Podcasts about b2b institute

Send us a textWelcome to another episode of Marketing in the Madness! This time, Jennifer Shaw-Sweet from LinkedIn's B2B Institute joins the conversation to reveal B2B marketing insights businesses can't afford to ignore.Jennifer shares how LinkedIn's B2B Institute is pioneering research that redefines B2B marketing strategies. She demonstrates how humanising B2B, focusing on consistency, and conducting bold experiments can propel businesses to new heights. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just diving into the B2B world, this episode offers the insights you need to transform your approach.

This week we strapped on a Motorola pager and stole a briefcase off our dad in order to look businessy enough to chat to the Batman of the B2B world, LinkedIn legend and co-founder of Evidenza, Peter Weinberg. Peter Weinberg has effectively grabbed B2B marketing by the ankles and dragged it out of the dull and dreary hole into which it had buried its head. World famous for his time in charge of the game-changing B2B institute at LinkedIn – alongside his pal Jon Lombardo – Peter is now the extraordinary human brains behind AI powered research platform Evidenza, where he continues to be a champion for the kind of B2B that's never bland. ///// Follow Peter on LinkedIn Here's his website Here is Rory Sutherland Eurostar TED Talk Timestamps (02:37) - Quickfire Questions (03:34) - Peter's Career Path (06:36) - Transition to Advertising (11:22) - The B2B Institute at LinkedIn (15:50) - Pivotal Moments in B2B Marketing (17:37) - Contrarian Views in Marketing (19:05) - The Role of Synthetic Data (24:32) - Launching Evidenza (30:50) - Validating Synthetic Research (34:13) - Scepticism Towards AI in Marketing (40:15) - AI and Advertising Effectiveness (45:45) - Using AI for Strategic Planning Peter's Book Recommendations are: Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson How Brands Grow by Bryon Sharp   Building Distinctive Brand Assets by Jenni Romaniuk  How Not To Plan – Les Binet & Sarah Carter Antifragile by Nassim Taleb  The Elephant In The Brain by Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson /////

In this episode, we're excited to welcome back our returning guest, Roger Martin, and he's brought along two brilliant co-researchers/authors, Mimi Turner and Jann Martin Schwarz! They're here to share insights from the latest Promise to the Customer (PTTC) research by WARC and The B2B Institute. Last year, Roger joined us to discuss findings from a B2C dataset, but this time, it's all about B2B. So grab a seat, plug in your earbuds and join us as we dive into what really matters to business customers today—direct from the experts. Our Guests Roger Martin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/roger-martin-9916911a9/ The World's Authority on Strategy Named #1 Management Thinker by Thinkers50 Trusted strategy advisor to CEOs of the biggest companies on the planet like P&G, Lego, Ford Author of 13 books & 34 HBR articles including Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works Mimi Turner - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mimi-turner/ Head of Marketplace Innovation with LinkedIn LMS Fellow @ The B2B Institute Jann Martin Schwarz - https://www.linkedin.com/in/janns/ Founder of The B2B Institute, Sr. Director Marketplace Innovation Follow our updates here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/ Get in touch with our hosts:Marc Binkley: ⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/Vassilis Douros: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/ Timestamps 0:57 - Introduction to Mimi, Jann & Roger 3:05 - How LinkedIn is shaping the understanding of B2B marketing 5:00 - Defining & examples of a promise to the customer (PTTC)  8:40 - Linking PTTC to strategy 10:53 - Why PTTC matters  14:40 - PTTC isn't just for big brands 18:47 - The link between PTTC and a winning aspiration in business strategy 20:39 - Why PTTC can help brands differentiate 24:08 - PTTC examples with Sage ERP B2B SaaS  26:20 - how PTTC can improve ad creative 27:55 - Why PTTC works 32:50 - PTTC is more than an ad campaign 35:14 - Aligning sales & marketing to simplify the buyer's experience  38:43 - PTTC impact on ABM & targeting  41:52 - Customer promises make the customer-company relationship tangible  44:20 - Business isn't personal?  46:20 - The real job of B2B marketers  50:17 - How you know when you've got a brand 51:40 - The importance of knowing a brands before buying 54:58 - Brands are like blame insurance in decision making   57:20 - Roger: the most striking finding from this research 1:00:45 - Jann: the most striking finding from this research 1:03:55 - Mimi: the most striking finding from this research 1:05:41 - how P&G used PTTC to evaluate campaigns 1:10:08 - Post-pod with V, Marc & MIMI! Links & References The B2B Institute - https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute Making a Promise to the Business Customer - https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/making-a-promise-to-the-business-customer Full Research Library - https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/b2b-research?selectedFilter=all-categories The Product Delusion - https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/b2b-research/trends/the-product-delusion Roger Martin Website https://rogerlmartin.com Medium https://rogermartin.medium.com/ SBP - PTTC 2023 episode with Roger https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/sbp-040-making-a-promise-to-the-customer-with-roger-martin/id1609811324?i=1000631039119

On this special episode of TTL, live from INBOUND, Chris sits down with Ty Heath, Director of the B2B Institute at LinkedIn, to talk about the biggest opportunities and trends in B2B marketing today. Sprinkled counterintuitive takes and tips, tune in to discover the strategies and insights that will help your brand stay ahead of the marketing curve.Links to Learn More:Follow Ty on LinkedInSubscribe to Talking Too Loud on WistiaWatch on YouTubeFollow Talking Too Loud on InstagramFollow Talking Too Loud on TikTokLove what you heard? Leave us a review on Apple!Leave us a review on Spotify!

Welcome to “In My Humble Opinion”, a podcast collaboration between The Marketing Society and Publicis Groupe UK agencies that creates a space for marketing leaders to discuss their opinions on topics affecting our industry which they think about but may not always say out loud. You will hear industry leaders and experts talk about their views and opinions on deliberately provocative subjects such as the impact of technology on brands and consumers, the future of our industry, the generational divides, diversity and inclusion and more.You're joining us for episode 1 ‘In My Humble Opinion...nobody ever got fired for buying the safest brands.'In this episode, we're joined by Billy Hamilton-Stent, Chief Strategy Officer at Publicis Pro, and special guests Mimi Turner and Jann Schwarz from Marketplace Innovation at LinkedIn Marketing Services. They dive deep into the often-overlooked importance of brand in B2B marketing and purchasing decisions.Our guests also touch on the challenges of measuring brand impact in B2B marketing and the need for a more holistic approach to B2B marketing strategies. Whether you're a B2B marketer, sales professional, or business leader, this episode offers valuable insights into the power of brand in driving B2B growth and success.About our guests:Billy Hamilton-Stent, Chief Strategy Officer, Publicis ProOne of the founders of Publicis Pro, Billy has 25 years experience in the fields of research, brand and marketing communications. As Chief Strategy Officer he is responsible for brand and messaging development, client planning, developing audience insights and generating creative marketing campaigns. Billy also heads up Publicis Pro B2B Lab, our B2B AI platform.Connect on LinkedIn here.Mimi Turner, Head of Marketplace Innovation, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and Senior Fellow, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn.Connect on LinkedIn hereJann Schwarz, Senior Director, Marketplace Innovation, LinkedIn Marketing Services and Senior Fellow, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn.Connect on LinkedIn hereLinks mentioned in the episode: Mimi shares this LinkedIn Blog Post Brand Value Blog PostMore content from The Marketing Society and Publicis Groupe UK agencies can be found here. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review our podcast!Our industry is filled with many brilliant minds with thought provoking views, we can't wait to bring them to you, our next episode of “In my humble opinion” will be coming soon and find our series of content of the same name over at The Marketing Society website.

Ty Heath, LinkedIn's Director of Market Engagement and co-Founder of the B2B Institute shares a career tip about how to find your true passion.  The longer episode (#3) can be found, it is entitled "Find Your Purpose, Grow your Tribe and Build a Memorable Brand."  

The effectiveness “revolution” is colliding with the AI-spawned efficiency uprising and it's leaping the early consensus AI use cases in marketing around automating personalised content and communications. So much so Mark Ritson choked on his Wellfleet oysters when Jon Lombardo and Peter Weinberg told him they were leaving top jobs at the LinkedIn-backed thinktank, the B2B Institute. Then they told him why. Ritson promptly joined their venture, along with what Weinberg calls “the advisory board to end all advisory boards”.  Thus the synthetically-enhanced AI marketing outfit Evidenza was born. The founders argue their new piece of “synthetic customer” tech, which starts with creating AI copies of target customers, can create an annual marketing strategy, category entry points, messaging and positioning at a fraction of the cost of traditional market research and in a fraction of the time it takes for a marketing team to do the same. They claim it completes major research projects in minutes – and have proven their digitally synthetic customers match real customer responses it took some of the world's biggest brands long cycles to gather. “It can imitate essentially anyone by gathering and synthesizing massive amounts of data,” per Weinberg, including almost impossible-to-reach professionals, like airline chiefs, or the bosses of mining companies. Which is exactly what Evidenza did in a head-to-head test with EY Americas CMO Toni Clayton-Hine's actual survey data – and “reached 95 per cent of the same conclusions,” per Weinberg. EY “has been a fantastic client ever since.” But as well as synthesizing customers, the system also synthesizes marketing strategy and science: Imagine on one side a synthetic combination of Mark Ritson, Professor Byron Sharp teamed with ad effectiveness maestros Peter Field and Les Binet. Then on the other side, hundreds of synthetic CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, CIOs, CMOs and each of those functions linked to the nuances of different industries and categories. Put them all into an AI blender, and you get what Lombardo and Weinberg think is an efficiency revolution in marketing fused with the effectiveness revolution from the marketing academics. The upshot for marketers? “A finance-friendly marketing plan that used to take months now takes maybe minutes, but more likely, a day,” per Weinberg. According to Lombardo that's good news even for traditional market researchers. “Everyone is going to get better. Average is over.” So what's left for the humans? The synthetic duo say the smart stuff - experience, strategic frameworks and brand and category nuance, for instance - that makes the machines do better. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jon Lombardo and Peter Weinberg built a reputation as the gurus of B2B marketing, being named as the Les & Peter of B2B Marketing (by Les and Peter) and they took time out of their yacht hopping in Cannes to join me to talk about what they are up to since leaving the B2B Institute. Before we get into the details of the episode, in a highly controversial moment, Jon and Peter take time out to clarify and rectify a comment they made on the Uncensored CMO podcast recently. Now getting into the conversation we have, we of course talk about their journey at LinkedIn and why they decided to leave. We dive into the core principles that guided their work at the B2B Institute, including the influence of Ehrenberg-Bass and Binet & Field on marketing effectiveness. They reflect on the impact they had at LinkedIn, helping elevate B2B marketing, and how they perceive the opportunities in B2B sector growth compared to B2C. They explain the challenges they faced with scaling traditional market research in the B2B sector, citing its high costs and slow pace. This led them to explore and adopt 'Synthetic Research' as a scalable solution that leverages AI to mimic customer responses accurately and cost-effectively - it is fascinating. We discuss how their new company Evidenza aims to build finance-friendly marketing plans using synthetic research. This method allows marketers to generate reliable insights quickly and more affordably, democratising access to robust market research. They emphasise the importance of asking the right questions and how synthetic research can help marketers avoid limitations like 'survey fatigue' and 'survey remorse.' Jon and Pete also explore the unique benefits of working independently after leaving LinkedIn, highlighting their newfound creative freedom and ability to directly apply marketing theories to their business. Their vision for Evidenza is fascinating and speaking to them about it, the passion is incredible, their innovative approach is set to revolutionise the field by making customer insights more accessible, faster, and cost-effective. 00:16 Uncensored CMO comments rectified01:10 Leaving LinkedIn: The Big Decision01:28 Challenges in B2B Marketing09:44 Global Marketing Insights12:50 The Role of Finance in Marketing16:12 Brand Consistency vs. Change19:22 Introducing Evidenza22:30 The Importance of Asking the Right Questions22:38 A New Way of Marketing23:36 Synthetic Research: Faster and Cost-Effective24:29 Creating Synthetic Samples25:55 Comparing Synthetic and Traditional Research30:28 The Flexibility of Synthetic Research33:24 Democratizing Market Research43:01 Global Reach and Future Potential45:12 Transitioning from LinkedIn to StartupThe Cannes Sessions are brought to you by Freedman International Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we got out our thesaurus and sent a proper professional-sounding connection request to snag the attention of Mimi Turner, Head of LinkedIn's B2B institute for EMEA and Latin America. With more strategic know-how in her little finger than a yurt-load of gurus, Mimi has worked as Director of Strategy, Messaging and Research for The Liberal Democrats and Marketing Director for Lad Bible, before moving to her current role at LinkedIn where she champions brand as a key growth driver for B2B businesses.  One of B2B's biggest brains and boldest bullshit busters, Mimi shares her thoughts on the ancient origins of strategic thinking, journalism's tendency toward self-harm, the common mistakes B2B marketers keep on making and why B2B is just one big game of hide and seek. ///// Follow Mimi on LinkedIn Read Mimi and Jann  Schwarz's eye-opening research The real job of B2B Marketing is to give the Buyer Group permission to agree Tune in to Mimi's Nudgestock 2023 talk Every Product Needs a Promise   Timestamps (02:23) - Quick Fire Questions (07:14) - Mimi's Early Career (08:43) - The early days as a student journalist (10:52) - The world's worst chambermaid (12:09) - Sequencing operations in Burger King (15:48) - Hospitality Skills in Marketing: Leaders should be waiters (21:35) - Mimi's route into marketing (24:50) - Playing to win and solve the strategic problems (29:31) - B2B marketing: The challenger to B2C marketing (32:29) - Joining the B2B Institute at LinkedIn (33:55) - Who is making the decisions in B2B buying (37:03) - In B2B Brand is a decision insurance (46:03) - This quarter's sales will be won or lost on brand (49:26) - Target B2B's hidden buyers (57:16) - Advice for CMO's fighting for investment (01:01:46) - Target your customers, go after the buying group (01:04:43) - Differentiation and distinctiveness: The job of creativity in B2B brands (01:11:23) - Pertinent posers   Mimi's book recommendations are: The Penguin Book of Modern Speeches by Brian MacArthur  /////

This week on The CMO Podcast, Jim brings you a packed bonus episode, featuring eight guests he spoke with earlier this Summer during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. This recording is part of a special episode of Vayner's Marketing for the Now series. Each guest joined Jim in the much-desired air conditioning to chat about creativity, leadership, what's inspiring them, and the central theme of Gary Vaynerchuk's new book: the importance and challenge of attracting attention in today's marketplace. Jim's guests are:Maggie Schmerin, Chief Advertising Officer for United AirlinesCarrie Seifer, Chief Customer Officer & General Manager for GWILisa Peterson, The Americas Chief Marketing Officer for EY Consulting Ty Heath, Director of Market Engagement for The B2B Institute, a LinkedIn ThinkTankDavid Zucker, EVP & Chief Marketing and Digital Officer for Perdue FarmsTabata Gomez, McCormick & Company Inc's Chief Marketing Officer Claudine Patel, the Chief Marketing Officer for Consumer Healthcare, SanofiBenji Baer, the Chief Marketing Officer of CBRE, the commercial real estate firm.You can check out the full video on Vayner's YouTube channel, plus much more content captured in Cannes on Vayner's various social channels. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

$18 trillion's worth of B2B transactions take place annually. But “40-60 per cent of deals get stalled”, says B2B Institute founder Jann Martin Schwarz, because B2B marketers are focusing on the wrong things and the wrong people. They are missing the “hidden buyers” that don't show up in individual-focused lead gen and those buyers – procurement, finance, legals, IT security, the c-suite – don't care about features. They just care about managing risk. They make group decisions (earlier than B2B marketers realise) based on compromise and the “least worst” option. On average, they represent half of decision-making heft, and they get to veto who gets the contract. That's one of the key insights from a major global study conducted with Bain across 500-plus enterprise B2B buyers. Across the study, “at every stage, familiarity and trust in a brand or vendor's reputation was the casting vote,” says B2B Institute EMEA and LatAm marketing lead Mimi Turner. Which means brand influences hidden buyers disproportionately, because it's effectively “deal risk insurance”, per Schwarz. The study effectively quantifies why nobody ever got fired for buying IBM and underlines why B2B's brand and performance teams need to align much more closely to hone brand messaging to hit hidden buyers – and stop focusing on leads and individuals. They argue the findings all but obliterate the model on which B2B marketing is founded – and requires a wholesale rethink of lead gen, measurement and strategy. Changing models means graft and pain, especially for the “rank and file KPI'd on reductionist metrics” acknowledges Schwarz. But if adopted, even moving the needle by 1 per cent will unlock $180bn of annual B2B deal-making upside – and early movers will get the biggest hit. Schwarz is willing to “stake my reputation” on brands that flip their models to reach hidden buyers will see “an immediate spike in activity” and “close deals faster”. A prospect, he says, no CEO or CFO will ever decline.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At any time, only 5% of a B2B company's potential customers are in-market. That's a small group. Which means marketing to the other 95% might be pretty important...In this episode, Elena and Angela are joined by Peter Weinberg, former Global Head of Development at The B2B Institute from LinkedIn. They're talking about the contrarian ideas Peter researched and popularized during his time at LinkedIn, including the 95-5 rule, why tight targeting isn't always the right choice, and the role of creativity in B2B marketing. Stick around, and you'll even get a sneak peek at what Peter's doing next! Topics covered:   [00:30] Introducing Peter Weinberg[04:30] How the 95-5 rule leads B2B marketing strategy[08:00] Broad vs narrow targeting for B2B[12:00] Why top-of-funnel and brand matters for B2B[14:00] How should B2B marketers think about TV?[19:00] The state of marketing effectiveness in the US[25:30] What's next for Peter? To learn more, visit marketingarchitects.com/podcast  Resources: The B2B Institute Article: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/b2b-research/trends/95-5-rule Get more research-backed marketing strategies by subscribing to The Marketing Architects on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Pytania o Marketing ROI zwykle pojawiają się podczas rozmów o budżecie marketingowym (w tym także na wynagrodzenie samych marketerów). To nie są łatwe rozmowy, a bywa, że zaczynają się one od pytania "A jaki będzie zwrot z tej inwestycji?", albo nawet "Zanim porozmawiamy o pieniądzach - udowodnij jaki będzie zwrot". Marketerzy dodatkowo wbijani są poczucie winy sformułowaniem, że marketing to koszt a oni na rozmowę z zarządem powinni przyjść nie z prezentacją a excelem, za pomocą którego jasno wykażą stopę zwrotu z wydanych przez nich pieniędzy. Jak zatem rozmawiać sensownie i szczerze rozmawiać z zarządem o inwestycji w marketing? I jak sensownie i szczerze rozmawiać o zwrocie z tej inwestycji? O tym w dzisiejszym podcaście "Rozmowy B2B". Notatki: Advertising effectiveness and the 95-5 rule: most B2B buyers are not in the market right now (The B2B Institute, John Dawes) https://marketingscience.info/advertising-effectiveness-and-the-95-5-rule-most-b2b-buyers-are-not-in-the-market-right-now/ Advertising effectiveness and the 95-5 rule: most B2B buyers are not in the market right now (The B2B Institute, John Dawes) What B2Bs Need to Know About Their Buyers (Harvard Business Review): "Fully 80%–90% of respondents, depending on what they are buying, have a set of vendors in mind before they do any research. Just as important, 90% of them will ultimately choose a vendor from the day one list." https://hbr.org/2022/09/what-b2bs-need-to-know-about-their-buyers

In partnership with our Black Inclusion Group and Veterans at LinkedIn, we are thrilled to welcome Doug Melville, an Army veteran turned creative powerhouse, to our next Speaker Series event. Our own Ty Heath, director for The B2B Institute at LinkedIn, will have the opportunity to sit down with Doug and discuss themes from his new book, Invisible Generals: Rediscovering Family Legacy, and a Quest to Honor America's First Black Generals.  They will discuss the significance of diverse perspectives in driving innovation and problem-solving, strategies for overcoming adversity and turning obstacles into opportunities, the importance of inclusive leadership in creating environments where every voice is heard and valued, and how to cultivate resilience and adaptability in the face of change and uncertainty. You will gain practical insights and actionable strategies that you can apply both personally and professionally from this powerful session.

Ty Heath is the Director of the LinkedIn B2B Institute. The B2B Institute works with some of the world's leading marketing academics to find counter-intuitive ideas that can have a ridiculous impact on B2B brands. In this interview, we discuss B2B Marketing 101. You can find Ty here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyronaheath/ You can download our "How To Do Strategy" ebook, read by 120,000+ people here: https://mailchi.mp/sweathead/how-to-do-strategy-by-sweathead Our next Sweathead Strategy Accelerator happens in March, 2024. Find details at www.sweathead.com.

Let us briefly introduce you to the 95/5 Rule: 95% of your market isn't ready to buy today. 5% is.    With such a significant chunk of future buyers not in-market at any given point in time, why are CMOs under so much pressure to generate leads? In this fascinating episode with Peter Weinberg of LinkedIn's' B2B Institute, he breaks down the key arguments you can use to remind your CEO and CFO why brand building is essential to long-term growth.   Based on B2B Institute's groundbreaking insights, we don't just explore the WHY of B2B success, but the HOW. It's time for B2B brands to get weird, to update their media spend strategy, and to hone in on the rational sales pitch.   This episode was recorded in front of a live audience as part of CMO Huddles' Bonus Huddle series. If you're interested in learning more, check out cmohuddles.com. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegade.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

It's taken a couple of years, but the LinkedIn-backed B2B Institute's mission to flip business-to-business marketing's focus from performance to brand building – encapsulated by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute penned 95:5 rule – is starting to land, crucially in the boardroom and exec leadership echelons. LinkedIn's polling of B2B CMOs and CFOs suggests most are planning to spend more on brand this year and are beginning to grasp that rational, product-focused messaging doesn't cut it. The likes of MYOB, Canva and MailChimp are setting the creative standard, reckons LinkedIn's Global VP of Customer Science and B2B Institute Global Head, Melissa Furze. But there's still a long way to go, as Adobe's APAC and Japan VP of Digital Experience Marketing, Duncan Egan will attest. Adobe, he admits, is challenged with building brand awareness – or more accurately, category awareness - when it comes to being known as a CX company versus its Photoshop legacy. He's hoping to change that with a full-funnel push – and convince the sales-focused, short-termists that brand both fuels demand and ultimately speeds conversion. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tyrona Heath is a leading B2B marketer, speaker, author, athlete and community builder who explores these topics at the intersection of behavioral science, diversity, equity, inclusion and transformation. Ty is Director, Market Engagement, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn, a think tank funded by LinkedIn studying the future of B2B marketing and decision making. She is also Co-Founder of TransformHer, the premier conference for professional women of color and allies in technology. With research, Ty engages and educates the industry in partnership with the leading marketing effectiveness thinkers and organizations such as Cannes Lions, ANA, and IPA to help better define the category, and drive growth. Ty is passionate about connecting people with information needed to make intelligent decisions, sharing research to help marketers be more productive and successful with a bit of humor. An award winning marketer, speaker and two time Olympic Trials qualifier in the 800 meters, Ty is a top B2B marketing influencer teaching B2B marketing as well as leadership and diversity, equity and inclusion. Marketers benefit from Ty's marketing experience at Google Inc, consulting within IBM as a social business manager and leading her own B2B consulting practice where she authored “Marketers of Tomorrow: A Step-by-Step Toolkit for Inbound Marketing”. Beyond marketing, Ty served as the President of LinkedIn's Black Inclusion Group (BIG). Today, Ty serves on the Digital Marketing Institute's Global Advisory Council, on the Board of Directors for the American Advertising Federation and as an Adobe Insider with top executives, experts, and pioneers in technology. Ty is a frequent industry and academic speaker on the marketing circuit, having appeared at INBOUND, Festival of Marketing, ADCOLOR, Marketing Society Changemakers, Ghana Tech Summit, Adobe Summit and the Digital Summit events to name a few. In her career, she has delivered marketing education to thousands.

Roger Martin returns to our show for a candid conversation on his recent research collaboration with WARC and the B2B Institute, "Making a Promise to the Customer." We delve into the implications of this research for advertisers, explore the relationship between branding and consumer promises, and much more. This episode will not disappoint. Enjoy the show. Our Guest: Roger's Website: https://rogerlmartin.com/ LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roger-martin-9916911a9/ Medium Blog: https://rogermartin.medium.com/ Thinkers 50: https://thinkers50.com/biographies/roger-martin/ HBR Articles: https://hbr.org/search?search_type=subscriber-search&term=Roger+L.+Martin&sort=publication_date#browse-reports-filter Our Hosts: Follow our updates here: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/⁠⁠ Get in touch with our hosts: Marc Binkley: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/ Vassilis Douros: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/⁠ Podcast Literature: HBR Articles https://hbr.org/search?search_type=subscriber-search&term=Roger+L.+Martin&sort=publication_date#browse-reports-filter LinkedIn Making a Promise to the Customer https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/making-a-promise-to-the-customer Customer Loyalty is Overrated: https://hbr.org/2017/01/customer-loyalty-is-overrated Marketing & Strategy Are the Same Discipline: https://rogermartin.medium.com/its-time-to-accept-that-marketing-and-strategy-are-one-discipline-17f0140521c9 Timestamps 0:44 - Intro 5:01 - Results from the Promise to the Customer (PTTC) report 6:59 - The difference between a brand promise and a PTTC 9:01 - Only 40% of campaigns include a PTTC 9:45 - A brand promise isn't as powerful 11:48 - Small brands can also benefit from PTTC 13:19 - Why AVIS “We Try Harder” isn't a PTTC and why Sixt “Pick THE car” is 16:45 - Eliminating bias in the WARC database and research methodology 19:06 - The hypothesis of what makes a brand. ie. FedEx 24:40 - The risk of rebranding, refreshing logos and revitalizing campaigns 26:12 - Snickers: How to correctly build on a PTTC 28:45 - Why this is the most striking research result in Roger's career 30:02 - Pricing research at P&G - the second most dramatic finding in Roger's career 34:33 - Walmart's Everyday low prices is a PTTC 35:40 - The 3 features of a good PTTC: Memorable, Valuable, Deliverable ie. adidas, Geico 40:22 - The difference between a USP and PTTC ie. IBM Building a Smarter Planet 43:27 - How P&G used the PTTC framework to evaluate their ad creative 49:44 - Why a PTTC can organize and align an entire company 52:38 - PTTC + PTW Case Study: Formica vs. Wilsonart high pressure laminate 57:45 - Customer loyalty is overrated, focus on habit instead 1:00:02 - Social media buzz is NOT a good indicator of PTTC success 1:04:04 - The first thing a CMO can do to benefit from the PTTC findings 1:06:15 - What's coming with the PTTC framework 1:08:40 - Find out more about Roger (use the L.) 1:10:55 - Our best compliment ever Where to listen Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-sleeping-barber-a-business-and-marketing-podcast/id1609811324 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF?si=7083317d5afd488b ⁠⁠ Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84MWVjYWJhNC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwji_oSOopP-AhXnlo4IHTZKBgYQ9sEGegQIARAC Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast © 2023 Sleeping Barber

“There are exciting shifts in B2B marketing which is going through a renaissance right now,” underlines Melissa Furze, Vice President, Customer Science and B2B Institute, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, during this fascinating conversation with podcast host Ben Downing as together they examine the shape of meaningful media experiences in the evolving B2B advertising space. With over 65 million companies on their platform, LinkedIn “sits at a pretty unique space when it comes to understanding what's happening in the professional world”, explains Melissa who leads a multi-disciplined team which includes marketing strategists, researchers, content solutions, engineers, and analysts. While there are differences in terms of B2C and B2B marketing, notably that B2B buying decisions involve high consideration purchases with typically longer sales cycles and often larger buying committees compared to the individual consumer's buying decision, during this episode we learn there is definitely a shift towards more emotional, human-centered and ‘story full' advertising in B2B. At LinkedIn, for example, they have new ad formats called Thought Leader Ads where brands have the opportunity to tell their stories through the voices of employees and their experiences by sponsoring a post from individual employees and executives. B2B advertising is seeing a shift around creativity. Recent research from LinkedIn found 50% of B2B marketing leaders say creativity is their biggest priority. While B2B marketers are understanding the importance of storytelling. In their recent B2B marketing benchmark report LinkedIn found that “43% of B2B marketing leaders actually say that storytelling will be one of the most important future skills for their marketing team.” Press play on this episode to learn how CMOs and their marketing teams are building impactful media experiences in the B2B advertising space to connect and build meaningful emotional connections. Useful inksFurther information on the LinkedIn CMO Scorecard mentioned in the episode: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/cmo-scorecardLinkedIn Collective: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/linkedin-collective/Good News Network cited by Melissa during her Fast Five: GoodNewsNetwork.org  Enjoy! ⭐ We'd love to hear your thoughts about meaningful media. Drop us a line! podcast@havasmg.com.    Like, share, subscribe and connect with us on our socials!  ⭐ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/havasmedianetwork/  ⭐ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/havas-media    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on an analysis of 2,500 B2B ads, one thing is very clear: B2B needs a new creative formula, one that's actually effective. This week, Ty Heath, Director of Market Engagement at The B2B Institute, a think tank funded by LinkedIn, joins Angela, Rob, and Elena to talk about why B2B advertising struggles with creative effectiveness. They cover why marketing to businesses is still marketing to people and explore the ABLE formula's guide to developing B2B creative that people will remember. Topics covered: [02:00] The problem with B2B ad creative[04:30] Connecting brand investments to business results[08:00] Why a lack of likeability harms creative effectiveness[14:00] What Disney teaches us about applying a consistent creative formula[18:00] Examples of B2B ads that aren't boring[23:00] Using the ABLE formula to develop effective creative[29:00] Why awareness is the first hurdle B2B marketers need to clearTo learn more, visit marketingarchitects.com/podcast. Resources: Connect with Ty 2023 Adweek Article Get more research-backed marketing strategies by subscribing to The Marketing Architects on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The fourth and final episode in a series with the B2B Institute at LinkedIn on a concept called Promise to the Customer. In this episode we look at where this research goes next - how the team behind it plan to use it and apply it, and what they hope to achieve with it over the coming months and years. WARC's David Tiltman speaks to renowned strategist Roger Martin, Jann Schwarz, founder and global head of B2B Institute at LinkedIn, and Mimi Turner, head of EMEA & Latin America at the B2B Institute at LinkedIn.Stay up-to-date with the latest marketing and advertising news with our free daily newsletter.

The third episode in a series with the B2B Institute at LinkedIn on a concept called Promise to the Customer. In this episode we go beyond the research to look at some real-life examples - two marketing initiatives that have a Promise to the Customer at their heart. WARC's David Tiltman speaks to Jason Carmel, global lead for creative data at Wunderman Thompson, Rachel Kerrone, director of brand and marketing at Starling Bank, and Jess Lovell, founder and CSO at Wonderhood.Stay up-to-date with the latest marketing and advertising news with our free daily newsletter.

The second episode in a series with the B2B Institute at LinkedIn on a concept called Promise to the Customer. In this episode, WARC's David Tiltman speaks to Mimi Turner, head of EMEA & Latin America at the B2B Institute at LinkedIn, and Paul Stringer, managing editor for research at WARC.Stay up-to-date with the latest marketing and advertising news with our free daily newsletter.

The first episode in a series with the B2B Institute at LinkedIn on a concept called Promise to the Customer. In this episode, WARC's David Tiltman speaks to renowned strategist and CEO advisor Roger Martin and Jann Schwarz, founder and global head of B2B Institute at LinkedIn. Stay up-to-date with the latest marketing and advertising news with our free daily newsletter.

In this episode of We Do B2B, host Dale Koerner welcomes Henrik Arlund, COO and Co-Founder of BlueOcean, to discuss alarming research from the B2B Institute. The data reveals a misalignment between businesses' objectives and their belief in marketing's contribution. Henrik emphasises the critical role marketing plays in business success and provides insights on how marketers can demonstrate their value. They also discuss the need for marketing's involvement at the governance level. A compelling episode encouraging marketers to showcase their impact and secure a seat at the boardroom table. Timestamps 00:00:00 - Welcome to We Do B2B00:00:41 - Meet Henrik Arlund - A Wealth of B2B Marketing Experience00:01:53 - Shocking Numbers - Marketing's Impact on Business Objectives00:04:02 - The Misalignment in Business and Marketing00:10:35 - Bridging the Gap with Marketing00:12:29 - The Role of Marketing at the Governance Level00:20:17 - Demonstrating Commercial Competence00:27:03 - The Future of Marketing and Business Futureproofing00:29:21 - Growing New Zealand's B2B Marketing CommunitySubscribeWhen you subscribe to the We Do B2B Podcast, you're playing a key role in growing and supporting New Zealand's B2B Marketing Community. Share Your FeedbackGot something to say? We're all ears. Your voice is what powers this community – it can't grow without you. Connect with Us LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blueocean-agency/ Website: https://www.blueoceanagency.co.nz/podcast/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WeDoB2BLet's roll up our sleeves and take on tomorrow together.

In the second episode of the series, Nick Hague is joined by Jon Lombardo, Global Head of Research at The B2B Institute, a thinktank funded by LinkedIn. Nick and Jon discuss the theory of reach maximalism, a simple formula to help brands create effective marketing, the law of brand user profiles, and the concept of cash flow funnels.

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Top Rank Marketing's Site Lee Odden's LinkedIn Lee Odden's Instagram Follow AJ on LinkedIn   NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Youtube Channel Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover. A great no-cost way to support us: Rate/Review! Show Transcript AJ Wilcox Are you using influencer marketing community and thought leadership as part of your LinkedIn Ads strategy? We dive into these topics and more on this week's episode of the LinkedIn Ads Show. Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. AJ Wilcox Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics. Today I have a special treat for you. Lee Odden has specialized in B2B marketing for his almost entire career. And I'm grateful to call him a friend. He and I have spoken at many of the same B2B events. Although I have to admit he's oftentimes the keynote, while I'm one of the breakout speakers. But, I've always looked up to him as a mentor and a thought leader and a friend. Today, we have a wide ranging conversation covering everywhere from thought leadership to influencer marketing and building communities in B2B, and I promise as a B2B marketer, you'll get a lot out of this. I wanted to highlight a review here by Alessia Negro. She's a senior sales and marketing executive in the hospitality industry out of Dublin, Ireland. Alessia says, "Absolutely great podcast. I have learned a lot about LinkedIn from this podcast. I think whoever wants to learn LinkedIn ads should follow it." Alessia, thanks so much for the kind words. And I do agree. Although I realized I'm a bit biased. And if you're a regular listener, I want to feature you so make sure to leave a review. And I'll shout you out live here. All right. Without further ado, let's hit it. Alright, we've got Lee Odden, co founder of TopRank Marketing. Lee, thanks so much for joining us. We're super excited to have you here. Lee Odden It's great to be here, AJ. Good to see you. AJ Wilcox Alright, so first off, tell us a little bit more about yourself. Anything that I didn't cover in that rather short and sweet intro. Lee Odden I started in marketing, and basically the late 90s. I was actually got into the website sales game selling websites over the phone to small businesses, believe it or not, people would fax us their brochures and we'd make a website out of that. And then of course, people started asking how are we going to get traffic to these websites that you're making us? And that's where I learned about SEO, you know, about creating doorway pages and, you know, creating different web pages for different search engines AltaVista excite Lycos hotpot, you know, no one has heard of those. But then Google came on the scene and linking, and content became more important blogging, social media, and really, over the last 10 years really leaned into the whole idea of CO creating content with influencers. So ultimately, what we tried to do is help customers be the best answer help our clients, b2b tech companies mostly be the best answer for their customers. And it's worked out really well. And, you know, it's kind of funny, on the path from being a really small agency to serving small customers to now serving large enterprise brands. I took that advice myself, right. So I started blogging, and I started doing the kinds of things to make myself known in the industry as a magnet to the agency. You know what I mean by speaking at events and being active on social and connecting with people who were influential to make myself influential, you know, and it's been a fun ride. And when I'm not doing marketing stuff, I'm usually running running is kind of been my thing during COVID. Basically, when I'm actually training for my first marathon, which is going to happen in four weeks. So I'm pretty excited about that. Oh, that's so AJ Wilcox Exciting! Alright, so what's your preparation for the marathon look like right now? I know, you start to do a lot more mileage as you go. Are you doing like low high mileage right now? Lee Odden Yeah, my highest mileage will be tomorrow. But I did 23 miles last Saturday. And I'll probably do 23.5 or something like that tomorrow. I don't need to do much more. Because the whole race is 26. Yes. So yeah, I've been running more than 13 miles for the last seven weeks or so. I've even run a couple of half marathon races just as a workout, which is kind of a crazy idea. Because a year ago, I was wondering whether I could even run 13 miles, let alone run one quickly. And quickly is subjective quickly to me. Not quickly, compared to a lot of friends of mine that I have out there that are runners that are just smoking it, but it's a great way to get out. It's a disciplined thing. It's a lifestyle thing. Now for me, I feel odd if I haven't run that day. And so it's good for your health. And it's great to have goals, right? Yes, it's great to work towards a goal and having a commitment to a thing that takes a long time is incredibly rewarding when you've been able to reach those milestones, right? And also you connect with a community of other like minded people. And now I'm starting to get all these Instagram posts from running communities with these inside jokes about running and it's like, oh my god, this is so funny, but nobody else cares, nobody else cares. It's fun. AJ Wilcox Well, It's so fulfilling, I think to accomplish something physically, that is hard that you know, other people can't. Before a knee surgery, I used to be a runner. And so I do a half marathon every year and an Olympic trial. And I love those kinds of things. I loved accomplishing something physically, that's awesome. Plus, it gives you insight, because you're already community minded, which we'll talk into more, but it gives you something to compare and think about, as you're developing communities around an interest that people have, you can mentally I think, compare it to like, oh, for me, this is running. But for someone else this is whatever the community is. Lee Odden You know, that's really important insight. There's a lot of value in metaphor analogy, when trying to break down new or complex ideas into something familiar for people. Because in order for those ideas to be adopted, they have to be communicated in a way that people will be willing to receive. And so yeah, that's a great point running as metaphor, or, you know, overcoming challenges. A lot of people, I'm inspired by our fitness people, but what I'm inspired by them about isn't so much about the fitness it's about overcoming challenges and worldview, and, you know, being resilient and those sorts of things. AJ Wilcox Perfect. So jumping back here into B2B, how did you originally get interested in b2b? How did you land? Because my understanding is you're exclusively B2B with your clients, or do you have some VC? Lee Odden Exactly. So my agency top rank marketing did start as SEO and PR firm, I had previously mostly consumer experience in marketing doing SEO for consumer websites. And my partner, though, had been working mostly with B2B tech companies as a director of marketing, VP of marketing. And so over time, well, through her knowledge and experience, I learned a lot more about B2B. And the market was responding in terms of inbound interest in our services from B2B companies. And I have a fun story about the big leap early in our business, we were working remotely. And I was working in my unfinished basement, right. And I had a desk down there. And I got a call and someone asked me if I would come speak at their conference, this company was fortune 15 company. So I had been blogging, I spoke a little bit, people knew about me being able to talk about SEO and public relations. So that was a unique intersection. And they wanted me to come speak at their event. And I spoke one morning to their marketing people. And then they said, Come back tomorrow and talk to all of our PR people. So they were a company that was so big, they brought all their different businesses, all the marketers from their all their different businesses and had a little mini conference. And so the second day, I talked to all the PR people. And my contact said, Hey, one of our senior executives was in the room yesterday. And we wanted to know if we could engage your agency on an ongoing basis. So this is the fortune 15 company was a b2b business unit that wanted to hire us. And we were only four people I'm working out of my unfinished basement. Wow. So of course, I said, yes, absolutely, we can help you out. And we figured it out. And that was a fast track to learning about b2b and learning the language of large, complex organizations, because obviously, that's very different than working with a small or medium sized business. And that laid the groundwork for me and the people that I had to competently be able to serve other b2b companies. Right. So now, Adobe, and you know, we've had experience with companies like SAP and Oracle, I've done work for Microsoft, and a really large telecom that I cannot mention, ever, but you know, biggest one, and so on and so forth. So and LinkedIn, my God, what am I saying, we've been working with LinkedIn for gosh, almost 10 years now, providing content and SEO services. So it's been an interesting ride, and b2b is a great space, because there's so much opportunity to raise the bar, it doesn't have to mean boring, boring, there's a lot of exciting things you can do. And there's so much room for us to be able to do it with because of the longer sales cycles, emphasis on content and education and that sort of thing. AJ Wilcox Well, I'm glad you shared someof them, I get the feeling that a lot of the kinds of clients that you were with are the kind that don't want you saying that you work with them. So it's really good to understand, and from my understanding a lot of the community and many of the thought leaders within LinkedIn that we hear from, I won't say created by you that you're the one behind them, but you're kind of the inspiration there. Do you have any comment or anything to share on that? Lee Odden Well, certainly, it's one thing to make a decision that people within your company should have greater visibility that you want to grow their influence, that you want to facilitate social interaction. But it's another thing to do that with intent with intent in a way that will achieve a particular outcome. So that requires doing some homework developing a strategy and architecting Okay, exactly how are we going to execute this in a way that is best going to accomplish the goal that we're after? So it's not just about tweeting more, or doing a LinkedIn live every once in a while. It's like, okay, what's the topic? And what is the anchor topic? What are the derivative topics? What are the conversations that we can repurpose from that? Who are the content collaborators or influencers on that topic that we can connect with, not only for co creation, but distribution, and so architecting all that stuff is really where the most magic comes from. And then for some companies, we do write content for them. But like I said, a lot of the magic comes in through the strategy and the architecture of the all that, and then of course, the ongoing optimization of performance. And then of course, yeah, and then some content here and there. AJ Wilcox Beautiful. I love it. Alright, so talking about thought leadership, specifically, tell us about why B2B marketers should be investing in being seen as a thought leader. Lee Odden So if you mean is, like B2B marketer, as an executive at a company or B2B marketer, like you and me are B2B marketers. AJ Wilcox Yeah, I think a little bit of everything. I think, executives, I think the frontline workers, everyone in between, like, what's the value? Lee Odden Absolutely. So there's a lot of value in that. We all are familiar with the idea, I think Nielsen came out with this research about how people don't trust brands, and they don't trust advertising. And of course, that's been repeated, by different folks since and it still is a challenge in combination with the overwhelming amount of information available to us. I don't know about you, but my email inbox is more of a monster now than it ever was. I mean, just keeping up is crazy. The social channels and people that I follow, I made a lot of effort to craft who I curate, and listen to, but it's just overwhelming amounts of information. I can only imagine what it might be for other folks who haven't had expertise in curation, right. So being a thought leader being a source of truth, for people who are in need, and let's face it, if you're in marketing, you're in need of up to date information every day, right? Ours is a dynamic industry. And so it's super important and to be competent in our industry, it's really very important that we connect with people that are on the forefront of what's new, what's trending, what's relevant. And so being a thought leader helps you as a person who is capable of original thought, who has something to offer, because that's kind of a prerequisite here, and being able to provide value to others in the industry. So that manifests as community building. It manifests as, you know, customers coming to you saying, hey, AJ, I've been listening to your podcast, and I've heard you talk about LinkedIn ads in this way or that way. It's like, you know, we're actually now in a position to get some help. I'm sure that happens all the time. Natalie, I can tell you from personal perspective, I've had it happen. A million times, it feels like where people say, Haley, I saw you speak last week, I saw you speak 10 years ago. And this is people who want to hire my agency, because I'm when I speak, I tell stories about the work the agency does, as well as just best practices, but also people who want to work for me will say, Yeah, you know, I saw you speak, I've been following your blog. And I'm just wondering if there's an opening, oh, my goodness, this person's amazing. And they're coming to us, you know. So for other folks, if you're an executive at a company, if you want to be listened to, if you want to be relevant, it's not enough for your own brands marketing, to go and put out information you think your customers need to know, buyers are looking for sources of truth. buyers are looking for people, humans that they can relate to, that they can subscribe to, so to speak. And if you have subject matter experts, if you are a subject matter expert, and you have something to offer, then it makes sense for you to go down that thought leadership path and make a connection and create value for those folks out in the industry because you know what they desperately need it. And they're overwhelmed with other information. And so you can actually provide them a service. And guess what, what's going to come back to you is new business. What's going to come back to you is community what's going to come back to you is connection with people who can make things happen. And AJ Wilcox What I hear from you is you actually have to have something to say in order to be a thought leader. So don't strive to be a thought leader for thought leader sake. But strive to be a great business professional, a skilled expert in your field, and then take that to share with others. Lee Odden Yeah, and so there's two things I'd say too, if you don't have that yet, if you're not there yet. I feel like if you're Junior in New York career and you feel like thought leadership is in your future. Two things. One, if you don't have a lot of resources, you could document your journey towards thought leadership. And that actually could help you be a thought leader, as a junior person, you could connect with others who are already thought leaders, they could do things like interviews, you could do things like, get quotes from them, or whatever. And so you can document that journey as you are learning more and more about a particular subject matter. And, you know, hey, I experimented with this. And I found this as an outcome, or I talked to this person. And here's some insight that they shared, I noticed in the news, they're talking about this. And here's what I think about that. documenting that journey can actually help you become a thought leader. The other thing is, if you do have resources, you're at a brand. And you don't know how to do this, you can certainly hire an expert, like an agency, or a PR firm or someone like us who can help you develop a plan for thought leadership, maybe even provide some of the content. And that doesn't happen that often. But it can. AJ Wilcox That's a great point. All right. So we've talked about thought leadership as individuals, what about getting your B2B brand to be seen as a thought leadership brand? Do you have any thoughts? Lee Odden Yeah, absolutely. You know, for companies, it's a huge differentiator in a crowded marketplace to be thought of first, when companies have a problem, and they're thinking of solution providers, right. And thought leadership is something especially in B2B. But you know, in general, it's useful from a marketing PR perspective. But in B2B, especially, these are large considered purchases. So you're not just looking for the best solution, you're looking for a solution that you know, is going to be relevant, and maybe innovative and important for you in the long run. So if a brand invest in thought leadership, and what that means is you're articulating a point of view, and it's validated by third parties. So that means that industry publications and industry influencers that are validating the ideas that you're putting forth, you're putting out original research, you're pointing out points of view, you're creating opportunities for other people who are important voices and trusted voices in the industry to have conversations with your executives with people that represent your brand. And that kind of combination of information, helps people subscribe to your religion, so to speak, they subscribe to your point of view. And they start to rely in trust on you as the source of truth. So a great example is Edelman puts out the trust research. Edelman is a huge, huge agency, obviously, they have a lot of resources. But it's like, you know, you can rely on Edelman's research about how people trust brands or not, year after year, because they continue to put out that research and they have other marketing conversations around that. For our small part. You know, we put out a report on B2B influencer marketing. And it's really been a great way for people to know that there is data, thoughtfulness and expertise behind the fact that we're a source of solution when it comes to working with influencers or content in the B2B marketing space, because we are connecting with third party entities influencers and media to corroborate those ideas, right? So brands is thought leaders super important. If someone's got a problem, don't you want them to think of you first, as a solution? I totally agree. AJ Wilcox I think especially in a crowded marketplace, where you have 15 vendors that you can go to for a CRM and information security service, of course, you're gonna gravitate towards the one that you feel like you have the best relationship with. And I think that comes from the thought leadership that comes from community that comes from being a voice that people want to hear. Absolutely. So I think you've touched a little bit here on parts of the strategy. But if someone wanted to start becoming a thought leader, or having their company be seen as a thought leader, what are the steps, the components that you would tell them? Like, here's the strategy for how you actually start to implement this? Lee Odden That can be a really big answer. So I'll be succinct. If I can, I think the first thing you got to do is, you know, specify what is it that you want to be a thought leader about? There's got to be topic specificity. You can't be a thought leader about all things, right? That's just not resource practical. But you've got to identify that thing that sits at the intersection of how you want to be known and what customers are most interested in. And so be a thought leader about that thing, right? Because that represents what's in demand and relevant to your solutions. And as you make that determination, then all things flow from that. What kind of content will you create? What kind of connections will you make? What kind of cadence will you publish and interact at right? So you get an idea about the resources that are needed in order to put something like that into action, right? There's got to be some consistency and continuity of message from thought leader. So in other words, if I talk about 10 Different things over a period of time, it's like, well, yeah, he talks about a lot of stuff like I guess marketing. But if I'm talking about, you know, B2B content, B2B content marketing, b2b content marketing, I mean, I'm talking about derivative ideas around that concept. But really, it's like, wow, B2B content marketing or B2B influencer marketing, people will come to know you as that very specific thing. So you've got to have some choices made about the topic derivative topics, you've got to think about the publishing platform or platforms, you know, is it the company website, the blog, or social channel? As the center of your hub? And the spokes? Are your distribution channels? Okay, where am I going to amplify this? Am I going to amplify through email? Am I going to pull people in through ads? Am I going to do some media relations and talk about these stories with journalists in the industry? Am I going to connect with industry experts? Am I going to partner with them and collaborate with any of them on initiatives? We have what we like to call best answer strategies, how to be the best answer is really kind of a thought leadership play. And you can do things like this is a practical tactic things. Okay, so let's say you want to be the best answer for a particular thing. It's like, okay, Fast Track way to get on the radar of the most important people in the industry, about that topic is to do what we call an honoring post, right? So it's like a list where the 25 top cybersecurity experts, right, I'm a cybersecurity provider of some kind and finance, right. And so here are the top finance cybersecurity experts. I don't even know if I could find 25 of those, but I'll do my best. And then I reach out to them. And I start to create a relationship with those folks. And I'll simultaneous to that, I might do a small version research, what are the trends, what's happening, and I'll invite those folks to be a part of that research. I'll start a podcast. And as I gain momentum, I might do something like, you know, a list of disparate resources like books, conferences, communities, and so on, and so forth. So I become like this destination around the topic. And that seems like a lot of work. But guess what, there's a lot of competition. And to be the best answer, guess what you've kind of have to be the best source of information, I would just say, as far as a thought leadership strategy, whether it's just you, or whether it's your brand, you don't go it alone, that would be one of the biggest mistakes. And that's why I suggest the idea of connecting with other industry experts, and finding opportunities to collaborate with them, you can start a podcast and become a thought leader on the thing that the podcast is about, that's cool. But if you involve other people, that are also well known about that idea, and you can create collaboration opportunities that create mutual value for you and your collaborators, then everybody wins out true, not just you and the person or people you're collaborating with, but especially the audience that you're trying to attract and engage. AJ Wilcox Oh, so true. I think it's so easy. If you're, let's say scrolling through your LinkedIn feed, and you're saying, I want to be a thought leader, let me see what other people are doing. You see someone is running a live stream, and you're like, oh, maybe I need to run a weekly live stream, and then someone else is running a podcast, and then someone else is recording videos, screenshare and posting them to YouTube, you're like, oh, I have to have a YouTube channel. And when you start taking from all of these ideas, you overextend yourself, because yeah, there isn't a strategy. So what I appreciate so much about what you shared is like this actually is a specific strategy where you can put the blinders on and ignore some of the other methods that other people are doing work on your own. And then you won't overextend yourself, like you can actually do this. Lee Odden Something I learned a long time ago about, you know, being known about a thing is one element, one leg of the stool is document your success, and then duplicate. So be specific, like you're saying, be specific on a particular or very specific channel, grow community on that channel. And you'll get to a point where it's like, wow, now it makes sense for me to extend into some other channels, right. And you can duplicate what you learned in that one channel into others. And that way, you can manage resources appropriately. And you create that continuity of message. And you'll be putting forward the most effective tactics for communication, as opposed to being in a constant state of experimentation. AJ Wilcox Yes. And when you look at what everyone else is doing, a lot of times they have a team that's helping them. And so I think that you can do this all yourself, you know, by the time you've done what you've talked about, which is really building a community around one channel or one thing, by the time it's ready to start expanding into other channels and taking on more things. By that time. You've probably built up more of a team and it's a She realistic, you Lee Odden could do that. Yeah. And then just thinking of myself, I started blogging, my only thing was I just started blogging, I could not write. And I started blogging in that blogging. You know, I always made mention of other people, I was just a way to have a conversation. And then social media came on. And people that read the blog started following me on Twitter, and then LinkedIn. And then I started speaking, and then I wrote a book and you know, just grew organically 100% organically. I did have help with the book. But with the rest, I publish all my own social stuff, I do all my own speaking stuff. And so it does make sense, at least in my case to branch out, you can get help to facilitate and expedite that stuff. But as an individual person, I think topics specificity specific channel is a great thing to get started with and expand from there. AJ Wilcox Oh, amen to that. Here's a quick sponsor break, and then we'll dive back into the interview. The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. AJ Wilcox Managing LinkedIn Ads is a massive time and money investment. You want a return on some of that investment? Consider booking a discovery call with B2Linked, the original LinkedIn ads performance agency, we've worked with some of the largest accounts over the past 12 years, and our unique scientific approach to ADS management, combined with our proprietary tools that allow us to confidently optimize and scale your LinkedIn Ads faster and more efficiently than any other agency in house team, or digital ads hire plus or official LinkedIn partners. Just navigate on over to B2Linked.com/apply. And we'd absolutely love the chance to get to work with you. All right, let's jump back into the interview with Leo. Alright, so let's shift gears now talking about influencer marketing, because I know you've done a lot with influencers. We probably see a lot of influencers in b2c we have for a long time, hate actors and celebrity involvement. But in B2B, I think this is a little fresher. And I think a little bit more new. What can you tell us about how B2B marketers should be thinking about leveraging influencers in B2B? Lee Odden We're kind of in a do more with less age, right? There's a lot of marketers pulling back right now B2B tech especially. And, you know, a lot of folks are looking for what are the most effective things I can be doing? Because the demands on delivering on mid to end to funnel KPIs, you know, forget about brand, right, are really high on people's lists. Well, the B2B Institute at LinkedIn did some research. And they found that at any given time, 95% of buyers are not in market, they're out market, right for any solution and only 5% are in a position like, yeah, we need a solution. And so that's not changed. Well, why influencers? Well, here's the thing, you know, you've got factors that are working against you, as a marketer, in this environment where you got to do more with less, we've got to produce, we've got to get results, we've got to react to this economic environment that we're in. And people are as buyers, you know, they are confronted with this information overload that we talked about before they are struggling to find single sources of truth. Who do they trust, they don't trust advertising. They don't trust brands a lot of the time, but they do trust people, they trust people that they follow. And so the idea of what would happen if you're able to connect with the most trusted voices in your industry? What if you're able to collaborate with them on creating content that was super targeted, super valuable to your buyers, and you're able to build a community of subscribers to a regular cadence of that kind of content, imagine how much more effective you'd be at reaching buyers that are actually going to pay attention, versus, you know, singularly relying on interruptive types of communications, right. And so influencers can play a very important role, not for everybody, but for a lot of companies that want to break through and want to attract and engage with buyers, that are really relying on industry experts that are influenced by people who are the thought leaders in the industry, right? And so there are very effective ways in which marketing programs can be put forward, that are creating content of value, of course, but our collaborations with these industry experts, so it's not just like every influencer is the same. It's not like I'm gonna think of a B2B marketing influencer and handling right? And Haley's, a wonderful, wonderful human being. But just because an Hanley is in a piece of ebook that we make or a video we make doesn't mean that's going to solve all problems. And handle is really broadly known as a very unique individual. She has both broad popularity, and she's actually super competent about her discipline. And so she's a unicorn in that way. So she's actually going to help satisfy bringing people in that don't haven't even heard of you, and actually start to consider you because she has that discipline, competency, about copywriting about content marketing, and that sort of stuff. But not all influencers are like that. So it's not just about working with influencers, it's about okay, how do we pair the right kinds of influencers for different stages of the buying cycle, for example, you know, the most popular influencers, those, you know, the pro influencers, they're doing keynotes. They're publishing books all the time. They're professionally famous in the B2B world, in their respective industry. Those are people you use to attract top of funnel types of outcomes. But then you work with people who are actual practitioners in an area, they can actually speak authoritatively on the discipline. So whether they're super user, whether they're a customer, or whatever, for those middle end to funnel types of content, assets, right. So you kind of line things up. So influencers are important, because everyone is influential, but everyone is influenced on a daily basis in some way. And you can architect programs that not only make your brand more relevant, and more credible, and can reach people that you're not reaching with your ads. But over time, you can build relationships with these most trusted voices in your industry in a way that they are starting to organically advocate for you. And that's priceless, right most valuable form of advertising word of mouth, if you can facilitate that as priceless. Oh, totally true. AJ Wilcox I have noticed in B2C influencers, usually they're paid off in some way. But in B2B, I see a lot of influencers, gotten through collaboration opportunities, and a lot of times money doesn't even have to exchange hands, you're doing something that's mutually beneficial to both of these companies are influencers audiences. Yeah, and you know, that's becoming more of an art to achieve that. Lee Odden So we started doing influencer marketing for B2B brands back in 2012. So back then, yes, it was true that the vast majority of influencer engagements were what we call organic. In the case of B2B influencer marketing, most of the influencers are contributing to content that lives on the brand channels. So if a person who's really well known in their particular subject matter area, could be seen in combination with a major brand, that's really credibility building for them, right. So they're creating influence for each other in that way. And so they'd be happy to do it for free, so to speak, obviously, it has to do with the ask too, if I ask someone for a quote, you know, no problem. But if I asked someone to write me 1000 word article, these days, that's probably going to cost something if I want them to write an article every month, that's gonna cost something. So it used to be maybe 90%, were organic 10% were paid way back in the day. Nowadays, it's like 60/40 60% might be organic activations, and 40% are paid. And that paid number is going up and up and up, as more people who are influential in the B2B space are creating media properties for themselves, right, they've got a really established podcast, they're part of a network of podcasts, you know, they're a blogger, or increasingly video assets of some kind, right? And so they're able to not only just say one nice thing about the brand, but they're actually able to put together a package of social distribution and content assets and this and that we're even, you know, do reports, and so on and so forth. So it's great, though, to have that mutual value, it's important to find something that you have in common with the influencer. And in some cases, they may want to contribute, because it's an easy Ask, and it aligns with what they want to do, and it doesn't cost you anything. And it could be that's the first thing you do. But then you might follow up and say, Wow, that was amazing. We'd really like to do to do this more robust thing, how much would that cost? And they're going to appreciate that. And trust me, when you pay an influencer. It's awesome, of course, for the influencer, but it's awesome for your brand, because now you've hired them. They are accountable to delivering to a specification. Whereas if you engage with people organically, and they say, Yeah, sure, I'll give you that thing by next Thursday. And if they don't, you have no recourse. You can't count on it. Right. They're not signing an agreement. So paying influencers is actually a really good thing. It's up to you to negotiate and to do your due diligence as far as who they are and their ability to deliver and have impact. AJ Wilcox Beautiful. I want to switch gears to talking about community because we've mentioned community several times. Yeah, you've put a lot of value and community over your career here in B2B, what role do you see communities playing in B2B. Lee Odden community is hugely important, I think because so many buyers are going to rely on their peers for recommendations. I mean, think you've probably had it happen I know I have. It's like, we go to remote work, and we need a new phone system that we can work, you know, so I don't know who to go to. So I asked a friend of mine, I go to a group community that I'm part of, and I say, Hey, does anybody know what's a good phone system? And this isn't real. But you know, I'm thinking of a silly example. And this happens every day. Right? And so being present with a community is important for b2b because it helps make you relevant, right? I talked about that expression being the best answer, right? Being a thought leader, being first choice means being where your customers are. And certainly your customers are part of different communities. So you have a couple of choices. You can be present in communities where your customers are, and you can exchange value, you can be a participant and you know, answer questions and interact or whatever your salespeople can or whoever, or you could create communities, right, you could say, Look, you know, we see that there's a common interest here, there's something that we can solve for. And it's not something we can do by ourselves. Why don't you join us at helping solve this problem together? Or why don't you join us on this journey to making our industry a better place, we actually are at the beginning of building a community around elevate b2b, right, elevate b2b marketing. And you know, we want to make b2b marketing a better place. And there are different messaging pillars that go along with that marketing, that is more experiential marketing, that is more inclusive, marketing that is more focused on connection, right community building, that sort of thing. So community is super important, I think, to be relevant, to be relevant. And first choice to customers in spaces where they're actually spending time. And where there can be a value exchange, right? It's one thing to provide useful content or utility to your customers through content marketing. It's another thing for you to create a place where as a brand, where your customers can connect with you, but also they can connect with each other. And there's a lot of momentum that can come from that. So I think community is super important. And when it comes to influencer marketing, same thing, you can engage with influencers on an individual basis, and that's fine. But when you can create a community of influencers that can connect with each other, in the context of your brand is solving Wow, now you have something really powerful right, that you can go to market with. And that can have a much bigger impact than these little one off campaigns, people are kind of dipping their toe in the water with here and there. Perfect. AJ Wilcox Alright, so lead, tell us what are those components to creating a community, especially as we're thinking about it for b2b? Lee Odden So as I mentioned, with, you know, thought leadership, I think that idea of topics specificity? Well, it's around the problems that you're trying to solve for, or the things that you stand for, that would be best served by the community. Right? So what's the glue that's going to hold this community together? What is the common interest that they have that aligns with that intersection of what it is that you stand for as a brand? And what's interesting to your customers, right? You also have to define who's going to be part of this community? How is the community get a function? There are other practical questions to be answered? Like, what platform are you going to use? And who are going to be your champions and your moderators? And what are the goals that you have for the community in terms of messaging penetration, in terms of size, in terms of engagement, and ultimately, you have to be accountable to some sort of ROI, right? And with any marketing initiative, those things all need to be defined, right? So sometimes community can start very intentionally. Yeah, there's communities is starting all the time where people just start in a LinkedIn, LinkedIn group or Facebook group or something like that. And it's just like, hey, and they invite a couple of other people who have a common interest. And it just starts organically and they start inviting, who do you know, that we can invite into this community and so on and so forth, or community could be an extension of an event? I think about marketing profs, and their marketing community, right, or Content Marketing Institute, has a whole community, but they also have an event, right? There's a marketing conference called PubCon that's been around. It's an SEO conference been around forever. And there's absolutely a community, you know, that is tied to that event where people you know, get to actually meet in person. So, you have to make choices about what is the purpose of the community, what are the topics that You're gonna cover what problems you're going to try and solve. And then you gotta identify some champions, some people who are going to help facilitate conversations, there's technology choices to make. And then obviously, you got to set up what kind of goals you're trying to achieve, not just for yourself, but the goals for the community itself. Well, selfishly, this AJ Wilcox is an awesome conversation, because we're actually just getting ready to launch our LinkedIn ads, courses and community all together. And so I'm paying special attention here. So thanks for the free advice. What are some of the phases that you'd actually go through in building and then scaling the community app? What should we keep in mind as we actually go to build this? Lee Odden Well, you know, again, you've got to think about some sort of milestone goals. Maybe the first phase is simply, you know, creating the architecture of the community. And as it relates to the major topics, the subtopics, and getting people involved that represent relevance and interest around those topics, inviting them to be actually be a part and then you've got to decide, okay, what are we going to offer them, right? You're so you're offering courses? Or you're offering opportunities for roundtables or discussions? Are you giving them visibility opportunities, and, you know, set some goals for that first milestone of having a certain level of participation. Maybe your first phase is very private. And no one knows about it, except, you know, those early invitees. And we've seen this demonstrated by the social networks that have all popped up all over the place over the last 20 years, or 15 years. And then maybe once you get to a certain threshold or milestone of participation, then you open it up, you know, more publicly as a phase out. And this is what I've observed being successful. One thing though, that, I think what happens is, there's a lot of excitement about anything new. And it's going to be really important to keep that excitement alive. And so you've got to allocate resources to a community manager, or managers that are not only going to be moderating stuff, but are going to be paying attention to what's the ebb and flow from a topic interest standpoint, from a content format standpoint, and adjusting and optimizing. Because if you do the same stuff, six months or a year into your community, it's probably going to peter out, right? If you're not responsive to where the community is growing and showing interest, you're, you're going to lose them probably. So hopefully, I think that's something to look forward to. That's something to anticipate from a face standpoint, maybe, you know, not every community has to start as an exclusive thing. That seems to work really well, though. And then it evolves into an inclusive thing, as there's something of more substance for people to experience, once you open the doors to all. I love it. AJ Wilcox Haley, just kind of off the wall question here for you specifically about LinkedIn ads. I mean, we've talked about communities, we've talked about thought leadership and influencers. One of the new features that's going to be coming out here in the next I would estimate one to three months that LinkedIn has are these thought leadership ads, where we're going to be able to boost personal posts, rather than rely on boosting or creating posts that come from the company for something like this coming out. What role do you see this playing? Do you have any feedback or thoughts or advice for us marketers? In thinking about the new ad format? Lee Odden I'm super excited about that. Because we know that things can get lost in the stream, but not so much about being able to put money behind a thought leadership posts for an individual. It's just like, you know, the targeting, how can we make sure how can we increase our ability for people that we want to see this thought leadership content? Well, other than through a feature like this, right. So I think that's super, super important. And, you know, we've already talked about the importance of individual thought leadership. And by the way, we did some research in our influencer marketing report about the value of executive influence and executive thought leadership at 65% of the companies that were engaging with building their executives, as thought leaders, said that that effort elevated the influence of the brand itself, right. So something like this being able to augment organic content at the individual level with LinkedIn thought leadership ads. Excellent, excellent opportunity. And, again, it'll really help people be able to be a little more intentional and targeted about what's showing up to who, and I think will really give those advertisers a big advantage over those who are relying on just the organic visibility that happens when you post normally I AJ Wilcox love that. All right, so final switch of gears here. What are you most excited about professionally right now? I'd love to ask the same question about what are you most excited about personally? Lee Odden Well, professionally, you know, we are celebrating our 22nd year in business this year. So that's amazing. That is amazing. Wow. And, you know, we made some strategic hires recently in marketing and sales. And we're launching a fresh brand fresh brand new website and blog will be launching with hundreds and hundreds of articles on content, search and influence, and a lot of really cool features, but a really well architected brand, and messaging and all that stuff. So I'm super excited about it. We haven't launched a new website in 10, fit 12 years, and we haven't really had a professional brand engagement with like a branding agency ever, never ever. So I'm super excited about that. Launching for influencer marketing here, late summer, and lots of other things happening. So I'm super excited about that great team. Yeah, an even bigger things plan that can't even talk about later on this year. So I'm super excited about that. I'd say at the intersection of personal and professional, I get to speak at a conference, the biggest conference for b2b in France, next month in Paris. Wow. And then a week later, I get to speak at the largest b2b conference in the UK, in London. So I'm super excited about that. And then I get to visit a client of ours in Geneva in between. So you know, that's pretty awesome. Get to do a little travel, get to do a little business abroad. And there you go. AJ Wilcox That's a lot to be excited about. All right. So I've caught a couple of the resources that you've kind of mentioned here. You talked about the Elevate b2b marketing community, you've talked about your influencer marketing report, I will put the links to those down below in the show notes for anyone. But as for resources, what would you like this LinkedIn ads audience to do what you want them to come follow you contact you in some way? Join the community, download a report, like, what do you have that we should be paying attention to? Lee Odden Absolutely check out top rank marketing.com. Our blog is there as well. With those actually, it's more than hundreds, it's 1000s of articles. But it's probably in the hundreds of those that are most recent and relevant. Yeah, toprank marketing.com, people obviously can connect with me on the socials, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, to see all the crazy food that I eat and all the running that I'm doing and other thing and travel especially, that's always fun, le e o d, d, e n. Yeah. And that's where we're going to announce our report. And we've got a enterprise brand, influencer marketing report coming out very, very quickly, we have a search intent report that's out already. So lots of fun resources there. And also, I have to say, if you're in the LinkedIn ads audience, if you're not already, you've got to be subscribing to the LinkedIn marketing blog. The LinkedIn ads blog, for sure. Also, in the LinkedIn Collective is another great resource over at LinkedIn. That's a great example of LinkedIn, own thought leadership. And of course, the b2b Institute is another great resource at LinkedIn. And you know, my disclaimer is that yes, LinkedIn is a client. But these are resources I, myself personally, rely on quite a bit. AJ Wilcox Perfect. Well, Lee, thank you so much for sharing your mountain of knowledge here. I'm grateful to get to hear it. Everyone, please go follow Lea, check out the resources that he and his company have come up with Lee, thanks again so much. And we'd love to have you on for around two sometime down the road. Super. Thanks, AJ, I appreciate it. I've got the episode resources for you coming right up. So stick around. Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. AJ Wilcox All right, like we talked about with Lee, if you go to his site, top rank marketing.com. And we have links to that down in the show notes. You can get access to everything, all the reports and everything he was talking about. You'll also see his three social media handles there in the show notes, his LinkedIn, his Twitter and his Instagram links. So go follow him stay caught up on what he's doing. He's constantly sharing gold. I'm telling you, if you or anyone you know, is looking to learn more about LinkedIn ads, check out the course that I did on LinkedIn learning all about LinkedIn ads. It's by far the lowest cost and the highest production value course that there is out there. If this is your first time listening, welcome. Thanks for coming. Make sure to hit that subscribe button if you've liked what you've heard. If this is not your first time listening, though, please do go and rate and review us. Usually it's Apple podcasts, but anywhere where you can leave a review. That is by far the best way that you can say thanks for us putting out this content week after week with any questions, suggestions or corrections about what we talked about here, reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you back here next week. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

Mimi Turner likes to make complicated things simpler. Over a career of twenty years she has found out - often the hard way - that while the price to be paid for this process of reimagination can be painful, the results will be transformational and spectacular. Driven by a desire to connect on ideas, Mimi became fascinated by journalism during her time at university and eventually became a science writer for the Sunday Times, where her engineering training came in handy deciphering complex journals and peer-reviewed papers. A few years later, she joined the Hollywood Reporter as the European Broadcast Editor in a field that helped her to understand the cogs and wheels of corporate strategy. After the paper made the shift into a more glossy Hollywood magazine, Mimi found herself interviewing celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Colin Firth and discovered that, while fascinating, it wasn't the career fit for her. Mimi landed the role of Group Director of Communications at Northern & Shell, a British publishing group, and found herself managing reputation and communications issues in a publishing empire spanning television, newspapers, magazines and a lottery business. Just a few months into the role, Mimi was given a commercial task she had little experience in, and was left to sink or swim. After a lot of angst, and time spent wandering around in a strategy wilderness, she managed to complete the task by reinventing the problem and was utterly thrilled to make her first commercial deal. In 2014, Mimi became Marketing Director at LADbible. After the announcement, a friend of Mimi's jokingly pointed out that she didn't have any experience in Digital Media and she realised that, while true, it was not something that had been afraid of going into the role. She knew that she could bring something different, that she could innovate and that she could rely on the people already in the business for their expertise in the core platform. Mimi visited the offices in Manchester, and after meeting the young LADbible team, was struck both by their generosity and the scale of their unique talents.  She knew that although she was non-one's idea of ‘a lad' she felt comfortable with an incredible new family and was able to bring new ideas and approaches that helped put the brand on an elevated track. Coming from traditional media, Mimi did have to learn the world of social media humour and for a very, very, short time had a pretty good handle on football memes. Mimi became Director of Strategy, Messaging and Research at the Liberal Democrats in 2020 and is now Head of EMEA & Latin America, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn, a think-tank which helps to provide businesses with advice on long-term brand growth strategies. To hear Mimi share her advice on changing career roles, the pain of failing, a quantum physics-inspired mental model of storytelling and a love of innovation, listen to this episode of ‘How I Became'. ⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@HOWIBECAME__⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for guest insights not on the podcast We're on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Episode Sponsor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Gray Matters⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - A straight-talking business development consultancy that empowers agencies to position, market and sell themselves for new business success ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unity & Motion⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - A London based production company specialising in commercials and branded content Email: info@weunify.co.uk This is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠UNIFY⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast. Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unity & Motion⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Credits: Director: Charles Parkinson Poet & VO Artist: Ashley Samuels-McKenzie Sound Recordist: Paolo Neri Editor:  Catherine Singh

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Illiana Acosta on LinkedIn Partner Hub Follow AJ on LinkedIn NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Youtube Channel Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover. A great no-cost way to support us: Rate/Review! Show Transcript AJ Wilcox LinkedIn 's official marketing partner program. Who are these partners? And how do you become one? What are the requirements? We cover the LinkedIn partner program on this week's episode of the LinkedIn ads show. Illiana Acosta Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. AJ Wilcox Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics, you've heard us talk about how we're an official LinkedIn partner. And you've probably used the tools of other partners to manage or report on your LinkedIn Ads initiatives. I met Illiana Acosta , who's one of the senior managers of the LinkedIn partner team at the B2Believe event that was in November. We talked all about that event on episode 79. And I thought it would be really interesting to bring her on and talk to her all about the program. Many of you have asked me what it takes to become a partner. So this episode is for you. First in the news, Jae Oh, who's head of ads measurement and audiences at LinkedIn. He wrote an article this month, called What's New With the Company Engagement report on LinkedIn. For those of you who don't know, there's this report that if you go and click on any of your audiences that our company list uploads, or sometimes we call them our ABM lists, if you click on that Companies list, it now takes you to this report called the company engagement report. And this is so cool. If you're advertising to a list of companies, now you can get all of this analytics and demographics information about who is actually engaging with your ads. It's way cool. Well, Jae talked about all the new updates that have happened to it. And I wanted to point out the things that I thought were really cool. First off, there's this company segmentation feature. So now you can dynamically prioritize the accounts that you're going after in certain campaigns, you can actually create a static list of here are the companies I want to go into which segment. But what's so exciting to me is the dynamic segmentation, where now you can say every day, I want LinkedIn to go to my list and go just for the companies that have the highest engagement. And let's show ads specifically to them. And you can have another segment, that's all about low engagement. So now with your campaigns, you can show different messages to companies that maybe aren't as engaged so we can try something new. The static segment is actually just a snapshot of the lowest engaged companies. And it's not going to change. We've linked to that article down in the show notes. So go give it a read and check it out. If that's interesting to you. I wanted to highlight a review left by Craig Sea. And that's the last name is S E. A. Craig says, "Very insightful and educational. I'm so happy I came across this podcast, I've learned a lot from it. Myself, being a beginner, started listening to this podcast. I've also started AJ's course, which is giving me a lot of confidence to get started running my own ads. Great podcast five stars from me." Craig, thanks so much for heeding the call and leaving that review. I'm so glad that couple of our resources could give you the confidence to begin advertising. You get five stars for me as well. Thanks, Craig. As a reminder, I want to feature you as well. If you haven't already left us a review, please do. And I'd love to give you a shout out. All right. Without further ado, we'll go ahead and jump right into the interview. Let's hit it. Illiana, I'm so excited to have you here. For those who don't know, Illiana is a senior manager on the LinkedIn ads business. She supports the LinkedIn Marketing Partners. She's also the Global Co Chair of the Latino ERG at LinkedIn. Illiana, thanks so much for being here. Illiana Acosta Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the enthusiasm and welcoming me on your show. AJ Wilcox You and I actually just met at the B2Believe event not too long ago back in November. Yes. It was awesome to get to hang out with you get to know you a little bit. I was excited to have you on the show because obviously you know so much about this. So give us an introduction to yourself. Tell us about yourself anything that I may not have covered in the intro. Yeah. Well, I was Illiana Acosta Well, I was born on a Monday. Oh, wait, no, I won't go back that far. I have been with LinkedIn for about four and a half years and I have been supporting our channel sales business which is our LinkedIn marketing partners program since day one. So I've seen it since its let's call it infancy stages to now its teenage years where we are operating almost like a mid level startup, if you will, right. It's like this crazy, awesome, high growth team and business that's supporting so much of what we're doing in our ads business to grow our business, but more so ensure that we are driving value for our customers with our marketing partners. In addition to my day job in managing our enterprise partners ad tech team. I am also the global co chair, as you mentioned, our Hispanics of LinkedIn's Alliance ERG, which is really helping to pour into our Latino community within our LinkedIn doors, but also within the community at large. So I've been in that role for a couple of years now, I'm actually stepping away from the co chair role in a couple months and giving an opportunity to newcomers, which is a little bittersweet, but we've done incredible work. And I will continue investing in diversity, equity and inclusion in some way, shape or form within the organization. So really excited to be here. So thank you for having me. AJ Wilcox Very cool. I announced that you are part of the Latino ERG, we may have listeners who aren't part of large organizations who may not know about employee resource groups, can you share just a little bit about what these groups are? Why They Matter? Illiana Acosta Absolutely. Let's take a step back as an employee, right? Every single person experiences their tenure, if you will, with an organization in different ways, some more than others, some negatively, some positively. And so when we look at our workplace, we tend to say like, I want to go somewhere where I feel like I belong, or I want to make sure that people understand me, or that I'm seen and heard and valued in a way that I haven't before. And for that I need to find community. And so at LinkedIn, we have about 10 ERG is employee resource groups that go everywhere from Black, Latino, LGBTQ, plus the Asian community, veterans, etc, etc. There's so many incredible groups and communities that people can be a part of, as soon as they join the organization feel a complete sense of belonging as soon as they join day one, but also find people that they can relate to and build community with. And it's also an incredible opportunity for allies, to learn more about different communities and how they can be of support. Because at the end of the day, we spent so much of our time at work and working with individuals and colleagues. And all we want to make sure is that we're doing really great work for people who appreciate us who see us and understand that our differences are what makes us so unique and great together. AJ Wilcox I love that. All right. So switching gears here to your role there at LinkedIn, I would love to hear how you specifically are supporting advertisers, maybe those of us who are listening who may not already be LinkedIn partners. Illiana Acosta Yeah, absolutely. So our LinkedIn marketing partners, is a global community of qualified technology and service providers that help our customers, our marketers achieve more on LinkedIn, in simple terms, like on our own work about us, you know, we're great, but we're so much greater with our partners. With partners, everything is better, right? So if I can give an example. So today, customers are facing changing buyer behavior, right, for example, shifting to e-commerce, etc. There's growth in the tech landscape. We're seeing an increase in spending martech from advertisers. There is now more new and emerging channels, right? Like think about it, the average number of channels to make purchase decisions increased by 2x in the last five years. And so it makes marketers jobs that much more challenging to actually go get to their goals and objectives, right. And so our marketing partners, our LinkedIn marketing partners can help navigate and reduce some of these complexities. And so what my role is, it's really working with a team of great amazing high performers. And I lead a team that's working with our enterprise level partners. And those enterprise level partners are typically those partners that are working with our enterprise or global strategic accounts. So those bigger, bigger customers at LinkedIn. However, we have three different teams that support our channel business today. So we have our enterprise partners, which I just explained, are those bigger partners that are working with our biggest accounts, so enterprise and strategic accounts, then we have our skilled partners team that's led by my colleague, John Hall, who's total awesomeness in the West Coast. And he's working with these partners that are typically supporting our online sales or customers or small to mid level size customers. And then we also have our content partners, who are creating these custom content solutions and creative solutions that help enhance a customer's LinkedIn campaign on the platform. And that's led by my colleague, Ally Rash, who's based out in New York. And so we have a whole ecosystem of partners that can help customers address some of the marketing challenges that they have, not only for LinkedIn, but as a whole for their, you know, social media buying as a whole. And so these partners, regardless of their enterprise, or scale, what we classify them internally, they help customers save time, right? So that they have to go through a less of a manual process to set up or manage your campaigns. Like, seriously, can I get an amen for saving time? Amen. Right. I'm like, I love saving time, anything to make me operate more efficient, Sign me up. And so these partners allow marketers to do that. They also allow them to plan more accurately, or target for every stage of the funnel. And so now you can actually sync your marketing strategy, your campaigns optimizations across multiple channels, all within our partner platforms. And so when you're thinking about activating your ad campaign gains, you want to get the most out of every single dollar you're investing. And so they also allow for a more in depth understanding of the performance of your campaigns. So you can make better decisions, you can shift dollars, you can shift creatives, you can do things, and optimize on the fly and get so much more value out of your campaigns with LinkedIn, and across our marketing partners. AJ Wilcox So we obviously don't want to call out any specific partners. We don't want to give anyone a preferred treatment here. Can you tell us about what are some of the kinds of things that you can do through partners, I'm imagining some will help you create campaigns, some will help you optimize and manage some will help you report. What sort of categories am I missing? Illiana Acosta Yeah, there's a few categories. So one, there's a ton of value in using the partners just because, you know, they allow you to do so much more with us. Over 70% of customers today, with LinkedIn are already using one or more partners. And so everybody's coming to the party. And so they are tapping into a partner for planning. Right. So insights, helping you developing the right content and creating your campaigns, targeting the right audiences at scale. So planning, we have partners that support campaign execution and tracking. So whether that's page management or campaign management with LinkedIn, we also have partners that are supportive reporting and ROI. And lead gen, everybody loves a good lead gen campaign. And so there's so many ways that a partner is supporting customers needs. It just really depends on what are your goals and objectives, right, and let's start there. And then let's make sure that as a company, LinkedIn, we're doing everything possible to tap into our arsenal to address those challenges that you're having, but also allowing you to get to your goals and objectives. And sometimes that means, like, rockin out just with LinkedIn, right? But sometimes that also means tapping into a partner that can help you really elevate your campaigns and take your campaign further. AJ Wilcox I totally agree with that. Alright, so if I could, I would love to pull all of our listeners and ask them who is using a LinkedIn partner for their campaign management or for any part of it? But obviously, since we can't do that, I hear you correctly, you said 70% of LinkedIn advertisers are using a partner in one way or another? Illiana Acosta Yeah, over 70%. They're using one or more partners. In many cases, customers are using multiple partners for different use cases, right. And so one might be using a partner for reporting. Another one might be doing for lead gen, there's different use cases, everybody has their special sauce, you know, and so a marketer has the option to work with many partners in order to meet their campaign objectives and more so their marketing goals for the year for the quarter, whatever the case may be. And so yes, so a really good chunk of our customers are already using a partner for their LinkedIn campaigns today. AJ Wilcox Oh, yeah. All right. So this leads me to a really good question. How have you seen partners in one way or another elevate your customers LinkedIn campaigns? Illiana Acosta We're on a time constraint, so I can't even tell you all the stories. You know, again, I've been here four and a half years. So I've seen you know, across the gamut, small partners, large partners deliver so much value for our customers. And so if I think back to some recent real great wins, so we have metadata metadata, and I know we're not supposed to calling out but these are success stories, and you can find them on our hub. I'll give you the site later, but one of our partners metadata helped oyster with their full ABM strategy. And you know, we talked ABM at b2b believe in November, and so therefore, ABM strategy and execution of ad campaigns, I believe it resulted in 3x engagement rate on the campaign, and it's doubled their ROI in less than 12 months. And so I'm like, what is it that we did that right? It's like, okay, medicine is one of our enterprise level partners that one of my colleagues, managers, and then we have Zapier, who works with so many of our customers. It's like Zapier makes you happier, it's an inside joke on our team. But Zapier is real time. I know, it's so corny, but it's fun. They have a real time lead gen solution, and it worked with a customer harnessed.io to look at lead automation, and they were able to improve the accuracy by 99%. From campaign manager to market like huge Wow. And so it's kind of insane. And there's there's other stories of like, you know, teams have reduced their time by six hours per week. And while that might seem a lot take six times 52 weeks, like that's a lot of hours that you're saving a customer in managing their campaigns. Helping them operate more efficiently, helping them to do more with less especially now with this economic climate that, you know, we do have less resources, we may have less people. So how do you operate more efficiently when you're a brand that's activating 10, 20, 30, 100 campaigns in any given quarter? I would like to think that we're all super people, super women and men and people, but there's only so much we can do. So sometimes getting automated tools and tapping into the right tools more than anything, I think can make the biggest difference when you are executing your marketing campaigns with us. AJ Wilcox I totally agree with this. We've had several episodes in the past that are a partner product spotlight. So if anyone's ever curious, they can go back and listen to some of those spotlights we put on partners and different tools. But to your point about saving six hours a week, I just think of this as a marketer. Yeah, it's not a big deal to save six hours. But think about it. This is six, super mundane and monotonous hours that don't need to be spent, you can now go and spend that doing the really high value stuff, digging deep into the account finding opportunities for scale or decrease costs. So this really is a big deal. Yeah, we shouldn't be doing the mundane. Exactly. And Illiana Acosta Partners make it more accessible. They have scalable tools, it makes your day to day job a lot more simpler and more efficient. And you can spend more time doing the things that really, really require the most attention being more strategic. But you know, when it comes to like copy and pasting things, right, like that, sometimes it's a really long time, if you're managing multiple, multiple campaigns. So how can we collectively LinkedIn and our partners help to increase customer value, like, that's really why I'm even on this team and in this business. I want to help drive value, and I want to help make a difference, and how people are operating every single day. On our own, again, I mentioned, we're great, you know, we have amazing tools. But sometimes our customers need more access to different tools that our partners provide. And with our partners, they can do things simpler and more efficient, like day parting and auto optimization rules, and add flighting, and management, and creative optimizations and all the things that customers need to enhance their marketing campaigns with us. AJ Wilcox Yes, and I can't tell you how excited I am that there is now this partner ecosystem, because I kind of, quote unquote, grew up in the world of PPC. And there are so many partners out there, if you're running Google Ads, or Facebook Ads, there's so many different tools that you can take advantage of. LinkedIn hasn't had that it hasn't really been considered a tier one platform until what I would say is fairly recent. And now we have all of those types of things that you'd want to execute that you just mentioned, any of those needs you have, you can go out and find a partner who is doing this on LinkedIn. And I just want to say I think this is super powerful. I'm so proud of where it's landed. Illiana Acosta Yeah, you know, it's so funny, because like, before I started working here, I was like, B2B. B2B doesn't have to be boring, B2B can be fun, and really insightful, and really an incredible way to drive some meaningful business outcomes. And so we really have transformed over the last several years, I'd like to think it's when I joined the company, but I know that's not accurate. But it really has transformed into this platform that I am so proud to be a part of the growth of our LinkedIn ads business, the growth of the overall organization, what we stand for, and how we're so we are really doing everything we can to make sure that our customers, our marketers are getting everything that they need from us to be successful. And that is something that I am incredibly proud of. AJ Wilcox Oh, I love it. I know there's a lot to the partner programs, there's different tiers. Could you tell us a little bit about what maybe benefits are there for partners? Illiana Acosta Yeah, so we have different tiers of partners, depending on the tenure with us, but more so depending on the bandwidth and the use cases that you all support, right? Data linked, is a partner of ours, too. Yes, we know you're an OG, so this is good. Some other benefits include having a one to one relationship with a partner manager, depending on your level of tier. And that is incredible, because you have a trusted resource that you can literally work with every single week to help identify meaningful go to market strategies that are going to help to elevate and drive awareness around our value together as partners, and what we do for our customers together. And so that is powerful, because we have, you know, over 1000 partners in our ecosystem, but not every single partner is managed, and that every single partner is certified they're all on a journey. And so that's the journey that's the path to get partner certified and into the the level of tear that they're hoping to as they grow with us and they get manager or partner manager on my team or John's team or Bruno's team or Lara's team that I work with but, more so you know there's opportunity to tap into additional resources that we have to drive go to market together. There's opportunity to sync directly with our sales teams. There's opportunity to work directly with our sales leaders to identify leads, prospects, and more. So identify where can we drive the most value for our customers together, there's opportunity to be a part of our events that we have throughout the year B2Believe, Partner Connect, I heart ABM, there's so many different touch points that we can include here within, and vice versa, right. There's also an opportunity for us to show up for your events and be a part of any thought leadership, any webinars, any in person sessions. There's opportunity to tell stories together, I love telling stories together. Because together, we can really help make a big difference. And so how do we tag team on all efforts to really help again, elevate not so much our companies but elevate the value that we're offering customers, right, because if together, we continue to build solutions that will help address market challenges and marketers find value in it working with us, it's just going to be a byproduct of that, right? Like they want to work people that can help solve things for them. And we want to do that with our partners. And so So that's some of the benefits that you can expect to receive from our partner program. Working with our cross functional teams, we have dedicated resources on the business development side, on the partner end side, we have our B2B Institute, which is our think tank and is fully equipped with incredible thought leaders. We have a full partner marketing team that is ready and able to start on some really cool marketing concepts that again, can help elevate the value that we're driving for our customers. And so as we evolve this program and continue to grow, there's so much information that we disseminate through webinars and different methods. And so you can find a lot of that on the hub, which is our LinkedIn marketing partner hub. If you search on Bing, you can directly find that link. And I can also share the links with you, AJ, so you can share out to your followers, your subscribers on here. But yeah, so I think that there's opportunity for are always on marketing programs, which obviously you get visibility on our hub, which is external facing for all customers and marketers to visit. So that will give you free marketing and visibility for customers to come and learn more about you. That hub also houses our success stories with customers and partners. So that's another touch point that we can really have there. And then again, as I mentioned before, I think for us, it's really, really valuable. And we've had a lot of feedback from partners, that having that FaceTime with our sales team, either one on one or one to many, whether it be in a larger format or smaller, has been incredibly valuable globally. And so our marketing partners program is not just in North America, but it's literally across the globe. And many of our partners support our customers across the globe. And some are starting to really branch out into different regions as well, helping to have that global footprint, which is great. AJ Wilcox I love this. All right, here's a quick sponsor break, and then we'll jump back into the interview. Illiana Acosta The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. AJ Wilcox Managing LinkedIn Ads is a massive time and money investment. Do you want some of that investment back? Consider booking a discovery call with B2Linked, the original LinkedIn Ads performance agency. We've worked with some of the largest accounts over the past 12 years, and our unique scientific approach to ads management, combined with our proprietary tools, allowing us to confidently optimize and scale your LinkedIn Ads faster and more efficiently than any other agency, in-house team, or digital ads hire. Plus, we're an official LinkedIn partner, which after this episode, you'll know exactly what that means. Just mosey on over to B2Linked.com/apply. We'd absolutely love the chance to get to work with you. Alright, let's go ahead and jump back into the interview. So I have to ask what qualifies someone to be a marketing partner? I'm imagining because this is with the API. This means these are people who are building tools, right? Who else is able to become a part? Illiana Acosta It really just depends on the use cases that you support, right? What's your special sauce? And whether or not our API's currently support the use case that you're looking to really invest in with us. And so you know whether you as a platform can support a campaign management, reporting an ROI. We talked about this before, but audiences, page management insights, lead gen content and creative. So if you fall under any of those use cases that we are API support today, these are all specialties that our current partners do support. If you fall under any of those, you may have a good chance of becoming one of our LinkedIn marketing partners. So there is a developer website that you can visit to apply to become a partner and we will evaluate the use case that you currently support how you're looking to really plug into our LinkedIn API's. And if there's a match, and you fall under any of those specialties, then we can start working together. AJ Wilcox Oh, if there is someone out there who's creating a tool or wants to create a tool, what advice would you give them? What can they do to better help their case to have a higher likelihood of being prioritized or or being taken on as a partner? Illiana Acosta I think one be specific in your application, right? As you can imagine, we get a ton of requests, be specific on what's your special sauce, we want to hear about your special sauce to obviously, if you have customers that are asking for it, that's always a really great story to share with us. And so many of our customers are working with us, they want to activate their LinkedIn campaigns to our platform. And guess what, hey, we don't have integration with you. So can we work on that? And so that's a really great way, right? Because now we have customers asking for this integration to happen. And we can start having those conversations, we can start working with our business development team, with our partner interest team, with our product team and getting all our ducks in a row to make sure that happens. And total sidebar, I said, ducks in a row, and I'm looking out my window. And there's four ducks walking across the way by the lake. And it's so funny. AJ Wilcox That's amazing. Illiana Acosta Perfect line. Yeah. So I think if they do that, I think that will help build a case, right? Because whatever our customer needs from us, like, we want to make sure that we're accommodating that. And if one customer is asking for it, the likelihood of many other customers is very high, are also demanding that. Again, we want to work with customers in the way that they want to work with us. And if that's via a partner, let's make it happen. And let's make sure that we are helping to simplify the process and working with LinkedIn as much as possible, ease the transaction between customers, as partners, etc. To make sure that again, we help to simplify the process working with us while also delivering value, and really great outcomes for the marketer. AJ Wilcox Awesome Illiana. This has been fantastic. I appreciate you sharing all this information about the partner program. My last question for you is do you have anything exciting that you're working on professionally, and personally? Illiana Acosta Yeah, I'm actually working on a few projects right now. One, I just finished his voiceover workshop not long ago. And I really took the course just to try to do more public speaking because I really enjoy it, it really fills my cup. And then I started realizing, wow, this is a really cool like opportunity to tap into. And it's been really, really fun just trying to find ways to adjust my voice and work on different projects. So voiceover has been really fun. Also, I have a newsletter called Lost in Translation and sort of tapping into the diversity piece. But the newsletter focuses on highlighting challenges and limitations for historically excluded groups. And it's a focus on experiences that have shaped who they, I am, and how they and we and me I show up both in my professional life and my personal life, because based on our experiences that really shaped who we are and the way we show up at work. What else am I working on? I'm doing a bunch of speaking engagements around the power of authenticity and taming your inner critic, because you know, impostor syndrome is real. AJ Wilcox We've all got it. Illiana Acosta Oh, my gosh, even on my best days, I'm like, wait, I'm like, no, no, just go to sleep, go to sleep, girl go sleep. But you know, covering topics, you know, the power that we each have. We literally every single person listening on this and not listening, we have the power and influence to create more diverse, more inclusive, and more equitable spaces for every single member of the workforce. And we have more power than we think. And so as you look at your colleague next to you, whether it be in person or on the virtual screen, I talk about how can we show up for others in a meaningful way. And even the smallest action and thought could actually make the biggest difference. And so I've been doing a lot around speaking engagements around that, because I think that, you know, the only way that we're going to change what this world looks like, for future generations is if we start doing the work now. That's some of the stuff I'm working on. AJ Wilcox So true. Is there any way that you want people to be able to reach out to you after this interview? Do you want them to reach out to you on LinkedIn or anywhere else? Illiana Acosta Yeah, tap into LinkedIn, honestly, crazy enough, my main social platform and more tech platform that I leverage on a regular basis, not because I work here, but I really enjoy being on the platform. I feel like it feeds me in different ways mentally, spiritually, and educationally and professionally. So LinkedIn, connect with me, send me an InMail happy to dialogue, you know, have some dialogue on there. And yeah, happy to answer any questions as well. AJ Wilcox Perfect. So we'll put a link to your LinkedIn profile down in the show notes as well as the link to the marketing hub. Yes. Ileana, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing of your wisdom. Do you have any parting words for us? Illiana Acosta Yes. I have parting words for everyone listening, whether you are a customer, whether you are a prospective partner, whether you are an existing partner of ours, ask for what you need. If you don't ask, you don't get right. We want to support you. We want to help you, in working with us in a greater way. We want to have long term sustainable partnership with our partners. We want to have long term sustainable relationships with our customers. And we want to make sure that we're doing everything possible for you to work with us, and that we drive value in the way that you expect from us and so ask for what you need. Connect with me and let's start the conversation. AJ Wilcox Perfect. Illiana Acosta ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. And please do everyone reach out to her shoot her an InMail make sure you're connected to her. She's a fantastic resource, especially for those who are partners or want to be partners. So thank you again for being here. Illiana Acosta Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. AJ Wilcox All right, I've got the episode resources for you coming right up. So stick around Illiana Acosta Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. AJ Wilcox Okay, like we mentioned in the interview, we'll have a link to Illiana Acosta's profile on LinkedIn. So make sure you go and connect to her, send her a message, tell her she's awesome. She also mentioned the partner hub where you can go and find out all about LinkedIn marketing partners, the links there as well. You'll also see the link to the company engagement report that we talked about that was posted by Jae Oh, at LinkedIn. Now, if you're just getting started on LinkedIn Ads, or know someone who is I'd love it if you'd point them towards the LinkedIn Ads course on LinkedIn learning. I'm the instructor on that one. And I know I'm a little bit biased, but it is by far the highest quality and the lowest cost LinkedIn Ads course out there. If this is your first time listening, thank you and welcome. We'd love to have you subscribe, so you can hear more episodes like this in the future. If this is not your first time listening, I would love to invite you to rate and review the podcast on whatever player you're using. Or if you can't find a review function, go over to us Apple podcasts version. That's where the majority of the reviews come in. We don't charge anything for listening to this podcast, obviously. So the best way you can repay us and say thanks, is by leaving us a review. I'd really appreciate it with any questions, suggestions, or corrections for this episode or the podcast in general, reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. With that being said, we'll see you back here next week. I'm cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

Tyrona Heath, Director of Market Engagement at LinkedIn's B2B Institute spoke about the benefits of having better inter department collaboration to drive B2B growth in this podcast: Key topics covered: What should growth marketers and sales teams keep in mind in today's B2B environment How can inter department collaboration drive unified growth models The importance of having the office of the CFO involved

In partnership with our Black Inclusion Group, we're thrilled to welcome trailblazer and change agent, Bozoma “Boz” Saint John—one of the world's most dynamic, influential, and accomplished marketers—to our next Speaker Series. This special Black Heritage Month event will be a live streamed conversation in our NY editorial studio followed by a book signing. Boz brings unparalleled energy, transformative thinking, and innovative ideas to everything she touches, and we'll experience this ourselves when she sits down with Ty Heath, market engagement director for The B2B Institute at LinkedIn, to discuss themes from her new book, The Urgent Life: My Story of Love, Loss and Survival. They'll delve into the lessons Boz has learned throughout her extraordinary career, and her exciting new role as ambassador for the African diaspora and special envoy to the president of Ghana. Get ready for some inspirational gems! The Urgent Life draws from Boz's own experiences of tragedy and grief to lay out a roadmap for those of us who are navigating our own battles. Through her stories and insights, Boz lets us know that we are not alone, that we can make it through, and that there is light and peace, and even inspiration, waiting for us when we do.

We discussed a number of things including:1. Ty's career journey2. How SM and LinkedIn can be used for different goals  3. What's working well on LinkedIn right now; insights from new research4. What entrepreneurs get wrong when using social media + LinkedIn5. Trends to keep an eye out for Ty is Director, Market Engagement, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn, a think tank funded by LinkedIn studying the future of B2B marketing and decision making. She is also Co-Founder of TransformHer, the premier conference for professional women of color and allies in technology.  With research, Ty engages and educates the industry in partnership with the leading marketing effectiveness thinkers and organizations such as Cannes Lions, ANA, and IPA to help better define the category, and drive growth.  Ty is passionate about connecting people with information needed to make intelligent decisions, sharing research to help marketers be more productive and successful with a bit of humor. An award-winning marketer, international speaker and two-time Olympic Trials qualifier in the 800 meters, Ty is a top B2B marketing influencer teaching B2B marketing as well as leadership and diversity, equity and inclusion.  Marketers benefit from Ty's marketing experience at Google Inc, consulting within IBM as a social business manager and leading her own B2B consulting practice where she authored "Marketers of Tomorrow: A Step-by-Step Toolkit for Inbound Marketing". Beyond marketing, Ty served as the President of LinkedIn's Black Inclusion Group (BIG) for several years.  Today, Ty serves on the Digital Marketing Institute's Global Advisory Council, on the Board of Directors for the American Advertising Federation and as an Adobe Insider with top executives, experts, and pioneers in technology. Ty is a frequent industry and academic speaker on the marketing circuit, having appeared at INBOUND, Adweek, Festival of Marketing, ADCOLOR, Marketing Society Changemakers, Ghana Tech Summit, Adobe Summit and the Digital Summit events to name a few. In her career, she has delivered marketing education to thousands.

Personalisation is possibly “the worst idea we have come across in digital marketing,” per B2B Institute's John Lombardo – even Amazon can't do it properly. “Find the biggest things that matter to the biggest group of buyers – that's the real commercial opportunity,” per Lombardo. He thinks 1:1 personalisation ultimately leads to a surveillance state. The downturn-induced swing back to performance over brand is another big mistake. “It's survival, I get it … But you can't just keep on adding up the short-terms and expect some sort of long-term strategy.” Former performance purist, Maria Grivas, now CEO at Mindshare, thinks performance marketers are much maligned – and are targeting longer-term growth as well as immediate gains. The problem is that CFOs demand demonstrable growth metrics. That means marketing to finance, per Lombardo, should be the “most urgent” CMO 2023 agenda item, “otherwise we get our budgets cut”. Elly Bloom, Executive Marketing, Business & Private Banking at NAB, is doing just that, using market mix modelling (MMM) to demonstrate which investments are generating returns in hard business terms – and where to spend next. “It's been invaluable”, says Bloom. Lombardo doubts econometric models can accurately prove where marketing is moving the needle – but thinks even demonstrating attempted due diligence to CFOs via MMM serves its purpose.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The struggle of B2B marketing to get respect, talent, awards is real but could it be old news? With the first ever Cannes Lions Creative B2B Lions, supported by the B2B Institute, a LinkedIn Think Tank and strategic thought partner to Cannes Lions - B2B work is getting it's share of the spotlight and a seat at the table. The mission? To change the tide of B2B marketing and nudge it closer to B2C marketing - not to duplicate it - but to be more creative, have more of a long-tail, to build a brand garnering loyalty and lean less toward strictly lead-gen and conversation. Ultimately, the goal is to move hearts and minds - to tap into emotion. My conversation with Paul Cash about his book (Humanizing B2B - read it!) and his work at his agency Rooster Punk highlights his mission to evolve B2B marketing. Paul is evangelistic in his message and delivery. I dare you to not be inspired. My article for Forbes entitled: Is it Time For A Breakout for B2B Marketing documents the "Call To the Creatives" to try the B2B side at Cannes Lions.

We're just over halfway through the year, and we've been noticing some common trends in B2B ads in 2022. Guy and Hope sat down to discuss four trends that you can jump on for 2022, and one that's played out.Top 5 B2B ad trends for 2022“Not boring” B2B advertising is the new normal.B2B brands are starting to use more celebrities in their ads.The word of the year for B2B ads in 2022 is “brand.”The one-size-fits-all B2B video is dead. RIP.Using history to explain web3 and Industry 4.0 products is played out.To learn more about each trend, listen to the episode or read the transcript. The “2030 B2B Trends: Contrarian Ideas For The Next Decade” report from the B2B Institute is available here.Learn more about Guy, Hope and Umault at umault.com

Today, on The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we kick off a new four-part series on what SaaS companies can learn from this year's first-ever B2B Cannes Lions awards. In partnership with LinkedIn Think Tank, the B2B Institute, this year's Creative Lions celebrate creativity in B2B marketing. With all the lessons to be learned from B2B companies (particularly some with B2C marketing chops), we'll be covering four interesting campaigns and winners. We'll discuss how B2B SaaS companies can learn from these award winners, and apply the lessons to their business strategies, marketing, messaging, and positioning. Our first episode in this new series focuses on Dole and their partnership with Ananas Anam to create Piñatex—a new vegan leather textile made from the refuse that comes from harvesting pineapples. As they create a new category and market it, we find a multitude of takeaways for SaaS businesses of all sizes they can learn from and start applying today. About DRMG: SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn't about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It's about the category you design and the story you tell. DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market. The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They're organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win. Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG. Send us an email at: hi@drmg.co Learn more at: drmg.co

In this episode of the Sleeping Barber, we welcome to the show Ty Heath, Director, Market Engagement at the B2B Institute at LinkedIn, where we discuss the contrarian matrix, the future cash flow model, the importance of content and emotion in B2B marketing and so much more. While the focus of the discussion revolves around B2B, Ty shares a lot of great information that can apply to B2C as well. Enjoy the episode! ____________ Our Guest: Follow Ty on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyronaheath/. Research from the LinkedIn B2B institute: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute Get more information on Ty Heath: https://tyronaheath.com/. ____________ The Sleeping Barber Podcast: Follow our updates here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/ Get in touch with our hosts: Marc Binkley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/ Vassilis Douros: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/ ____________ Timestamps 0:41 - Introduction to Ty Heath 1:48 - A little on the LinkedIn B2B institute 4:32 - The contrarian matrix and the value to businesses 6:35 - How to succeed in B2B marketing 9:00 - What are the blind spots for marketers? 11:43 - What is performance marketing? 12:40 - Does the orientation of a company change how it performs? Marketing vs. Sales. 16:16 - Orienting a team around the consumer decision journey. 17:14 - Where does brand live in a B2B organization? 22:45 - Marketing and Sales teams, how do they play nice? 26:20 - Creating shared outcomes, why is it so difficult for organizations? 28:42 - The Finance department and how marketers can make a greater impact. 31:43 - Storytelling internally. 33:35 - Future cashflow model. 38:40 - The importance of content and emotion in B2B marketing. 44:28 - What marketing trends should marketers lean into? 46:49 - Post Pod discussion

Effectiveness data in B2C is robust, but not so in B2B. The Institute plans to change that. Jon Lombardo shares their latest work and some new  concepts that can help your CFO support your case for effective investment.

Mi3's most read story of 2021 unpacked the critical role of mental availability in business metrics, as well as its impact on ESOV, or extra share of advertising voice. Now Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Professors Byron Sharp, Jenni Romaniuk and John Dawes, the people behind ‘mental availability', have produced a paper with the B2B Institute that should have far-reaching implications for marketing and advertising practice. From flipping the marketing funnel sideways to scotching “delusions” that retention and loyalty trump acquisition – and a new performance-enhancing twist on Binet & Field's 60:40 brand to performance rule (it should be 95:5) – the rules unpacked in How B2B Brands Grow equally apply in B2C marketing, says co-author, Jenni Romaniuk. Jon Lombardo, Global Research Lead at The B2B Institute hopes the science emboldens brands to stop making “drab and dull” performance ads and stop worrying about offending customers. The truth, he says, is few people care about brands at all: “It's all upside. The job is always to build mental availability.” LinkedIn's ANZ and SEA Enterprise boss Prue Cox says the likes of Westpac and DocuSign are nailing it.  Read the original 'mental availability' story here: https://www.mi-3.com.au/28-06-2021/mental-availability-critical-brand-growth-and-extra-share-voice-says-aca-report See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo are the heads of research and development at the B2B Institute, a think tank at LinkedIn that studies the laws of growth in B2B. You can follow Peter and Jon on LinkedIn. What we covered in this episode: Introducing the youngest B2B marketers on the planet Jon & Peters favourite Super Bowl ads The very low hurdle of writing a B2B article How half the economy is in fact B2B Is B2B really different to B2C Sales vs Product led B2B companies The Product Delusion and why it damages marketing How B2B ads compare to B2C on long term brand building What everyone can learn from Salesforce How brand advertising is good for sales and talent The power of cuddly furry animals Publicity vs Persuasion in Advertising Plug for ‘Why does the Pedlar Sing' by Paul Feldwick Introducing the 95:5 rule The best search engine is the one in your head The importance of aligning marketing with finance Sponsoring the first ever B2B Cannes Lion Advertising is the tax for having a bad product Their least successful Marketing Week article Liberty Mutual and the power of sound What we can learn from Boston beers Super Bowl winning Ad How emotion regulates what we pay attention to Why characters are the most underused tactic in advertising Wear in vs Wear out and why incentives for agency and client aren't aligned The Originality Delusion and the power of old ideas Bitcoin maximalism and the power of blending something old and new

Yes, we know we're already two months into 2022, but we have high hopes for this year. In this episode, we discuss our 22 wishes for B2B marketing in 2022. Read the quick list below, and listen to the episode for more details.Interested in our wishes for 2021? Revisit last year's episode.Umault's 22 wishes for B2B marketing in 2022Stop thinking of making a video as a goal in and of itself. Everyone should read B2B Institute's 2030 B2B Trends: Contrarian Ideas For The Next Decade report.More asynchronous video messaging and fewer camera-on meetings. Morph your marketing KPIs to allow you to have more time to do brand-building marketing. Bosses, start to give marketers more time to make things good instead of pushing quick returns. “Not boring” B2B is soon going to be standard. This year is the time to invest in creative marketing.B2B brands stop seeing emotion as a four-letter word. Develop confidence in marketing's role in the company. You are important!Make distribution a clear part of your B2B brand's video strategy. Make some smart work. Attend in-person conferences again. Make everything shorter.Stop using that stock footage of a robotic human hand to represent the future. Rethink gated content. Give away your content for free. (And check out our video “The Stalking.”)Social media marketing isn't free. Start investing in it properly. Use creativity as your secret weapon in B2B marketing. Focus more marketing efforts on wide and out of market prospects. You need to ask yourself, does anyone care about this? Don't be a “no one” meme.Think about ads and marketing as a strategic asset.Every ad can be a Super Bowl ad. Make some Super Bowl ads this year.Hug more people this year (with their consent, of course).Stay healthy and have boundaries.Learn more about Guy, Hope and Umault at umault.com

Before Afiya Addison landed her position as the Global Program Manager at LinkedIn, her story began when Trinidad met Tobago. Her desire to be associated with her Caribbean heritage led to a shocking discovery in college. After landing a job in HR, she managed to pivot her career to Marketing at the biggest social network for professionals.

Cos Mingides & Richard Parsons are the Co-founders at True and the minds behind the B2B Needs Don Draper podcast. Returning back on the show to talk about what we have learnt from our guests, the state of the industry, the latest research from The B2B Institute and discuss why 2022's a big year for B2B.

This is one of the best conversations I've had about how to use social media effectively as a thought leader. My guest is Tyrona (Ty) Heath, who is Director, Market Engagement, at The B2B Institute at LinkedIn. You're getting the inside scoop of the big picture of how to make the most of LinkedIn. We get past the superficial tactics and really dig into what makes social media and LinkedIn in particular unique, how to showcase your body of work as a thought leader, and what your audience wants from you. Ty and I talk about: The ways social media, and LinkedIn in particular, can be used for different goals (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation, thought leadership) What entrepreneurs often get wrong about using social media and LinkedIn effectively What's working well on LinkedIn right now How LinkedIn content is similar or different from what other social media platforms prioritize (IG reels/stories, TikTok, etc.) The key ingredients to think about when posting content   This episode is part of the series we've been doing called “The Medium is the Message”. About My Guest: Tyrona (Ty) Heath is Director, Market Engagement, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn. Ty is passionate about connecting people with information needed to make intelligent decisions, studying the future of B2B marketing and decision making. With research, she engages and educates the industry in partnership with the leading marketing effectiveness thinkers. This effort helps better define the category, so customers can drive growth through marketing. Marketers benefit from Ty's marketing experience at Google, consulting within IBM and leading her own B2B consulting practice. Ty serves on the Digital Marketing Institute's Global Advisory Council, on the Board of Directors for the American Advertising Federation and as an Adobe Insider with top executives and experts.   About Us: The Speaking Your Brand podcast is hosted by Carol Cox. At Speaking Your Brand, we help women entrepreneurs and professionals clarify their brand message and story, create their signature talks, and develop their thought leadership platforms. Our mission is to get more women in positions of influence and power because it's through women's stories and visibility that we challenge the status quo and change existing systems. Check out our coaching programs at https://www.speakingyourbrand.com.  Links: Show notes at https://www.speakingyourbrand.com/256  Join our Thought Leader Academy: https://www.speakingyourbrand.com/academy/ Ty's website: https://tyronaheath.com/    LinkedIn resources: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/linkedin-live https://members.linkedin.com/creators Connect on LinkedIn: Carol Cox = https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolcox Ty Heath (guest) = https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyronaheath Related Podcast Episodes: Episode 252: Using Video for Thought Leadership, Brand Awareness, and Sales with Stacy Mayer  

Join our Head of Growth Nick Hague as he takes you on the ultimate B2B branding journey with brand experts from around the world in our latest podcast series; The B2B Brand Masters.   In this second episode, Nick is joined by Peter Weinberg, global lead at the B2B Institute, a think tank funded by LinkedIn which researches the future of B2B marketing and decision making. Nick and Peter discuss why the most valuable ideas are contrarian ideas, the benefits of short-term and long-term brand building and the concepts behind the trends “War on Brand”, “Blockbuster Marketing” and “The Death Of Hyper Targeting”.

95% of B2B buyers are not in the market for your product or service at any given time. It's a fact. So why spend your precious B2B tech marketing time and resources on convincing people to buy, instead of making your brand memorable for when they're ready to?Learn how to make the case for brand marketing with Jann Schwarz, Snr Director at The B2B Institute, who delivered this new research in partnership with Ehrenberg-Bass.Find the full research report here. ---The FINITE Podcast is made possible by 93x, the leading digital marketing agency for B2B technology, software & SaaS businesses delivering SEO & PPC strategy that drives leads, pipeline & revenue growth.And The Marketing Practice: The global B2B marketing agency built to close the gap between marketing engagement and business results.---To apply to join the FINITE community, head to finite.communitySupport the show (https://finite.community/)

What makes B2B marketing effective? Find out why acquisition is more important than loyalty, why B2B creative should be more emotional, why financial metrics are critical and why brand awareness is a terrible measure of performance.  Please join our host Marc Binkley for this incredible interview with Peter Weinberg, one of the worlds most important voices in B2B marketing.BioPeter Weinberg is the Head of Development and co-founder of The B2B Institute at LinkedIn which is a think tank that partners with leading experts to research the future of B2B marketing.  Along with partners like global thought leaders Jenni Romaniuk, Les Binet, Peter Field, Mark Ritson and Rory Sutherland, they study the laws of growth in B2B and work with LinkedIn's largest clients to put these principles into practice.Timestamps 1:26 – Introduction to Peter Weinberg2:33 – What is the LinkedIn B2B Institute4:38 - A background on the world's leading marketing effectiveness databases8:07 – What makes the IPA and Ehrenberg-Bass data so meaningful9:30 – The differences, and similarities between B2B and B2C marketing16:18 – Acquisition or loyalty? Answers to the most controversial debate in B2B marketing 18:44 – The one way to grow B2B (or B2C) brands - the double jeopardy law20:40 – The trouble with word of mouth23:56 – Wide reach v. going deep on niche audiences27:22 - How the length of purchase cycle effects B2B marketing30:27 - The place for Account Based Marketing (ABM) in the B2B landscape34:10 – The common sense approach to B2B growth36:00 – Why Share of Voice matters and why Click Thru Rate doesn't37:40 – The financial metrics marketers need to track41:31 – The revenue opportunity of the 95:5 mental model44:10 - The benefit of realizing nobody cares about your brand45:31 - The 3 rules of effective creative in B2B marketing48:47 – Why brand awareness isn't the best idea for marketers51:10 – Why all marketers need to track Category Entry Points instead of awareness52:48 – What's next and how to connect with PeterOther LinksPeter on LinkedinB2B Marketing InstituteEhrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing ScienceIPA - Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Article: Measuring things that matterArticle: B2B marketers bet big on going longArticle: 3 Rules for more effective B2B MarketingBlockbuster Marketing for B2BB2B Playbook

Today we continue our A-Z of Business Marketing. We're looking to give a primer on the very latest thinking, practices and practical examples on every big topic in B2B land. And we've reached B. B stands for Brand. B2B Marketer Dave Stevens hears from four experts on the topic today: Head of Strategic Customer Marketing at O2 Mark Larwood, Senior Marketing Manager at Fiat Chrysler Jason Fitzgerald, Global Lead at the B2B Institute at LinkedIn Jon Lombardo, and Co-Founder and Head of Growth at B2B International, Nick Hague. 

Andy Culligan is CMO at Leadfeeder. Leadfeeder is a b2b website tracking software - showing you the companies visiting your website, how they found you and what they're interested in. Andy is on a mission to reinvent the word "alignment" between sales and marketing teams. A sales person stuck in a marketer's body (or a marketer in a sales body!), he is an expert in marketing and sales for SaaS companies with always the ultimate goal to drive pipeline success. We talked, of course, about sales and marketing alignment and how to achieve it. At the end of 2020, the B2B Institute by Linkedin published a report called 2030 b2b trends. They state that there are 2 types of marketing: Short-Term Activation and Long-Term Branding. And although short term activation has been the focus so far in b2b, this is changing and the winning companies will be the ones focusing on long term brand building. I asked Andy his thoughts about that report. We discussed Lead Gen vs Demand Gen and Demand Gen vs Brand.

Você pensa no LinkedIn apenas na hora de procurar um emprego novo? Prepare-se para rever seus conceitos nesse papo entre Paulo Loeb, head do b2biz, e Lais Orrico, líder em Soluções de Marketing para Agências da rede social. A executiva mostra as diversas facetas da plataforma e expõe opiniões sobre as características mais singulares do B2B Marketing. O primeiro podcast do B2B Rocks! traz ainda informações sobre a expertise do LinkedIn em dados e pesquisas com seus diferentes clientes ajuda a agregar valor para uma estratégia de negócios de sucesso na plataforma. Uma das novidades destacadas é a criação do B2B Institute, área das Soluções de Marketing do LinkedIn dedicada à comunicação entre empresas, ainda não disponível no Brasil. O b2biz é a divisão da Fbiz dedicada a soluções de tecnologia e comunicação para estreitar e consolidar relações entre empresas B2B e seus públicos. Somos parceiros dos nossos clientes e buscamos entender suas necessidades e obstáculos em profundidade. O B2Biz Rocks! é o nosso podcast, no qual você encontra tendências, novidades e mais informações sobre estratégias de marketing de sucesso feitas por companhias do ramo. Confira os links mencionados no episódio: B2B Institute: b2binstitute.org LinkedIn Ads: linkedin.com/ads LinkedIn Marketing Solutions no YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/LIMarketingSolutions