Napier's Webinar: Tips, Tricks and Best Practices for LinkedIn

Social media continues to play an increasingly important role in communicating with customers, especially in the current climate of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the B2B industry, LinkedIn is arguably the most vital platform to connect and engage with your audience; yet we often hear marketers ask how do I market successfully on LinkedIn?

Napier recently held a webinar 'Tips, Tricks and Best practices for LinkedIn', which covers what you can do to be successful on the platform. We address:

  • How to get results from your LinkedIn profile
  • Optimising your company page
  • The top 5 tips, tricks and ideas for LinkedIn

Register to view our webinar on demand by clicking here, and don't hesitate to get in touch and let us know if our tips helped you!

Napier Webinar: ‘Tips, Tricks and Best Practices for LinkedIn’ Transcript

Speakers: Mike Maynard

So hi, everyone, and welcome to our second webinar. And I really appreciate you joining us for this LinkedIn tips and trips work webinar. One thing to say is that the chat in the webinar system is open. So if you have any questions or would like any more details, please do place a question in the chat. And what I'll do is I'll address those at the end of the webinar.

Okay, so obviously, with the COVID crisis, and with lots of people at home, there's been quite a lot of attention on social media for reaching audiences in b2b technology. And in reality, though, we've actually seen b2b technology as having huge results and huge benefits from using LinkedIn as a social platform over the past few months. So, it's not a new thing. It's not related to people actually being at home is definitely related to LinkedIn, becoming more of a media platform that brands and companies need to understand in order to get the best reach to their potential customers. So, what are we going to talk about? Well, the first thing we're going to talk about really is something that requires an investment. LinkedIn requires time, and actually, LinkedIn requires a lot of time if you want to be effective. So, it's certainly not free media. However, what we've seen is when people do LinkedIn correctly, then it's definitely worth the effort.

So, this webinar will talk about, you know how you can get results from LinkedIn, with a reasonable amount of time and energy from your site. Within LinkedIn, though, there's two areas that you need to look at. One is your personal LinkedIn profile or indeed personal LinkedIn profiles of executives in your company. And the other is your company page. So this is the page that covers the information about your organisation. So we're going to look at those two areas separately. And then lastly, we're going to look at some ideas really to get you started. So our top five tips, tricks and ideas for LinkedIn, to give you some ideas of what you can do with LinkedIn, and how you can make it more effective for you.

So the first thing to do is to look at getting results from your personal LinkedIn profile or the personal LinkedIn profiles of your executives. Now, LinkedIn is interesting, because it gives you a profile that is absolutely unique to you, and is very much seen as your standard business profile. Obviously, LinkedIn started as fundamentally an online CV service, really focused on recruitment. But today, it's really a huge opportunity to increase your influence in your industry. And perhaps the most important thing to say is that LinkedIn is highly democratic, it's not just a platform for senior execs or specialists. It's a platform that everyone can see success with. So let's look at you know, some other questions. I think most of you are familiar with LinkedIn, and how it works and the ability to post updates and create articles. But the first thing everyone says to me, is, how often should we be posting? And the answer is, there's no good answer, unfortunately. But it's really important to be relevant, rather than being frequent. So our view at Napier is that you should post as often as you've got something useful and interesting and valuable to say. And for different people, that will mean very different posting frequencies. So there certainly is no ideal, or they typically we see people posting, you know, somewhere between a couple of times a week, to every two weeks in the b2b tech industry. And to be honest, if you can't post something interesting, useful, you know, every other week, then perhaps you ought to look at a little bit about what sort of information you're going to share because you need some frequency to keep engagement with your audience. It's really important to understand your approach and we're going to talk about a model we use here at Napier have different personas.

So different types of LinkedIn users that all offer different approaches and different ways to engage on LinkedIn. And there is no best or right way to work with LinkedIn, it very much depends upon you know what your company wants to achieve the goals of your company or your organisation. and the value you can add. And obviously, you know, if you're in marketing, you're probably not going to be posting content that relates to, you know, in-depth issues around developing software, for example, you're going to talk at a higher level, so it's about the value you can add. And also, it's about the audience you're trying to reach and making sure that you reach an audience that is important and influential to your business. But also you reach that audience with content they care about. Now, the interesting thing about LinkedIn is that when you share something, it initially gets shared with your network, and then will get shared with other individuals networks, if they engage with it. So if they like it, or comment on it. And this typically means that a lot of people look at the algorithm and say, well, the more people in my network, the more likely people are engaged, the better it's going to be for me. But actually, as the graph here shows, there really is very little correlation between the number of connections you have on LinkedIn. And the average amount of engagement. This was some research done for an organization called the agency collective, and actually found a slight negative correlation. Although, of course, with agency managers, there tended to be people with very, very large networks of thousands of individuals. But certainly, once you get above 1000, individuals, it certainly seems that there's very little benefit in increasing your network size. And the reason for this is you're then not sharing content with people who really know and care about you. So a smaller network of a few hundred can actually get those early engagements. And this can drive your post to go viral and be much more effective than having a huge network. So a really important takeaway is not to focus on the size of your network, but to focus on the quality.

The other really important thing this is fairly obvious is what you're going to post and this is where we use the personas I mentioned earlier, there are a number of different approaches to posting. And the approach you take will have different impacts in terms of you know how much engagement you might get, but equally, also how much time you have to spend.

 

So, the first persona we're going to talk about is a PR publisher. This is a persona that simply shares content that looks good from a PR perspective. So quite often news and announcements from their organisation. And sometimes, you know, information about the wider industry in which they work. This is actually a great persona, because it's a relatively low time and low effort approach, because all you're doing is sharing content that may already be available, you can see here. In fact, we've got Petra, who's sharing content that's been published on the Tektronix, Germany company page. So literally just resharing content. And it's easy to dismiss this as just, you know, reshape existing content, but actually, it's incredibly valuable to do. And it's massively underestimated, particularly amongst sales teams. So, when you share content on your company page, and we're talking about this a little bit later, typically, it has a very limited reach. If you can get people within your organization, and particularly the sales teams who've got great contacts and great networks, within customers and prospects, that can massively amplify the impact of content that you're sharing on your company page. So, although the PR publisher is an easy and simple persona to be, it's actually can also be incredibly valuable. Of course, the PR persona isn't really talking about themselves. So, there's lots of different personas that really build you as a brand rather than you as a channel to share information.

So, the first one we talked about is the storyteller. and here we can see someone talking about actually getting rejected from Google for a scholarship. Typically, the storyteller will tell stories that are, you know, either very honest, very brutal, maybe self-deprecating, as this example does, or simply some funny stories to engage people. And quite often, the storytelling approach is also coupled with some sort of clickbait. headline, it's great, it's really interesting. It does require someone who fairly obviously is good at telling stories. So it's not an approach for everyone. But if you're an organization where you can openly talk about, you know, some of the challenges and mistakes that the organization makes, and you'd like writing in the story format, then this is a good persona to engage people, it's highly engaging. People love to hear the honest the truth, the behind the scenes stories.

The next one is the thought leader. And I think in technology, this term thought leader becomes very hackneyed. So, we have a very specific view of what we mean when we talk about thought leaders on LinkedIn. And for us, a thought leader is someone who researches ideas. So, they may be looking at data or run experiments, and they create their own ideas, and their own data that therefore results in an opinion. So you know, quite often these thought leaders, you know, curate some information, and then generate some original content on top of it. And I think, you know, the thought leader is, is a great persona to be, particularly if you're in a fast moving industry, where things are changing all the time. And everybody's interested in the latest research. However, it goes without saying that to generate real thought leadership, on LinkedIn, you've got to generate new insights that other people haven't shared previously. And so that requires a huge amount of work, including basic research to actually generate data that you can share. In some industries, it's a lot easier. So for example, if you run a company that offers an email platform, for example, it's very easy to do research on the length of subject headlines and the open rates. And, you know, really basic data like that. But if you're working in an industry where you're making complex technology that goes into large systems, like many of you guys are, that it's very hard to generate that research, and therefore very hard to generate your own thought leadership. The next persona I'm going to talk about is someone we call a strategist, it's really common in agencies, and actually, is almost non-existent in b2b technology, to the point that when I was looking for an example, I couldn't find an example of someone taking this approach in b2b tech. So I think it's a huge opportunity. But it's also difficult because we are by our natures working in quite a conservative industry. And the strategist basically provides analysis and commentary on what's happening in their industry. So they are continually talking about other brands, what they're doing their products, and providing analysis that helps you understand what these brands are doing and how they're serving the industry. In conservative industries, it's obviously very difficult to talk about your competitors. And I think this is why we almost never see it and b2b technology. In the agency world, it's very, very common, and every agency loves to have a commentary on either another agency's campaign, or indeed what's happening to a brand that they'd like to work with. So it works very well in the agency world, it's very hard to transfer into b2b technology. Although I'd love to see it done one time.

Our next platform is the knowledge share, the knowledge share is actually quite like the PR persona I shared earlier, where we're sharing information. And typically, the differences that knowledge share, is actually sharing news about the industry, rather than sharing news about their organization. So that is the primary difference between the two. But both of these personas are simply curating information. So to gain influence and actually see your posts you know, shared across an industry, if you can share knowledge and information other people don't have. It's an incredibly effective way to actually become an influencer on LinkedIn without spending a huge amount of time generating your own content. So those are the kind of personas we look at.

It's worth also just mentioning the content types, and I did allude them earlier. And fundamentally, there are three sorts of content that you can place on LinkedIn, other than your profile page. And the first is articles, articles, in theory are unlimited. Although various people have run tests and found there are character limits on articles, but basically any sensible length, article about technology can be posted as an article. articles we find have much less engagement and are not favoured by the LinkedIn algorithm, which is very interesting. So LinkedIn tends not to push them, you get a little bit of engagement from them, but not a huge amount. However, articles have a massive advantage in the articles at evergreen content, they'll stay associated with your profile. And because you'd typically write fewer articles, you'll actually see those articles near the top and quite often on your homepage. So we definitely recommend that everyone who wants to build their profile on LinkedIn, generate some articles that they post on the platform.

Most of the content on LinkedIn is post. So that can be links to others content, or indeed links to your own content. You know, obviously, don't be too promotional. If you're just seen as outlets selling, you won't get engagement, you won't build an audience. But you can certainly share content that exists either on your company's website, in the industry media, or perhaps from analysts. And these posts are the main body of what people do on LinkedIn. So pushing posts out is a great way to share information with your audience and build that influence. There is a downside to post is that LinkedIn does tend to prefer content that is on the LinkedIn platform. So certainly when you post, you shouldn't be putting multiple links into the text that you use along with your URL. So just share one URL, don't put multiple links in. When you're posting content through the post system. It's important also to know that video is clearly and without doubt the most effective content today on LinkedIn. So it generates far more engagement than any text based or image based content. I did say there were three sorts of content.

The last thing and something I think that is very important not to forget, is the engagement that you conduct on LinkedIn. So this is the liking the sharing and the commenting. And what we found is that people who are active on LinkedIn, and are engaging with other people's content, as well as promoting their own, are far more effective than people who simply push content out and don't engage with other people's content. So I guess a lot of the audience, perhaps isn't the younger tik tok generation. And one of the things that I certainly heard, as a bit of frustration was when LinkedIn started introducing hashtags. So obviously, everyone likes a good hashtag. It's a great way to summarise what you're doing, for example, trying to hashtag success. But interestingly, on LinkedIn, unlike many other platforms, it appears that you don't need to use hashtags. And this is some research that showed a surprising spike on three hashtags. I suspect that was because people who are good at LinkedIn just tend to try for three rather than three being the magic number. But the second most impactful number of hashtags was zero. So, whilst hashtags are good, it's quite clear as you start stuffing or post full of hashtags, you'll actually see the engagement drop for your posts. So, if you want to use hashtags, absolutely. But I would certainly recommend not using more than three, as a maximum number of hashtags.

The last thing said about content is to be creative. This is something one of our clients has done. And it looks like, you know, a fabulous glossy page, talking about a new technology. In fact, this is their press release. And all this client smart much of technology has done is use a tool to create a much more engaging format. So they've pulled out key quotes from the release. They've got some really striking imagery. And then they've literally just pasted the reason it doesn't look like a press release. It feels much more engaging. And so certainly, I would say if you're looking to link back to content, look at how you can make that content more interesting and more engaging. And something like this approach is absolutely fantastic. I think its incredibly creative approach, and it's something that I think takes about 20 to 30 minutes per release to do to create this layout. So it's very straightforward, and if you want information on how this is done, then please do ask us afterwards.

So just as a summary, I mean, how do you get engagement and obviously, like any other social network, if people aren't liking or sharing your post it, it won't get shared by the network, the level of interest is judged by the interaction. So, um, you need to make sure that people engage with your content. So some fairly obvious things. The first is, you know, be social doing engage with other people, if you engage other people's content, they are much more likely to engage with yours. Secondly, being boring doesn't work. And this goes back to the frequency, be relevant, be interesting, just don't worry about frequency. And don't feel you have to post something and end up posting a boring post, just because you want to fill in a slot, because you need to post twice a week, it just doesn't work. And a really good tip for LinkedIn is to give the inside of you. LinkedIn is a social media platform. It's not a formal means of communication. And lots of your customers and potential customers love to see the inside story. So just draw back a little bit on the formal corporate approach. And give a little more of a fun and interesting view about what it's like to be inside that company. And then lastly, you know, where you can have fun and obviously understand, you know, this is very dependent upon your, your industry. You don't want to be, you know, crazy and fun and wacky, and then try and sell life support systems that isn't going to work. So you need to have fun within the context of what fun will be defined as for your industry not to be the craziest, or the most out there person on LinkedIn.

The second half of our presentation, we're going to talk a little bit about company pages. And company pages, had a bit of a bad rap recently from LinkedIn. Lots of people are feeling that the value of the company page has been diminished because LinkedIn certainly is not promoting company posts, as much as they're promoting posts from individuals. However, we still think company pages are very important not only as a, effectively a directory page that gives an overview of your company, but also the platform on which you can build to get a social presence for your brand or your company. So, the first thing to say is that company pages aren't quite as simple. There are actually two sorts of pages you can create for your company. The first is called a company page is the official page of the company. And it's basically an overview of the whole organization. The second type of page is called a showcase page, and you can create a number of showcase pages that focus maybe on a specific market, or a specific product or group of products. The great thing about this is that you can use the company page to broadcast more general information about your organization, the company's accomplishments, and then you can use the showcase pages to narrow down and focus on specific audiences and deliver tailor messages for people who are interested in specific areas of your business. So this is a very exciting way to get more focused with your LinkedIn activity.

So here's a couple of examples. We've got the Napier company page on the left. And then on the right, we've got a showcase page, where we talk about our content generation activities. And what we do is we post you know, typically slightly different information on the content generation page that we post on the company page. Although we do quite often post content on where they're widely applicable. When you create the company page, and when you create the showcase page, it's really important to make it easy to find and this is a simple, straightforward SEO job. So it's all about using the right keywords that people are going to be searching for when they try and find a company like yours. So very much thinking about what people would type into the search box that you'd like to generate your company as a as a result. And as a tip here we'd certainly recommend you some of these keywords in the tagline that you can put into both the company page and also in your showcase pages.

It's really important to test when you when you use LinkedIn, and certainly you can do this on an individual personal page, but it's much more easy to see what's working on a company page. So you can test things like frequency, the topics of work and the format's very, very easily. So we'd strongly recommend that you test because every audience is different, although as rules of thumb, you know, if you produce content, that's slide based PowerPoint, and you create SlideShare presentations from that, or you create stories around your product or service rather than just talking about the products and service itself. or indeed, video content. And behind the scenes content, which I've mentioned earlier, all of these will perform typically better than average. So it's all about creating content that's gonna perform well.

Now, I mentioned that the company pages aren't emphasized posts on company pages aren't as emphasized as much as they used to be, and LinkedIn is more focused on posts from individuals. This is certainly true, but actually, you can use your team to amplify posts on your company page. And it's incredibly important to expand the reach of your company page, by using employees and particularly sales to share comments and engage with that content. Because whenever they do that, that content then has the opportunity to be shown to their network, as well as the people following your company page. So it's incredibly powerful. I would say you know, it is also incredibly difficult. Most companies struggle to get really good engagement, even from the sales team, I have a lot to gain from sharing content. But if you can make sure that the content you offer is you know, really valuable to customers, and also high quality, that's going to help your team share, as well as giving a good impression of the company to the wider audience.

Company pages have something else that's quite unique. LinkedIn will let you target posts. So this is incredibly useful. If you serve a range of different industries and can't have showcase pages for each industry. Or, for example, you want to post content that's applicable only to one country, or one region. So, you simply need to select the drop down when you create a post and change it from anyone to targeting an audience. And then you can select from any one of these demographics. So you can say that you only want to send this post to people with a marketing job function, for example, or an engineering job function or a purchasing job function. And you can select language. But actually, you know, one of the tips we recommend, rather than selecting language, actually, quite often, it's better to select by location when you're talking about language. So sometimes that can get better targeting than you do through language, because we see some people on LinkedIn defaulting to English where maybe that's not their only language. So that's a really quick updates on, you know, company pages and how to make use of them. And we really believe that there's a big future in company pages, but it does require people in the organisation to amplify the content you're sharing through that company page.

Let's look at you know, finishing the webinar with just a few ideas of how you can improve your LinkedIn presence very easily. So here are a few tips and tricks to help you boost the engagement.

And the first is customization. I mean, please don't underestimate the value of even asking the audience what content they want to see. So, sharing questions on LinkedIn that lets you understand the content that's most likely to generate engagement. And perhaps more effective than asking people their opinions is actually to look at the data. And so absolutely, analytics and data are incredibly important. And do feel free to, you know, either alter or update existing content to make it more topical, more relevant and more interesting. And I would say as well that with LinkedIn, it's really hard sometimes to get data. LinkedIn has very limited API's to allow you to access data. So, it can be quite a manual process to understand what's working and what isn't. But it really is worth the effort.

The next tip is thinking about your company page as a lead generation page, a lot of people who land on your company page will land there through search. So, it's very easy to think of a company page as an about us page. And actually, there's an opportunity to change that and make the page much more a lead gen platform. So thinking about putting offers on the page, you know, making sure you have the complete profile, of course, to increase the likelihood of discoverability. But also think about what a customer would want right at the start their journey, when they find you and perhaps know little about you, what information will they need? And how can you get them to start engaging with the company, and ultimately, generate contact details and drive them to become leads. So really think about the customer journey when you build your company page, and LinkedIn has an interesting feature that we definitely recommend trying, it's possible to put a button on all your forms, this is not forms on LinkedIn, or they can do this on LinkedIn. But this is any form on your website, you can put a button that will auto fill people's details with the information on their LinkedIn profile. It's great because it's a one button fill, and it certainly increases conversion rates on landing pages. However, I would say you must test this, because we found that whilst it can increase completion rates, on the forms and conversion rates on landing pages. And actually, sometimes these autofill forms can generate low quality leads. So when we've tested this as Napier, we've actually found it better to leave the button off. But other people in other industries have absolutely found the autofill button to be incredibly valuable. So we'd certainly recommend, you know, running some tests to see if the autofill button can actually increase your lead generation activity.

I mean, obviously, you want to promote content that builds engagement, not only because engagement is a great indication that people are enjoying and reading your content, but also engagement is what allows amplification of your content. So, it's all about you know, doing something that's a little bit different. So maybe that's a How to post a post with tips in the title, perhaps it's a top 10 list. Perhaps it's a post that builds on some research your organization has done perhaps has infographics or video. Or perhaps it's something fun and different. For those in the audience who are not engineers, but marketers by background, I can assure you asking a D type connector, whether it's dead or not really is very funny to engineers, even though may not be funny to anyone else in the world.

The next tip is to pay for promotion. And we've talked almost entirely about organic LinkedIn in this presentation. But I think that you know, the important thing to remember is that LinkedIn is a business. It's a big business with some of the smartest people in the world working for it., and their job is to make sure that the platform extracts money from other businesses. So, we would absolutely recommend spending money. It's very hard to get traction, particularly organic company posts. But also, LinkedIn is incredibly good at targeting particular audiences very, very accurately, and is probably the best ABM says account-based marketing platform that we're using at the moment in Europe. And quite often with our clients, LinkedIn advertising generates the best return on investment of any advertising. So it is valuable in itself. But it's also important to be part of your mix. If you want to get organic success, so we recommend a mix of payment, and also focus on organic LinkedIn as well.

And then the last tip, and I think I've mentioned this a couple of times, but don't forget, it's social media. It is slightly different from Facebook. We had a client once who said to me, they said, you know, you've got to understand with Facebook marketing, that people go onto Facebook to waste time. And the job of brands on Facebook is to help them waste time. And I think that's great. It is different on LinkedIn. People do go on to LinkedIn because they want to learn, and they want to find out what's happening in their industries. So it is certainly you know, less laid back less fun than Facebook, but it's still social media. And so this is really important to make sure you create a social feeling. So comments on others to actually build an audience of people who want to come in and your content. And also, this is something we see people failing to do. And it is a really big mistake, definitely respond to comments on any of your posts, that is a massive, that generates a massive impact in terms of creating future engagement. So that's our bonus tip, be social, be friendly, and just go out and talk to people on LinkedIn.

So that concludes the presentation, the overview. As I mentioned earlier, if people have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them. I just have a look and see if there's any questions that have come through on the chat so far.

Okay, so we have a couple of questions come through. So the first one asks about showcase pages, and whether showcase pages are free to use?

And the answer is yes, showcase a showcase pages are hundred percent free, there is no cost in doing that. So they're incredibly helpful, because they give you a another way to segment your audience. So not only can you segment by choosing an audience when you post, but you can also choose to post a particular showcase page. And it's absolutely free. There's no cost involved.

Another question is whether there's an ideal time to post. And this is something we get asked quite a lot of great question. And I think the answer is quite often, there is an ideal time to post. But it is very dependent upon, you know which industry you're in, and the type of audience you're trying to reach. So I saw a presentation by LinkedIn last year, where they were talking about somewhere between seven and eight in the morning, particularly in the States, as being the ideal time to post to get engagement because people tend to look at their phones, and try and work out, you know what's going on in the world first thing in the morning. Now, of course, this was American research. And it's not that simple to post between seven and eight, because America spans multiple time zones. So it gives you an indication of the challenge of winter post. My recommendation is definitely to, to run some tests. And it's something to be honest, we don't have data on since the COVID crisis hit, and people started working from home. But I suspect that optimum times may be changing as people change their work habits.

Okay, and then the last question I've got is whether the slides and the audio will be available after the event? And the answer is yes, absolutely. We will save the web recording of the webinar. We're recording it now. And it will be available as an on-demand replay.

Okay, I've just seen some more questions come in. So I'm just going to pick another couple that I can answer. Okay, so we have another question about targeting. So being asked whether you can target regular updates, as well as sponsored updates? And the answer is yes, you absolutely can target regular updates. The sponsored update gives you slightly more options in the way you target. But if you have a look when you post on a company page. And just to be clear, you can only target on company page, not on your personal update. And you will have the drop down which lets you select the audience so you can build a custom audience. So that's absolutely possible to target organic posts.

And we have a great question actually about the inside view. So I think maybe I didn't explain this very well. This is something a lot of agencies do very well. And I would say a lot of b2b tech companies don't do at all is provide a view of what it's like inside the company. And so this can range across all sorts of different things. So it's anything that your customers might be interested in. So customers, you know, certainly might be interested in, you know, how you design and develop products and the engineers that do that. They might be interested in the manufacturing, but also they might be interested in things like strategic decisions you make you know, if you choose to launch a product or not launch a product, that sort of thing is is fascinating to your customers. Obviously, you know, you need to be very careful about the sort of information you share. But the more information you can share that kind of gives that, that context about why the company does certain things, and also that the viewers to who's doing it and gives the company a real personality, all of this, you know, really helps to make your customers more engaged and more interested in your organization.

Okay, and now, I think this is the last question. And this is a great question. This is a question on groups. We haven't covered groups, mainly due to time in this webinar. But for those of you don't know, you can form groups within LinkedIn, that allow people to discuss topics. And I think the answer to groups is somewhat like everything else, if you've got the time to create a group and manage a group and ensure that the group is having, you know, high quality engaged discussions, some of the groups are amazing. And the reality is the vast majority of groups in LinkedIn, have either, you know, fallen almost into, you know, complete lack of use, or, you know, really don't have high quality discussions. So if you can build a group on LinkedIn, that has the right people who are prepared to share information, groups are fantastic. And they are an excellent way to, to talk to people who are either customers or potential customers. And particularly if you build a group around a key topic in our industry, that can be a great way to build not only your company's reputation, but also drive sales leads. One thing worth mentioning about groups is, you know, I've said it takes a lot of effort to actually build a group. And you can actually target groups, you know, for example, if you want to target a paid sponsored post, you can actually target that sponsored post to a group that somebody else runs. And this can be incredibly powerful to reach other people's audiences. So it's an interesting approach on sponsored posts, and certainly something worth considering if you're interested in the idea of a group, but you don't have the resources to moderate and manage and maintain that group.

So thanks ever so much for listening. I hope everybody found it useful. Thanks for so many great questions. Really good, insightful questions about LinkedIn. And as I say, we will make this presentation available as a recording, so you'll be able to see the presentation online, download it whenever you want. And if you have any other questions, please do feel free to contact me. You can email me at Mike@napierb2b.com. Thanks very much, and I look forward to talking to you when we do our next webinar.


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EETech Announce Media Partnership with 21ic.com

EETech has announced a new partnership with the largest Chinese electrical engineering community, 21ic.com. This move makes EETech the exclusive media partner to 21ic for North American and European companies seeking engagement with the Chinese market.

21ic currently provides valuable content across 15 industry verticals for the Chinese electrical engineering community, covering news products, applications, and trends.  With more than 1.1 million registered users and 12 million monthly page views, 21ic provides leading online resources for the EE community in China.

Adam LaBarbera, co-founder, and CEO of EETech commented “This partnership provides an incredible opportunity to expand our community of engineers and support a growing market. 21ic is the largest electronics website in China. Partnering to unify our audience and deliver meaningful content is the foundation for our continued growth as a key resource for the global engineering community.”

“This partnership enables EETech to provide greater support and a wider range of reliable, quality resources for our growing EE community,” added Bob Dumas, Vice President of Sales at EETech.

For more information on this partnership, please view EETech's website here. 


Semtech's Lauren Roady - Marketing Expert Interview

Lauren Roady, Digital Corporate Marketing Manager at Semtech, is the latest marketer to take part in our marketing expert interview series. From Lauren's top tips for marketing automation campaigns to her view on the 3 biggest marketing challenges, we asked Lauren a variety of questions to learn everything we could about our latest marketing expert.

In which marketing activities do you specialise?

I’ve had the great opportunity to support everything from event marketing to sales enablement in my career so far, but I’ve found my happy place in digital marketing analytics. Digital marketing itself is an enormous landscape, so “specialty” is probably a misnomer. There are so many hats to wear in this field, every day brings a new challenge, plus the standards and toolsets are constantly changing. I’m a content creator, UX designer and statistician rolled into one. In school, I excelled at math and statistics, and love a good Pivot table, so the data analytics that come with digital marketing are like a warm cup of tea for me. You see a lot from this behind-the-scenes position in an organization; people outside of marketing communications have no idea the amount of elbow grease that can go into a single campaign. It’s rewarding to be able to measure the results and celebrate with the hard-working team that made it happen.

How did you get to this point in your career? Was it planned, or did you just take opportunities when they appeared?

In college I studied graphic communication with an emphasis in print and image management, earning B.S. from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, one of the few graphic communication programs in the U.S. I love print because it is a fantastic intersection of design and technology. There’s an amazing world of engineering and science behind those tiny little dots on paper that make a printed image. From packaging to signage, print is all around us every day. While I didn’t choose to make a career out of printing, that knowledge is advantageous in marketing communications where we are constantly using imagery and visual experience to communicate or enhance our message.

By sheer luck, I’ve had the great opportunity to contribute to high growth businesses in earlier roles in my career. In a previous role, I rocketed from the first marketing professional on payroll to the manager of a department covering complete in-house services for multiple business units in just a few short years. That level of exposure to continuous challenges and growing responsibilities gave me the opportunity to sample from every specialty within marketing communications. That experience wearing many hats in a high growth organization gave me the flexibility to pursue a more specialized role in digital marketing.

What are your top tips for a great marketing automation campaign?

  1. Set it but do not forget it. Messaging changes, market maturity evolves and new content is constantly becoming available. Drip campaigns should be revisited on a regular basis just to refresh content alone. Performance metrics should also be reviewed to optimize deliverability and engagement.
  2. B2B can learn a lot from B2C. Every morning I open my personal email and delight in the clever campaigns that consumer brands are running to get my attention. It’s inspiring and challenges my paradigm in B2B. Though the sales and buying process for B2B and B2C are starkly different, people are still people and principles of brand awareness and thought leadership still apply when influencing prospects.

What have been the biggest changes to B2B marketing in the last 3 years?

The bar is continuously rising on best practices. By my observation, personalization was the golden ticket in the Tenties (2010-2019). But now segmentation and personalization are a bare minimum, and new privacy laws rolled out in recent years (GDPR, CCPA) make leveraging personally identifying data a delicate dance to maintain consumer trust.

The vast amount of tools in the market have also been game-changing. What sets “good” marketing apart is not just a clever marketer any longer, but the variety and complexity of tools at his or her disposal. The IBM Marketing Trends report, which I adore, coined the term “martecheter” in its 2019 issue. A martecheter is a technically savvy marketer, and IBM states this is one of the greatest marketing advantages.

What do you think will be the biggest change in the way you approach your campaigns in the next 3 years?

It’s very easy to stay siloed in a warm a cozy marketing communication bubble and get lost in the metrics of digital marketing. The challenge for professionals in my role is to come up for air and get a reality check by aligning with sales and business development, to more effectively fill the lead funnel.

In the martech world, I am very interested to see how artificial intelligence will be further applied to everyday marketing tools. Advancements in natural language processing and search sentiment, for example, will be interesting to watch.

What are your 3 biggest marketing challenges?

  1. Demonstrating return on investment. Marketers create so many touchpoints for a brand, many of those offline or outside of our marketing automation platforms, making it difficult to attribute campaign efforts to revenues.
  2. Sales and marketing alignment. Has a B2B marketer ever answered this question without mentioning sales and marketing alignment? This is a classic challenge, particularly for corporate marketing where long term thought leadership and awareness objectives are often prioritized over near term sales conversion objectives.
  3. Balancing experimentation with known formulas for success. Trying a new strategy, tool or process can often be disruptive, but well worth the temporary discomfort. Making mental space for experimentation is hard, but necessary in order to evolve and deliver new value to our customers.

Tell us about the best campaign you have ever run.

Sometimes the most outstanding campaigns can be shockingly simple. At Semtech we launched a campaign offering side by side comparison of two connectivity platforms for the Internet of Things (IoT). Campaign elements included a gated infographic, blog, and week-long social media campaign. The organic traffic and social engagement were so outstanding, we realized it would be a strong candidate for a pay per click (PPC) campaign. The content itself was simple and low budget to create. Years later, whenever this campaign is reshared on social media, it’s almost as powerful as the first time. The key to success with this campaign was simply the buzzworthiness of the keywords.

Which campaign didn’t work well, but taught you a lot?

Early in my career, I made the mistake of allowing too much human error to influence campaign reporting. I’ve learned that unless you’re using technology and automation to measure a result, you should expect nothing, and certainly should not rely on manually collected or subjective data. It’s humbling when a campaign fails because it reminds me that my preconceived notions or opinions are nice, but what really matters is the data. I keep my favorite quote written on my office whiteboard:  “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” - quality guru W. Edwards Deming

If there was one thing you could change about marketing automation systems, what would it be?

I’m quite pleased with some of the new features I see being rolled out around AI. For example, when an email campaign has an above average unsubscribe rate, I like it when my marketing automation system proactively points that out for me and tells me what I could do to improve in the future. There are seemingly endless metrics for me to track, so when a system is smart enough to flag anomalies and bring them to my attention, and then go the extra mile to tell me what to do about it, that system becomes more than a tool, it becomes a critical asset. Analysis paralysis is a real problem in digital marketing, and AI can help direct my attention to where it will make the biggest impact.

If you could get more marketing budget, what would you spend it on?

Data integration and sanitation. The volume and variety of data within an organization and its tools (plus external resources) are so powerful. Harnessing all that data, ensuring it’s clean and reliable, and turning it into actionable insights is the stuff marketers dreams are made of.

And a little bit about you… What do you like to do in your spare time?

I live in beautiful Camarillo, California with my cattle dog and two cats. I enjoy road trips and hikes with my dog, cooking for my family, and reading my way through the public library. In a never-ending pursuit of craftiness, I am teaching myself to sew in 2020.

What career would you have chosen if you couldn’t work in marketing?

I’d probably try to find some way to make a full-time career out of writing Yelp reviews. I love giving feedback, and appreciate when others leave thoughtful, objective reviews for me to read when evaluating destinations, dining, entertainment, etc.

If you had three wishes from a genie, what would you ask for?

  1. Apparition (a la Harry Potter) – it’s 2020, why are we still wasting time on long plane rides and sitting in traffic?
  2. Three more hours per day (one uninterrupted work hour, one for personal life, one for sleep)
  3. A real-world Ctrl+Z button (with unlimited use, of course)

 


Vicor and Napier Awarded Online Banner Marketing Excellence Certificate by Electronics Weekly

We were delighted to be recognized by Electronics Weekly, alongside our client Vicor, who presented us with a certificate of excellence for online banner marketing 2019.

The certificate was awarded in recognition of outstanding performance and engagement by achieving the highest MPU total number of clicks, and highest Wallpaper click-through rates.

We would like to congratulate Vicor on this fantastic result!

 

 


Value of Video in 2020

Over the last few years, its clear that video has become a key marketing tactic, and with the digital landscape continually shifting, marketers have no choice but to deliver their content the way consumers want it.

Yet, some marketers are still hesitant in investing a significant amount of their budget in video. If your still wondering whether a video investment is right for you, check out our infographic below that shares some key video marketing stats, to prove why 2020 is the right time to make your first marketing video.

 


ETN Announces Embedded Conference Finland for 2020

ETN has announced its 4th annual Embedded Conference Finland for 2020. Taking place on Thursday 4th June at the Lighthouse in Akavatalo in Helsinki, this years conference will focus on the topics of embedded devices and code security.

The event will feature a technical programme and keynote speakers, with Jarno Limnéll a cyber security professor at Aalto University already confirmed, who will provide an introduction to security and why it is such a critical factor.

ETN are currently looking for sponsors, presenters and exhibitors, so if you'd like to get involved, get in touch with Editor-in-Chief Veijo Ojanperä at vo@etn.fi, or Sales Manager Anne-Charlotte Sparrvik at ac@etn.fi for more information.


Napier Named in Top 10 HubSpot Consulting/Service Companies

Here at Napier its no secret that we are a HubSpot agency partner, and as such huge advocates of the HubSpot platform. This is why we were delighted to be approached by Marketing Tech Outlook and asked to feature in their special edition of the 'Top 10 HubSpot Consulting/Service Companies' for 2019.

After careful consideration, we decided the most valuable information we could share with their readers, is how Napier uses a unique approach to help clients utilise tools like HubSpot to increase the speed prospects travel through the funnel.

To read our full article please click here, and why not get in touch to let us know your thoughts on our approach, or to find out more about how we can help you.

 

 


Theo Van Gelder Announces Retirement

We were sad to hear that Theo Van Gelder, a well known figure and journalist in the electronics industry, will be retiring at the end of this year.

With Dutch publishers continuing to struggle in an increasingly marginal market, Theo has made the decision to retire early and focus on sailing and his many other hobbies from the beginning of 2020.

We wish Theo all the best for the future, and a happy retirement!


Napier's First Trends Webinar

Here at Napier we've decided to take a new approach to sharing our insights of the industry, with our first recorded trends webinar! Our webinar focuses on the latest marketing news and trends including:

  • Some good news about the financial performance of the B2B publishing companies in Europe
  • The implication of layoffs at Aspencore, the largest global publisher of titles for the electronics design industry
  • News from Inbound 2019 about the growth of Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
  • Other ideas from Inbound 2019, including LinkedIn tips and sales emails as part of marketing nurturing workflows

Give our recorded webinar a listen today and get in touch to let us know your thoughts! You can also follow along with our webinar transcript featured in this blog below.

Webinar 1: B2B Marketing Trends October 2019 Transcript

Hannah: Hello everyone, welcome to our first recorded webinar on the latest trends in the industry. Trends in the industry something we look at quite regularly so we thought would be a good topic for us to chat about. I'm Hannah, the Business Development Manager at Napier, and I'm with Mike, Managing Director of Napier. Mike, let's start with what you think is the most interesting research, we’ve completed this quarter.

Mike: Well, the really interesting thing we did was we actually asked B2B publishers how well they're doing. And I think, you know despite what you hear, and clearly the market isn't easy. But things are not as bad as you might think. And in fact, of all the B2B publishers we talked to 68% grew revenues suggesting they're all in pretty good health.

Hannah: Were you surprised by the results. Is it what you were expecting?

Mike: No, I think when you listen to publishers you do hear you know tales of woe and you know clearly as I say it's not an easy market, but for 68% of grown revenue was pretty impressive. And in fact, only one of the publishers out of the 25 that replied, actually saw a decline in revenue more than 5%. So, you know, even though the guys that lost in revenue didn't lose very much.

Hannah: What about the US is this just research that reflects what's going on in Europe, or does it count for the USA as well?

Mike: So, the truth is, is this is just a European survey. We did look up both Western and Eastern Europe. But I suspect the story is very different in the US and actually one of the things we'll talk about is what's happening with one of the big US publishers in a minute, so I think the US is somewhat different to Europe.

Hannah: So, there has obviously been a big shift in the US, with Aspencore can you tell us a bit more about that?

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. So, the US does seem to be having a tough time, I mean, obviously Aspencore is a global publisher. So, they have titles around the globe, I think 21 IC is one of their better-known titles over in China. But what's happened is they've let go some of their most well-known journalists so people like Rick Merrick, Clive Maxfield and Steve Ravitch have left the publishing house, and in Europe actually Jurgen Hubner who I think is reputed to be you know one of the best publishers over here has also been made redundant. And at the same time one of their I think best known salespeople Bob Dumas also resigned in the state so a lot of people leaving.

Hannah: So why is this significant like how does this affect the future of Aspencore?

Mike: Well I think it's interesting, I mean, most people believe that Aspencore probably isn't profitable and some of the comments that Yoko Rashida made when she was talking about these layoffs suggest that's the case. But I think clearly there's a new editorial strategy. I suspect they're probably looking less to generate high-quality in-depth articles in house. They're more focused on news and without a doubt I think they've got a greater focus on growing their business in the Far East, and all of these may be valid things to do so it may not be a bad idea but obviously for those of us in the West it's disappointing to see, you know, such well known editors, leaving their jobs.

Hannah: Very disappointing so obviously saying we've lost some of the best journalist’s kind of within the industry. What is the impact of this? Are we going to see any change?  Do you think the quality of content is going to decline, or they just put in the trust and that they're still going to produce the same level of content without these journalists?

Mike: I think you know; it's going to be hard to generate the kind of quality of content these guys wrote because they were genuinely some of the best in the industry. Having said that, without a doubt, there are still some great journalists left at EETimes so they still have some very strong resources in terms of generating their own content. But it will be interesting to see. I think perhaps more interesting is the impact that being owned by Arrow has had. So, initially I think Arrow was making use of the publications, to both grow their database, and also influence potential lines. And now I think you know that the reality has come home that under Arrow, the publications aren't making money, and clearly Arrow as a public company needs to do something about it. So I suspect you know there's a little bit of reorganization, a little bit of cost saving and perhaps a little bit of change of strategy as well.

Hannah: Well, it's definitely something that we need to keep our eye on and see what happens in the future.

Mike:  Definitely I agree, it's going to be interesting to see what the next step is from Arrow I mean hopefully they'll continue investing and the publications will start growing again.

Hannah: Well, let’s move away from the electronic press industry for a moment and focus on some of your marketing trends findings. I know you recently attended the HubSpot Inbound event and gained some great insight into the continued growth with Account Based marketing.

Mike: Yeah. It's interesting, actually I read recently that I think it was the VP of Marketing for Pardot has decided that account based marketing should now be called account centric marketing and I always feel that when you've got something that people start rebranding then clearly it's kind of hit the mainstream. And to me, you know, the big thing we saw was the size of ABM campaigns and companies where they saw success with ABM growing the number of target customers in their ABM campaigns.

Hannah: And how are they doing that, what are they doing to target, you know, bigger clients on a on a higher level?

Mike: I think actually ABM is a lot simpler in most instances than people think. Conceptually people are targeting customers either through direct mail which is clearly easy, email if they have contacts or perhaps programmatically using, you know, a platform like LinkedIn, which is clearly one of the biggest for ABM. So, the process is fairly simple. I think what is difficult is scaling up. For example, I listened to a presentation by Sigstr that actually developed 1000 customised landing pages, each one targeting a different specific account, and clearly you know generating one landing page is fairly straightforward, generating 1000, even with tools that are available today is incredibly complicated.

Hannah: And would you say you know spending all that time building these landing pages is actually worth the results that they've gained from the experience or is it just a waste of time?

Mike: Well I guess that's the question we're all wondering about, you know, certainly when you listen to the presentations people are talking about fantastic ROI from their ABM campaigns. And that is, to be honest, backed up by industry research and also backed up by own experience. So, you know, I think it's still early days I think it's very hard to compare, but my honest opinion is  that ABM will be one of the most effective channels in terms of ROI going forward, and certainly something everyone should be looking at.

Hannah: That's a really interesting insight Mike and I'm sure other companies are also seeing great results from ABM. But let's move on, and why don't we have a chat about marketing silos.

Mike: Sure. I mean this is something I've been talking about for a while, you know, previously companies always thought in terms of the way content was distributed because distribution typically was expensive. But now, I mean increasingly as an agency, we are thinking about content development and content distribution as being our two core competencies. And that's really because distribution is becoming easier with digital technology, but content development is still time consuming and expensive particularly high-quality content development. And so, it's so important to, once you've developed something to be able to reuse it across a multitude of different tactics.

Hannah: So, moving forward as an agency, what are we trying to do to cater to clients on this?

Mike: Well, I think the main thing we're trying to do is help clients think beyond, you know, a campaign is a particular tactic, and think much more about reaching a target audience, and all the different ways they could do that. You know, typically once you've generated the content and you've got you know one channel working maybe that's email. It can be very easy to then promote the same content for example, through online advertising or you know even targeted as ABM. So, I think it's all about thinking about content reuse and how you can make use of content through different channels. Rather than thinking about individual tactics and this isn't you know for example; this is an email campaign. This is an advertising campaign.

Hannah: And do we think we're seeing great results from this? Is this approach working?

Mike: I think the thing it absolutely does is massively increase the return on investment. And the reason for that is our clients are having to invest less to run more campaigns. If you're generating content for each campaign it's very expensive. If you're able to reuse and repurpose content, then suddenly the campaign costs can be reduced quite considerably. So, clearly that helps massively increase the return on investment.

Hannah: That sounds brilliant definitely a step in the right direction of what we want to achieve.

Mike: Definitely, I think also, people are finding that having the same clear messaging across a number of channels, also makes the campaign more effective. So it's not just a cost thing it's also, you know, increasing results as well so you kind of get, you know, basically benefit on both sides of the coin,

Hannah: That's some interesting stuff, thank you, Mike. Okay, why don't we talk briefly about some other trends now. You know it's clear to see that both influencers for B2B technology and podcast have gained momentum. Would you agree?

Mike: Yeah, I mean this is interesting. If you looked, you know, a couple of years ago there were virtually no podcasts really targeting the B2B tech market, and perhaps there was some, to be honest in the IT sector but in the engineering side there wasn't, and increasingly now more and more people, I see, you know, listening to podcasts in our industry, as well as consumers so I definitely think that that is a growing trend, and it's an indication of the ability of individuals to become influencers. And to be honest this is still very early stages, particularly in an industry like electronics, where basically most of the content being shared is being shared through conventional media. But I certainly think you know influencers are going to grow, both in importance, and also grow their followings as well.

Hannah:  You know I've heard a rumour that Napier is actually featuring on some podcasts soon.

Mike: Yeah, we've actually been asked to appear on a couple of marketing podcast, but we'll see how that goes if it works out well then we'll obviously share the links but if not, I will try and hide them.

Hannah: So, what else have we seen as we make our way through the last quarter of 2019?

Mike: I think one of the things we're seeing is from my point of view, a little bit of sanity really in terms of measuring campaigns so people are focusing on better and simpler metrics. And increasingly, we're seeing clients and other companies recognising that just going for example for the maximum number of clicks doesn't always make the best campaign. So clients are focusing, you know, very simply down onto metrics that that make a difference. It could be for example, registrations, or it could even be sales in campaigns. And as part of that with simpler metrics, it becomes easier to create marketing dashboards because you've got a more consistent set of metrics across different tactics. And so again we're seeing some clients, looking into building marketing dashboards, really for the whole marketing operation, which is great when you can get that working.

Hannah: So, to finish let's take a look at some key inbound tips and tricks that you've uncovered. Would you like to share?

Mike: Yeah, definitely. So, I'm an inbound we have some great sessions talking about how to you know make campaigns more effective. I think there were there were a couple of things that I found particularly interesting one was a session talking about LinkedIn advertising, and there the speaker was very keen to share the results that he sees through the different formats of advertising. So actually, if you look at what they were seeing for example, sponsored content might get a click through rate of 4%. But text ads were 1/40th of a percent so a massive difference in terms of click through rates. Although actually sponsored content, typically cost more per click. But he was talking about this, and the different approaches, which was very interesting we wrote a blog post on that. I also saw more and more people talking about moving the initial sales approach, away from sales and into marketing so effectively during marketing nurturing campaigns. Companies are increasingly sending emails as though they came from the appropriate salesperson. And this is certainly something HubSpot doing, and claiming it is an incredibly effective tactic and something we're looking at doing both for Napier, and also with our clients.

Hannah: Could you share why do you think the connection emails are so successful?

Mike: So, the connection emails, emails from salespeople, I think it's becoming more of a marketing tech tactic rather than a sales tactic. And clearly you know it's typically is a very simple straightforward email, and it's very focused on getting the recipient to either click through a request a meeting or a call, or maybe reply to the email so I think it benefits from two ways one it's quite personal. And secondly, the email also is very focused and industry focused so it helps marketers write an email that's clearly focused on achieving one objective and we all know, the more you can focus on one objective and any kind of piece of marketing content, the more effective that's likely to be.

Hannah: That’s brilliant thank you. And, you know, this is where we were going to finish today, and we've left a link to our trends page so you can read more detail about what we've discussed today, and we hope our insights have been helpful to you.


WTWH Media Acquire Advantage Business Media Assets

In June of this year, we wrote a blog about the sad closing of publisher Advantage Business Marketing (ABM), with the future of publications like ECN left uncertain. So our interest was peaked when we heard the news that WTWH Media was transitioning long-time brands ECN Magazine, Medical Design Technology, Product Design & Development, and Wireless Design & Development into Design World, EE World Online and Medical Design & Outsourcing.

The announcement also revealed that although the R&D 100 Conference & Awards will continue, the R&D magazine will re-launch on a new platform as R&D World, with a series of targeted vertical technology sites expected soon.

After a quick search, we came across a webinar held on the 15th October and hosted by Scott McCafferty, co-founder of WTWH Media, explaining the acquisition of ABM's assets and what its means for the publications' future.

It seems that shortly after ABM went bust, WTWH Media found opportunity amongst the publisher's assets, acquiring the R&D and ECN 'pillars' of ABM.  Scott explained that WTWH Media want to revitalize the brands and to accomplish this has three focuses for the future. This consists of unwinding the brands, rebuilding them, and growing them. Although many members of the old staff have moved on from ABM, they are engaging with a few of the original staff members, enlisting their help to ensure a smooth transition.

Alongside the acquisition of the R&D and ECN 'pillars', WTWH Media has gained access to ECN's database of 262,303 contacts and ECN's customized list of 83,177 digital subscribers.

It will be interesting to see the approach WTWH Media take with these brands, as if the news of the Aspencore redundancies  is anything to refer to, the growth of publishers and publications is declining in the US.  Perhaps Scott sums it up as best, as he reveals that moving forward they are looking 'to do the opposite of what happened in the past', and with certainly lots of plans for the future, we will be interested to see what they do to achieve success.

 


Elektronik Magazine Introduces New Issues for 2020

Elektronik magazine, has announced 'Elektronik 2.0', as the editorial team has revealed that for 2020 instead of regular and special editions, the magazine will introduce issues that specifically cover the spectrum of trends and 'hot' topics within the industry.

The new issues will feature technology and business/markets themes, and aim to provide readers with a 'one-stop-knowledge-shop' on topics that are currently fundamental to their readers.

With previous editions of the magazine featuring a mix of random topics and resulting in readers 'cherry-picking' the parts of the magazine they are reading; this move means a specific edition of the magazine will offer readers a comprehensive source of information on one topic (e.g: the automotive industry) and advertisers a market-analogue advertising environment.

Elektronik has also announced the introduction of Social Media Plus and Social Media Chinese, offering advertisers LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and newsletter advertising.

At Napier, we think its great to see a publication modifying their approach to engage with their readers more successfully, and we look forward to seeing the response this approach receives from the industry.

 


What is Active View Viewability and How Can You Improve its Performance?

Ian Poole, editor of Electronics Notes, has provided some great insight with his blog posts in the past, which is why we were delighted to receive Ian's latest blog detailing what Active View Viewability is, and his journey to adopting Google Ads as the primary form of revenue generation for Electronics Notes.

What is Active View Viewability and How Can You Improve its Performance?

Many advertisers are now opting for programmatic forms of advertising such as Google Ads or one of the variety of other systems available. This is done to reduce costs and increase performance. As a result, advertisers need to be aware of various factors in choosing which websites their advertisements should appear on, if they want to select websites on which their ads should appear. From the other viewpoint publishers need to be aware of factors that make their sites attractive to advertisers whether they use programmatic banner advertising or directly placed ads.

In the electronics industry, companies have traditionally adopted directly placed ads. However, with click through rates diminishing and advertisers wanting to improve their return on investment, many have adopted other tactics including email campaigns and content marketing.

However, banner advertising can still provide some excellent returns - not only does it provide the click throughs directly onto a tailored landing page, but it also gives a high level of branding. Some reports have indicated that the branding aspects of banner advertising are equally or more important than the number of clicks received.

When selecting where to advertise, one of the key metrics now being used is that of Active View Viewability (AVV).

According to Google: "Active View metrics have been created in compliance with industry standards for measuring the viewability of online ads, as developed by the Media Rating Council (MRC). According to MRC guidelines, the standard for measuring the viewability of ads, are as follows:

A display ad is counted as viewable when at least 50% of its area is visible on the screen for at least 1 second. "

Traditionally many advertisers have requested that their ads appear above the fold, and this normally gives better results, but the actual picture is a little more complicated and AVV provides a defined metric to understand what is happening better.

At Electronics Notes, I have adopted Google Ads as the primary form of revenue generation. It enables me to focus on content generation all the time without hassle of managing the ads.

I have been on a journey to improve the overall site performance and improve its attractiveness to advertisers, and I hope that others can learn from this.

One key element of this journey has been to improve the AVV performance, so that advertisers using the Google Display Network (GDN) will want to target the site via Google Ads as what is termed a "managed placement."

It really started when I attended a day at the Google offices in London for AdSense users. (AdSense is the publisher side of Google Ads). Here the topic of AVV came up and returning home, I discovered my AVV was well below 40% - it was hardly surprising that at this time Electronics Notes was not a particularly attractive proposition for advertisers.

At the time, I used a large proportion of the Google delivery below the fold - ads above the fold were used by other advertising schemes. Although there are some advantages to showing ads just below the content, the AVV performance was very poor, so I made a number of changes.

Before detailing the changes, it helps to understand where the ad positions are located on the page:

  • Top leaderboard - a 728x90 slot at the top of the page in line with the logo
  • Top MPU - a 300x250 at the top of the right hand column
  • Bottom MPU at the bottom of the right hand column,
  • Skyscraper - 160x600 to the right of everything else and towards the top of the page
  • Bottom leaderboard - 728x90 underneath all the content

Firstly, I enabled the advertisement positions above the fold for Google Ads - namely the Top leaderboard and Top MPU. Positions below the fold were given to another network that preferred below the fold advertising.

Next, I moved Bottom MPU up to around the page fold and enabled it for Google Ads.

The next stage was to enable the floating or "sticky" right hand skyscraper ad for Google Ads. Permission was required for the use of "sticky ads," and Google requests certain requirements are fulfilled. These were all very sensible and so with this permission gained, I started to show Google ads here. In terms of AVV, this performed very well, and it offered advertisers a good position.

Similar changes were made to the mobile site which was very important because about 45% of my traffic is mobile.

All of these changes required extensive experimentation but significantly improved the AVV performance, and we had a large rise in AVV figures.

A few interesting figures came out of this. The leaderboard at the top of the page did not score the highest AVV figure - people scroll down very quickly, often before the ad had loaded. I could have improved the AVV figure for this position by moving the ad beneath the logo, etc, but I retained it where it was to preserve the page layout and retain the "user experience."

The "sticky" skyscraper had an excellent AVV figure, which is not a surprise as it stays within view all the time.

The MPU at the top of the right-hand column performed well, but again, it suffered from people scrolling down quickly. That was particularly interesting. The most interesting one was the MPU position just on or below the fold. This performed better than the one at the top of the right-hand column. The reasoning for this is that it comes into sight once people start to scroll and remains there for a while.

In view of the MPU performance, I later decided that one ad in the right-hand column would suffice. I moved the top MPU position down almost to the position of the lower one, so that it was virtually on the fold, and removed the lower one.

This probably did not make too much difference to the overall site performance and revenue, but it reduced the ads by one which was useful from a user experience viewpoint and slightly improved the overall AVV figure.

So far, I have not mentioned in-content ads. I enabled these for both the mobile and desktop formats. Introducing these has not made much difference to the AVV figures as Google uses its AI algorithms to select the optimum positions. These have performed well and provide a good click through rate.

With in-content ads in place, it has also been necessary to look carefully at the number of ads appearing, and we are still experimenting with this. I am also trying to improve the quality of the content, so that people still want to visit the site. Pages have to be sufficiently useful to attract people, and I hope we are winning the battle here.

When I started on this journey, I did some research into the typical AVV figures that were being obtained by websites. Figures varied according to the research organisation, the country where the website was located, and the sector, but it appeared that typical figures were in the region of 45 to 55%. With the changes I made to Electronics Notes, I started below 40% and now have been consistently able to maintain figures of between 60 and 65%, although it does vary a little on a day to day basis.

There are a number of messages to take from this. The position of an ad within the page is crucial to its performance, and it is not just the top position that is best. Sometimes positions on the fold work well as they are in view for longer. It also helps to have a reasonable amount of clear space around the ad to prevent accidental clicks, and to make it nicely visible.

Programmatic Ads like Google Ads not only provide very cheap advertising when compared to directly placed ads, but they also give more insights into the performance for the advertiser.  It is possible to select websites with high AVV ratings so that advertising will give the highest ROI.

 

 


7 Content Marketing Stats Every Marketer Needs to Know

As the B2B marketing world continues to evolve, it’s important to stay up to date with the latest from the content marketing industry. With some marketers doubting that a content marketing strategy is still important, the latest content marketing stats can provide great insight, so you know that the time spent on your content marketing strategy is not only important, but also worth it, to achieve growth.

But with so much research out there, it can be time-consuming to hunt down the most relevant and important stats by yourself. This is why we’ve pulled together the top 7 content marketing stats every marketer needs to know, to show why a content marketing strategy is still so important and how an effective strategy can bring great success for your company.

Content Marketing costs Up to 41% Less Per Lead Than Paid Search

Your current marketing mix might include several campaigns across a variety of platforms, including paid ads, social media marketing and email marketing. So why should your content marketing strategy be a priority over those activities?

Well, according to research by Oracle, content marketing costs up to 41% less than paid search for larger businesses, and 31% for mid-sized companies.

Prospects Want Content – Especially White Papers

White papers and e-books are arguably some of your most valuable resources for attracting leads, and according to Curata, white papers are among the top 10 tactics used by B2B content marketers, with 78% of prospects in the last year, reading white papers to contribute to a B2B purchasing decision.

Custom Content Creates a Relationship Between the Company and a Customer

Demand Metric revealed that 78% of customers perceive a relationship between themselves and a company when receiving custom content, with 90% of customers finding custom content useful.

As a simple yet extremely effective tactic, custom content allows you to tailor content with the company's branding, and provide them with high-quality, relevant and valuable information; and with 82% of customers feeling more positive about a company after reading custom content, it is clear to see this is a tactic that is working.

Content Marketing Generates Three Times as Many Leads as Traditional Marketing

In comparison to traditional marketing tactics, content marketing can generate three times as many leads, while also reducing cost by 62%.

It’s important to understand the different benefits content and traditional marketing can create for your company; but a good content marketer will know that if done right, content marketing will not only help you attract leads, but also nurture them through the funnel at the same time.

59% of B2B Marketers Consider Blogs as the Most Valuable Channel

Blogs should be a vital, if not the main, part of your content marketing strategy. Blogs are an easy yet effective way to inform, and interact with your audience, and are easy to share on different social media platforms.

With 59% of B2B marketers considering blogs as the most valuable channel, and databox revealing that the average conversion rate for a blog is 19% (the survey revealed 1-5% of visitors to blogs turn into a newsletter subscriber), it’s hard to argue that the writing and distribution of blogs shouldn’t be a top priority for content marketers.

48% Of Marketers are Making Youtube Video a Priority

Visual content marketing should also be an essential part of your strategy. From images, infographics and videos, this is another great way to get in front of your audience.

With the HubSpot state of inbound report revealing that 48% of marketers are making YouTube video a priority, and Cisco reporting that by 2021, video will represent 82% of all internet traffic; it's clear to see video isn’t going anywhere, and content marketers should seriously evaluate adding videos to their content marketing strategy.

Content Compliments Traditional Sales Techniques Perfectly

Still not convinced that content marketing is important?  According to WordStream, approximately 49% of marketers are producing content to align closely with various stages of the sales cycle.

If used effectively, your content marketing strategy can target customers at each stage of the sales funnel, providing them with content which answers their pain points at the right time, ensuring you are also nurturing current leads, and retaining the users you already have.

 

Get in Touch

At Napier, we use our four-step approach to design and continually optimise campaigns that convert awareness to opportunity more quickly, increasing your prospects’ momentum through the funnel. If you want to find out how we could help you with your content marketing strategy (or another issue you may be facing), then get in touch in today!

 


New Data Reveals That More Than 50% Of Google Searches End Without a Click to Other Content

We recently read a blog written by Rand Fishkin, co-founder of SparkToro, that discussed new data from an update to Fishkin’s initial Google clickstream data study; revealing that in June 2019, for the first time, the majority of Google searches ended without a click on an organic or paid search result.

Using data from Jumpshot, Rand explored what these latest updates mean for marketers and the future of SEO; and in this blog we’ve pulled together some of his key (and most interesting) findings to share with you.

The updated data revealed that as of June 2019, searches made on both mobile and desktop resulted in 42.25% of organic clicks, 4.42% of ad clicks and an astonishing 50.33% of zero-click searches.

Looking at data from 2016 to 2019, it's clear to see desktop has not changed much over the last three years, with organic only down a few percent, and the results of June 2019 not far off from January 2016.

However, on mobile, where more than half of all searches take place, the results have presented a consistent pattern, with organic falling by almost 20%, while paid has nearly tripled, and zero-click searches have been on a significant rise.

There could be a number of reasons for this, if you consider Google’s increased aggression with how ads and instant answer-type features appear on a mobile device, or perhaps it’s the result of Google sending a huge portion of search clicks to their own properties (according to Jumpshot, Google sends 6.01% of all searches (~12% of search clicks) to websites owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company).

So, what can a marketer do to ensure they are still achieving SEO success amongst these changes? Rand details three key ways:

  • Make sure you are trying to find new ways to get value from zero-click searches
  • Seek out keywords that have a higher CTR opportunity
  • Get your content optimised on Google’s own properties (YouTube, Maps, Images, AMP, Knowledge Panels, etc.)

To find out more and read Rand’s full blog on the results of the new data, please click here.

 


elektroniknet.de Extends Reach to the Chinese Market

elektroniknet.de, a WEKA FACHMEDIEN publication, has announced that it is now extending its reach into the Chinese Market, by not only delivering content in Chinese, but also offering advertisers the opportunity to specifically reach the Chinese market through its subpage elektroniknet.de/chinese. 

This move is particularly important for WEKA FACHMEDIEN, as China has been the most crucial trading partner for the Federal Republic of Germany since 2016 - and Germany is the most important European trading partner for the People's Republic.

At Napier, we think its great to see an electronics publication expanding into the Chinese market. With elektroniknet.de already achieving impressive performance figures (the website received a total of 12.17 million page impressions in 2018), this decision can only bring further opportunities for companies to increase their global reach; and we look forward to seeing the results it provides for both advertisers and companies.


Napier Partners with Market Analysis Experts Vantage Research

Napier recently started a partnership with Vantage Research, experts in market analysis, giving our clients access to invaluable information about the opportunity in countries around the world.

Vantage provides a detailed report of where the business opportunity is for your company in major international markets. Designed to pinpoint ‘serious contenders’ for international expansion the market entry reports include:

  • A breakdown of where Demand is likely to be concentrated for the client’s offer and why.
  • Analysis of key Economic and Regulatory factors, likely to impact the opportunity
  • An insightful Competitor Analysis giving a SWOT summary of the client vs competitor brands
  • Benchmarking – expert witness rankings of the key competitors, market gaps and entry options

Vantage can also offer more in-depth analysis of the markets that are most attractive, enabling our clients to plan market entry with more information and context. With Vantage’s extensive experience in the engineering and manufacturing sectors, this partnership supports Napier’s commitment to an insight-led approach, providing our clients with a great opportunity to optimise market entry plans.

If you’re interested in finding out more, why not drop me an email, and we can set up a discussion to identify potential target markets you could be missing.


New Delhi Print Media Announces 4th Edition of ‘The Spotlight on Indian Electronics'

New Delhi Print Media has announced the 4th edition of its yearbook 'The Spotlight on Indian Electronics', which is due to be launched in May 2019.

As the electronics industry in India continues to rapidly grow and evolve, the 2019-20 edition of 'The Spotlight on Indian Electronics', delivers useful information to professionals about the state of the industry in India. The report provides a detailed study and SWOT analysis of the ecosystem for the high priority product markets, as well as identifying the future drivers of growth amongst various segments in the industry.

We think its great to see a media house providing such a useful piece of content, which allows professionals from across the globe to understand the complete picture of the Indian electronics sector.

 


My Work Experience Week with Napier

Lily McIntosh, a Year 10 Durrington High School Student recently completed a week's work experience at Napier. Read her blog to find out what she learnt during her week at the Napier office:

My work experience at Napier gave me a chance to learn about what it’s like to be in the workplace and an idea into careers you could apply for in the future.

I am a Year 10 Durrington High school Student who is currently taking Business, Drama, BTEC Digital Information Technology and History as my GCSEs. Within my GCSE courses they have taught me how to set up a business, promote products and to target a certain audience. I decided to do my work experience at Napier Partnership in Chichester, because I thought it was suited to my GCSE’s and wanted to explore what working in a B2B marketing and PR company would be like.

Over the last week, I have learnt about researching and finding the right stories for the Directors' social media accounts, and how to publish and schedule Tweets using HubSpot. I also learnt about Inbound Marketing, and why it is so important for a modern marketer’s strategy.

Other opportunities I have had, include learning about ad design and video editing, with Napier’s graphic designer, Rob. Rob even showed me how a video is created through to the finished product. I have been shown how to use HTML coding for emails and websites, which is confusing at first but once you have your head wrapped round it all, it is not so difficult.

Overall, my experience here has been great, the Napier team has been very warm and welcoming during my time here. I have enjoyed learning new skills I could use in the future and in jobs that one day I might apply for.

Thank you to Napier for the insight into the world of work.


A 'Napier Nine' Video... Get to Know Account Director Rhianna Bull

In our ‘Napier Nine’ video series, we’ve been taking the time to learn more about the team. In this instalment we introduce you to Rhianna Bull, Account Director at Napier.

Watch the video below to find out the four words Rhianna would use to describe herself, her strongest quality, and the fictional place she would most like to visit, as she answers her nine questions…

 

Missed the other ‘Napier Nine’ Videos in our Series? Watch them Now!


A 'Napier Nine' Video... Get to Know Account Administration Executive Danielle Robertshaw

 Danielle Robertshaw, Account Administration Executive at Napier, is the latest to take part in our ‘Napier Nine’ video series.

Discover Danielle’s secret skill, her favourite quote and what she would spend her last £20 on, as she answers her nine questions…

Missed the other ‘Napier Nine’ Videos in our Series? Watch them Now!

 


New Electronics’ Peter Ring Interview

We recently asked New Electronics’ Peter Ring to participate in an interview with Napier, to discuss the organisation of his events and the successful results he receives from all the hard work. Read the interview below to discover how many people Peter reaches through the events, and the reason why events such as the BEEAs and Embedded Design Show were formed.

How long have you been running events alongside New Electronics?
Since 2013 when we launched the Electronics Design Show. This year we added a one-day roadshow on PCB Design and Manufacturing which was well received, and it’s running again on May 9th 2019 at Silverstone.

Why did you start running events? What are the goals for the events today?
We felt there was a gap in the market for a design focussed event, as publishers of both New Electronics and Eureka we are in an ideal position to deliver the audience which is often the biggest challenge. Each year we get around 4,000 designers to attend over the two days. Adding shows/events to our channels to market has given New Electronics a much higher level of visibility.

How is revenue/profit split at New Electronics between the publication, the database and events?
Online revenues account for a third of New Electronics revenues with print, inserts, projects and PCB making up two thirds. The EDS revenue sits in MA Exhibitions a separate company to MA Business who publish New Electronics. EDS turned over £1.2k million in 2018.

Do you have a specialist team running the events? How much time do the events take from the editorial team?
We do have dedicated marketing teams for EDS and PCB, Neil puts a lot of effort into creating and running the EDS Conference content, but it creates good content for the magazine too as well as helping attract the audience for EDS.

How many people do you reach through your events?
4,000 plus visit EDS and 1,000 came to PCB Design which is co located with FAST an adhesive event and Engineering Materials Live.

How does this compare to the readership of New Electronics?
We send out 15,000 copies of New Electronics reaching the universe of UK electronics designers which is 53,914.

How do you judge the success of each event?
Year on year visitor increases plus we track the rebook during the Shows, at EDS 2018 we had an 80% on site rebook

Why do you run the BEEAs separately from the Engineering Design Show?
We prefer our Awards to be a daytime business event. BEEAs celebrates their 10th anniversary in 2019 and London offers a lot of choice on venues. We were in County Hall this year, taking it to Coventry to run alongside EDS is not in our current thinking.

What is the most fun for you: the show, the awards or the publication?
Actually we really enjoy all of it but EDS gives us all a lot of pleasure. Meeting readers that appreciate New Electronics creating a platform for them to meet 220 exhibitors in one day, plus exhibitors returning year after year as they get great leads from EDS is very satisfying.


Napier Listed as One of the Top Digital Marketing Agencies in London

We are thrilled to announce that HubSpot has listed Napier as one of the top digital marketing agencies in London. With fierce competition, this is a great achievement that demonstrates Napier's consistently high standards and accomplishments.

Mike Maynard Managing Director says" As a HubSpot agency partner, it's fantastic for the Napier team to receive recognition after all our hard work this year, and we look forward to maintaining this momentum and achieving even more success in 2019!" 


Winner of the Elektra Selfie Competition Revealed!

Congratulations to Alex Price, Marketing Manager at Vicor, who is the winner of the Napier Prop Selfie Competition recently held at the Elektra Awards. See Alex's winning picture below: