Knotch delivers high-value collateral to eager marketers, driving quality leads

Challenge

● Knotch is a content intelligence platform that helps companies measure the sentiment and engagement of the content they publish. The company works with enterprise-level brands, but is branching out to attract SMBs and smaller content teams.

● As it expands its reach to content marketers across a broader landscape, Knotch turned to LinkedIn to help drive engagement for its larger campaigns and special content offerings. The company needed to not only expand its lead-gen efforts, but do so through results-driven messaging.

● While Knotch was already familiar with LinkedIn, it needed to go beyond the realm of general engagement. They decided to experiment with LinkedIn paid ads. “We use LinkedIn organic social to post a regular schedule of curated and original content,” says Liz Lowman, Senior Director of Marketing at Knotch. “We needed an extra push for our bigger events, news and things like that.”

Solution

● Knotch created a high-value piece of content, titled The 2020 State of Content Careers Report. Using a curated list of potential leads, the company promoted the report through a series of LinkedIn ads. The team relied on LinkedIn’s targeting tools to define job titles and company sizes, ensuring a relevant audience would see the report offer.

● In addition to high-level targeting, Knotch also varied ad creatives, and tracked engagement across each. They leveraged top-performing ads into refined targeting to put their ebook in front of content marketers, while also linking the authority of their collateral to the Knotch brand and platform.

● “We’ve promoted events and things with LinkedIn in the past, but this was our first time using the platform to promote a piece of content of this caliber,” says Liz. “We weren’t quite sure what the expected number of leads would be, but I can tell you that we were blown away by what happened.”

Results

● Knotch saw prolific engagement for its report, and attracted content marketing professionals from across industries and organizations. Not only was it a win for the company’s outreach strategy, it was a test balloon for future paid advertising success on LinkedIn.

● Beyond quantity, the company enjoyed a high level of interest from quality leads. “We got a lot of people to respond, but the number of them interested in pursuing Knotch was what was really exciting,” says Liz.

A big push for big opportunities

● The jump from routine posting and organic content was a big one for Knotch—but so was its decision to produce a high-value piece of collateral. The State of Content Careers showcased the brand’s ability to promote content to a targeted group and see results. The experience has helped Knotch pursue a more successful paid advertising approach.

● “We gathered a pretty decent amount of leads from The State of Content Careers,” says Liz. “Since then, we’ve found a lot of success in LinkedIn paid ads—specifically for high-value content pieces for our larger events or webinars, such as our Insight 2021 conference.”

Consistent testing drives higher engagement

● A large part of the success Knotch saw from its ebook campaign came from its willingness to experiment with creative direction. “We had four or five different images, and each of those images had three versions of text,” says Liz. “You never know exactly what’s going to hit, and so testing is extremely important.”

● Knotch relied on robust reporting from LinkedIn to understand the success of its various creative options, and leveraged winning examples to increase engagement. Data was key in helping the company connect the dots between visual, copy, value proposition and audience. “You know how your ads hit the audience and you can make adjustments, instead of trying to throw stuff against the wall,” Liz explains.

Quality over quantity when it comes to leads

● Knotch isn’t a stranger to digital marketing, but its previous efforts outside of LinkedIn weren’t generating efficient returns. The company saw no shortage of leads, but probing deeper, found that few of them were quality leads. When it came to conversion metrics, the results simply weren’t there.

● Through LinkedIn ads, Knotch had full control over targeting and ad customization, which allowed the company to curate a more specific customer profile. In doing so, they were able to perform better on conversion metrics. “We found that, not only were we getting large numbers of interested people, they were quality leads that turned into real opportunities,” says Liz.

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