Utilising nudge-nurture to garner leads via LinkedIn for Fujitsu Ireland
The main goal for most B2B brands on social? Acquiring marketing-qualified leads (MQLs).
But unfortunately for those brands, there’s no ‘set and forget’ paid social strategy that gets companies populating that all-important sales lead funnel.
In fact, effective paid social for MQLs involves a well-thought-out, sophisticated strategy with tried and tested methods. And in this case, that method is storytelling. Storytelling, built out across 5-9 touchpoints to reach the desired audience and eventually provoke engagement or action in the form of personal data from those users.
For Fujitsu Ireland particularly – a key division of Fujitsu as a global business – its national sales funnel needs to be consistently topped up with leads. Across its entire marketing plan, social media would be key to gathering MQLs to fill the pipeline. We knew how to help.
The setup
The primary challenges were:
- Limited budget: delivering peak social media advertising performance with a limited budget.
- Niche target audience: landing 5 – 9 touchpoints with a niche audience, to foster discovery intent, without appearing spammy.
- Duration: Publishing 9 effective touchpoints requires many weeks, even months to land. Smart compelling and influential content cannot be crammed into short sprints.
- Value exchange: Requesting data too early in the nudge nurture process turns audiences off. Having content that fosters a belief of a trusted and valued partner is key if prospects are to impart their previous data to you.
The desired audience provided by Fujitsu Ireland contained major brands with key senior stakeholder roles. Paid media, much like any form of advertising, is often measured by way of ROI – so gathering as many leads as possible through LinkedIn lead generation forms had to be the goal.
Of course, social doesn’t allow you to target people by name – the more specific the requirement, (role, country, company, industry, etc) the more likely Fujitsu were to hit the key figureheads they had in mind. The other big challenge was getting these users to share their name and contact details – what could Fujitsu offer in exchange that was valuable enough that their target deemed worthwhile?
Time for the fun part
Simply firing out lead generation forms on LinkedIn is rarely going to work – if only it was that easy! No, there must be time for the audience to build trust and understanding in Fujitsu before they become open to the prospect of parting with their data.
Now, this is where our nudge nurture philosophy comes in. Throughout this approach, we targeted audiences effectively and positioned Fujitsu and its services at the front of their mind, leading into the third phase of the campaign, where lead generation forms would be run as the value exchange kicked into action.
So, how did we do it?
Although this approach is based on building out deeper messages through storytelling, the key to success is to maintain quality over quantity.
To form the nudge-nurture campaign, we plotted out a three-phased approach, utilising various forms of content:
• Phase One – raise awareness of the Fujitsu brand using a frequency of c.3 (Trigger – 2-week duration)
- Timely news, stats and facts related to the industry.
- Thumb-stopping social with impactful graphics (carousels, audiograms, and animations).
• Phase Two – encourage engagement on posts that resonate (nudge nurture – 6-week duration).
- Industry pain points, ‘sleepless nights’ associated with customer sectors.
- Retargeting based on phase one.
- Impactful imagery, incorporating hard-hitting stats and attention-grabbing visuals.
• Phase Three – conversion. Provide useful information for the audience to digest, in return for their data (8-week duration).
- Lead generation forms
- Value exchange: useful insights and new data, industry reports, white papers, and thought leadership.
- Links to Fujitsu-formed content/landing pages
Developing the visual identity
A nudge-nurture campaign was one thing, but we needed to make it thumb-stopping too, with eye-catching visuals that resonated with the brand and audience – animation was going to be key here.
First, we looked at the colour combinations in Fujitsu Ireland branding – playing with different shades of green, whilst also considering the natural beauty of Ireland – which was an important factor in the visual identity.
We created a visual identity based on juxtaposition, by taking elements of nature and the landscape of Ireland, and mixing them with data and information, to create an animated campaign that was present in the correct touch points for our audience, whilst also being engaging and interesting to look at.
But how did it do?
The campaign was a success, pulling 30 high-quality leads into the sales funnel for the telemarketing team. Our nudge-nurture method was key to this success, attracting key-decision maker target accounts, which allowed Fujitsu to continue building on the touchpoints, driving brand awareness, and increasing the chances of investment.
Always learning
With continuously demonstrable results from our nudge-nurture philosophy; validating the use of social spend on B2B marketing has never been easier – and with lead generation becoming increasingly prominent for brands that take to LinkedIn, we saw a great opportunity for one of our clients to pad out their sales funnel with quality leads.
Remember, for your audience: they want to know what you can do for them, not what you can sell to them.