Brands should be more human and focus on storytelling, believes Diana Daou, the Head of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions for MENA. “There’s an impression on LinkedIn you have to be serious, you have to be corporate,” she said during an interview with Campaign Middle East.
“Brands in general tend to be too serious. You don’t need to preplan and over-analyse. End buyers really love to see that human side. Whether you are CEO, CMO, we see the most engagement when the content is authentic”.
As a platform, LinkedIn does a lot of work in partnership with media and creative agencies. “We encourage them to be more bold and present on the platform,” she added. While this rule to be more human applies to all brands, she singled out B2B brands for the biggest need for improvement.
“We are really busting this myth. In the world of B2B the end buyer is still a human, not a machine, and to appeal to their needs and emotions”.
Daou said some of the biggest B2B brands now power the global economy across sectors such as cloud computing, fintech, hardware and automation. While many will be largely unheard of, some well-known names include ServiceNow and Salesforce.
In partnership with LinkedIn, The Creative B2B Lions awards now celebrate game-changing creativity in the world of business-to-business marketing. “B2B brands are really starting to recognise the long-term benefit of brand building. We are definitely seeing they are in it for the long term”.
Daou singled out Maersk, the Danish global shipping company, and German manufacturing giant Siemens as two B2B companies leading the way with their creativity, bold messaging, and humanizing their brand. “They are doing a really awesome job, and we use them as examples”.
“We talk about storytelling and brand building. Don’t jump straight into product details and the dry technicalities. Tell a story of the need for this product and solution, nurture your audience down the funnel to then go into more detail”.
LinkedIn recently launched thought leadership ads to allow CEOs and senior leaders to send out messages under their own name but promoted on their company page. These have seen increased engagement, comments and reshares from these ads over the last few months.
