Challenge: Increase brand and product awareness throughout the funnel

While Microsoft Canada knew that video was the best way to capture the voice of the customer, they needed to find the right platform to target the right content to the right person, at the right time. That’s what led Microsoft Canada to LinkedIn video ads.

• Commercial customers are a top priority for Microsoft Canada, so they needed an advertising channel that would resonate strongly with business professionals.

• Microsoft Canada needed the ability to target by function and reach the relevant senior decision-makers.

• As a subsidiary, they also needed to make sure they’re reaching their Canadian customers with locally relevant content.

Solution: Targeted LinkedIn Video Ads

Microsoft is no stranger to marketing on LinkedIn, so adding video ads was a natural fit for their marketing mix. “We have the amazing benefit of being able to leverage the best of the video content created at our headquarters,” says Social Media Lead Róisín Bonner, “so we can curate the most relevant Microsoft brand videos into our mix – but where we have real opportunity is to infuse that mix with locally relevant stories, from real Canadian businesses driving digital transformation.”

• Microsoft has seen excellent performance of video in other marketing streams, but with LinkedIn’s targeting precision, Microsoft’s social media team maximizes relevancy with a professional audience.

• This hyper-relevant content can be shown to business decision makers in the Canadian market, which moves customers further down the funnel into product consideration/demand generation.

• The targeted videos are paired with some top-of-funnel brand awareness videos. For those, Microsoft Canada can leverage the high production value videos from their corporate team.

Results: LinkedIn exceeds expectations with video KPIs

“The way our audience engages with the video ads changes with every campaign we launch,” says Waleed Hafeez, Digital Community Manager, Commercial. “A lot of it is dependent on the content, the audience, and the action we want them to take. Each campaign has had its own set of learnings and KPIs.”