Helping Brands Engage and Influence Buyers with New Advertising Capabilities Published on Oct 14, 2024 Categories: Product News, Company News, Europe, EMEA LinkedIn Corporate Communications
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With 81% of B2B ads failing to gain adequate attention or drive recall, B2B marketers need more compelling ways to connect and engage with their buying groups who are turning to video, events and expert voices for information. Today, we're introducing new research to help marketers understand how buyers like to receive information. We're also sharing new capabilities for Live Events and adding more customization options in Accelerate, our AI campaign creation experience, including video ads and new campaign objectives.
Why This Matters: Capturing attention and engaging with the 95% of buyers who are out-of-market is one of the biggest challenges facing B2B marketers today, especially when 81% of B2B buyers choose to purchase from brands they already know on day one. Understanding how buyers like to receive information and then developing your marketing campaign based on those insights and your business objectives is critical.
What Buyers Need: Our new Business of Influence' research*, which surveyed over 1,700 B2B tech buyers in the US, UK and India, reveals how buyers look to receive information about new products. Global research finds:
Video is the most compelling form of content: 63% of B2B buyers say that short-form social video content helps inform buying decisions, with 80% of those who consume video content saying that video-focused influencer content is one of the most trusted forms of content in B2B.
Influencer content is critical during consideration: 67% of buyers, who are aware of B2B influencer marketing, say that influencer content plays a critical role in the consideration stage of the IT buying process.
B2B influencers must be subject matter experts: 53% of B2B buyers say that subject matter expertise is the most important trait for B2B influencers.
Expert content helps build trust: 67% of buyers who consume B2B influencer content say that B2B expert content helps build brand trust and creates awareness of different products and solutions.
Our data shows that video is now the fastest-growing format on LinkedIn, with uploads up 34% year-over-year, and according to the emarketer report, B2B Video Marketing in 2024,' LinkedIn is one of the leading B2B video platforms for brands.
About the New Product Capabilities
To help brands connect and build influence with buyers through multiple formats, including video, we're introducing new capabilities:
Live Event Ads: With Live Events on LinkedIn up by 14.4% in the past year and Thought Leader Ads generating 2.3x higher click-through-rate (CTR) compared to single image ads, we're introducing new features to allow B2B marketers to maximize registration and participation in their events. Coming this quarter, they can:
Promote a members post about the Live Event their Company Page is hosting with a Thought Leader Ad that links directly to the event to drive more registrations, views and engagement
Offer a sneak peek with a 30-second video appearing on LinkedIn to allow people to preview during and post-event to help drive registration and attendance
Regionally target who they want to invite when setting up the event to promote a more personalized event experience
Accelerate: With Accelerate campaigns showing up to a 42% lower cost per action** compared to advertisers who run a Classic Campaign with LinkedIn, we're continuing to introduce new functionalities to help B2B marketers tailor their campaign to achieve their marketing goals. This quarter, they will begin to have the option to add a video or document ad, like an eBook, whitepaper or customer testimonial, in addition to a single-image, when creating an advertising campaign with Accelerate.
And, to help them better achieve their campaign goals, we're also beginning to introduce new campaign objectives for Accelerate, including brand awareness, engagement, website conversions, and video views. All new formats and objectives will ramp slowly across the globe over the coming months, while the Accelerate beta is now available for lead generation and website visit objectives to all advertisers globally in all languages, with AI creative creation only available in English.
What Customers Are Saying
About Live Event Ads:
Reaching current and future customers through our events is critical for us to drive product awareness, adoption, and ultimately build the Salesforce brand. Over Dreamforce, we leveraged our Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud to identify CRM audiences to target within LinkedIn. With LinkedIn Live Event Ads, we were able to target AI-interested decision makers with relevant messaging, which resulted in an increase in quality viewerships and continued collaboration to grow our events pipeline.
Erin Oles, SVP, Strategic Events at Salesforce
About Accelerate:
"Accelerate has helped Advantive achieve astonishing success by helping drive significant leads to a number of our campaigns across our various verticals. By having the right team and tools at our disposal with LinkedIn, we have seen strong performance and are excited to only see that performance strengthen over time!"
Phillip Montalvo, Senior Manager, Demand Generation, Advantive
With Accelerate, we've been able to not only improve top-line metrics, such as decreasing our CPCs by more than 50%, but also be more efficient with campaign management and creative optimizations.
Veronica McGhee, VP, Paid Social Director, Cramer-Krasselt
Thanks to LinkedIns Accelerate campaign, we were able to reach a significant volume of potential clients with a cost-per-click that is competitive with other media and a click-through
