Re-Entry / Re-Opening Support

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve witnessed the need for clear communication within companies to let employees know the employer is committed to their health and safety. As pandemic restrictions begin to ease, reopening the workplace is a complex and multifaceted process.

LabCorp contacted Signal for help clearly and effectively communicating company policies and best practices to promote safe and considerate behavior as they re-open their global facilities. Our first task was to develop and produce a large volume of re-entry signage, including both print and digital:

  • Handwashing Bathroom Mirror Decals
  • Stand Here Floor Decals
  • Practice Social Distancing LCD Screen Graphics
  • Wear a Face Covering LDC Screen Graphics
  • Isolation Area Pop-up Banners
  • Directional Posters
  • Temperature Check Posters
  • Thank You for Working Safely Posters
  • Stairwell Posters
  • Elevator Posters
  • Face Covering Required Posters
  • No Waiting or Congregating Posters
  • Sanitize Hands Here Posters
  • Keep Your Personal Desk Clean Signs
  • Last Disinfected On Signs
  • Max Capacity in Room Signs
  • Healthy Steps Signs
  • Please Clean This Area Before You Leave Table Tents
  • Table Seating Instructional Signs

The approved English versions were also translated into several different languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, and Korean.

The Signal team also worked directly with LabCorp’s existing online storefront provider to seamlessly deliver high-resolution files for print, fulfillment, and distribution. Through this process, LabCorp employees can access signage and communications via an intranet portal where managers can either place orders or download PDFs to print with office printers.

In addition, our team collaborated with LabCorp to prepare a Re-entry Readiness Timeline and Re-Entry Strategy for communication to employees and media.

Employer Branding Development

Bioventus wanted to update their employer branding to better reflect their value in the marketplace. They came to Signal with a request for a comprehensive employment brand messaging platform. Our mindful approach used the input of the global Talent Management team to craft messages that would resonate with internal and external audiences. The goal? Stimulate interest and engagement from both existing and potential employees. Here’s how we successfully did it.

Step 1: Discovery

  • Conduct corporate branding online survey
  • Validate survey with handful of interviews with key execs / employees
  • Develop messaging platform
  • Conduct feedback meeting with key stakeholders

Step 2: Create and validate

  • Create final messaging platform
  • Create plan for launching new messaging
  • Get final buy in from the client team

Step 2: Execute

Using the new message platform, step off recruiting collateral, including job fair materials, landing page, fact sheets.

Messaging platform delivered

  • Brand essence and promise
    • Who we are / how we help our customers
  • Brand differentiators
    • What sets your company apart
  • Brand personality / voice
    • High-level content and tone guidelines
  • High-level key messages / proof points by audience

LinkedIn ABM: A Winning Strategy During the Pandemic and Beyond


I think everyone would agree that 2020 is a year most would rather forget, and to say that our clients and marketers in general have felt the pinch is a gross understatement. The latest CMO Survey (June 2020 Special Covid-19 Edition) presents some bleak insights and predictions:

  • Marketer optimism about their own company and about the economy as a whole are at 10-year lows
  • Companies have reported big losses across revenue (18%), profit (15%) and customer acquisition (9%) metrics
  • Marketing spending and hiring is expected to go down over the next 12 months

However, this survey also presents some jaw-dropping growth in social media spending across all sectors – 74% growth on average. And what’s more, social media is now showing the largest increase in contribution to company performance since the survey began in 2008.

So how do you reconcile shrinking budgets with increased social spending? One answer could be deploying social campaigns based on Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategies.

What is ABM?

ABM involves marketing and sales working closely together to identify a group of high-value accounts and create personalized marketing messages for them, based on their specific needs. It essentially means you’re targeting individual companies rather than personas, and offering specific solutions to their specific challenges.

While there are many tactics and channels to use within ABM, for the purposes of this article, I’d like to focus on Sponsored Posts within LinkedIn. Since Covid-19, we’ve witnessed a rapid uptick in working with clients on LinkedIn ABM campaigns.

Why is LinkedIn ABM important in today’s climate?

  • Sheer numbers, especially now that many of us are working from home – 690 million total LinkedIn members and a 26% increase in sessions last quarter alone
  • Personalized and tailored messaging means you can guarantee message relevancy
  • More relevancy leads to more engagement, better conversions and a better ROI
  • Knowing what accounts you’re targeting and how much business you ultimately gain from them makes it easier to measure ROI
  • With shrinking budgets overall, you need to reduce as much budget waste as possible to ensure the best bang for your buck

ABM on LinkedIn

With LinkedIn, you can display custom advertising messages to key stakeholders of your target companies. The messages can be customized not only for the overarching needs of the target company, but also for an individual’s attributes, like job title or job function. For example, stakeholders in Procurement might receive ads focusing on potential cost savings from your offering, while people in Operations might receive ads on time savings gained by your offering.

How we do it

  • Choose your goal and objective.
    • This decision is the foundation of your campaign. It aligns your campaign with the appropriate performance metrics and recommended ad formats to help reach your goals. For example, you may choose brand awareness for top-of-funnel brand building. Or, if your goal is to generate leads, you’re better off selecting a lead generation or website conversion objective.
  • Build the audience.
    • Work with sales to get a list of key contacts within the target account. Hopefully the list contains job titles and locations.
    • Use that list to build the audience within LinkedIn, using combinations like Company Name + Job Title + Location, or Company Name + Job Function + Experience Level + Location.
  • Create the ads.
    • Work with marketing and sales to uncover tailored messaging for the account, and ideally tailored messaging for the different types of people at the account.
    • Design compelling ads in a format that’s best for your goals. For example, we’ve seen some success with static image ads and carousel ads for driving website traffic, but we recommend using animated or video ads when possible. Our experience has shown movement in the ads generates 5x more website clicks at half the cost in comparison to static ads.
  • Install the LinkedIn Insight Tag
    • The LinkedIn Insight Tag is a piece of code that you can add to your website for campaign reporting. You will need this in place to unlock valuable insights about your website visitors.
  • Vigilantly monitor the program and optimize often.
    • Look out for things like ad frequency. Is your budget too thin? How much are you blanketing your audience with your message? We know your audience may need to see your ad more than once in order to make an impact, but when they see it too much it becomes less effective. While there’s no hard and fast rule, CPA tends to rise sharply when frequency rises above 4 views. Plan to refresh creative before reaching that point.
    • Closely monitor performance metrics and make decisions accordingly. Drilling down in LinkedIn reports will show a breakdown of KPIs by audience segment like Job Function, Job Title, Location and more.

If you’re interested in learning more about ABM or other strategies that fit well during today’s unique climate, please let me know.