Using LinkedIn for Brand Building
Brands reap long-term benefits from reaching and connecting with their audiences in a way that makes their brands memorable when it comes time to purchase. Brand equity, or the value of customers’ perception of the brand, builds over time. Brand equity drives short-term activation (performance marketing) and long-term growth.
So why aren’t all companies considered strong brands? It’s easy to assume that improving your brand equity is as simple as exposing prospects to your organization. Instead, brand equity requires building mental availability, which is a challenge for many businesses. Mental availability is the brand’s propensity to be considered in buying situations. With greater mental availability, prospects become more comfortable with your brand and can recall it when it comes time to purchase or even refer your brand to another customer. In addition to driving short- and long-term sales, increased brand equity improves pricing power, builds competitive advantage, and provides better category security and flexibility.
Awareness
Make my business known to the right target audience
Consideration
Please stay in the audience’s consideration shortlist by nurturing them
Conversion
Convert prospects into customers or talent
So why is your acquisition strategy dependent on brand awareness? Ultimately, your acquisition likelihood comes down to three things:
- The prospect is aware of their problem.
- The prospect is aware of your brand.
- The prospect knows how your brand can help them solve that problem.
Effective marketing campaigns will educate customers that they have a problem and convince them that your brand is the one that can best solve it. So, what is a brand?
“A brand is a living entity, and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.”
Michael Eisner, Disney CEO, 1984-2005
Thus, a brand is every experience that a customer has on their way to choosing and successfully using what you offer.
Why does brand matter?
90% of the purchase journey is completed before contacting a vendor
>10 pieces of content may be consumed in the process
Not only is most of the purchase journey completed before the actual purchase, but also, on average, more than 10 pieces of content are consumed during that process.
Seeing just one piece of brand content likely wouldn’t compel you to buy a complete tech stack solution for your business, sign up for a home loan, or buy a car. We like to consider all the relevant information before making a purchase. And, we like to form a relationship with the brand before we invest our time and resources in it.
Why build a brand on LinkedIn?
Efficiently reach a high-quality audience
LinkedIn audiences are unique because our members are purposeful when they visit the platform. They invest time to be more productive and successful, to learn and grow. As a result, they’re more interested in learning about brands on LinkedIn than on other platforms.
On LinkedIn, your brand campaigns have access to broad B2B and B2C audiences. As the largest professional network, LinkedIn is a great place to efficiently reach everyone in the B2B category. Furthermore, LinkedIn’s B2C audience has 2x the buying power of an average web audience. This is quality reach at scale.
Grow community through organic and paid ad campaigns
A brand is the sum of every touchpoint that a current or future buyer comes into contact with, whether that’s paid or organic. LinkedIn’s combination of high-quality data and organic and paid products offers the ability to connect brand spend to business outcomes in a way that helps you reach customers across their workflows and buying cycles.
Four out of five LinkedIn members drive business decisions
It is because LinkedIn provides the right environment to drive trust so that your brand is remembered and at the top of your buyers’ minds. It provides transparency and control for advertisers. People trust what’s shared on LinkedIn because it comes from each member’s authentic professional identity. Members bring their best selves and ask fellow members to do the same.
