At a time when trust in tech CEOs is idling at neutral and belief in technical experts and relatable peers are heightened (Edelman, 2024, pg. 11), our team decided to conduct an experiment. We (Lenovo's Global Social Media Center of Excellence) learned about a new ad type that allowed LinkedIn posts published by individuals to be boosted, similar to how we regularly boost our company's posts. They were called thought leadership ads (TLAs).
When we learned about them, the potential of these ads sent our team into a brainstorm frenzy. There were so many interesting possibilities!
HR has a hard-to-fill open req? Let's boost a post from an existing employee in that role, targeting an audience of potential candidates on LinkedIn.
Our hottest product was just demoed at CES? Use the product SME's LinkedIn post to target IT decision makers.
We just inked a partnership as the premier technology provider to FIFA? Use our CEO's post to tell the world.
Our goal was simple: to leverage Lenovo's employees as industry experts to build brand credibility and positively influence our marketing efforts. What better way to do that than to elevate a selection of our 63,000 authentic employee voices on LinkedIn.
We started with a pilot and began testing the ad type with our annual Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report, then with some executives in our incubator business unit who were eager to build a voice on LinkedIn. The results were so immediately compelling that we quickly integrated thought leadership ads (TLAs) as a part of our social media event strategy, where we took nominations from each business unit on the leaders they would like featured in a TLA.
The response was so overwhelming that we began adding TLAs to complement existing social media series; for example Lenovo Leaders, which spotlights employees across the company with various titles, backgrounds and specialties. We utilize TLAs during important inflection points, such as our executive leadership attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. HR Communications colleagues, with whom partner closely, are using TLAs to attract talent by spotlighting Lenovo's top workplace awards. Our team has also enabled some of our more vocal executives on social media to integrate TLAs into their individual social media strategies.
As we continue to iterate and experiment with our approach, we've settled into a strategy of using curated content aligned to important Lenovo topics like AI, ESG, and other B2B initiatives. Looking ahead, we plan to tip the balance on using TLAs as a way to elevate more non-executives, individual contributors and true technical experts who may be under the radar.
The metrics took our team by complete surprise.
Collectively, our thought leadership ads (TLAs) generate 6x higher engagement rates (versus LinkedIn's historical benchmarks) and drive a +63% increase in campaign click-through rates after audiences see our ads. Continually, we record exceptional engagement rates while executing exceedingly cost-effective campaigns. For example, three TLAs from a Gartner event generated an engagement rate 15x over benchmark (6.92%) and a cost per engagement that was 94% below benchmark ($0.38). At our flagship event, Tech World, TLAs performed 11x higher than benchmarks with an average CPE of $0.52. A single post from our CEO even yielded an engagement rate of 7.79%.
As of January 2025, we learned that we are surpassing other leading tech brands that are launching similar TLA campaigns. According to LinkedIn, from October to December 2024, our single image ads outmatched the tech industry benchmark by 91% and our video ads outpaced the competition by 144%. LinkedIn has been so pleased with our use of TLAs that they even published a global case study spotlighting our team's results.
What's more, the individuals we highlight through TLAs are also reaping benefits. On average, employees gain 285 new followers when their posts are boosted, with 9,000 new followers acquired cumulatively by thought leaders featured in our campaigns.
What began as an experiment for elevating influential employees has become an internal initiative with so many latent benefits. Most importantly, it's allowed Lenovo to show up uniquely, through the voices of our most trusted, valued constituents: our employees.
