5 Trends Every CMO Should Know
Research-backed trends paired with tactical recommendations
Opportunities Await for CMOs on LinkedIn
LinkedIn can be a valuable resource for those in senior management. Executives use LinkedIn to connect with peers, establish thought leadership, and grow their business. CMOs are leading by example on social media: the nearly 3 million CMOs on LinkedIn share more content, follow more companies, and participate in more discussion than the average member. If you’re ready to build your reputation and advocate for your brand, it’s time to get active on LinkedIn.
This pocketbook highlights top 5 critical trends every CMO should know. Each research-backed trend is paired with tactical recommendations of 1) what you can do to get ahead of the trend and 2) how LinkedIn can help. We’ll wrap by highlighting your influential peers who are certainly worth following for inspiration.
82% of consumers are more likely to trust a company whose CEO and leadership team engage on social media. Seventy-seven percent are more likely to buy from such a company.
Five Critical Trends for CMOs in the Know
If one word sums up marketing this year, it’s “more.” We have more data to parse, more channels to cover, more opportunities to embrace, more responsibilities to shoulder. The only things we don’t have more of are time and resources.
To cut through the clamour of “more, more, more,”we need to come down from the clouds and get down to practical, street-level actions you can take for immediate impact.
The following five trends are well worth an investment of your budget and attention right now, starting today
1. Measurement Is Becoming More Sophisticated
Marketers have access to more data now than ever before. We can track consumers across the internet and back. And the CEO is increasingly demanding we do just that.
We need to demonstrate ROI and prove marketing’s value in concrete ways. Marketers are beginning to be more sophisticated with measurement, but we have a ways to go—right now, only 57% say they can prove their marketing leads to sales (Source: Content Marketing Institute B2B Report 2017).
What to Do:
When setting goals, work backwards from ROI to make sure you will be able to prove results. Focus on the metrics that are relevant to your goals and tie directly to ROI.
How LinkedIn can help:
LinkedIn Conversion Tracking can help give you the full picture of your LinkedIn marketing efforts on and off the platform. See which campaigns, ads, and audiences are driving leads.
2. Account Based Marketing Enables Precision Targeting at Scale
Account based marketing (ABM) has always been an effective tactic for companies with enough people and resources to do it properly. Now technology is bringing ABM to the rest of us. Rather than focusing a ton of effort on just a few accounts, you can bring a degree of personalization to many accounts at once. ABM gets results: 84% of companies engaged in ABM say it brings in a higher ROI than other types of marketing (Source: GO-Gulf).
What to Do:
The first step towards an ABM strategy is identifying key accounts. Start working with your sales department to find likely candidates, and begin planning how you might personalize content.
How LinkedIn Can Help:
LinkedIn Account Targeting can assist in both finding key accounts and delivering personalized outreach.
3. Influencer Marketing Extends Reach
Consumers today are surrounded by so much content they’re becoming numb to it. Influencer marketing is an easy and effective way to give your content added value for your audience, and an amplification boost to make sure it gets seen. Influencer marketing is the fastest-growing online method of acquiring customers, outpacing organic search, email, and paid search.
What to Do:
Start identifying influencers in your industry. It’s not about the absolute biggest social following—you don’t need Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift. Look for people who are the most influential with your target audience.
How LinkedIn Can Help:
You can start building relationships with influencers on LinkedIn. Use InMail to make a connection and add them to your network. Then share their content, help promote them, and look for opportunities to work together.
Publishing your own content on LinkedIn can help establish thought leadership and engage with a broader audience. Each post automatically shows up in your network’s feeds and gets pride of place on your LinkedIn profile.
4. Native Advertising Drives Engagement
Consumers are growing more sophisticated in their approach to advertising, more likely to tune out intrusive or irrelevant messaging. Native advertising makes it easier to reach consumers on social media by adding value to their content feed, rather than interrupting it. Research shows that consumers interact with native ads 20-60% (Source: IHS) more than traditional advertising.
What to Do:
If your budget doesn’t already include native ads, it’s time to make them part of your strategy. Use native ads to add followers to your social networks and drive traffic to landing pages.
How LinkedIn Can Help:
LinkedIn Sponsored Content delivers business messages in the right format and venue for your audience. Use Sponsored Content to target the broadest relevant audience for your top-performing organic content.
LinkedIn Elevate can also help you increase reach and engagement in the feed by empowering employees to share content.
5. Video Is The New Content King
Video content is an ever-growing percentage of all content consumed online. Cisco estimates by 2020, 82% of all data transferred online will be video (Source: Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2016–2021). And it’s not all Netflix and YouTube: 75% of business executives watch work-related videos weekly (Source: Forbes).
What to Do:
Explore how your brand can use video to tell stories. You don’t need an in-house production studio. Think simple how-to videos, motion graphics, behind-the-scenes video, and live feeds.
How LinkedIn Can Help:
LinkedIn supports video embedding right in your Company Page updates. You can specifically target each post to the most relevant audience.
Coming soon you’ll be able to record and post videos directly from the LinkedIn app, giving you another way to share your professional insights and perspectives.
Get inspired by your peers
Ready to raise your visibility and join your fellow CMOs on LinkedIn? Start by following these knowledgeable, highly active business leaders. These individuals were selectedas most influential by Forbes’ 2017 CMO Report. View the full list of the top 50 CMOs here.
Conclusion: CMOs Can Do More on LinkedIn
It’s an exciting time to be a CMO.
Marketers today have a direct line to our customers: we can see what they’re thinking about and what they need, and we can respond in real time. By staying a breast of the latest trends, you can engage in meaningful dialogue, be the public face of your brand, and build your personal reputation on social media.
LinkedIn is here to help by offering more tools to make sure your quality content reaches the right audience at the right time. You can measure your efforts with a high level of sophistication. You can personalize with automated account based marketing. You can expand your reach with influencer marketing and native advertising. You can earn more attention with multimedia content.
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