Why is everybody’s content still so static? A plea for B2B/tech marketers to grab an easy competitive advantage.

Some premise-setting first

LinkedIn feels like social media, but it’s really business media. Everyone is on there for the same reasons — to connect, to network, to buy, to sell, to learn, and to broadcast. There’s the LinkedIn of the individual, and then there’s the LinkedIn of the company. I’m pleading with marketers on LinkedIn, working on behalf of their company’s brand to move their businesses forward.

B2B is really H2H on LinkedIn, played out in micro-interactions, where Humans engage with other Humans to buy and sell stuff on behalf of their businesses. Marketing and brand-building play a big role in how those human interactions drive B2B success. This is the scenario where your content is shared, and it’s where your brand creative strategy either drives you forward, or gets stuck in the mud.

I want your content to have every available advantage to help it stand out against your most potent competitors. Your content is competing with their content, and although it doesn’t feel quite as sexy as prime time TV spots battling for recall victories, it is essentially the modern equivalent. Your campaigns on LinkedIn have a huge impact on your business goals, and it blows my mind that so many marketers, especially in the B2B/tech space, are totally fine just cranking out the same static assets every day, week, month, year.

Why is so much content so static?

All the same old reasons. Time and budget, maybe limited creative resources or capabilities. There’s been a major democratization of design tools (Canva, Adobe Express) in the last 3–5 years (and AI most recently) that has every marketer — especially with a strapped budget — feeling equipped and worthy of doing the work themselves. If they have some talent, they may produce some decent static work, but I’ve rarely seen good animation or video editing coming from non-creatives inside of marketing departments. The baseline is static content, because most people aren’t capable of moving into something with a timeline.

(Some related thoughts on ‘Media Delay’ here, which fully apply to this scenario where an interactive/animated medium is chock full of static creative)

But it’s not just a challenge for cash-strapped marketing coordinators. Companies with agency partners or freelancers (or both), monthly budgets and the sophistication to appreciate animation — these marketers are also conditioned and comfortable putting out static work. It takes a top-down decision to commit to animation on some or all LinkedIn creative output, and it requires the willingness to spend a bit more up front to build a system of production that can sustain consistent animated output over time.

It doesn’t need to be super high-production work. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to be shopped out to an agency or motion designer every time. But it does need to be a part of your strategy moving forward. The blandscape of you and your competitors, lobbing JPGs at each other and at your shared prospects, is so ripe for breakout success, and I think animation is the key. You can pull way out ahead of your pack. I want this for you.

Animation can mean so many things

An explainer video is a big production, with a big price tag. 2 minute brand anthem videos are even bigger productions, with even bigger price tags. That’s not what I’m talking about here. We’re talking about quote cards, headline cards with brand messaging, product update announcements, webinar promos, event announcements, press releases, project announcements, partnerships. The assets designed with your visual identity system, using established components (fonts, colors, design themes). The things you can crank out as statics, and that could instead be cranked out as animated assets if you steered your ship in that direction.

Scroll through your LinkedIn feed and count how many posts have visuals. Then count how many of those visuals are moving. Pay attention to which ones grab your attention. Recognize your scroll fatigue even after just a minute or two. What will break through for you? What would break through for your prospective customers?

An aside on video footage

Not to muddle this all up, but short-form video is a whole other ball game. The best video content from brands is layered with visual identity components, but the heart of the content is footage. People on camera, talking in wonderfully human (H2H) ways. This is one of your most accessible content types, but the opportunity to layer animation as a finishing feature should not be overlooked. A motion designer can build you intro and outro bumpers that can bookend every piece of authentic footage you shoot or edit — giving you the crafted quality of branded content on repeat, with injected agile video in the middle. A great strategy if your products or services are best presented with faces on camera.

The case for animation

When this animation advantage is within everyone’s grasp, why is nobody grasping for a revised creative strategy on LinkedIn that prioritizes animated content? The case for animation is simple and robust:

According to LinkedIn, short-form video content, which includes animations, earn 3x more reactions, and 5x more engagement than static posts. This is all about stopping the scroll. It doesn’t matter if your hook is legendary, or if your post is full of brilliance. If they don’t stop, you never have the chance. When you make it move, the eyeballs lock in, and your message — whatever message it is — now has a chance to cut through. Beyond the engagement bumps purely by modernizing your content formats, there’s brand psychology at play here as well, and this is probably the most important upside you could capture…

The psychology of brand identity quality as it relates to the perceived quality of your products and services

This is simple stuff, and shouldn’t surprise any of you. But it’s very real, and often overlooked. In the eyes and minds of your audience, if your branded communications are disciplined and always at peak quality, then chances are good that you put that same effort into your products and services. This is what your animated content communicates — your company is higher-touch, higher-sophistication, higher-tech than the other guys. You value quality, and are the kind of brand these prospective customers would be proud to champion. I hope your products and services bring real and unique advantages to your customers, but in most B2B/tech landscapes, there are interchangeable companies who can offer interchangeable solutions. Your brand may be the only differentiator, and if you find yourself in that kind of a fight for new business, you better be sure that your brand has been positioned to win.

You can build premium trust in your brand, and its offerings, by delivering premium branded content every time you show up. It’s right there for the taking, and it’s a guarantee that most of your competitor set will not strive to this level of quality with you. The ocean is blue.

Easy wins vs competitive markets

I’ve been describing the first-position-grab scenario, which is probably applicable to most of you. In more established competitive sets, where your main competitors are already posting animated and top-class creative work on LinkedIn, moving to animation may not be the deciding factor, but staying static is nothing less than an admission of defeat. It’s effectively deferring to their top position. This carries through to your customers’ buying decisions when it comes time to engage with you, or with your competitors. Short of a major product or service dominance that renders branding irrelevant for your company, the impression your brand has made will play an outsized role in their buying decision.

Yes we do this work, but

But we’re not right for everybody — in fact we’re only right for a certain size and cross-section of B2B/tech companies. This opportunity applies to everyone though. Pre-funded startups can build animation templates in Canva. Companies with healthy revenue and an agency relationship can commission smart animation template projects that equip their in-house teams. Big companies with big budgets and much fancier agencies than Studio Rover can roll out TV-campaign-quality creative on every LinkedIn post. Hardly any of your competitors, at any level of might, have committed to this approach though, which means that first position is likely yours for the taking.

Check out Studio Rover’s series of sample animated short-form videos on LinkedIn, that we put together to demo this concept. We had some fun with faux posts covering typical B2B/tech content types like: brand message animations, a faux webinar promo, an animated quote card, and a few others.

OK so go call someone, maybe even us, to help you put some plans in place. This doesn’t need to be a big lift, but it’ll be a guaranteed big win on LinkedIn for your company.