045 | LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for HealthTech with A. Chris Turner of Golden Spiral | Studio CMO
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The Episode in 60 Seconds
LinkedIn is one of the best ways for HealthTech marketers to identify and communicate with prospective customers. What are the fundamentals? What are the advanced tactics? In this episode of Studio CMO, we look at:
- Eight Essentials for Every LinkedIn Post to Maximize Your Engagement
- Three Ways HealthTech Brands Can Deepen Relationships on LinkedIn
- InMail
- Groups
- Paid Ads
- Putting it All Together to Drive Leads
- The Overall Value of LinkedIn for a HealthTech Marketer
About Our Guest
Chris Turner is Golden Spiral’s Senior Director of Digital Strategy and Performance Analytics and an expert in all things digital. Chris manages and monitors the online strategies for our clients related to paid media, content, social media marketing, and digital optimization.
Chris helps our teams build synergistic digital strategies that touch on everything from relationship building with partners to content creation and syndication — all to help clients make an impact through their business. He leverages his experience of 10+ years of marketing leadership to direct marketing teams to success based on addressable KPIs and data-driven tactics.
Chris has a bachelor’s degree in information technology and a master’s in information systems. He is well educated, heavily experienced, and always seeking more knowledge.
Show Notes
Eight Essentials for Every LinkedIn Post to Maximize Your Engagement
- Remember your audience and keep the subject relevant, valuable, and important to them.
- Always include an image or video.
- Keep things short.
- Lock them in with the first sentence.
- Always tag people and pages that your audience connects to.
- Use two or three good hashtags plus a branded hashtag.
- Stay engaged. Like and/or answer every comment that you receive.
- Start and engage in conversations because they may lead to deeper opportunities to present your product or service.
Three Ways HealthTech Brands Can Deepen Relationships on Linked
In InMail (4:00)
Don’t use it without a strategy. You must know where your prospect is in the buyer’s journey before you engage them in this way.
Groups (4:59)
Don’t be a troll. Participate. Learn deeply about your prospects, their needs, and their journey.
Paid Ads (20:16)
The data provided makes your paid ads very targeted in the context of a professional network
Putting it All Together to Drive Leads (24:51)
The Overall Value for a HealthTech Marketer (38:10)
Previous articles on LinkedIn
Why You Should Leverage LinkedIn Publisher for Content Marketing
How to Grow Your Social Media Following in a B2B World
Getting Started: Social Media Strategy for B2B Brands
Social Media Marketing for B2B Tech Companies
Content Strategy Guide for Saas Marketing
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Schedule your no-obligation strategic consultation to discuss LinkedIn or any other portion of your digital marketing strategy. Their objective view of what you’re doing could help drive you forward to realize your market potential.
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Transcript
John Farkas:
Reaching the people you need to reach. It is the unrelenting task of the marketer in the B2B HealthTech universe. And it is not easy to do. It’s a crowded space. There’s a lot of activity and finding the people that you need to find to have the conversations you need to have is critical. LinkedIn is one of the best ways to make that happen and that’s what we’re going to explore today on Studio CMO.
Mark Whitlock:
Welcome to Studio CMO. And just a quick question. How did you find this episode of this podcast? You might’ve found it on LinkedIn. Just maybe because, guess what, we posted about it on LinkedIn. On this episode of Studio CMO, it’s all things LinkedIn. Buckle up and get ready for a conversation of wide-sweeping topics related to LinkedIn. John Farkas, our host is with us today. He is the CEO and Chief Storyteller for Golden Spiral, the agency, which brings you Studio CMO. John, did you post on LinkedIn today?
John Farkas:
I didn’t. That’s the true confession and that’s too often my true confession, because if I was a responsible marketer, I would be doing it all the time.
Chris Turner:
And it’s okay, John. It’s okay. It’s early in the morning enough.
Anna Grimes:
The day is still young.
Chris Turner:
The day is still young.
Mark Whitlock:
And the voices you just heard, Chris Turner, Golden Spiral’s Senior Director of Digital Strategy and Performance Analytics is back with us. You’re the first three-time guest on Studio CMO, Chris, just so you know.
John Farkas:
You win the prize. You win the prize.
Chris Turner:
Where’s the studio applause? Make sure to add that in post please. Studio applause.
John Farkas:
Hey, update your LinkedIn with that, Chris.
Mark Whitlock:
And Anna Grimes is with us, my sidekick and fellow co-host. Anna, have you logged into LinkedIn at all today?
Anna Grimes:
I’ve actually logged into LinkedIn today and I actually downloaded a report from Deloitte about marketing technology trends in healthcare.
Mark Whitlock:
Well, there’s something we’re going to talk about here in just a minute, the importance of content.
Anna Grimes:
Yeah, but Mark, I downloaded it. I didn’t read it.
Mark Whitlock:
Well, that’s on Deloitte. That’s not on you.
Anna Grimes:
Well, that’s because the day is still young and I have downloaded the report. I have yet to read the report. I will read the report. Conjugation complete, thank you.
Mark Whitlock:
Thank you. And if you want to see the diagram of that sentence, never mind.
John Farkas:
Chris, if you could, before we dive into the senior seminar level course on LinkedIn for HealthTech, Chris, why don’t you give us a few basics? What are the fundamentals of LinkedIn we ought to all have at the tip of our fingers and the top of our heads and the tips of our tongues?
Chris Turner:
Tips of our tongues. I like that one. I’m going to use that. That’s going to be on a shirt. Well, I’ll skip over the basic basics, doing hashtag research and strong introductions on post and using video and images and just dive into three keys.
Chris Turner:
Use your InMail, use the groups, and make sure you have some paid media behind it. The reason that we always include the paid media side of everything on LinkedIn is just because that’s the best way to do not only more or less content promotions and content marketing, but to really leverage the remarketing audiences that LinkedIn can provide.
Chris Turner:
Everyone’s providing a whole lot of data on LinkedIn, just like you would on Facebook or Twitter, but LinkedIn is more refined to the professional environment, so it’s always great to use that data in any way, shape or form you can.
Mark Whitlock:
InMail. You say it’s one of the fundamentals and I’m sitting here going, “I hate to get InMail.” Oh man. Because I get it, and I get an alert in my own email and it doesn’t let me read it. It makes me go over to LinkedIn and read it. Why is LinkedIn InMail so important?
Chris Turner:
It’s important because of all those reasons you just pointed out. It sounds like, and what we’ve all experienced, is that a lot of times people don’t have a strategy for using that InMail. And they’re not sure where you’re at in your journey. We often talk about the buyer’s journey and oftentimes you can’t do a cold prospect in InMail. That’s the worst. It’s just like getting a cold call. “I’m calling because I saw that your car’s extended warranty was about to expire.”
John Farkas:
How did you know?
Chris Turner:
How did you know? Wait, you didn’t. And so it’s the same experience with LinkedIn InMail. It is a strategy that works when you work it. You have to know where the person is in their journey.
Chris Turner:
Here’s the cohesive elements of the strategy. Being part of the groups, as well as making sure that your business page is up to date and has been posting relevant information makes a cohesive more or less profile for your organization as you do those InMails, or you do updates in those groups or as you promote your company solution or curated content from a LinkedIn Campaign Manager standpoint.
Chris Turner:
The only way it really works is when you’re using it intentionally with the idea that the person that you’re pointing those ads, you’re pointing that InMail to, or how you’re engaging with the group is ready for that message.
John Farkas:
Chris, if we have the basic strategy down and we understand the value and we’re moving in this direction in a consistent framework, I’m guessing that we’re not just throwing up any old content, any old time, any old way on LinkedIn. What are some of the check boxes that we have to look at? What are the things that we need to make sure are done with the content that we’re putting up in the context of LinkedIn?
Chris Turner:
Great question. Because I know oftentimes we’ll talk at a high level about strategies and really how all these things connect with the expectation that some of our listeners have already looked at some of the best practices. But it bears repeating that there are about six to seven key things you want to do whenever you’re crafting content for LinkedIn.
Chris Turner:
The first thing is always an image or video, please. Please. Everyone wants image or videos. I’m a visual learner. I’m speaking from experience that I need something to react to that not only triggers my mind to read through details, but also stimulates it as well.
Chris Turner:
The other part is to keep things short. Unfortunately over time, our attention span has shrunk. I think you’ve all heard the studies about goldfish in less than 10 seconds. I think we’re at 3 seconds nowadays. Keep it short.
Chris Turner:
That first line really has to lock it in what you’re about to say in any proceeding lines. Oftentimes you’ll see that a good post on LinkedIn will have a short one sentence, really call out to say, “Are you doing X, Y, and Z? Look at this, you’ve lost,” blah, blah, blah. That one line can then expand because anytime you post on LinkedIn, it’s not going to open up to the full post. It’s going to truncate it. That first line really has to be an attention getter.
Chris Turner:
The other part of this is you’re talking to professionals, so you want to call out things that are relevant, valuable, and important to them. That can be key stats. That can be quotes. You can cite a source. If you know that your audience loves a specific author or topic, then call that out immediately, so that they’ll engage with that post directly.
Chris Turner:
The other piece of that is always tag people. Tag pages, anybody that you’re going to mention in that post, tag them.
Chris Turner:
That then leads into one of the other basics of best practices. Hashtags. You always want to include two to three hashtags and make sure that those hashtags are actually being engaged. Often times we find that our clients have started their LinkedIn journey by just generating hashtags that no one else is using. We always do recommend at least using one branded hashtag. If you’re in AI, you might hashtag your brand, AI, which is totally fine.
Chris Turner:
But ultimately at least two of those tags that you’re using have to be natural and they have to be something that resonates with your industry and actually gets engagement. Something you may have missed with LinkedIn is that you can click on a hashtag and it a stream that just shows posts that use that hashtag.
Chris Turner:
And then the last one is always about encouraging engagement. Whether someone likes or responds to the post, always then have either yourself as the brand responding, or that’s a call to your sales and marketing teams to jump in there and represent your brand and have those conversations.
Chris Turner:
Part of it is having a conversation that may lead into a deeper, more lead specific conversation with those individuals. But remember other people can see that as well. That’s one of the indicators that B2B is becoming more like B2C. People want to see how you engage because it’s an indicator of how you’ll engage them.
Mark Whitlock:
Let’s say for instance that we’ve got the ads working, we got the organic content working. We’re in a group and we’re interacting with people and it comes time, our products ready to launch, or our next product’s ready to launch. We’ve got a special or a marketing phase of time that we’re going to be working into. How would I put InMail into that stream effectively? What’s the most important aspect of InMail when it’s all working together?
Chris Turner:
Great question. It’s really a natural, more or less process that people experience. It’s the same thing you do with anything else that you’re going to make a determination on. It’s just in the case of businesses, there’s more heads that are in the room. It’s just like being married. You’ve got one partner on one side and then the other partner on the other. And you have to come to a consensus about a choice you’re about to make.
Chris Turner:
Well, when you take a healthcare organization and you say, “Hey, we’re about to make an investment in a solution.” There’s a lot of heads at the table, but ultimately what you’re doing with anything from a LinkedIn strategy standpoint is identifying who’s going to be at that table and finding a way in. And the only way that you can do that is having a comprehensive strategy.
Chris Turner:
The reason that, going back to your earlier comment about, “Hey, I opened this InMail and it makes me read it in LinkedIn,” it’s because the data matters. And so LinkedIn is helping marketers to gather that data by gently nudging targeted individuals back into their platform so that they can gather some of that data for the marketer who has sent the InMail, but also for the user so that they know that they’re in a safe, secure environment. It’s not necessarily just for the data. It’s also to ensure that the quality of the message comes across. Often people will see those email notifications and if the message would then present it in that email, they could easily mark it as spam or ignore it or they’ll have their dark mode on or their light mode on and everything gets really wishy-washy.
Chris Turner:
It’s a security mechanism from a LinkedIn and user perspective, but it’s also to ensure that your message is received properly. But the way the process really works is if you’re intentional about those InMails and you’re intentional about how you do your marketing, you’ll understand where people are in their journey. If they’ve never heard of you before, and you are sure that they haven’t heard of you…
Chris Turner:
Heard of you before, and you are sure that they haven’t heard of you. Why would you send them an InMail? Now, if you are doing some type of brand awareness and awareness of your solution set to these audiences, then any InMail will come after at least two to five touches. That means they’ve seen your brand, they’ve seen a post, organic or sponsored on LinkedIn, or they’ve heard other people talk about you. That’s one of the strongest ways that LinkedIn can be useful is when other people talk about you and validate your claims. And so that’s why that whole three-step process of using campaign manager, meaning the paid media, using InMail, as well as using your profile on LinkedIn, both the business and your individual profile all have to work together.
Chris Turner:
If you’re just doing one you’re missing out on two thirds of the strategy there. So the idea is you get the data about a person, whether that’s from your ABM strategy, your account based marketing, or whether you’re looking at your analytics and you’re understanding how people are engaging with you already. Once they have an awareness, then you can move into doing some of those deeper, more rich marketing activities only.
Anna Grimes:
So, Chris, one question I have that I see so often is, we talk a lot about the synergy, the need for that synergistic approach to really, almost any of our marketing activities, but especially in LinkedIn with these three components of LinkedIn. Why don’t people do it? It feels like we see a lot of marketing out there that gets halfway there, but somehow doesn’t hit the home run.
Chris Turner:
No, that’s a great way of putting it, a home run. Is a home run just swinging a bat at a ball?
Anna Grimes:
There you go.
Mark Whitlock:
No.
Chris Turner:
A home run is not just swinging a bat at a ball and all the baseball aficionados will tell you that. There’s a lot more to hitting a ball than just swinging a bat. You put a lot of time and effort into the gym before you even set foot on the field. And that’s the same thing that we have to do from a marketing standpoint. And I think a lot of times people miss the opportunity to really hit a home run because they don’t spend enough time in the gym. They’ve got to work out their strategies. They’ve got to work out their solution sets, but really it always goes back to the users and the potential leads that you’re pursuing. Again, you heard me say ABMs, start with account-based marketing. It doesn’t have to be a robust solution. You don’t have to go get a Marketo.
Chris Turner:
You don’t have to go get a large scale solution. You just have to understand who your buyer is, who you’re going after. Whether that healthcare organization that you’re targeting is the right one or not, you have to determine that based on who they are, not who you are. You’ve got to step into the role of who you’re going to be talking to so that you can understand how best to present your solution to them. But also what other curated content, what other pieces of content you can produce that helps to nurture them in your direction to show that you have the authority, the credibility, and the wherewithal to be the solution that they’re looking for.
Anna Grimes:
So how can LinkedIn help HealthTech marketers identify who they should be talking to? We always say around here, you’ve sold into one healthcare organization, you’ve sold into one healthcare organization.
Mark Whitlock:
One.
Anna Grimes:
Yeah.
Chris Turner:
Every organization is different and they all have their UVPs, but they’re all made up of a different combination of individuals. And that’s what people forget. Yes, there are a number of healthcare systems out there. There’s a number of solutions and they all do, air quotes here, “They all do the same thing.” They’re all helping people with their healthcare journey and improving outcomes. But there’s more to the story there. There’s a lot of detail in the DNA of every organization. And without doing the research, you miss the mark with everyone if you don’t understand anyone. So the idea there is that the way you go about doing anything with LinkedIn is to just understand who is on LinkedIn, what kind of conversations are they having? What kind of material are they consuming? You don’t go to a dietician and expect them to automatically know what kind of diet you’re on.
Chris Turner:
You don’t go to the grocery store and just expect them to produce whatever you’re looking for. You have to tell them what you’re looking for. And so the way that we interpret that, and I know that was a very roundabout way, but what we’re talking about here is the data. We’re talking about, the data that LinkedIn provides, because LinkedIn can provide all that data. It’s up to you as a marketer, as someone who’s going to be presenting this, your solution to an audience, to understand what’s available to you to help inform your strategic management of your campaigns. And campaigns can mean a number of different content pieces, it can mean ads. But ultimately, you go onto LinkedIn and there’s a number of elements that you can use. So if you’re in the LinkedIn campaign manager, there’s tons of demographic data that you can leverage to identify who’s in the marketplace that you want to target.
Chris Turner:
Who’s in that geographical area, what kind of roles they fill, their experience. All of those details are available to a marketer through the platform. But the other piece of that, that a lot of organizations miss is that people are having conversations every day, just like they do on Facebook and any other social platform. So all you have to do is observe those conversations. What are people talking about? What are their pain points? What are they looking for? How are they talking about the environment and the industry? Are you in line with how they’re talking about it? And just gathering all that helps to give context to the data and give context to how you approach those individuals.
Anna Grimes:
What’s the one data set that you think people overlook that’s easily discovered in LinkedIn?
Chris Turner:
I have always used a couple of different, strange tactics. So for me, if I’m looking at an organization, right? And I’m saying we want to really market towards them because our solution helps with X, Y, and Z. I’m actually going to look at not only what they’re posting and what kind of information they’re more or less putting out into the marketplace, but also what kind of roles are they hiring for? So I think that’s a key element that people are missing because that gives you an insight into how they’re seeing more or less their organization. Where are the opportunities for growth with our organization? Because we’re growing in that direction. And so then that gives you a way of kind of saying, “Hey, we see that you just hired three new admin people to help with patient management or help with outcome control and referrals, whatever have you.”
Chris Turner:
That way you can look at it from a marketing piece and say, “Okay, you’re leaning heavily into this area. And our solution supports you by doing X, Y, and Z.” And again, that then leads back to things that you can do with the paid media, the way the InMail should be sculpted for who you’re actually going to be talking to. If I’m talking to the chief revenue officer versus the chief healthcare-
Anna Grimes:
Nursing officer or whatever.
Chris Turner:
…nursing officer, then my message should be different. It can’t be, “Hey, we noticed that your car is…” It’s the same message. Delete, ignore. It’s got to be very… And you don’t want it to be overly personal either. There’s a couple of tactics and solutions there. It just depends again on who you’re going to send it to. It takes five minutes to just look at who you’re going to send that InMail to, or the group of people that you’re going to send it to.
Anna Grimes:
So look at the open positions that they’re pushing out on LinkedIn, because that’s going to give you a good idea of where their strategy is heading.
Mark Whitlock:
Talk to the CMO. CMO knows they need to go deeper into LinkedIn. He or she feels there’s a treasure trove of data there, et cetera. How would you coach the marketing executive to instruct the marketing team to maximize LinkedIn advertising?
Chris Turner:
What I would Instruct them to do is obviously do the research first, understand how and who you’re going to go after. Along that same path it’s being comprehensive and collaborative. Oftentimes you’ll find that people are kind of in their own swim lane. You’ll have maybe some representatives or some sales members who aren’t really communicating with the other sales members, because, “Hey, these are my leads, this is my book of business.” Or they’ll not lean into the marketing and say, “Hey, marketing, I really want to go after these organizations. I’m not sure who at these organizations would be best to kind of approach first.” And so what happens there is there’s a disconnect. There’s a disconnect between marketing, which is gathering information and then producing content or marketing content to these audiences and a disconnect between the sales people about the experiences they are having as they’re having conversations with not only different organizations, but the people at those organizations.
Chris Turner:
And then the last piece of the disconnect is the fact that they’re not understanding how people are interpreting that information, the context of the information that they may be sending. So without the clear through line for all of those, you get this mixed message or you get these random emails that don’t make sense. I haven’t been looking at a solution this whole time. Why did you just send me this InMail? Now is not the time. We’re not in a revenue generation or an investment cycle. We haven’t had our seed round yet. It’s coming up in October. It’s like, you’re off kilter. This isn’t the right way, this is the right time, and I’m not the right person.
Chris Turner:
Being that I have a senior in my title, I often get a lot of InMails that are just not right for me. At one point I have a dentist website on my profile that I had helped optimize. And so many InMails from people trying to proceed doctors and dentistry. And it’s like, “Oh, I see Dr. Turner that you got a great opportunity with marketing. If you need some SEO, I’m here to help.” You don’t even know who I am.
Anna Grimes:
Right, right. Exactly. Oh my gosh.
Mark Whitlock:
You are the doctor, but you’re not that doctor.
Anna Grimes:
Yeah. You’re not that doctor. Well then how can marketing departments and the sales teams, we talk a lot about how they need to be aligned, how they need to work together. That’s well established, but how does LinkedIn serve as the glue to keep those two kind of side-by-side, sales and marketing?
Chris Turner:
The reason that LinkedIn has such a strong foundationary element of any marketing program is just because it relies on people vetting themselves as professionals. Now they may embellish a little bit but that’s all the more to your credit because now you can see what really motivates them. You can see it’s almost a bridge between the professional and the personal, because oftentimes LinkedIn profiles aren’t about a company, they aren’t about some specific role someone’s filling, it’s about who I represent in myself, my personal brand. “Hey Chris, why do you always have the A before the Chris on any of your professional material?” Well, there’s a long story there, but ultimately it comes down to, I’ve seen a lot of professional people that do that same activity.
John Farkas:
I have thought several times, however, Chris, that you should change A Chris Turner to The Chris Turner. I mean, come on.
Chris Turner:
One day, I’m not at the Madonna level yet. I can’t just own The yet. When you get to that level, then you become, it’s like Amazon or Google. They became verbs. They became actions. When you become that level-
Chris Turner:
… Became verbs. They became actions. When you become that level, then you can add that the to it. But hopefully one day. But really what it comes down to from a individual standpoint on LinkedIn and really looking at it from that perspective is that there’s so much information that all it takes is someone being intentional with it to really make it worthwhile, to make any investment of time, money, or effort. Really a win-win for everyone.
Chris Turner:
You are connecting with someone who will ultimately leverage your service or solution. You’re ultimately supporting a better environment for the world, because we all know that there’s spammers everywhere. But if you’re intentional behind it, then it makes the platform more useful and meaningful to the people that are on it.
John Farkas:
So, Chris, put it together for us. How does a sales or marketing professional really leverage this platform to drive leads? How are we going to make it happen so that we can clearly see and attribute that activity and understand how best to leverage that platform?
Chris Turner:
The best way is to really understand the way that technology works. So anyone with a LinkedIn profile is going to have to fill out a lot of details and provide that information to the system, because ultimately that’s how they are making money aside from charging you for some of those sales activities and marketing activities in campaign manager.
Chris Turner:
But the way it often works, where we find the most success, is when we are using it from an intentional standpoint. So marketing does the work of prospecting and providing awareness and driving to key landing pages on the website, whether that’s a gated resource, a video webinar registration. Then the followup comes from the sales members.
Chris Turner:
What that looks like is making sure that there’s any and all types of attribution for that traffic, meaning UTM strains, it could be Salesforce or a CRM that helps to capture who’s converted, and then building your, your connections sheet off of that information, meaning what happens next is seeing what groups those individuals are in, how they’re communicating with those groups, really looking at what type of content they’re posting or what kind of content they’re engaging with.
Chris Turner:
From that standpoint, that becomes the end. That becomes what the sales team members should be doing as a post followup. Not just sending, “Hey, we noticed you joined our webinar,” or, “Hey, we noticed you downloaded this resource.” Okay, great. Do you know why I downloaded it? Do you know what I’m going to do with it? Do you know who else at my organization may need to see it? Those are the types of internal conversations and questions that need to be asked before someone sends an InMail or follows up via the CRM with those individuals.
Chris Turner:
The idea is that they may not be ready for that conversation. The only way to figure that out is to do a little bit of research.
Chris Turner:
The other part of this is to also show that you are an engaged person within that industry. So that may look like involving some of your existing clients and posting content around those existing clients and having those existing clients engage with that content.
Chris Turner:
Oftentimes people forget that that can be one of the biggest factors for someone coming to you and choosing you as a vendor is because they see that you take care of your clients. Great that you’ve got all the solutions, great that you’re an expert in your industry, great that your company has five stars. How do you handle clients? Do your clients like you? Do they appreciate what you do?
Chris Turner:
Oftentimes an indicator, whether it’s intrinsically, subconsciously, or just because we all are aware of it, if I don’t see that a company is posting and engaging with their current client base, to me that’s an indicator that the clients aren’t engaging with the platform anymore or that the platform itself wasn’t the solution that they thought it was.
Chris Turner:
If they’re not shouting it from the rooftops, that’s one thing. But if they’re not even showing engagement or sharing information, it could be because they aren’t satisfied. And so, oftentimes you’ll find that companies that are struggling with that may not be sharing client information or the clients themselves may not share that information as well.
Chris Turner:
So that just looks like posts that tout that you’re working with somebody not only just in the beginning, but throughout the engagement. If we’re talking case studies here, because everyone loves a case study or a white paper, the white paper shouldn’t be the only event that happens with the client. If you go from signing and doing an announcement in one year to a case study two years later, what happened in between? Great that you’ve helped that client for two years, but what happens along the way?
Chris Turner:
The reason that I’m even bringing that up is because as a salesperson or a marketer who’s trying to prospect for new clients, by showing that as part of the content mixture, you’re helping with the authority and the credibility of not only yourself, but the organization that you’re representing. That helps flush out who else you could be pursuing in that same vein or industry.
Anna Grimes:
Could you talk a little bit about the role that the CEO or the chairman needs to play in using his or her personal LinkedIn profile? Then how does that knit together with the company profile? Because we’ve seen a lot of thought leadership advanced in LinkedIn via these big box, big brands.
Anna Grimes:
Like I think it was Dick’s Sporting Goods. He wrote a really great piece about why they decided to stop selling guns in the store. Delta and Southwest had some really good posts early in the pandemic about how they’re coping and the measures they’re putting in place for safe air travel.
Anna Grimes:
Well, two-part question. One is how do you get CEO buy-in for things like that? And, two, how do you leverage the CEO’s personal LinkedIn real estate with the company’s real estate?
Chris Turner:
Anna with the hard-hitting questions here.
Mark Whitlock:
Boom!
John Farkas:
I’m just going to leave the room.
Chris Turner:
How are you going to get a CEO involved in marketing and sales? Without going too deep down a theology rabbit hole, the CEO or president of any company or organization should want to be involved because it’s a representation of their heart and passions, because if you’re with an organization as a leader … And this could be my own hubris and my own view, but if you’re a leader of an organization, you have to be passionate about it. If you’re not, you should question why you’re in that role. But I’ll step down off that pedestal for a moment.
Chris Turner:
Oftentimes, we’re marketers, we’re in this content creation strategy hub, and we know that sometimes the CEO or the president of the company is very busy. And so, there’s people who may do some ghost writing, ghost management of the accounts, and oftentimes that’s who is actually managing it. But part of that management includes the relationships that the CEO or president actually owns and carries.
Chris Turner:
And so, again, going back to my previous statement about showcasing clients, oftentimes the way that you’re actually going to close a deal, is it because the nurse practitioner who handles the admin for an organization is going to be like, “I’m going to sign the dotted line”? It’s usually the president of the CEO who knows somebody at your organization or has heard good things about you from someone else.
Chris Turner:
This is getting generational at that point, millennials versus Gen-Xers versus Gen-Zers and all that good stuff. We won’t unpack that too much. You’ve got the Virgin Galactics versus the Elon Musk and Tesla.
Anna Grimes:
It’s a very different voice, very different … I mean they’re both very powerful people and powerful brands, but, yeah, it’s a different way of branding.
Chris Turner:
That carries down from the top to the bottom. The top has to set the tone and then the bottom has to carry that tone forward. So to directly answer your question/statement, what has to happen on that CEO’s LinkedIn profile is that they have to be carrying that banner without reservation. They have to be a stalwart believer of their own product, their own solutions, and the clients that they’re serving. What happens then is that all of the members of the team, the marketers, the sales team members can all use that as material to carry it forward to new prospects.
Chris Turner:
So really it isn’t that the CEO or president’s profile is doing a marketing job. It’s just curating content that is then further carried by members of the organization as a way of saying, “Look what our leadership is doing. Look what our culture is all about. Look how we want to pursue new business. Look how we want to engage with our clients. Won’t you want to be a part of this club?”
Chris Turner:
And that goes back to the intrinsic parts of all humanity. We either want to be a part of something special or we want to feel like we are something special. The only way that you can really do that is by showing that you understand who people are and then presenting a message that resonates with them.
Mark Whitlock:
Chris, the reason we wanted to chat with you about LinkedIn on Studio CMO is that we see time and time again how you come to the table with one of our clients and we’re able to talk about LinkedIn. Their eyes get big, they say, “We haven’t thought about that before,” and we move them down the road to an integrated LinkedIn strategy with the rest of their marketing efforts that demonstrates results. We hear them talk about that at their next quarterly update or the annual meeting. They say, “We didn’t know. We had no clue that this type of result would happen.” Can you walk us through a client or two and what you’ve seen, the 30,000-foot view of how LinkedIn has helped a client?
Chris Turner:
So for a number of our healthcare clients, what ends up happening is it’s a very clear strategy. It’s just the doing that sometimes gets a little complicated. But to lay it out really crystal clear, thought goes into the content that’s going to get crafted. When that thought is applied, you can then get a clear view of how people should be engaging with the content at that point.
Chris Turner:
For instance, with one of our clients, what we’ve done is really put together a robust content strategy and the content isn’t just content for content’s sake. It’s content that informs about how to improve healthcare outcomes, how to really support people from a number of healthcare avenues, whether it’s diabetes, whether it’s heart health, whether it’s women’s care, whether it’s cancer.
Chris Turner:
Really they all lead to different outlets. They lead to different roads. And LinkedIn is the number one spot that starts that road because we can be specific in who we target with that content. So we craft this piece of content, which ultimately may lead to a webinar, a downloadable, an infographic, but this piece of content isn’t about the client. It’s about the industry. It’s about the need. It’s about the outcome that everyone is looking for and how we can help … Speaking for the client here, how we can help produce that …
Chris Turner:
… speaking for the client here, how we can help produce that outcome. The content then is engaged with from clients of our client, as well as people at the organization. So, that means people are tagging each other, they’re tagging additional resources. You get as far down the road as someone at Forrester being tagged, just to say, “Hey, look at this rich content piece that we’ve put together,” that’s about something you speak on. Along that same path, then you get a lot of engagement. It shouldn’t be a post people look at it and move on. It should be a post that triggers conversation, that triggers engagement. Whether that engagement happens on LinkedIn or not, if you’re targeting the right people with the right content at the right time, they will engage. But helping to facilitate that conversation is part of the role of the marketer and the sales team with that piece of content.
Chris Turner:
So then from there, it looks like and moves into then taking that piece of content that now has that strong engagement and promoting it. So, it goes from just being an organic piece that was triggered to create some of that engagement, to being an ad itself, the whole experience being marketed. And that’s one of the biggest ways that LinkedIn is different from other platforms is because you can then market that whole experience, that exchange that happens on those posts as an ad itself. And so, then you’re getting new people involved in the conversation, you’re showing up on hashtags because the original post had them, as well as connecting the dots for people who may have missed the train that, hey, this helps your focused tech solution actually is involved with a couple of the outlets that I follow religiously. And that’s where you then get into the conversation of using InMail, you get into the conversation of going through the groups because you’re promoting this material to those groups to drive activity and drive people to engage with your platform specifically or with your sales team, if they’re involved in those posts updates and conversation.
John Farkas:
So, Chris I think you’ve already answered this question but I’m going to ask it because I think it’s important that we put it plainly. For people that are just wondering the overall value here, as we are looking at the things that a B2B health tech marketing leader could be looking to do, places to invest to really work to engage their target, where would you put LinkedIn in that ecosystem? How far up the chain would LinkedIn make it as far as tools that can be leveraged to that end?
Chris Turner:
I would have to honestly and genuinely say it would have to be in the top three. The reason that it would be in the top three of my B2B category of tools to use is just because of really a lot of the highlights that we’ve talked about. The ability to really do specific targeting, to dive deep into the data, to really do market research within the platform itself. But then also the targeted reach that you get with clear attribution that can be aligned to more or less your analytics suite. Whether you’re using Salesforce, Pardot, whether you’re just using Google Analytics or using a wide swath of different types of analytic material, it’s going to provide a richer experience for anyone using that data for marketing, but also for the sales teams as well because it’s a clear overlap between all of these different departments.
Chris Turner:
And it’s worth it only because you can control how much or how little you do on the platform. If you don’t do anything with it, you’re hurting yourself. And so, that’s always one of my parameters when I evaluate a tool. Do I actually have to use it in the case of 2020? Yes, you had to use LinkedIn. If you were anywhere to be found, it was going to be on LinkedIn. If you avoided LinkedIn, the whole reason you may be listening to Studio CMO now is because you turned to LinkedIn for solutions and found us. It proves its worth in just its existence and who it exists for. It’s a network website for marketing, as well as sales and healthcare and every other organization under the sun who wants to be a part of a professional network. And so, you can only leverage that as much or as little as you want to, but you’re hurting yourself if you’re not.
John Farkas:
Yeah. And I think it’s just worth saying here the reason LinkedIn exists is to make money and the way they’re making money is by effectively connecting people in the professional community. So, the advertising ecosystem that surrounds LinkedIn is certainly a piece of this and the way they’re gathering data is by watching us interact and watching us connect and watching how we share the content we share and the meanings that we make through it. So, it is built to be effective for exactly what we’re looking for it to be effective for. And so, our awareness of that and understanding how to best leverage that is an essential part of everything that we’re doing in the context of marketing to business professionals. It’s an outstanding opportunity. It is a great platform to be leveraged and if you’re not really diving deep in it, it bears diving deep in it. We are paid by our clients to help them be successful, and this is a critical link in helping organizations be successful in reaching their targets. So, that’s the simple truth.
Mark Whitlock:
And if you wanted to learn more about how your company can be more effective and all of marketing, but LinkedIn specifically, come on over to our show notes page at studiocmo.com. Click on the LinkedIn interview, and you’re going to find a number of resources. We didn’t go into the fundamentals very deeply today. We’ll link out to a number of articles we have on our website at Golden Spiral that will help you know how to deploy and employ LinkedIn effectively. We’re also going to link to a free guide we have about content strategy, how content strategy works. You heard Chris talk about the core of a LinkedIn effort is content. If you don’t have the content, you’re not really going to get the traction you need in LinkedIn. And we talk about how to build a effective content strategy for your health tech company in that free guide, you can come, click on the link at studiocmo.com. Click on the LinkedIn interview and find that guide for a free download from us here at Golden Spiral.
Mark Whitlock:
Furthermore, if you want to talk about this, if you want to get into the nitty gritty, share your experience, share your perspective and with a objective ear so that we can help you figure out where to go, we’d love to chat with you. That’s a no-obligation conversation. Click on the link there. You’ll be able to set up a meeting with John and talk a little bit about how LinkedIn could interact with your marketing efforts and how you can make headway and for your health tech company.
John Farkas:
And if you’re really nice, I might even ask Chris to join on that call, too.
Mark Whitlock:
So, put please in that InMail
John Farkas:
Please, I got to talk to Chris. I mean that’s what I do.
Anna Grimes:
We’ll just ask Chris.
Mark Whitlock:
So, A Chris Turner, we hope that you’ll be a part of some meetings with our listeners and we’re so grateful that you were on Studio CMO for the third time today. Thanks for coming back.
Chris Turner:
It is always my pleasure.
Mark Whitlock:
And if you heard a vein throughout this entire episode, it was that you must understand who your customer is. And that leads to the three core concepts we talk about on every episode of Studio CMO. One, you have to understand your buyer’s problems.
Anna Grimes:
And you must lead with an empathetic understanding.
John Farkas:
And always work to make your buyer the hero.
Mark Whitlock:
We’ll see you next time on Studio CMO.
Mark Whitlock:
Studio CMO is shaped by Golden Spiral, an agency providing market positioning and demand generation for health tech. We help healthcare technology companies establish and communicate their unique message to the right decision-makers. Realize your market potential. Contact Golden Spiral. Our music is provided by some of Nashville’s hottest studio musicians. They make up Human Music, a BMG production music company. Find out more at humanmusic.com.
