The Challenge

Microsoft wanted to directly engage with prospective B2B customers in the Middle East and Africa through improved visibility of its messaging on LinkedIn. The company sought ways to fill in its audience knowledge gaps with personalised expert insights on digital transformation and cloud computing.

Our Solution: Strategic Social Selling Programme and Lead Generation

We defined and delivered comprehensive value propositions for each offering, industry, and persona. Initially starting with 18 executives, the project expanded to 40 due to its success. Our employee advocacy program built stronger and more visible personal brands for Microsoft MEA senior executives, including the C-level leadership team and country managers.

To reach the audience, we crafted relevant and engaging employee posts, articles, and industry ebooks, allowing Microsoft experts to personally pitch enterprise leaders with quality solutions. Supporting the content with personalised graphics paved the way for consistent LinkedIn interactions and steady lead conversions.

We led all program stages, from social advocacy strategy to content production, prospecting, and paid lead generation campaigns. Our team provided training on social media visibility, optimised personal profiles, developed ad formats, and collected leads.

Guidance

To create strong and attractive personal brands, we defined the best strategies for profile visibility and used LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Personalisation was a significant aspect of this project. The challenge was to map markets, industries, and personas so that program participants did not overlap. The content was highly personalized for each social seller individually. We created a comprehensive social selling playbook and presented nine content clusters according to the guidelines.

Execution

Before building a sales funnel with content, we delivered a list of targeted names and links to their LinkedIn profiles. Social sellers directly engaged with those who downloaded ebooks. We decoded complex digital transformation and cloud computing concepts for the audience, using content to build a sales funnel for the client team.

Monitoring and Reporting

We delivered leaderboards to boost motivation and competition between social sellers and created a metrics dashboard. The reporting system was integrated into Microsoft Marketing Cloud, ensuring comprehensive monitoring and analysis.

The Result

Adding a ‘personal touch’ to an outreach campaign helped Microsoft build positive relationships with prospective clients and introduce them to Microsoft tailored digital transformation technologies. The programme, which we coordinated over eight quarterly flights spanning 24 months, has been extended several times due to its success.