Engaged employees are every organisation’s most significant assets. They play a crucial role in shaping the brand’s culture and perception, both internally and externally. The power of their participation also manifests organisations’ goals and objectives.
SMEC, a large global engineering, management and development consultancy, set out to invigorate their existing engagement with employees as well as external stakeholders. With 70 years of delivering specialist expertise and technology-driven solutions behind them, SMEC launched the ‘70 Years of Impact’ campaign for their key Australia-based clients, industry members and 5,500 employees spread across 35 countries. They turned to LinkedIn as a preferred marketing channel.
SMEC’s objective was crystal clear — generate pride and empower employees to become brand advocates on LinkedIn and measure the results by engagement and distribution of campaign communication. The only challenges in achieving the results were SMEC’s small marketing team and limited campaign budget.
“It was important for us to show what could be accomplished through innovative use of resources and careful targeting to maximise return on our activities,” said Liz Shi, Corporate Communications and Marketing Manager at SMEC.
A journey of impact
A significant portion of the budget was allocated to sponsored content to ensure targeting stayed a priority. With LinkedIn’s precise targeting capabilities, SMEC amplified their global reach even with limited resources.
For their key clients and employee members on LinkedIn, they deployed rich content in the form of single image and video ads that communicated their brand story and value proposition in a meaningful and compelling way to the audience.
The team also posted regularly and targeted precisely on LinkedIn to build quality engagement. They promoted the brand internally to encourage executives and employees to engage with the content on LinkedIn and increase its reach. Since most SMEC employees are active on LinkedIn, this increased activity encouraged them to interact with the campaign communications.
The overall campaign achieved over two million impressions and reached 756,000 members on LinkedIn. The highlight was that during the campaign period, SMEC’s employee shares increased by 90%. This increase in numbers on LinkedIn, opened the gates for SMEC to profile their specialists and circulate thought leadership in the market.
Above all, the campaign won the coveted International Association of Business Communication (IABC) Gold Quill Award of Excellence, a recognised and awarded excellence in strategic communication worldwide, in April 2020.
This is how a well-thought-out strategy, including rich sponsored content and precise targeting, helped SMEC build trust with their internal and external audiences, making ambassadors of employees on LinkedIn.
“Being able to demonstrate results through LinkedIn data and campaign metrics, and having benchmarks/competitor data to rank ourselves against, have proved that LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is a strategic function and partner to business. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of our conferences, event and industry forums are cancelled, we are relying even more on LinkedIn as one of the means by which we can engage with our clients,” Shi added.
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