How EY Canada Uses LinkedIn Stories to Tell Its Own Story About Entrepreneurial Strength

EY provides audit, tax, business risk, technology and security risk services, and human capital services worldwide. Working across assurance, consulting, law, strategy, tax and transactions, EY helps its clients answer the complex issues facing our world today. Enabled by data and technology, diverse EY teams in over 150 countries provide trust through assurance and help clients grow, transform and operate.

Challenge

EY Canada was struggling to find its unique voice on social platforms to break out of the sea of sameness. The company provides assurance, consulting, strategy and tax services to businesses, including private companies and entrepreneurs — however, they lacked a distinguished voice that smaller companies could also relate to. They needed to focus their messaging to reach more specific audiences.

“The depth of our business enables us to have an abundance of content to pull from. While a good challenge to have, it means we have to be extremely thoughtful around prioritizing distinct, thought-provoking content that will garner high engagement and resonate with our targeted audiences on social media,” said Fatima Israel, Head of Brand, Marketing and Communications at EY Canada. They sought to develop a revamped social media strategy to identify and speak directly to entrepreneurs and startup decision-makers.

EY Canada had no shortage of quality content but needed a more effective way of positioning it. “We have great content, but our audience doesn’t have a ton of time,” said Dylan Doyle, Social Media Lead at EY Canada. “The question becomes, how do we take great long-form stories and condense them into a meaningful, impactful 20 seconds?”

Solution

“We need to educate our customers before we begin selling to them, and that’s what LinkedIn Stories have enabled us to do.” –Dylan Doyle, Social Media Lead at EY Canada

EY Canada’s inaugural LinkedIn Stories series, The Entrepreneur Shift, shed light on how COVID-19 affected small businesses, and what founders were doing to pivot. 

“This content series was successful as a LinkedIn Story because we were showcasing relatable entrepreneurs telling their authentic stories in a very unfiltered way. We were also producing content on relevant shared human experiences such as navigating the business landscape during COVID-19 or re-tooling to give back to local communities – timely topics of high interest to our diverse audience,” Israel said.

The company discovered that the conversations they were having with entrepreneurs were perfect for the Story format. 

“We really wanted to lead strong with our brand identity and a very business-to-human approach. We shared stories about real humans and we saw a lot of success from the storytelling format.” –Dylan Doyle, Social Media Lead at EY Canada

This campaign didn’t have a direct lead generation goal. Instead, EY Canada focused on elevating their brand voice and experimenting with LinkedIn Stories to uncover the recipe for engagement. “Our marketing objective for this was to engage our audiences and drive meaningful dialogue,” Doyle said.

Results

Between The Entrepreneur Shift and a second series focused on International Day of the Girl, EY Canada’s LinkedIn Stories saw tremendous engagement. The company tallied 23 Stories across 93 total panels, with 2,287,612 total views and a view-through rate (VTR) of 1.88%.

“I believe the most impactful and best-performing campaigns are ones that feature people who are a natural reflection of our day-to-day lives, the places we work and the communities we live in,” Israel said. The data agrees. EY Canada’s most successful LinkedIn Stories were real-life experiences, shared by real people, speaking candidly and directly to the viewer.

“We’re continually using data to learn from our campaigns, and we leverage the insights to refine our voice on social media. LinkedIn Stories gives us the opportunity to test ideas, evolve our brand voice and engage our audiences in memorable ways to drive meaningful connections.”  –Fatima Israel, Head of Brand, Marketing and Communications at EY Canada.

Creating a Dialogue With Decision-Makers

LinkedIn Stories offered an opportunity for quick, yet meaningful engagement from followers. EY Canada used this opportunity to implement buyer-first selling through an ABM approach. The goal wasn’t sales; rather, it was to improve brand awareness and position the company as a human-centric, relatable solutions provider.

“At the end of the day, regardless of industry or market segment, our clients are human,” Israel said. “Taking a B2B or B2C approach is no longer relevant — businesses need to put humans at the core of their strategy to deliver purposeful experiences that resonate with customers in bold, real ways.”

Engaging With a Younger Audience

“Stories present a unique opportunity to share more bite-size content that’s dynamic and engaging to capture the hearts and minds of our decision makers, influencers and followers.” –Fatima Israel, Head of Brand, Marketing and Communications at EY Canada. 

Data shows that Story views are growing at a rate of 15x faster than feed views, with the sharpest increases among younger audiences like Millennials and Gen-Z. People have less time to scroll and instead, they choose digestible content that’s more impactful. EY Canada leveraged Stories to not only find their voice but also their audience.

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