From Unaware to Hired: Driving Leads Through Content Marketing
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Industry research has shown that candidates need 3-10 touches before applying. You can't win talent overnight, but you can influence people along their journey and help them make the right decision about their next career move. By creating and sharing unique, informative content across social platforms, you can engage your target audience and showcase your culture. On top of that, our research found that when people see company content first, it can boost application rates on LinkedIn by up to 65%! This presentation, originally presented as a webcast, will teach you about the importance of content marketing as it relates to lead generation. You will learn tips and best practices for creating, distributing, and optimizing your content – ultimately helping you build a targeted pipeline of qualified talent. Learn more about our solutions at business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions
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From Unaware to Hired: Driving Leads Through Content Marketing
- 1. From Unaware to Hired - Driving Leads Through Content Marketing Avani Khanna Solutions Consultant
- 2. What we’ll cover 1 Branding for influence 2 Why content marketing matters 3 The full funnel strategy – TOFU, MOFU, BOFU 4 Tactics for lead generation 5 Q&A
- 4. Promoting the organization as a great place to work APPEAL Branding for
- 5. Giving candidates trusted guidance to make better decisions about whether to apply INFLUENCE Branding for
- 6. “Branding for Influence Persuades the Best, Deflects the Rest” Awareness Interest Application Hire Appeal Influence
- 7. Messaging differs between branding for appeal vs. influence • “Check out our career opportunities” • “Be challenged every day” • “Our culture is very collaborative” • “We have ping pong tables” APPEAL Branding for • “Meet some of the cool people you could be working with” • “Your work helps achieve our mission by…” • “Here are some innovative projects someone with your background might work on” INFLUENCE Branding for
- 8. Influential branding has a large impact on quality of applicants Shifting from appealing to influential branding brings you almost 4xthe improvement in applicant quality than moving from unmanaged to appealing branding
- 9. The Corporate Brand Effect “Applicant quality is virtually identical regardless of how well known the corporate brand is. Branding for influence is the optimal strategy for organizations with unknown and well- known corporate brands.” Source: CEB 2014 Employment Branding Effectiveness Survey
- 10. Creative Director, Co-Founder, Velocity Partners Doug Kessler
- 12. Interactions with talent have changed Talent Network (ongoing) Traditional Acquisition (one time)
- 13. 13
- 14. And those candidate touch points pay off RECRUITING EFFECTIVENESS INCREASES WHEN MEMBERS SEE COMPANY CONTENT FIRST 65% lift in application rates through LinkedIn 3.3x Lift in conversion rate to hire on LinkedIn Source: Using LinkedIn.com data from January 2015 – July 2015 for the top 100 companies with the strongest talent brand
- 15. “Always on” strategy engages people along their journey FROM UNAWARE TO AWARE, FROM INTERESTED TO APPLIED Candidate Employee Unaware Aware Interested Applied Hired
- 16. What can content do at all of these touch points? Unaware Aware Interested Applied Hired Introduce people to your brand Showcase career opportunities and thought leadership Advise people about what it’s like to work at your company Drive people to take action and apply Reinforce employer value proposition and promote sharing
- 17. “We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and become what people are interested in.” C R A I G D AV I S F o r m e r C h i e f C r e a t i v e O f f i c e r, J . Wa l t e r T h o m p s o n
- 18. The Full Funnel Strategy
- 19. Ensuring contact at all touch points requires a full funnel approach TOP OF THE FUNNEL, MIDDLE OF THE FUNNEL, BOTTOM OF THE FUNNEL Awareness Interest Application Hire TOFU MOFU BOFU Top of the funnel content facilitates awareness Middle of the funnel content facilitates evaluation Bottom of the funnel content facilitates conversion Appeal Influence
- 20. Align talent mindset to the funnel WHAT ACTIONS DO CANDIDATES TAKE AT EACH STAGE? Awareness Interest Application Awareness Interest Application Hire • Connect with peers • Read industry news • Check network updates • Bolster professional skills • Visit Career Pages on LinkedIn • Watch videos about a company • Look up connections at a company • Research company of interest • Find specific job postings • Visit company website • Respond to InMail or apply to job posting • Talk to connections at a company
- 21. Map content to the funnel VARY THE TYPE OF CONTENT BASED ON THE GOAL FOR EACH STAGE Awareness Interest Application • Photographs/Images • Infographics • Press releases • Thought leadership • News updates • Industry blog posts • Career tips • “Day in the life” content • Videos • Employee blog posts • Career Pages • Blog posts about the company • Project highlights • Emails/InMails • Job postings • Microsites • Lead Capture Landing Pages • Employee testimonials • Career Pages
- 22. Lead Generation
- 23. Top 5 Reasons People Engage With Content OUR MEMBERS AREN’T ON LINKEDIN TO KILL TIME, THEY’RE HERE TO GROW PROFESSIONALLY
- 25. Treat your EVP like the turkey DIVIDE IT UP INTO DIFFERENT PIECES Blogs Infographics Presentation s Videos Images
- 26. Compliment your turkey with starters, sides, and dessert THINK OF OTHER CONTENT YOU CAN USE TO FILL IN YOUR “MEAL” Industry News Trends Humor/Pop culture Influencers Research and insights
- 27. Conduct a content audit START WITH YOUR OWN COMPANY’S ASSETS COMPANY WEBSITE Where to look COMPANY BLOG COMPANY RESOURCES ‘ABOUT US’ SECTION PR/NEWS SECTION Employee culture Engaging images Cadence Videos Whitepapers Other media Company announcements News What to look for Specifics Leadership Corporate values Links to other social sites
- 28. Ask Yourself These Questions Before You Get Started • Who is your content for? • Where are they in their candidate journey? • Does my content make them more productive and successful? • Will this ultimately drive action? • How will I measure success?
- 29. 5 tips for optimizing your content for lead generation Visuals are the new headlines Visuals Enable lead capture through a custom landing page Capture Design for the mobile experience Mobile Tailor messaging for your target audiences Tailor A/B test creative and optimize Test
- 30. Visuals are the new headlines IMAGERY IS THE BIGGEST FACTOR IN ENGAGEMENT – MAKE SURE YOURS IS DIFFERENTIATED • Differentiate your brand • Consistent brand look and feel • Compelling data visualization • Creative variations of imagery
- 31. Design for the mobile experience 58%+ OF MEMBER SESSIONS COME VIA MOBILE – DELIVER THE OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE • Consider the crop factor
- 32. Design for the mobile experience 58%+ OF MEMBER SESSIONS COME VIA MOBILE – DELIVER THE OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE • Consider the crop factor • Keep the CTA above the fold
- 33. Design for the mobile experience 58%+ OF MEMBER SESSIONS COME VIA MOBILE – DELIVER THE OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE • Consider the crop factor • Keep the CTA above the fold • Account for viewing patterns “Golden Triangle” rule does not apply to mobile
- 34. Tailor copy for your audience TAKE ADVANTAGE OF TARGETING AND INSIGHTS TO SPEAK DIRECTLY TO MEMBERS • Create personas for each target audience • Speak to what they’re interested in • Directly call out your audience
- 35. Test different versions of your messaging RUN SEVERAL VARIATIONS OF YOUR CONTENT TO SEE WHAT DRIVES PERFORMANCE Test different headline copy A) “B2B buyers…” B) “75% of B2B buyers…” 33% higher engagement than “A” 32% higher conversion rate than “A” VS.
- 36. Test different versions of your messaging RUN SEVERAL VARIATIONS OF YOUR CONTENT TO SEE WHAT DRIVES PERFORMANCE Test different images A) Image featuring devices B) Image featuring a person VS. 160% higher click through rate than “A” 289% higher conversion rate than “A”
- 37. Test different versions of your messaging RUN SEVERAL VARIATIONS OF YOUR CONTENT TO SEE WHAT DRIVES PERFORMANCE Test in waves
- 38. Enable Lead Capture DRIVE PEOPLE TO A DEDICATED LANDING PAGE AND COLLECT LEADS • Harness the scale and reach of Sponsored Updates and Ads to drive recruitment leads • Lead Capture Landing Pages allow interested members to submit their information in one-click • Quickly track and measure ROI
- 39. Enable Lead Capture DON’T LOSE MOMENTUM – FOLLOW UP WITH YOUR LEADS • Monitor campaign folder for leads daily • Respond to top candidates as quickly as possible • Create templates for short & long term pipeline as well as people who aren’t a good fit • Drive leads to take action – discussion, application, or follow your company
- 40. “Most brands still call content marketing a campaign, which implies there is a stop date. Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. We need to take a longer –view of how we communicate with our customers.” J O E P U L I Z Z I F o u n d e r, C o n t e n t M a r k e t i n g I n s t i t u t e
- 42. Key Takeaways • Branding for influence drives consideration of fit and quality • Content should engage people at all points on their journey • Align your messaging with each stage of the funnel • Focus on optimizing your content for lead generation
- 44. Thank you
Notes de l'éditeur
- Good morning! My name is Avani Khanna and I’m a Talent Brand Consultant at LinkedIn. I help our clients optimize their employer brand to attract the best talent. However I am a marketer at heart. Prior to working at LinkedIn I was a client of LinkedIn at Walmart’s eCommerce division. In my role there I focused entirely on marketing our talent brand to attract highly sought after talent. I also have experience in advertising and branding agencies, and a business education with a focus on marketing. I’m glad to be talking with you today about driving leads through content marketing.
- Thank you again for joining us today. I wanted to give you a quick glance at what we’ll cover today. We’ll talk about branding for influence, Why content marketing matters, Why it’s important to have different strategies for diff stages of the funnel, and Some tactics for generating leads. I have a lot of content to share with you today—so let’s get started!
- Let’s first talk about branding for influence, a concept developed by the Corporate Executive Board. This concept will help set the stage for why everything else we’ll cover is so important. CEB looked at diff btwn branding for appeal and branding for influence.
- To understand branding for influence, we must first start with branding for appeal. This is really the more basic concept of branding that people are generally familiar with. Branding for appeal is simply promoting an organization as a great place to work. It’s telling people that you’re awesome, and hoping that that motivates someone, anyone, to want to work for you. This is all fine, but you don’t want anyone to want to work for you. You want the right people to want to work for you…
- This is where branding for influence comes in. it’s about giving people enough information so they can self select in or out. The goal of branding for influence isn’t to broaden awareness, but to drive consideration of fit. You are among many companies competing for talent, so it’s important to focus people’s attention on you and educate them about your culture, the type of work they could do, how they might fit in, etcetera. This approach enables people to self-select in or out of getting to know your company once they have that knowledge of you. The result is that you then get a higher quality pool of talent, because only candidates that would be a good fit apply. They’ve learned about your organization and decided that they want to apply.
- This headline summarizes it nicely: “Branding for influence persuades the best, deflects the rest.” It’s about quality, not quantity. When we think about this in terms of the funnel from unaware to hired, branding for appeal only focuses on the top of the funnel and building awareness. Historically, many companies stop at this point, neglecting the rest of the funnel. Branding for influence, on the other hand, nurtures people along the funnel and builds interest, finally leading people to the application stage.
- Let’s look a little bit closer at the difference between branding for appeal vs. influence. As I mentioned earlier, branding for appeal is all about promoting your organization as a great place to work. CEB talks about it as “messages that sell”. I like to think of it as “messages that tell” because you’re telling people what’s so great about you. It’s saying things like “our culture is very collaborative”, “we offer challenging work”, “we’re fun, we have ping pong tables”… at this point many employers have ping pong tables and this doesn’t tell the candidate about you to help them undestand if it might be a good fit for them. Branding for influence is less telling and more consulting. It’s saying things like “meet some of the cool people you could be working with”, “here are some innovative projects someone with your background might work on”, and “take a virtual tour of the office you might work in”… It’s a more tailored approach to speak to specific types of people in a way that will hopefully resonate with them. Or it won’t resonate with them, and that’s ok, because that’s the point of branding for influence. You want people to learn all about you and then be able to confidently say whether or not they want to pursue a career opportunity with you.
- Hopefully I’ve now sold you on this idea, but if not, these numbers might! CEB’s study found that shifting from branding for appeal to branding for influence can bring you almost 4 times the improvement in applicant quality than simply starting to brand for appeal. If you look at this graph, you can see there is a slight uptick in applicant quality when companies went from no management of their employment brand to branding for appeal. This is no surprise, of course doing some level of branding will be helpful. But the real change came with moving to a branding for influence strategy. The average quality of the applicant pool went from 28% to 43% with this shift. Personally, I don’t find this that surprising, it seems intuitive. What I do find surprising, however, is this… (click to next slide)
- CEB also found that how well known the corporate brand was had basically zero effect on applicant quality. So, if you want to really move the needle on your applicant quality, you need to brand for influence.
- “Traditional marketing talks at people. Content marketing talks with them.” Similarly, branding for appeal talks at people, branding for influence talks with them. The parallel between these two statements is why content marketing is so important to influencing the people you want to hire.
- So let’s dive into why content marketing matters.
- As you are all probably aware, interactions with talent have changed. Gone are the days of simply seeing a job opening, sending out your resume, and either getting that new job or not. It’s now an ongoing cycle in which engaging your own employees is just as important as engaging potential candidates, and people are constantly flowing through this cycle.
- And we’re all busy! We’re bombarded with information and messages all day, every day. That’s why candidates need anywhere from 3-10 touches before they apply. You can’t be satisfied with a point-in-time campaign that blasts a message out and then people never see you again after that. It just won’t work, you need an open, consistent dialogue with talent.
- And those touch points pay off. When members see company content first, we’ve found that a company can see a 65% lift in application rates through LinkedIn and a 3.3 times lift in conversion!
- An “always-on” strategy will engage people along their journey. (click) You want to touch people as they move from unaware to aware to interested and onto application. (click) Each of these stages is an opportunity to have a touch point with someone that can influence them.
- Content serves a different purpose at each of these stages. (click) You want to tailor your messaging appropriately. (click) You start by introducing people to your brand and then move onto showcasing career opportunities and general thought leadership. Next, you advise people about what it’s like to work at your company (the branding for influence part), which will allow people to self-select in and apply. Last but not least, as part of the ongoing cycle, you reinforce your employer value proposition with your employees and encourage them to share it. (Def: The employer value proposition (EVP) is a unique set of offerings, associations and values to positively influence target candidates and employees. A company needs a unique EVP to attract top talent into their organization. )
- “We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and become what people are interested in.” You don’t want to interrupt a person’s journey, but you should want to become part of it. You do that by creating content that people want to consume. And what that content is changes along the way.
- So let’s talk about the full funnel strategy and how it specifically impacts your content marketing strategy.
- As we think about ensuring those 3-10 touch points every candidate needs, we need to think about how to embrace the full funnel and what that really means in terms of the content you build and share, because, as we just discussed, the goal is different at each point. It’s helpful to bucket this into the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel. (click) Top of the funnel content facilitates awareness. (click) Middle of the funnel content facilitates evaluation. (click) And bottom of the funnel content facilitates conversion. (click) Relating this back to branding for influence, you can see that the tofu content is branding for appeal and mofu and bofu content are branding for influence.
- In order to facilitate awareness, evaluation, and conversion, it’s important to know the mindset of people at each stage. (click) At the awareness stage, people aren’t seeking out company information. (click) They’re doing things like connecting with peers, staying up to date on their industry, and developing their skills. (click) Once they’re aware of a company and move to the interest stage, that’s when people start to take actions to learn a bit more about what it’s like to work at a specific company. They visit career pages, watch videos, and see who they may know at a company. Lastly, if you’ve nurtured a person all the way to the point that they are seriously considering applying, they will then take very direct actions to interact with your company like finding specific job postings, talking to connections at the company, and finally applying or responding to your outreach.
- These differing mindsets and actions should then dictate what type of content and what content features should be shared at each level. I won’t go through all of these, but we can talk through a few examples. As I mentioned, at the awareness stage, people aren’t seeking out your company. Someone isn’t going to visit a microsite you’ve built at the awareness stage so you want to align the content based on where you are in the funnel. This is a good time to position your company as a thought leader and provide content that is useful for someone’s own career development or entertaining. Something like blog posts on hot topics in your industry work well here. When someone becomes interested and wants to know more about working at your company, that’s when you can start to really interject mentions of your own company and culture. Featuring “day in the life” content or blog posts from your employees are good examples of content for this stage. And lastly, at the application stage, you can drive people to very personalized things like inMails and Lead Capture Landing Pages which we’ll talk about in more detail later.
- So now that we’ve talked about the types of content you want to use along a candidate’s journey through the funnel, now let’s focus on how to optimize that content sharing for lead generation.
- People don’t engage with all content, so let me share a look into the top 5 reasons people do engage with content. In a basic tie, being educational or informative and relevant are key. After that, people want content that helps them stay current, be inspired, and improve their own skills. The important thing to point out here is that it’s all about bettering the person consuming the content. Remember it’s about THEM, not YOU. Share not what you want to share, but what people want to consume.
- Now, some of you may be thinking that you don’t even have any content ready to share, let alone stuff that will be super engaging. But humor me for a moment and let me explain how you can capitalize on what you already have. Think about a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner. The centerpiece of your meal is the turkey. You enjoy that turkey at dinner, but inevitably you’re left with lots of turkey leftovers! So after that night you use pieces of the turkey to make sandwiches, casseroles, soups, and more!
- Now think of your employer value proposition and core brand assets as your turkey. You can leverage what you already have built to fuel various pieces of content, from blog posts to infographics to videos and more.
- And no meal is complete without starters, sides, and dessert! So compliment your own branding and company-centric information with things like industry news, influencer posts, research, and humor.
- A good place to start is with a content audit of your own company’s assets. (click) You’re going to take a deep-dive into your company website. (click) Look at your company blog if you have one. Find pieces about employee culture, look for imagery, and take note of the cadence of posts. (click) Check out the company resources and look for videos, whitepapers, and other types of media you could share. (click) In the about us section, you might find information about leadership, corporate values, or links to other social sites with shareable content. (click) Lastly, take a look at the public relations or company news section for announcements and other interesting company news.
- There are 5 key questions to ask yourself as you’re building your content marketing plan. (click) Who is your content for? (click) Where are they in their candidate journey? (click) Does my content make them more productive and successful? (click) Will this ultimately drive action? (click) How will I measure success?
- Now I’m going to tell you about 5 easy tips that will help make sure your content is optimized for lead generation: Visuals – they’re the new headlines. Mobile – design your content with this in mind. Tailor messaging for your target audiences. Test different creative and optimize. And lastly enable your campaigns to capture leads.
- Imagery is the biggest factor the affects engagement metrics, so it’s critical to use it wisely. (click) First, you want to differentiate your brand so your images couldn’t be mistaken for anybody else’s. Say NO to stock photos! Your images should be uniquely you. (click) In a similar vein, you want your imagery to have a consistent look and feel that represents your brand. This example from P&G shows images pulled from LinkedIn, Facebook, and their own site. You can see that they all look and feel the same and over time would be easy for someone to identify as P&G. (click) Data and numbers can be bland. But if you have stats you want to share, you can do it in an interesting way. This animated gif showing population data is a catchy way to showcase what could otherwise be a very boring chart. (click) Lastly, think about imagery more broadly, it doesn’t have to just be pictures. GE stands out by using cartoons as imagery.
- Almost 60% (and rising) of our traffic comes from mobile, so a vast amount of content is consumed on mobile devices. In order to ensure a good user experience, you must design for mobile. Take this update for example. You have to consider where it gets cut off on mobile. (click) Intro copy cuts off at about 160-180 characters, so you better make sure your most important info is visible in that intro.
- Similarly, you want to keep your CTA above the fold, meaning before the point that someone would have to scroll down to see. (click) The link in this example would get cut off.
- It’s also interesting to consider viewing patterns and where someone’s eyes are looking. Historically, when desktop ruled, people would often refer to the “golden triangle” – basically the top right corner of the screen, across the top couple of lines, and down the left side where you often find navigation. You can see this depicted in the eye tracking map where the “hotter” colors are – red and orange. (click) This rule does not apply on mobile. On mobile, people’s eyes are focused in the middle of the screen, not at any of the edges.
- Appealing visually to people only gets their attention though. To keep their attention you need to make sure your content is relevant. Remember, 61% of people said they engage with content because it’s relevant to them. (click) First, create personas for each of your key audiences. What are their behaviors, values, interests, and more? Give them names, maybe you have an engineering persona named Beth. You can keep each of these personas in mind as you build or curate content and ask yourself would “Beth” like this? (click) At LinkedIn, we can actually help you understand what different audiences are interested in and the types of content they’re consuming. Your Solutions Consultant would be happy to help you with this! (click) You can even go so far as to directly call out your audience. Take this update from Lenovo as an example. The headline reads, “For all the misunderstood IT managers”. They’ve made it very clear who they’re speaking to and this would catch the eye of an IT manager.
- If you want to optimize for lead generation you should test, test, test and repeat! You can A/B test different versions of creative or content to see which performs the highest. Let’s look at a couple examples from LinkedIn’s own marketing. In the first example, we were targeting marketers. We wanted to test how different headline copy would impact the success of our Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to Content Marketing. (click) Our first option had a headline that read “B2B buyers rely more on content to make purchasing decisions than ever before.” (click) The second option’s headline read, “75% of B2B buyers rely more on content to make purchasing decisions than they did a year ago.” We ran both of these variations and found that option B got a 32% higher conversion rate and 33% higher engagement rate!
- We’ve also tested content using different images. (click) In this example, the headline stayed the same but option A had an image featuring devices, (click), and option B had an image featuring a person. The update with the person had a whopping 289% higher conversion rate and 160% higher click through rate! A general rule of thumb is that images with people usually tend to perform better.
- For more sophisticated testing, you can test in waves. Looking at this chart, waves 1, 2, and 3 would all have unique sets of content being tested. The “winning” content from each wave would then be run together in wave 4 and, in the case of using LinkedIn’s sponsored updates, our campaign manager tool can optimize between those 4 for you.
- Last, but most certainly not least, you can make it very easy to collect leads from a Sponsored Updates or Recruitment Ads campaign by using a lead capture landing page. This is a branded page that keeps members on the LinkedIn platform and makes it very simple for them to submit their information if they’re interested in your opportunities – all they have to do is click one button! It then send their info into Recruiter so you can quickly follow up with your leads and track success. This page is simply a landing page, so you can use a variety of content to drive people to it.
- As you collect leads, you then must respond to them, so it’s good to follow a couple of guidelines and have a plan in place to make this easy on you. It’s best to keep a close eye on the leads that are coming in and respond as quickly as possible. If you have response templates already created, you can very quickly use the appropriate one and you’re done! I recommend having at least 3 templates: one for people who are a good fit right now, one for people who may be good future candidates, and one to politely decline people who aren’t a good fit. For the buckets of candidates you want to continue nurturing, make sure you’re clear on the action you want them to take from setting up a discussion, filling out an application, or following your company.
- Joe Pulizzi summed things up nicely when he said, “Most brands still call content marketing a campaign, which implies there is a stop date. Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. We need to take a longer –term view of how we communicate with our customers.”
- Always keep this in mind, you do content marketing to build and nurture a pipeline for the both the short and long term. You’re there to walk alongside talent as they continue their journey and to influence them to go in your direction.
- I want to leave you with a few key takeaways. I hope you’ve learned some things that you can take back with you and start doing today! Branding for influence drives consideration of fit and quality Content should engage people at all points on their journey Align your messaging with each stage of the funnel Focus on optimizing your content for lead generation