thought leadership and creativity are key differentiators in B2B marketing.
0:05:41 Building a community and fostering relationships with influencers.
0:08:00 Balancing brand spend and demand capture campaigns during economic downturns.
0:10:02 The importance of thought leadership during economic downturns.
0:11:28 Emotional advertising and its impact on B2B marketing.
0:14:46 The Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity and LinkedIn's involvement.
0:19:22 Measuring success of content and campaigns on LinkedIn.
0:25:54 Unique ways LinkedIn's marketing team uses LinkedIn, such as LinkedIn Live.
**0:00:00** - (Tara Robertson): Welcome back to a new episode of Demand gen Chat. I'm your host. Tara Robertson, head of demand gen here at Chili Piper. In this episode, I'm joined by Alex Rin, who leads global content and social strategy for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. We chat about how LinkedIn's marketing team uses LinkedIn to grow and the trends they're seeing in B two B marketing from their own data at LinkedIn. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Alex.
**0:00:24** - (Tara Robertson): Alex, thank you so much for joining me on Demand Gen Chat.
**0:00:27** - (Alex Rynne): Of course. Thank you so much for having me. Long time no talk. Yeah, we connected.
**0:00:32** - (Tara Robertson): We were just saying before this, probably around six or seven years ago when you were newer to LinkedIn, it's pretty amazing.
**0:00:38** - (Alex Rynne): I was writing an ebook, which is so funny because I feel like we don't really do ebooks anymore, but I was writing this ebook around a Millennials Guide to Marketing on LinkedIn, and you were one of the folks that asked to contribute as a top Millennial voice. So now no one cares about us anymore. It's all about Gen Z, and we're just like the dinosaurs. But yeah, at the time it was a very hot topic.
**0:01:04** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, I remember you reached out, actually, to my boss originally. It was Hannah at Uber Flip, and she was kind of like, I don't know if I qualify as a Millennial, but you definitely do, so you should. That was a great way to get connected. I'd love to just jump into I hear you have maybe a couple marketing hot takes for our audience that we can just use to get the conversation started.
**0:01:26** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah. So one of the hot takes that I have, I'm not sure. I feel like most folks B two B realm are coming around to agree with it, but it's kind of debunking, this concept that B to B is boring and that B to C can't be as creative. B two B can't be as creative as B to C. But we did a study recently on LinkedIn that found that around 82% of B two marketing leaders think creative confidence is growing, and 81% say that they're seeing creative. B, two B campaigns that rival the best of what B to C has to offer.
**0:02:06** - (Alex Rynne): So I think B two B buyers want more innovative experiences and marketers are more equipped than ever to create them. And I think they're feeling more empowered to do so because there's a lot more education around why you need to invest in creativity and why you need a consistent brand voice over time. So really, I think that creativity is your best competitive differentiator, especially right now, because we might be facing well, the economy is not great, we might be facing a recession, we're not really sure.
**0:02:41** - (Alex Rynne): But more folks within companies are kind of like, reassessing the products and services that they need to survive. And those that are kind of like ancillary and so can have that creative advantage. If you can put out really compelling thought leadership that's valuable, then that's one way that I think that you can make sure that you're still getting picked despite the fact that budgets are being cut.
**0:03:08** - (Tara Robertson): And are you seeing that? Do you have access to data that shows your team that that creativity is paying off in terms of engagement metrics on LinkedIn? Or do you have a different way of measuring that?
**0:03:19** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah, for sure. There are certain ways that we measure what a five star creative would look like. One is having an overarching story, one is including humor, one another tactic I've seen people do like salesforce, they have their little trailblazer like illustration, so that it's almost like having a mascot for your brand, having a song or like a jingle or something like that. There's a lot of different ways that you can incorporate it. But for our team, I think what we've really tried to do is just create.
**0:03:59** - (Alex Rynne): Well, we've created this thing called The Collective, which is essentially our thought leadership franchise, our brand from LinkedIn Marketing, and it's a community for B two B marketers by B two B marketers. And within that community, we're asking, we're publishing, we're really taking like a spicy point of view on certain topics. One of them is around creativity in B two B. One is around reimagining what measurement looks like. One is around diversity, equity, inclusion, the changing world, the CMO.
**0:04:27** - (Alex Rynne): These are all things that we want to be known for. So we're doing original research and using our own first party data or partnering with someone like Edelman or Ipsos to find more that we can't just find on our platform around these specific topics. And publishing that we're building a community in the sense that it's not just us telling folks on the platform, like, what we're seeing, but we're also being inclusive of a bunch of external industry voices and leaders as well. So we've had on Jill Kramer, CMO Accenture has contributed E. J. Multy, who is actually a winner of the creative B two B Lions, which we'll talk about can more because I have a lot that I'm excited about around can.
**0:05:12** - (Alex Rynne): But the idea is that it's our internal voices, it's external voices, and it's all research backed and insights fueled. And so that for us, is how we're seeing our creativity really pay off. Because that specific showcase page that we just created last July already has like 15,000 followers, and the caliber of folks that are following are the exact people that we want to be reaching with these type of messages.
**0:05:41** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, I think it's tough because everyone's trying to build community right now. It feels like, but you guys have a built in mechanism, obviously, to do that. And how do you foster those relationships with those influencers? Is that within your team or is that someone else's responsibility?
**0:05:55** - (Alex Rynne): It's definitely a group effort. I mean, our team. When I first started in 2014, our marketing team was very small. We've gone gangbusters since then. And we have a bunch of different teams within the marketing team, within the marketing that are creating content that have relationships with specific like, our agency team has specific relationships with agencies. Oso team might have more relationship with SMBs and startups. Our partner marketing team has a lot of clients that they work with that we partner on, for example, Measurement Solutions.
**0:06:26** - (Alex Rynne): And it's a mix of that. And then our team has been around in the industries for a while, so we have some friendlies, I've had some people proactively reach out to me and be like, hey, how can I contribute? So the way that we get contributors is kind of a mix of all those different things or like, our Vpgm will go to some industry event and someone's like, hey, I have a really interesting idea. Can we bring it to life? So the way that we source and foster these relationships is through the different teams that we have. The agency, the Enterprise Strategic Accounts teams that are doing really cool stuff with some of our larger accounts on the platform.
**0:07:06** - (Alex Rynne): So yeah, it's kind of a myriad of different ways. But most recently, now that things are kind of like opening up in the world again, we're introducing these collective dinners where we invite some of the industry leaders. It might be associated with an event. So we just did one at the Adobe Summit where we bring together folks in real life to network and to discuss some of the topics that we think that might be top of mind for them. And those relationships end up sometimes translating into articles on LinkedIn or maybe they're alive on one of our collective live episodes or like that type of thing.
**0:07:45** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, that's really cool. That's similar. Actually. I've talked about this in a previous episode, but a lot of marketers are cutting down on that trade show budget this year just with things being tight. So dinners and more kind of exclusive invite only events are definitely really prominent right now.
**0:08:00** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah, and we don't want it to we don't want the collective. It's a niche community, but it's not necessarily like exclusive. So we still want to make sure that smaller agencies and smaller companies have a voice on it as well.
**0:08:18** - (Tara Robertson): That's great. One other kind of you hinted at the economy not being so great right now. So one thing that I know we've talked about internally, other marketers are talking about is kind of swapping some of that brand spend out for more. Call it legion, call it demand capture type campaigns. Have you seen that trend overall? And are there any things that marketers should look out for when making that switch with budgets?
**0:08:42** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah, I think it's a big no no when you're cutting budgets to just go automatically to cutting the more top of the funnel or brand focused, brand awareness focused content. And just like dumping all the money into Legion, because the best program is a full funnel program, which is leveraging both of those in partnership with each other. We say sometimes at LinkedIn that when someone isn't ready necessarily to buy and you're pushing them out of the funnel content, it's kind of like you go into a bar and you ask someone that you find attractive for their Social Security number. That's just not an appropriate way to build a relationship.
**0:09:29** - (Alex Rynne): So that's why it's so important. It can be quite off putting to just be pushing all this product focused stuff, especially during an economic downturn when the morale is low and whatnot. Because it's like people are actually looking to you for more of your thought leadership content during that time to make sure that that kind of exhibits that you know what you're talking about and you're building credibility that way because at the end of the day, people buy from people, not.
**0:10:02** - (Alex Rynne): And that's why it's so important for your leaders to be showcasing their thought leadership. And in general, your employees are your best advocates for consumers and as an aside, for your talent brand. So recently we put out our study, annual study in partnership with Edelman that we do every year around thought leadership. And this year was really interesting because as we're approaching what could potentially be a recession, we found that half of C suite executives, like 50% of CC execs say that high quality leadership has more of an impact on their purchase decision making during an economic downturn than when times are good. So that just shows you like, there's a void that needs to be filled when times are not good.
**0:10:50** - (Alex Rynne): And then also I found this really interesting. So 61% of decision makers say that an organization's thought leadership can be moderately or a lot more effective at demonstrating the potential value of the products and services compared to a traditional product oriented marketing. I think that that kind of speaks for itself in the sense of why you should continue to invest in brand and top of the funnel activities and not just switch to all bottom of funnel. There's nothing wrong with bottom of the funnel, but you're building a relationship.
**0:11:28** - (Alex Rynne): It takes time to get there.
**0:11:29** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, I think you made a really good point too, that people, I mean, your buyers might be just more sensitive than usual to messages that seem off putting or too direct.
**0:11:38** - (Alex Rynne): Right, totally.
**0:11:38** - (Tara Robertson): And people are on edge about their jobs, about being smaller maybe than last year.
**0:11:43** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah. And to add to that point, we've all become more emotional and compassionate in a post pandemic world. And there's a misconception that B, two B. Buying isn't an emotional process. Anytime you're buying, it's an emotional process. I think if you're buying a CRM or whatever, that's going to affect your role, it's going to affect your job it's going to affect, which affects your pay, which affects your quality of life. It's all intertwined.
**0:12:18** - (Alex Rynne): So you can't really say that buying isn't emotional. And additionally, I feel like we're more primed towards emotional advertising in a post pandemic world. And another study that we found showed that it proved that Emotion actually impacts lower funnel. And in fact, we found that top Emotion brands saw a higher 44% higher average click through rate compared with rest of companies on LinkedIn. So Emotion isn't just like pulling at the heartstrings or having an emotional campaign isn't just something that's for top of the funnel, you see it reflected and having a bigger impact when you look towards lower the funnel metrics.
**0:13:06** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, it's funny, I think a lot of us think of those B to C, like just memorable emotional campaigns as kind of fluffy compared to more traditional demand gen tactics. But when you say things like 44% higher click through rate, that really speaks to how important it can be.
**0:13:22** - (Alex Rynne): I mean, there's a difference between fluff and top of the funnel content, right? I guess fluff would be, in my mind, top of the funnel content or thought leadership that is not high quality because there is a lot of top of the funnel stuff and everyone thinks they're a thought leader these days. But there's definitely a difference between investing in fluff or like consuming fluff versus what you feel is like, well researched point of view on something.
**0:13:56** - (Tara Robertson): We were catching up earlier and I know there's an event coming up that you're super excited about to be attending with LinkedIn. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
**0:14:04** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah. So the Can Lion Festival of Creativity, I guess the right proper way to say it is Khan. Khan is in the south of France. And you might know it because every year that's where they have the International Film Festival as well, that all the celebrities go to. But it's also where we host marketing similar event, I guess, which is the Festival of Creativity. All the big agencies come out, big marketing companies come out, win awards. We actually hosted the first ever Creativity and B to B award last year, which is also like, why I'm on and on about creativity and B, two B, because I just feel like things are changing.
**0:14:46** - (Alex Rynne): We have an award now at can and then this is our second year hosting the award. And we are going to have a big LinkedIn studio as well. I can't reveal where it's going to be quite yet, but it's one of the prime locations. We're very excited about it. And from the LinkedIn studio, I'm going to be hosting, well, not myself, but I'm programming the content for like four to five different LinkedIn live broadcasts from can.
**0:15:16** - (Alex Rynne): So really excited to not only be there and host this award and host award parties and whatever, and the amazing networking and the amazing food, but also making the content a bit more accessible by being able to broadcast it from our showcase page to folks at home. So we are currently working on what we're calling right now, I guess I'll call as our State of B to B Marketing Report. So if you follow our other business lines like Sales solutions, every year they have their State of Sales report that they put out or like the talent will put out, workplace Trends Report or whatnot.
**0:15:58** - (Alex Rynne): And we haven't had our own report to own like that people can expect from us on an annual basis really, until now. So this is the first of many to come, hopefully. But within that report, we've partnered with Ipsos on the research and we're really trying to outline what the evolving role and influence of the B Two B marketer looks like, especially given the current macro. So we are asking questions in the survey to marketers around the evolving role of the CMO.
**0:16:29** - (Alex Rynne): We're asking about measurement, we're asking about De and I. We're asking about the world of work and the future of remote work, what successful B Two B brand building looks like. So the idea is that we're going to launch this report just in time for can and then we're going to host these specific live broadcasts on a bunch of our findings, inviting on industry leaders to chat with us about the findings as well. So very excited about that.
**0:17:00** - (Tara Robertson): That's really cool. And it's a way to make the event you have data driven content that you're bringing to it. So it's not just let's chat at the event, right?
**0:17:10** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah, I mean, hopefully all of our broadcasts are really based in research that we've done or research that some of our partners have done. Last year we hosted Thai Heath on our team, hosted an amazing conversation about Juneteen Th there at can and we had on Emily Graham from Omnicom and a bunch of other folks and it was like, it was just such it was probably one of my favorite conversations, really. And if you send out any communications after this, I can share a link out to it. But those type of conversations that are a little bit more real about what the experience is of being a beaded marketer, unless we were talking about earlier, being fluffy.
**0:17:59** - (Alex Rynne): I have no time for fluff. No time for fluff. There's a lot of content to be consuming and I want to be consuming things that are more real and are discussing things that are actually top of mind for B Two marketers today.
**0:18:16** - (Tara Robertson): Very cool. While getting to south of France is maybe a goal for some of the B Two B marketers listening, getting that award.
**0:18:23** - (Alex Rynne): Yes.
**0:18:24** - (Tara Robertson): How can marketers qualify for that award? Do you have details on that that we can share afterwards? Might be too late for this year.
**0:18:30** - (Alex Rynne): But I don't know if they're still accepting nominations to be honest, but anyone can really apply. Last year, one of the jurors was Chris Duffy from Adobe, and he actually shared in a broadcast that we did with him kind of like the criteria that they were looking at to qualify. So definitely I'd point people to watch that live. He can explain it much more eloquently than I can. Great.
**0:19:01** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, we'll find the link for that to share if anyone's interested. I know I am close. I'd love to shift gears a little bit and just talk more specifically about what your team I know you're producing a ton of great content behind the scenes, and how do you measure success of either individual content pieces and then kind of a content program or campaign overall?
**0:19:22** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah, I mean, it depends on the format and what the intention was behind the piece of content. We definitely believe in an objective based advertising approach. So everything that we put out, depending on what the objective was or what the format was, has kind of a different set of success metrics associated. But one thing that I wrote a piece about recently for the Collective was talking about customer lifetime value.
**0:19:54** - (Alex Rynne): So in the piece, I talked about how the CMO Council recently did a survey in partnership deloitte, and they found that only 17% of CMOS feel like they're tracking CLV effectively. And as a driver of an organization's marketing efforts, this is a huge oversight and could be costing marketing budget dollars and overall company revenue. So just like to level set the way that I define customer lifetime value is it's a return on investment or ROI metric that offers insight into how much revenue an individual will or organization will contribute over the lifetime of their relationship to your business. So we calculate it of average customer lifespan times customer value, and that equals customer lifetime value.
**0:20:50** - (Alex Rynne): And digital marketing is already making use of machine learning and AI for customer segmentation and targeting. But by augmenting your segmentation with information derived from calculating your customer lifetime value, you could actually target personas who are more likely to not only purchase once, but remain brand loyal for a long time. So if I kind of zoom out and look at what the broader goals are, customer lifetime value is definitely one of them.
**0:21:24** - (Alex Rynne): And as much as we can tie commercial value back to the top of the Funnel programs that my team does, for example, like LinkedIn, Collective, Live and that stuff, that's all great because at the end of the day, what you're looking at is the relationship we built, the quality of the relationships, the revenue that's being generated as a result of the relationship. So that's like, more at a high level. But if we're looking at a video, for example, like one of the lives we put on, we'll be looking at peak viewership, lifetime viewership.
**0:21:59** - (Alex Rynne): We're looking at who's watching, like, from what companies, from what locations. You can look at what titles on LinkedIn as well. You can get that granular to see who's tuning in. And then there's things that are a little bit more like the quality of the comments and the questions that are coming in throughout the broadcast. That's the stuff that I really look at to see. Yes, there were, yes, 5000 people watched, but who were they and were they engaged? Were they asking questions during the Q and A that were super relevant?
**0:22:35** - (Alex Rynne): Because those are really important things to look at too. It's not always just about the simple number of eyeballs that potentially looked at your video for two minutes or more.
**0:22:49** - (Tara Robertson): And for things like, say you're getting great comments, great questions from people who are in the target audience that you want to reach. Do you have a way to kind of share that back with your executive team or is it something that you just kind of anecdotally? Maybe you take a screenshot. That's what I do. I have just a folder of crazy screenshots that not really sure what to do with. But is there something that your team has a way to kind of share those wins?
**0:23:14** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah, we'll share back. The execs on our team are speaking on the shows now. Like Jim Or VP hosted the show in November, so he was well aware of the questions that were coming in. But in general, yeah, when we're talking to them about how an episode did, we'll mention the quality of the questions and whatnot and what we've started to do, we have at the end of our broadcast at least, we try to save around ten minutes at the end to answer those questions. And like, myself and the social media team are kind of filtering out the questions that are most relevant and they answer them in real time.
**0:23:52** - (Alex Rynne): But what I think we want to do also moving forward is taking all of those questions and especially the ones that we didn't get to because we didn't have enough time, and turning it into a blog post. And then within that blog post, we get into more into detail with research of why we're saying this piece is high quality content, like for example, or high quality salvatorship, like what are the specific boxes that it's checking and whatnot?
**0:24:23** - (Alex Rynne): It's just a great way of sparking more content ideas, honestly, because people are asking questions that maybe we hadn't thought of or maybe we thought that we had answered before, but it's not realistic that just published about something once that everyone has seen it or everyone truly understands it. If you really want to own a topic, you kind of have to continue the drumbeat on it.
**0:24:46** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, I'm definitely guilty of saying, oh, we already wrote about that, or we covered. Not everyone is reading everything you put out.
**0:24:53** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah. And one thing that we've been finding really effective recently on our LinkedIn Ads blog is that rather than creating net new comment or net new content. We are going back and updating old top performing posts and republishing them because they already have the high traffic, they already have the SEO value. We're just adding more up to date content, maybe adding new stats or maybe adding an embedded infographic and republishing it.
**0:25:23** - (Alex Rynne): And that has proven really successful for us. And it's like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, just kind of like reinvest in it.
**0:25:32** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, and that's a great way to use those questions. Like you were saying, if someone asked something that you thought you answered in the blog post, maybe you need to be a little bit more specific and actionable with the way that you're helping. Cool. I'd love to hear a little bit if you can share of just maybe some unique ways that LinkedIn's marketing team is using LinkedIn. I know you mentioned LinkedIn lives.
**0:25:54** - (Tara Robertson): Is there a specific strategy you have to get attendance really going for lives? I've been on a few lately where people are actually recording podcasts while doing a LinkedIn Live, which I thought was a really interesting strategy because obviously they're getting the content. But any other unique things that your team is trying?
**0:26:11** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah, I feel like I need to do like a LinkedIn learning course on how our team does lives because I forget how much work goes into it. And then someone asks me and I'm like, well, there's all this stuff beforehand and then there's during, and then there's all this stuff like post that happens. But in what you're talking about podcast now, you can also do live audio on LinkedIn as well, which is something we haven't experimented on my team with yet.
**0:26:41** - (Alex Rynne): But in terms of the LinkedIn lives, we are very fortunate at LinkedIn that we have our own in house media production team. So the stuff that you see in our studios, again, very fortunate to have these beautiful studios with beautiful sets, those are all produced by our Media productions team. So it looks like a set when you walk in, it looks like you're on Jimmy Fallon or something. It's very professionally done. They're amazing.
**0:27:11** - (Alex Rynne): So I will say we have them, which helps a lot. And we really think it adds to the production value because during COVID there were just so many talking heads and people talking to you from their home offices. And I think people are just over that people want to see other humans in a room together physically interacting. I guess to go back to what we do beforehand, there's a whole the topic selection, the speaker selection, then it's creating the LinkedIn event itself, inviting everyone.
**0:27:54** - (Alex Rynne): We also use our own products, so we'll use event ads and we'll use static sponsored content to drive attendance. Whoever says email is dead, that's another maybe like potentially unpopular opinion hot topic. But email is like email is 100% not dead. Email is probably one of the ways that we drive the most new attendees to our Live program. So you set the event live, you encourage your speakers to share about it, you start posting about it organically on your channels, you put paid behind it, you send out an email, not too many emails, just like one or two the most, and encouraging people to attend.
**0:28:38** - (Alex Rynne): You might want to do something like a meet the marketer type of series beforehand so that folks can learn a little bit more about the speakers that are actually going to be on the show. That's one way that we have kind of garnered more attention and excitement around it and publishing posts that are related to the content you're going to be talking about on the Live and having the CTA be like, to learn more, go register for this event.
**0:29:08** - (Alex Rynne): And then I'm sure I'm forgetting like a million steps, but in general and then you actually well, beforehand, I will say we don't just go in there blind. We typically work with our speakers to create a broadcast doc which generally outlines the questions that our host is going to ask and then they get a chance to organize their thoughts beforehand. They don't have something they're speaking off of during the broadcast, but it just helps with the flow and everything because then we'll have a dry run where everyone gets on a content call and the speakers get more acquainted. With each other in terms of who's going to say what and who the host is going to volley what question to first. That kind of stuff.
**0:29:51** - (Alex Rynne): And then there's actual Live that happens. We have our social team moderating that as well. Like I said, picking questions that are most relevant for the host to answer. If we're having someone external, we typically bring them a gift. So everyone loves LinkedIn. Swag. Everyone Loves Swag. Period. So typically it's like a hoodie or like North Face as a LinkedIn on it. And then from there you're really nurturing a relationship with the people you had on the show. So we'll offer them to do an article on the LinkedIn collective which double clicks into a specific point they made potentially on the show.
**0:30:30** - (Alex Rynne): We also our BDA Productions team sends us, we identify like three to five different 32nd to a minute max clips and then we share those out on social. Again, driving people to watch the entire on demand video. And then we also change the lol sorry, LinkedIn. On LinkedIn we change the sponsor content. There's so many internal acronyms. We changed the sponsor content from the wording of like registered to attend and instead be like, watch this video so that we're still driving views to the on demand via Paid after the show has launched. So there's a lot of different steps. You don't have to make it as complicated as I probably overcomplicated in my own head, but we just have really high standards of. How we want the shows to be produced and the guest experience and all of that. So we think about it a lot.
**0:31:30** - (Tara Robertson): And you mentioned reusing that content after the fact. Are you typically leaving those just ungated on LinkedIn, or do people have to register to see the full?
**0:31:43** - (Alex Rynne): My team's philosophy overall generally is that top of the funnel content shouldn't be gated. And it goes back to what I was saying before, of, like, someone who might be interested in your product or service is going to consume five to seven pieces of content before they're ready to put their hand up to sales and say, like, hey, I want to talk to you and take this relationship one step further type of thing.
**0:32:06** - (Alex Rynne): So when it's top of the funnel, we don't really feel like gating is the best way because most likely people that are consuming that content are not ready in their journey to have someone from sales reach out. That's also not the objective of the content. It's not like, let's gather all these names so that we can nurture them to a sale. We're still building the relationship with the top of the funnel stuff. So in general, if it's top of the funnel, we don't gate it.
**0:32:36** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, that totally makes sense. And like you said, if you know that it takes six or seven pieces of content to move them past the line, if you gate it, you're losing one of those touch points, potentially.
**0:32:46** - (Alex Rynne): Right, exactly. And it's like, I think I saw some report a couple of years ago that said that almost half of the information that's inputted into those forms is falsified anyway. And I think that's a result of people gating everything or people gating too soon in the relationship because people are like, I'm not ready for you to be calling me.
**0:33:10** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. You mentioned that you do paid placements for driving event attendance. Does your team experiment with any other Paid formats on LinkedIn? I'm curious what's working right now, maybe new?
**0:33:24** - (Alex Rynne): We use all of our own products. I mean paid. Both paid and organic. So one of the organic products that we've most recently been experimenting with are newsletters. And we set our newsletter live for the LinkedIn ads showcase page. And I think it was like, crazy how fast we got to a million newsletter subscribers. Newsletters are like the it thing now in terms of organic, for sure. For Paid, we use all of our own stuff. We drink our own champagne. So carousel ads, video ads, event ads, static ads.
**0:34:04** - (Alex Rynne): I'm trying to think of something that might be like, newer, something that's really cool, that's not available to the public yet, but it's coming are thought leader ads. So really excited about that, especially given all the research we've done over the years around thought leadership. So moving forward, it's like LinkedIn ads could do a thought leader ad that's associated with me, for example. So very excited for that to be launched.
**0:34:35** - (Tara Robertson): And those would be literally published from your page, so not from a company page, right?
**0:34:40** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah.
**0:34:42** - (Tara Robertson): Very cool. Yeah, I'm excited to get my hands on that. I think I'm on a list somewhere to try it early. Yeah, we're really big proponents of thought leadership here. So excited to try that out. I'd love to hear a little bit. Just speaking of kind of yourself, putting out content your team. Does LinkedIn encourage everyone who works there to kind of create their own content and create a following for themselves? Is that something that's built into the culture just from the outside in? I kind of imagine that it would be, but I'm curious.
**0:35:11** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah, I guess it's kind of a cultural thing. It's definitely not like something that's required of you by any means. But I think just in general, maybe it's just within the nature of the people that LinkedIn hires where they want to build their own personal brand and they have that drive. And plus, it's like when you work at LinkedIn, there's just so many amazing resources. We're constantly learning and there's always opportunities to hear from different speakers and authors and LinkedIn learning courses and et cetera. So I feel like a lot of us just feel compelled to share the goodness of all the information that we're consuming.
**0:35:57** - (Alex Rynne): But yeah, I think it's a personal decision and choice to put yourself out there in that way. But I think it's a smart one because you're not going to be at your company forever. Right. And eventually when you leave, you're taking your personal brand with you. None of that is left. I mean, the blog post will live on, et cetera, but when you're building your own personal brand kind of associated with your company, but not really, when you move on, you get to obviously take all of that with you.
**0:36:34** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, I think especially now when there's so much uncertainty, it's not a bad thing to build up your own personal brand just in case. Is there anything specific that LinkedIn does to just make that really easier for people if they are interested in growing a personal brand?
**0:36:51** - (Alex Rynne): I honestly can't think of anything, like off the top of my head, but there's opportunities for like I mean, there's like workshops and stuff like that and opportunities to we call it or it's called own the room training. So that's kind of like speaking public speaking training. So there's definitely a lot of opportunities to do that. But no, we don't have a formal process in place of what it looks like to build your personal brand on LinkedIn or what becoming a creator looks like.
**0:37:28** - (Tara Robertson): So looking ahead kind of maybe could be something this year. I know we've already talked about cons and a couple of other things, but what are you looking forward to as you grow the marketing team? Is there maybe a new tool you're excited about or a new format on LinkedIn.
**0:37:45** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah, I mean, Con is definitely a top of mind at the moment. I'm excited about this data B two B marketing report we're putting out because it's going to be, like I said, the first of many that the B two B marketing industry can expect from us. I'm excited about how our team is expanding. I mean, I'm bringing on two senior producers beginning in the beginning of April to help us out with our video strategy. So it's like all the stuff that we're doing for Collective Live, we also want to do it for LinkedIn Ads Live as well, but the nature of that program will be a little bit more tactical, less thought leadershipy. But I think we're only just getting started with our video strategy. And given the ample resources that we have with our Media productions team and all of these beautiful studios to shoot from, I think we're only getting started with not only showcasing our internal thought leaders, but getting more diverse voices across our channels in video format. So, yeah, I think the ways that we've been experimenting with video and trying to up level our own, the production of our videos is something that's top of mind. Aside from France, which I can't stop thinking about, honestly, hard to beat that.
**0:39:06** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, that's a fun trip to shop for us.
**0:39:10** - (Alex Rynne): Great.
**0:39:10** - (Tara Robertson): So let's move on to our quick fire round. Just have three quick questions to round things off. Is there another marketer you follow that our listeners should go check out? I'm guessing on LinkedIn, but could be elsewhere.
**0:39:22** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah. So Bozema St. John, who was in the C Suite at, like, Apple Netflix, she worked at Uber. She worked at Pepsi. She recently published a book called The Urgent Life. And not only is she just, like, wicked smart in her own right in terms of the things that she's accomplished professionally, but the book I bought, it thinking, like, oh, maybe it'll be a mix of tips from her in her corporate life and then also talking about the extreme loss that she's endured in her life and how she overcame it. The book is mostly a memoir about her personal life. She doesn't really talk. I mean, she talks about her jobs and I just feel like we could all take a tip from her in that way in the sense that when you're going through something, it's really not easy to compartmentalize it. And a lot of companies talk about bringing your entire self to work, but she really lives it and she is just an inspiration.
**0:40:26** - (Alex Rynne): We had her at LinkedIn recently to talk about her book and just in general, her experience, and she's a force to be reckoned with. Man, being in the same room with her is humbling. She's an incredible woman. So I would recommend following her on LinkedIn, buying her book. If you ever have an opportunity to see her. If she's signing books, I'd highly recommend going.
**0:40:49** - (Tara Robertson): That's a great one. I've seen a couple of her talks I want to say on YouTube. I don't know where I saw them, but she's such a strong speaker, so I'm really curious to learn. I don't know much about her personal life. So now I'm curious to hear more.
**0:41:02** - (Alex Rynne): Yeah.
**0:41:03** - (Tara Robertson): Is there an under the radar could be a channel or maybe a tactic that your team is loving right now or experimenting with?
**0:41:11** - (Alex Rynne): I already mentioned thought leader ads, which we're really excited about. I think we're maybe taking it back to old school tactics of building real relationships IRL. But that's probably the thing I'm most excited about because we've all been living in our little bubbles for the last couple of years because of COVID and now it's like we're emerging, we're filming in studio, we're hosting these collective dinners with CMOS and CEOs and having real conversations.
**0:41:41** - (Alex Rynne): And that's probably it's not like an under the radar tactic, but it's like a tactic that maybe we've all forgotten because everything is so digitized now, is that there's no replacement for IRL interactions and relationship building when it comes to business, or any relationship for that matter. So that's probably what I'm most excited about.
**0:42:04** - (Tara Robertson): And lastly, where can we go to find out more about you or follow your update?
**0:42:08** - (Alex Rynne): Me? Yeah, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I publish regularly on the LinkedIn Collective Showcase page as well as the LinkedIn Ads blog, which has its own LinkedIn Ads Showcase page. Not really active on Twitter. I got to be honest. That's another story for another episode. Yeah, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Great.
**0:42:36** - (Tara Robertson): Yeah, a lot of our listeners run LinkedIn ads, so I'm sure they'll get a ton of value out of following you. Alex, thanks so much for joining me today.
**0:42:43** - (Alex Rynne): Thank you for having me. Great seeing you again.
**0:42:45** - (Tara Robertson): You too. And thanks, everybody for listening. We'll be back in about two weeks with a brand new episode.
**0:42:51** - (C): Thanks for listening to Demand Gen Chat. Demand. Gen Chat is a Chili Piper podcast hosted by Tara Robertson and produced by Me Nola McCoy. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. It only takes 5 seconds and helps other marketers like you discover Demand Gen Chats. Also, if you'd like to have a question answered in a future episode, you can connect with Tara Robertson on LinkedIn, send her a DM with your question, and it could be answered on a future episode.
**0:43:20** - (C): Finally, if you've gotten this far and are wondering what Chili Piper even is, chili Piper helps B two B marketers book more qualified meetings for their sales teams. You can't afford to leave opportunities on the table, so let your lead self qualify and schedule a time with the right rep instantly. And that's just one of the many revenue impacting things that Chili Piper does. Visit Chiliper.com to learn more.
**0:43:43** - (C): And thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next episode of Dimension Chat.
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