LinkedIn Strategy

Boosting your Brand with LinkedIn: Debunking Common Myths

LinkedIn is an incredible tool for individuals to connect with other professionals, to hunt for a new job, or to stay tuned to the latest news in the industry. However, often people forget that LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for advertising and building your business’s brand. 

If LinkedIn isn’t at least a part of your marketing and social media strategy, you are likely missing a bid opportunity to reach potential clients in a brand safe social media channel.

You may have avoided focusing your social media strategy on LinkedIn for a number of valid reasons. It may make sense for your business to spend your resources and time on something else. You may flat out think LinkedIn isn’t important. 

On the other hand though, there are a number of times where businesses ignore LinkedIn for reasons that are wrong. As a result, we are taking a deeper look at some of the common myths we hear from clients about LinkedIn.

Myth 1: My customers aren’t on the platform.

For business-to-business sales, the benefits may seem obvious. LinkedIn is known as the number one social network for lead generation. According to Forbes, an “estimated 40 million business decision makers (i.e. the people who seal the deals and sign the contracts) spend their time on LinkedIn.” 

Additionally, Omnicore reports that … 

  • It is the #1 channel B2B marketers use to distribute content at 94%.
  • It makes up more than 50% of all social traffic to B2B websites & blogs.
  • 91% of marketing executives list LinkedIn as the top place to find quality content.
  • 92% of B2B marketers include the platform in their digital marketing mix.

However, if you aren’t a business-to-business focused company, you may be rolling your eyes at the idea of LinkedIn helping you reach your target audience. However, professionals are people too, and LinkedIn has a massive general consumer audience with money to spend.

In fact, more than half of LinkedIn’s audience has a college degree and forty-nine percent make more than $75,000 per year. To learn more about this platforms unique demographics, check out Omnicore’s full report or see the list below:

Myth 2: LinkedIn is just for career milestones and announcements.

LinkedIn has become a thriving community for professionals and businesses to share content including industry perspectives, blogs and more. This content is not just about celebrating a year at company ABC or announcing a new hire. 

In fact, “more than 100,000 organic articles are published weekly on LinkedIn, many of which are written by top-level executives at brands around the world,” according to Buffer. AdWeek even wrote a feature on how LinkedIn has become a hot social network.

If your business writes blogs posts, it is worth the extra effort to post these to your profile. Even that small thing is better than nothing and can bring users back to your website.

Myth 3: LinkedIn may build my brand, but it won’t lead to actual sales or profit.

Did you know that LinkedIn has three times better conversion rates than Facebook or Twitter? From that perspective, it is important to balance your social media strategy and not just stick to one platform.

One of the key benefits of the platform is that there is arguably less bombarding a user or potential customer or client when using the platform. The platform has been established as a brand safe and professional environment. This means that content viewed here will more likely be consumed by an attentive and engaged audience.

Start building your brand!

LinkedIn is a free, powerful tool you can start using right now to advertising and build your brand. You can explore the paid advertising options. However, simply building an active online presence for your business will have a big impact. There is a large audience of engaged consumers and business decision makers ready to spend money on your products and services. You just have to take the time to show them who you are.

If you’d like to learn more about Adventure Ad Agency social media strategies, contact us here or call us at 1-864-400-9920. To learn more about the latest advertising trends and strategies, check out more of our blog.

Messages

Is your Brand Message sticking?

We all have listened to a song on the radio that has played over and over in our heads all day repeating the same message over and over again. When this occurs it is often called an ‘Ear worm’, also known as a ‘Brain worm’.

If you are a business owner, wouldn’t it be nice to have an ‘Ad worm’ stick into your target consumer’s brain for the day? To be exact, communicating the main takeaway of your business’s message is important, only you don’t want to lose your audience’s attention. Furthermore, changing up your brand message while sticking to the main ideas, is better than using repetitive messages.

Every business should learn the four sources of brand messaging, in order to create brand coherence to their target audience.

Let’s take a broader look into the four sources of brand messaging below…

What is the difference between Planned and Unplanned messages?

Planned

A planned message is usually delivered through mass media, and is one of the most traditional forms of brand messaging. Ideally, this form of brand messaging uses advertising, promotional materials, publicity releases, and more. Ironically, even though this form of messaging does not always have the greatest impact, it does allow a business to control how the message is placed.

Unplanned

A celebrity’s name and personality is their brand, and often celebrities feel as if bad publicity is good publicity. Despite the status, celebrities generally believe that any type of news keep their name in to the media. Unfortunately, gossip and bad word of mouth reviews are often uncontrollable. These types of messages are what we call unplanned.

What is the difference between a Service Message and a Product Message?

Service

The service message should include all details about your business’s services, and how a consumer will benefit from them. In a competitive business world, it is imperative that your service message explain the business’s core competency over its competition. Most important, explaining the service’s quality and how a consumer will benefit by using the service, will help give you a competitive edge.

Product

Understanding your target’s thoughts and needs are essential in planning your product message. Before launching your business product, you’ll want to explore target group sessions, and product testers. This will enable your business to gain feedback about how your product message engages with your target audience.

Listed below are five questions that every business should be able to answer before launching a new product…

1. Who is your ideal target market?
2. What problems and concerns do your consumers have?
3. How will you solve your customer’s problems?
4. What are the benefits offered by your product?
5. How is your product better than the competitor’s product?

For more information on Brand Messaging read this article, and check out his link. Our blog also has helpful tips on other ways to enhance your brand.