LinkedIn Video Strategy in 2026: The Ultimate B2B Guide

The reason why we're hosting this webinar is that, at shoots that we are really passionate about video content.

So we've been for the past decade helping businesses all over the world create video content at scale all the way from high end video campaigns all the way to UGC.

And in twenty twenty six, it is no different and video is still shaping up to be the best way of communicating. So if you're looking for a video partner and need help creating video content of any kind, we are here to help.

Without further ado, it is my great pleasure to introduce our guest today, Stephanie. Stephanie joins us with over fifteen years of experience in media and advertising working across global brands including Workday, HP, Google, and Gucci.

In her current role, she partners with LinkedIn's largest global strategic clients, bringing their business objectives to life through LinkedIn marketing solutions.

She's here to share what works for B2B brands on LinkedIn, particularly across video and thought leadership, and how marketers are showing up more effectively on the platform. Please, give it up for the wonderful Stephanie. Good morning. Morning. Thank you for having me.

Our absolute pleasure. I will leave the stage to you. Alrighty. So before we get started, look, I'd love to share a fun fact with you guys. LinkedIn live is actually up by thirty four percent year over year.

So while we've had a lot of people subscribe and show interest, we get it. Life gets busy. So the great news is this is recorded. So all of this information will be shared for you to review afterwards. So let's jump right in.

Let's talk about LinkedIn and the landscape and what that looks like. So LinkedIn has grown massively over the years, and we're at one point three billion members today.

We have over sixty nine million companies, fifteen million jobs on the platform, over forty one thousand skills on the platform. Fun fact, one hundred and forty five hours of content are consumed every minute on the platform.

So a lot of that is focused on video, which we'll discuss a lot today. And then in terms of schools, we have one hundred and forty thousand and there is over nineteen billion posts.

So really big numbers and growth over the globe as LinkedIn has evolved as a platform. Now as we're speaking, these are continuously growing so updates essentially grow every single minute by the bulk. So we're here to talk about video.

What does that look like today? Look, it's moving fast. And so we'll unpack a few key elements. But the numbers specifically show here, there are one hundred and fifty eight billion views on LinkedIn annually and climbing.

So that's up by thirty six percent year over year in video viewership. Now some of our markets, for example, India are actually up by ninety five percent on video views. Markets like Australia are up by forty seven percent for video views.

So each market has its own individual nuances. But all of the motions show that movement is definitely the space where we're seeing a lot of engagement and actually helping to drive business outcomes.

Whether you are a B2B, a B2C brand, whether you're an enterprise brand or a small brand, it doesn't really matter.

So let's talk through what that looks like. So currently today, video posts are shared more than twenty times than any other content.

And a lot of that we'll talk through today, but a lot of that is tied to the emotions and the learning and being able to digest that content on the go.

So perhaps people are on their commute this morning, they might be listening to the LinkedIn Live, have their headphones on, or they are, you know, just on the go and they're reading the captions as well.

So all of this is happening in a few different motions across the platform. And what we're seeing is LinkedIn is growing one point six point times faster when it comes to video than any of our other formats.

So it's quite a massive swing in the growth that we're continuing to see. Now, we get started, I want to lay a foundation for you all because there is organic and there is paid.

And so I want to talk through what these formats look like and how you can bring them to life as I give you the examples for anyone that might not be familiar with all of the formats that we have when it comes to video.

Now the first is in feed video. I'm assuming ninety nine percent of you all know what this is when you're scrolling on the feed, whether it's organic or it's paid, it is a feed that appears in a video that appears in your feed.

Now the second, which we've seen a lot of activity in is thought leadership. So that could be your employees, that could be your leadership team, or even what we're seeing more growth of is in the creator space.

So again, this is something that can be done organically or paid.

Now a couple other buckets that will fall into is something like BrandLink, which is a paid only program that we have working with high end editorial companies to bring in more of that high impact video.

And then lastly, LinkedIn Live, which I'm very passionate about. We see a ton of growth in this space. And there's a great way for you as B2B marketers and comms leaders, employer branding to take this and also package this up pre post enduring.

So I'll touch a little bit on that for today's topic. So just laying a baseline of what these different formats are as we work across the conversations today. So let's talk about the paradigm shift in B2B marketing.

Global video ad spend has doubled over twice the amount in the last five years, and it's continuing to climb. And when we think about that on LinkedIn, we're seeing the exact same thing happening in parallel.

So we have doubled in video campaigns over the past five years as we continue to see this massive growth.

Now the challenge here is while fifty five percent of marketers say short form video drives the highest ROI, which is actually surprising, but hear me out later. Forty percent of marketers struggle to create an effective video strategy.

So that's where your planning, your production, all of that work that goes in upfront, you know, partners like Shootsta can help you to get there in a better scenario to ultimately drive more impactful video to influence those users and your buying journey.

So quickly just touching on what makes video so effective, it is the memory factor. So attention ultimately drives the most attention on LinkedIn and engagement video gets one point four more engagement on LinkedIn.

So things to think about a couple stats that are helpful to know. And ultimately retention, it comes in at ninety five percent. And a lot of that is because video can show emotion.

Even when you think about when you're watching video, you have it on mute, you're still able to engage, catch someone's body language or the storytelling that's going on.

So that's why often video is so compelling and allows us to warm up that buying group that you are getting in front of, or perhaps you're an employer branding, and you're warming that audience for that message.

So the biggest thing to think about when you think about video is often emotional storytelling. And this is something that Shootsta really does a great job at mapping out with their partners.

What this looks like is taking something like your main character and breaking that down and thinking about a relatable goal. So what's that relatable goal? For example, here, one of our clients SAP is breaking this down.

Now, I'll share these video examples with you, key pieces as a follow-up, but I'll walk you through the conversations today just keeping in mind time and streaming capabilities as we work through today.

So the second piece that we think about is moving into that relatable goal. And the third is thinking about tension, risks, and jeopardy.

Like how can you create that kind of sense of tension, that friction to get your users really more engaged into your video?

And then from there, you walk into transformation, sensory detail, having them feel that environment, and then looking through engagement, which is emotion.

So we'll talk through these pieces and unpack them today, but this is a really good way to break down video when you have the time to properly plan ahead.

Now, of course, sometimes in LinkedIn, we're going to be doing something really quick and easy like a talking head video, And you might not need to do as much planning.

So video can be really six to twelve months out of planning and then really easy in terms of pop your phone up and just go ahead and shoot depending on how comfortable you feel. So that's our baseline before we jump into some examples.

But I think what would be helpful is how to show you how to win with video. And I'll give you some tips of things that you shouldn't do as a B2B marketer along the way.

Look, this is a common topic of like what should or should we not do and the great part about today is we'll actually have a Q & A session at the end.

So if you have questions, feel free to ask and we'll go through those as well. So the biggest thing you can do is think about your strategy and think about how that ties together with your business objectives.

And what does that mean in terms of emotions and the ultimate goals that you're looking to do. But really what we're looking to do is not to serve ads, but to tell stories because people don't want to be spoken at, right?

They don't want to say buy this, buy this. They need to be warmed up to whether it's your product or the calm strategy that you have behind your objectives. So I want to walk you through a few examples here.

But the emotive effect is essentially something that is designed to create an emotional response and that allows that trigger in the brain to have a connection.

And when you do these in small repeatable formats, it works well with brand recognition and studies show the brand lift that associates with it as well. So think about pairing these pieces together with your objectives to tell that story over time.

So we actually find, of course, that shorter videos work better. And I don't think that's anything new. Attention spans have become much shorter these days.

But think about how you can get in front of these users, your audience, by taking your video and perhaps filming it and a long day with your leaders, maybe with your some of your employees, and you take this video and then you cut it down into multiple formats.

Let's say you have thirty minutes of video and now you have created some organic content and now you've created paid content. And you can now disperse this across LinkedIn, but each one's going to have a little bit different of a message.

So that allows you to do these short snippets of storytelling. And by focusing on elements such as emotion, you can put emotion in the motion emotion, emotion in the motion, then you can actually help to drive leads at the end of the day.

So we actually see a twenty percent in leads when we act when we are pairing video with leads. Now I'll talk about how you can do this because there's a lot of measurements on LinkedIn that people don't actually know even exist.

And I think this is one of the biggest pieces that people often miss out on is taking your business connecting like your CRM to LinkedIn's CAPI as an example.

Now again, I'm not going to go deep on to measurement, but there is a ton of capabilities that allow you to actually show the value in your video.

So when your leadership team comes to you and says, okay, we're doing video, what's happening with it? I just need to drive revenue. Now you're able to unpack that over time.

So in this use case here, Salesforce is really talking about a father and daughter relationship. They're pulling in the emotions. And this is really where they're thinking about how can we stand out from crowd today and not just have a typical B2B ad.

So think about there's different use cases for when and where, but this really does resonate on LinkedIn when you look at different types of content and how we see the best engagement and influence on leads overall.

Another emotive effect that I like to think about here is cinematic storytelling. And again, this is going to be something that you do with a partner. This is or maybe it's something you do in house.

But this isn't something that me myself as you know, employee at LinkedIn is going to do this massive cinematic storytelling. This is going to be something big and flashy.

For example, this is one of the partners that leads Formula One, a lot of beautiful cinematic content.

And when we see this storytelling comes in, so that picture that I talked through earlier and touching on all this points to evoke emotion and activating the brain, we actually see a fourteen percent lift and dwell time.

So those users are actually watching your video longer. They're warming up. They're thinking about you know what they want to do with your brand. Now moving into this next section, what's helpful is the power of LinkedIn and the community.

And I cannot stress that enough. Even before I worked at LinkedIn, I see so much value in LinkedIn and the community. So think about this today from your perspective, from your colleagues' perspective, from your leaders' perspective. Don't disconnect even the smallest of roles.

Interns, for example, you can highlight their capabilities and what they've done to be proud of at the company. Now again, going back to your business objectives, think about what you want to do.

But overall, across the whole network, there's some really great storytelling when it comes to video. So a big tip is don't underestimate your network when it comes to LinkedIn. So when we think about the network effect, who are you connected to?

Who am I connected to? Who's my boss connected to? Who's connected to our company page? Right? There's so many members. So again, there's over one point three billion members across LinkedIn and growing.

Also, think about it this way is think about it from a user behavior. As people commute, they're actively on their phone, they're watching video, you want to capture those moments. And as people comment, you're seeing their comments, you're seeing the connections.

All these signals are ultimately mapping people together, and video helps bring that together. So when I think about this example here, so this is PwC for Australia. This is a mom. She's basically talking about how work life balance is really great at PwC.

And what that does is that actually helps to build on brand you know brand building and employer employee generated content even. Because we see that fifty percent of job seekers actually evaluate a company before applying.

So again, it's taking that emotion and just making it a little bit softer and relatable to the market to warm them up based off of your messaging.

Now, I've talked a little bit about employer branding, but really what I'm going to focus now is a bit more on the marketing and sales side.

So thinking with your marketing hat on, LinkedIn essentially allows us allows to be a network that is a marketing asset.

And I think this is a huge mistake that brands often miss today. Think about the power of your network when it comes to your employees.

Think about who you're trying to reach out to in your target audience. Often your employees are connected to the very same people.

There is so much that you can do with that.

So with that being said, across your network, one of the best stats that I think is really helpful is you can actually enhance your leads by two point four times when employees target accounts that follow your company.

So think about getting in front of these accounts that are already interested. So as an example today on, you know, Shootsta, there's people that are already following almost thirteen thousand people that follow Shootsta. Actively engage in the content.

They're interested in the content because the content that LinkedIn puts out or that Shootsta puts out on their LinkedIn is informative and educational, and they're highlighting case studies. So they already have that natural engagement, which is really great. So that's one bucket.

So think about who follows your company page. Now the second bucket is more leads come from senior members that target accounts that are connected to your employees. So this is two point two times higher.

So think about these senior members of these target accounts. So let's say for example, I believe Singtel was on the call. Singtel used to be a client of mine.

Look, if Singtel is a senior client and we're trying to get in front of them, video is a great way to do that and tell that story.

So again, putting yourself in the seat of who's in your audience when it comes to following your page, but also thinking about who is everyone connected to as an employee essentially is a winning combination when you bring those together.

So diving into a huge movement, which is the thought leadership piece. This is the c suite. And just some quick stats for you.

Ninety eight percent of Fortune five hundred CEOs are on LinkedIn, and fifty seven percent of CEOs are posting more than they ever have been on LinkedIn over the last past two years. I'm sure you can see that when you're actively scrolling.

A lot more leaders are starting to get KPIs about engaging and showing the human side of their leadership style. Because people ultimately trust people, not logos, right? So thought leadership is a really good way to unpack that.

And with that being said, video is an essential way for you to soften your audience and really show your C levels and the case of who they are and what they're interested in.

Now this doesn't need to be something that's like a hard pitch. You can do some softening pieces such as like what's working in AI. Here's some common challenges we're seeing.

And think of this as thought leadership does not need to be just C level executives.

A really great idea is to bring in people from let's say comms or even your product marketing team and having them talk specifically about the product from an educational standpoint. So these are really good options when you think about thought leadership.

So moving a little bit further into the thought leadership piece, I would love to highlight this B2B play because this is huge when it comes to creators. So I'm sure you're seeing this as well.

There's a lot more movement in the b to b space when it comes to creators. Now eighty seven percent of B2B buyers actually prefer credible content from trusted industry influences. Influencers, so here on the right hand side you have Caitlin.

She's known as a cybersecurity girl. She has a massive following across many different social platforms. She works with clients such as Palo Alto Cybersecurity Networks, which is the largest global cybersecurity company in the world.

But the point being is what she's doing is using video to unlock and storytell. So again, this doesn't have to be something that's massively overproduced.

But what you could do as an example, shoot in one day with multiple creators, and then you cut that down, and you have multiple stories that you can then push video out organically and paid.

So think of this as another way to reach your audience and using these credible creators along the way. Now I'm not saying you go out and you just grab any creator. It needs to align with your brand and the vision.

So think about who's right for your brand. But if you do this from a C level executive and then you pair this with creators, you now have two different audiences as well because creators are going to have their own audiences following them too.

So a really great example, some of our best in class work comes from ServiceNow. I love the branding that they do.

This is an example if you I'll walk you through the left to the right, but essentially this is a local leader who has done a ton of research findings on her findings essentially to highlight in a video series.

And so this is professionally filmed where she's speaking about topics that are relevant to ServiceNow and that gets continuously fed so organically and then cut down into snippets as well whether that's paid organic.

So think about video, the best way to get the most out of it is to plan ahead and then also take that video and do multiple cut downs so that you can get a variety of touch points with your buying group at the end of the day.

Now the second piece that they had unpacked at ServiceNow was the in house interviews, which was really cool. So again, something that was professionally produced, you need to plan ahead and account for this.

But thinking about how you can pair an individual and then now having it a slightly more corporate lens when it comes to video with these in house interviews. Now the third piece is events campaigns.

So just like we're doing now, you can promote your LinkedIn live events through paid and organic, and that can be a global or a local lens that you can approach this from.

And then of course, what I absolutely love is the branding, the storytelling that is really activated from a high impact perspective when it comes to ServiceNow.

They have amazing video creative, so I'll be sure to share one of those with you as a follow-up from the Shootsta crew. Now I can't talk today without talking about events, so I really love this example of HPE. This is very simple.

So I'll give you a massive example. Salesforce, every single year, they absolutely crush it when it comes to Dreamforce. They do a ton of organic and paid pre during post. So it's massive. It's in person, and then it's online.

They really just go about it best in class. So that's one of my favorite examples in the industry. But this one's a little bit more scalable in terms of a little bit closer to if you're just starting to get into event space.

HPE essentially took their audience and they looked at it from an organic perspective and said, okay, we're gonna go ahead and promote some videos on thought leadership before and after their events. So they're gonna lead up with, hey, this is Steph.

I'm coming in live from our events. So happy to be here. And then they're gonna go ahead and do like a post recap from the thought leaderships. Hey, Steph here. We had a great day at x y z events.

You know, it's storytelling and it's personalizing that event rather than having like an image just pitched at you saying like x y z event attend, right? It allows us just to have a little bit more of a warmer perspective.

And when we see you actually get higher engagement and higher attendee as a result of actually using thought leadership to promote organically and also paid. So again, pairing it both ways will ultimately give you that nice winning combination.

Now another piece that we're doing a lot of on LinkedIn, of course, is the events ads. So that's a separate piece in itself, and then that can be hosted from your LinkedIn lives page.

And then there's a ton of measurement that you can unpack after you do an events campaign. So again, think about how you use that LinkedIn Live video.

You're shooting, you're paying so much money for your LinkedIn events and for your in person events, especially in person. It's super costly when it comes to actually renting the venue, inviting everyone, catering.

And then when you hire an awesome production team, such as Shootsta, for example, they're helping you to bring that content all together.

So take that content that's being filmed that day and just remember to use it because I will tell you one of the biggest misses is that people film events, and it's almost like they film it and forget it.

And that is such a huge waste because that is a massive investment, and any of that footage can then be repurposed for follow-up campaigns, remarketing campaigns, your organic. Again, getting in front of those people.

You can even do message campaigns, your email marketing campaigns. All these snippets are highly valuable and how you package them up. So I will say that's one of the biggest misses that I see.

Brands that do all of that and combine it, the impact is amazing. And you can see the measurement when it comes looking across business objectives and advanced measurements. So just know that does exist. It's awesome when it comes together.

Now, wrapping this up for a pretty little bow as we move into the last few portions of these slides, the biggest thing I can say and you'll hear this is, look, you need to be consistent. So ninety two percent say consistent creative matters.

So think about what's the visual image that you're trying to push. So when you looked at ServiceNow, even though there was like a localized leader, there's a beautiful visual of you can look at that and tell it's ServiceNow.

It's consistent from localized thought leadership to branding as well. So the big thing that happens is only twelve percent of people or brands actually deliver on consistent creative. So think about that from an organic at a paid perspective.

Look, I know marketing budgets in particular are often getting cut these days with more pressures of AI and CMOs constantly turning over every few years.

But if you can work out a long term plan to incorporate video, cut that down, get as much as you can from repurposing on paid and organic.

Then echo that with your brand consistency. You're going to see an impact from it.