by Christina | Jul 29, 2025 | 2025, Blog
Late last year LinkedIn changed its algorithm, signaling a pivot in its business strategy and taking a dramatic shift. The question is, why?
Has LinkedIn come to the realization that other social platforms are increasingly coming after business (especially small business) or is it their advertising model they covet?
The truth is, LinkedIn needs growth. Revenue growth has slowed to 9% in 2023 and 2024, driven mostly by premium subscription and talent solutions.
And new growth looks like advertising, and lots of it. The old free “networking” platform is quickly transitioning to becoming an ad platform.
The Change
Many users of the platform will tell you they saw a dramatic decrease in their engagement metrics at the end of last year. According to Richard van der Blom and Just Connecting’s Algorithm Insights Report 2025, overall organic reach has declined 50% over the last year in hope of connecting content with the right audience…quality over quantity.
LinkedIn’s AI-driven ranking systems now resemble those of platforms like Instagram and TikTok, meaning you are more likely to see content coming from less creators, and more from creators you engage and/or connect with. Compared to the past which was more balanced towards professional relevance and interest.
Just as the other platforms mentioned have created content “rabbit holes” to dive into, those same content holes are being created in a quest to drive deeper engagement. Where it was once believed that LinkedIn favored organic content creators, it’s now fully on the side of the content consumers. For businesses, this change (unless you have a broad following) means that little of the content that you are sharing on your corporate page will make it through to your audiences organically. In fact, according to a report, organic corporate page content showing in a LI feed has now fallen to 2% in 2024.
The Big Push for Video
What is increasing is video. Lots of it. The use of video increased by 69% in the past year according to the Algorithm report and Daniel Shapero, LinkedIn’s COO who stated that viewer time has increased by 36% year-over-year.
To continue the push to video, LinkedIn has now built a staple of 50+ B2B influencers to promote it. They’ve signed business partnerships with well-known content creators, like Steven Bartlett (The Diary of a CEO), Guy Raz (How I Built This), and Allie K. Miller (AI Business), to make more video content for the platform. Anyone want to guess why?
If you guessed ‘to sell more advertising’, you’re correct. Mr. Shapero also stated that advertising revenues saw significant growth in the quarter, and they see video as a great way to extend business reach.
What Does it Mean for Business and Paid Social?
The first question…is LinkedIn an important media channel for your business? If so, then the second question is, what is the goal? What is your expectation – do you see it as an awareness or demand generation channel?
If it is the latter, you may find the new direction frustrating. LinkedIn pushes video mostly for reach and impressions. And, as I mentioned in my last post, LinkedIn posts and promotions are very difficult to connect to business impact metrics. You may be better off investing in LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator.
If the goal is awareness, then you are in luck! Here’s what you need to do in order to align with the new direction.
- Ramp up video – Identify thought leaders who are camera ready to use for short form videos. Candidates should be subject matter leaders and not salespeople.
- Videos should be vertical in format and under 1 min in run time.
- Shift budget from promoting posts on your LinkedIn corporate page to higher performing thought leadership ads sponsoring videos.
- Posting video should be done by the person featured and reshared by the corporate page…and hopefully, employees within your organization.
- Focus on storytelling. Personal stories perform best. Go easy on the selling.
- Link your metrics to track performance from impressions to form fill or website visit.
Will it Work?
LinkedIn says that the changes have been made in an effort to bring more of the content consumers want by mining engagement data. By doing this, it is restricting the organic reach of content creators. And that organic reach drove results, according to The Social Shepherd, 77% of B2B marketers said that organic content and engagement produced the best results.
Now those creators will be ones who will be buying the ads. The question is, can they create the quality and style of content that will fit the new advertising vehicles, like Thought Leadership ads.
Will LinkedIn influencers be effective? If you don’t have the inhouse talent to build a following you may consider “renting” one. But, a business audience is very different from a consumer audience. Will LinkedIn influencers be creditable enough to move an audience to take action?
All good questions that we’ll watch play out over time. In the short-term ad revenue will grow, but in the long run, will it adversely impact user experience? One thing is certain, you will see more sponsored content, especially from LinkedIn, on your feed.
I don’t knock LinkedIn for making the pivot. TikTok owns small business retail and Instagram is coming for corporations. Business buyers are consumers and have been programmed to prefer video on social feeds.
Users of “free” platforms also get that is a price to pay for usage, but will this pivot drive users to spend less time on it. Currently, 16% of users check in daily for an average of 1 minute and 17 seconds, according to The Social Shepherd.
Let’s also keep in mind that the platform was built and grew by catering to recruiters and job seekers. Can it balance the need for revenue growth while staying true to its original charter?
It’s a big bet and only time will tell. TikTok goes the clock…
by Christina | Apr 3, 2025 | 2025, Business Trends
In today’s economic climate, losing a customer isn’t just disappointing—it’s potentially devastating. Yet many businesses miss the early warning signals until it’s too late.
I’m experiencing this firsthand with one of our vendors right now. The relationship is deteriorating, and I can see exactly where things went wrong. Don’t let this happen to your business. Here are the critical warning signs to recognize and address immediately:
1. Service Deterioration
When service quality stumbles at the start and never recovers—or worse, begins strong but steadily declines—customers notice immediately. This often stems from internal turnover or stretched resources, but regardless of the cause, clients can sense when they’re no longer a priority. Remember: consistency is as important as quality.
2. Communication Breakdown
Poor communication compounds service issues and accelerates relationship decline. Worst of all is attempting to cover problems with transparent excuses—this damages trust far more than the original issue. The solution is straightforward but crucial: honest, proactive communication can salvage even troubled relationships.
3. Eroding Trust
If your customer begins questioning your expertise or experience, you’re facing a five-alarm fire. Once trust evaporates, recovery becomes exponentially more difficult. This warning sign demands immediate intervention—schedule a candid conversation about expectations and reset the relationship before it’s unsalvageable.
4. Subpar Deliverables
Sometimes the sales team sets impossible expectations, creating a delivery gap from day one. Other times, businesses overreach beyond their core competencies. Either way, consistently disappointing deliverables will end relationships. Focus on excelling at what you do best rather than attempting to be everything to everyone.
5. The Toxic Team Member
One underperforming team member can poison an entire customer relationship. Don’t retain problematic employees simply to fill a position—they consume disproportionate management resources while actively damaging customer relationships. Make the difficult staffing decisions before they cost you valuable clients.
6. The Preemptive Reset
Sometimes the boldest move is acknowledging when you can’t meet expectations. Proactively addressing shortcomings—even suggesting a pause in the relationship—demonstrates integrity and preserves future possibilities. A temporary revenue hit is preferable to a permanently damaged reputation.
The Path Forward
Customers don’t make switching decisions lightly. When a vendor is deeply integrated into operations or fulfills a critical function, transition costs are substantial. This reality often creates a window for relationship recovery—but only if you recognize the warning signs and act decisively.
Use this opportunity to genuinely improve your service delivery. Not only might you save the relationship, but you’ll also remove the constant weight of knowing you’re underserving a client—a burden no business owner should carry.
by William Walsh | Jul 15, 2024 | 2024
As previously published on 7/11/24 in MarTech
Did you know that you have your own intent data, you don’t need to buy it. If you are executing campaigns, especially in existing accounts you have data that goes much deeper than what you could buy.
You just know where, and how, to look for it. Once you find it you will realize that what has been sold, or said, to you about “signals” isn’t exactly true.
As marketers, we’ve been told that there is a connection between a “signal” of a prospect seeking information with their interest in your company or product. That a response to an offer made could imply they’re “in the market to buy”
This is how Zoominfo describes intent data based on signal strength.
- “Derived intent signals are a mix of first-party and third-party signals. These offer insights into behaviors that indicate interest in a company, such as ad engagement, web activity, topic engagement, and technology use.”
As a result, we have a tendency to think of this as a MQL. But this is where things break from reality. Again from ZoomInfo:
- “Identify interest: Purchase-intent signals help identify which companies are actively researching your solution before they fill out a form on your site or engage with your sales and marketing teams.”
This is simply not true, it’s an assumption. Let me break it down, unless you understand a buyer’s personality, which would give you real insight into their behaviors and motivations, and you are able to observe this over time, you can not assume that they are “actively searching” for what you are offering because they have ‘purchase intent.”
We have found only a small percent (5-10%) of cases where this is true, and we have evaluated engagement and intent data across 7 industries and thousands of interactions. When you look at your own data you will find the same thing.
Given the fact that 5% of your targeted audience is in a buying cycle at any one time this would make sense. But what is more interesting is what is in the 95% of data that you aren’t analyzing or buying.
Here’s what you need to know about to analyzing your own engagement data
First, pull data from your sales and marketing systems at the account level. We’re often so busy executing we rarely have time to look at what has happened in the past. You’ll want to pull 12 to 18 months of engagement data based on the length of the sales cycle.
Pull data on 10 accounts to start. They could be the 10 biggest or most important (based on pipeline value) accounts. Here’s what you’ll want to look for in the data.
- Engagement over time – this is an important metric because it’s a measure of mindshare you have with a buyer/contact. Look for how they have engaged with your outreach over the past 12 to 18 months. Is it a “burst,” for example, a C-level engages multiple times in a month or is it “consistent” – a couple of engagements over a longer period of time.
- Engagement time – how much time did they spend with whatever was offered. Was it millisecond or seconds? This will help you understand their level of engagement. Are they glancing at what was sent or did they dig deeper?
- Engagement frequency – did they hit one thing multiple times in one day, and over a period of time? This may be an indicator of them forwarding information to others. And it gives you insight into who might be the “router” of information inside of the account.
- Engagement offer – what are they engaging with, e.g. what offer or outreach. Are they looking at webinar invites, new case studies, reading the newsletter, etc. Having 10 accounts will give you real insight into what content really matters.
This insight will help you understand if the audience is interested in your brand, solution, or just what was offered.
Most times, it will be just the offer. But that’s a great insight because it allows you to narrow down your activities to the things that really matter to your audience. What content offers really do is they open a window for a salesperson to be viewed as valuable. It doesn’t tell you if the target is in a buying window or in a certain part of the buyer’s journey, unfortunately.
Giving the sales organization insight into how, and what, audiences are engaging with enables them to focus on starting a relationship. Through a better understanding of why people are doing what they are doing, it gets to their real motivations. The signal becomes insight.
For example, did they look at your upcoming webinar invite or user conference? How many times did they look at it? How many emails related to those events did they open? Did they attend the event? If they didn’t, you now know they were interested.
This creates an opportunity for the salesperson to offer an on demand version of the webinar or maybe a free pass to next year’s event. They’re building a relationship based on interest, not jumping to selling a solution where they have shown no real interest in pursuing.
And that is what is in your 95% of the engagement data that doesn’t get analyzed. It tells sales who to spend their time with, and how to start a relationship, that one day could become a new customer.
by William Walsh | Jul 1, 2024 | 2024
By Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 3 Minutes
Want to take your ICP’s to the next level? Try using personality based marketing to understand corporate cultures.
Here’s why. Above are 2 SaaS companies in the martech industry. Our client is selling to the same buyer in each company. But the company situations are vastly different.
The first company is growing aggressively and has a corporate culture that is full of “Dominate” personalities.
The second company is under attack and has lost significant revenue and market share during the last two years. The corporate culture is skeptical, given the prevalence of “Consciences” personalities.
So what does all this mean?
First, it impacts the positioning of the value of your product.
Second, it helps you identify the right set of the sales and marketing assets.
In company 1, you position the value of the offering to help scale growth.
You communicate that through case studies with ROIs. Given their “dominant” culture, they are heads down operators so use relevant case studies that align, as closely as possible, to their situation.
In company 2, you position the value of the product on what it can do to drive efficiency.
This is a company fighting for its survival. It needs ideas on how to improve operations. As a result, use cases showing potential cost savings (business cases) are most important.
And given the culture, use data and research to support the use/business cases which is essential for building credibility in selling to an organization like this.
Before you even speak to a buyer you can understand the environment in which they operate. It allows you to create a connection — optimism for company 1, empathy in company 2.
ICP’s are not just an acronym, they’re people. Decisions are influenced by emotions. Motivations cause decisions, and personality dictates both.
The more you understand this the higher the likelihood of getting engagement, interest, and a decision. It’s a 1, 2 punch.
by William Walsh | Jul 11, 2023 | 2023
As previously published on 6/28/23 in MarTech
By Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 5 Minutes
What if they are wrong?
When responding to questions about AI replacing humans in certain roles, most ‘experts’ claim that AI will replace some jobs, but will be a much more valuable tool for augmenting human intelligence and ability.
In all of the hype associated with this latest technology wave, an important trend is occurring across industries that could significantly change the impact of AI – the retirement of the knowledge worker.
We need to look no further than the last wave of intelligent technology – the “internet of things” (IoT) to see the impact.
The term ‘Internet of Things’ was coined in 1999 by computer scientist, Kevin Ashton. While working at Procter & Gamble, Ashton proposed putting radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips on products to track them through a supply chain.
“Machines talking to machines” started rolling out in early/ mid 2010 making their way into manufacturing, precision agriculture, complex information networks, and for consumers in a new wave of wearables.
Now, having about a decade of experience of how IoT has impacted certain industries and markets, perhaps it can give us some interesting insights on the future of AI.
In 2010, Cisco launched the “Tomorrow Starts Here” IoT campaign at the time when communication networks were transitioning from hardware “stacks” to software development networks (SDN).
The change meant that in order for carriers to expand their bandwidth, they no longer needed to “rip and replace ” hardware. They only needed to upgrade the software. This transition began the era of machines monitoring their performance and communicating with each other, with the promise of one day producing self healing networks.
Over this same period, network engineers who ushered in the transition from an analog to digital began retiring. These experienced knowledge workers are often being replaced by technicians who understand the monitoring tools, but not necessarily, how the network works.
Over the last dozen years networks have grown in complexity to include cellular, and the number of connections has grown exponentially. To help manage this complexity, numerous monitoring tools have been developed and implemented.
The people on the other end reading the alerts see the obvious, but have a difficult time interpreting the issue, or what to prioritize. The reason is, the tool knows there is an issue but is not smart enough yet to know how to fix it or if it will take care of itself. Technicians end up chasing “ghost tickets,” alerts that have resolved themselves, resulting in lost productivity.
The same thing is repeating itself in marketing today. As one CMO told me; “I can find people who know the technologies all day long, but what I can’t find is someone who thinks strategically. Ask a marketing manager to set up the tools and run a campaign and they have no problem, but ask them to write a compelling value proposition or offer for the campaign, and they will struggle.”
It’s easy to get sucked into the tools. AI generators are really intriguing and can do some amazing things. But based on what we have seen, the tools are not smart enough to fully deliver on their promise…yet.
Here’s the warning from IoT – as tools become more knowledgeable, the workforce operating them is becoming less. It is leaving a knowledge gap. As that knowledge is transferred from worker to machine, we need to ask ourselves what we’ll be left with. Will there be enough experience and expertise in our workers to know if what comes out of the machine is accurate, factitious, or even dangerous.
In a recent WSJ article, Melissa Beebe, an oncology nurse, commented on how she relies on her observation skills to make life-or-death decisions. When an alert said her patient in the oncology unit of UC Davis Medical Center had sepsis, she was sure the AI tool monitoring the patient was wrong.
“I’ve been working with cancer patients for 15 years so I know a septic patient when I see one,” she said. “I knew this patient wasn’t septic.”
The alert correlates elevated white blood cell count with septic infection. It didn’t take into account that this particular patient had leukemia, which can cause similar blood counts. The algorithm, which was based on artificial intelligence, triggers the alert when it detects patterns that match previous patients with sepsis.
Unfortunately, hospital rules require nurses to follow protocols when a patient is flagged for sepsis. Beebe could override the AI model, if she gets doctor approval, but faces disciplinary action if she’s wrong. It’s easy to see the danger of removing human intelligence in this case, it also illustrates the risk associated with over relying on artificial intelligence.
AI will free us from low value tasks, and that is a good thing, but we need to redistribute that time to better developing our people, and our teams. The greatest benefit from these game changing technologies in the business to business environment will be realized when we combine equal amounts of human intelligence with machine intelligence.
