Benefits of using LinkedIn in your social strategy

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is a platform focused on networking, building careers, and sharing ideas. It enables users to connect, interact and share content with other professionals including colleagues, potential employers, business partners, competitors, new employees, and customers.

 Including LinkedIn in your social media strategy is important and powerful — the platform is an excellent marketing tool both for B2B & B2C businesses. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network generating leads 227% more effectively than Facebook and Twitter, making it an essential platform when marketing your business.

 Here’s how:

1.    Speak to a B2B audience if you're seen as a B2C company

If you are typically seen as a B2C (Business to Consumer) brand, LinkedIn gives you a great opportunity to channel your B2B (Business to Business) communications. 

For example, our client Mackie’s of Scotland is a well known and established retail brand, but they also have a sizeable foodservice arm to their business. LinkedIn allows them to reach foodservice businesses and buyers directly who may not have known that they can use Mackie’s ice cream in their parlour or restaurant.

2.    Personal branding - engage yourself with the company's activity

In an environment where authenticity and the personal touch is everything, using your own profile to promote your business is a unique advantage you can utilise with LinkedIn.

Whether you are sharing a post, selling your services, or celebrating some good news, make sure to interject your own style and a sense of storytelling to make your post stand out. 

Here are some more tips to make your LinkedIn posting more personal:

• Maintain engagement - Respond to comments on your own posts and posts that you share this continues the discussion and allows you to connect with a wider network

• Comment posts that catch your attention - Leaving comments on others’ posts helps to build relationships. By doing this you are engaging and contributing to a discussion amongst likeminded individuals.

• Connect with others – LinkedIn connections are the new and improved business cards! When you are networking, make a new business connection or spot someone’s content that inspires you – send them a connection request! Per week you are allowed to send 100 connections on LinkedIn. If this is done right, you could grow your audience by 400 people per month.

3.    Engaging your employees - employee advocacy

On the flip side of the coin, engaging your employees with the company’s LinkedIn page is a great way to expand your brands reach and reputation. Generally, the employees of a brand have a network that can be at least 10 times larger than the brand’s follower base. Typically, people are far more likely to interact and engage with content when it comes from someone they know rather than a company, as it is considered more authentic and personal.

While only 3% of employees share content about their company, those shares are responsible for driving a 30% increase in the total engagement a company sees.

Some ways you can engage with your employees via LinkedIn:

• Share some ‘behind the scenes’ office content

• Engage with new employees sharing that they are joining your team/company

• Show how you celebrate achievements as a team

• Congratulate an employee on a promotion or work anniversary

• Share company news and give a special mention to those in your team that contributed

• Share client news – helped launch a campaign for a client? Share what you did, why you did it and how you did it.

4.    Connecting with your industry - swapping notes or sharing anecdotes

Being active on LinkedIn and creating interactions with your favourite brands helps to generate more engagement and reach from like-minded individuals and brands. This can be useful for brand partnerships, and networking generally.

 Some great examples:

Innocent Smoothies

 Whilst Innocent are a retail focused company, they have still found their place on LinkedIn by creating fun and playful workplace content that is relatable to many LinkedIn users.  By creating relatable content that often refers to common workplace jokes, or popular trends, not only are they engaging other businesses but also individuals across a range of industries.

Unilever

Unilever is well known for its consumer goods but rather than promote its products on its LinkedIn profile, it uses the space to promote its community and sustainability initiatives.

 Unilever makes use of all the features available on a business profile. They share upcoming events, videos, page posts, and promote current vacancies.

 The value of setting up a profile like this is that it gives users a chance to peek behind the curtain. You can see what Unilever's values are as an organisation and build a connection with them over shared interests and values.

We have covered the importance of LinkedIn as part of your social strategy in a number of ways, but most important is picking a marketing style and strategy that is right for your brands audience. Alongside this, engaging with your employees and general networking is a really good way to build your brand and show some authenticity.

 The way you market your brand is so important as it conveys the standard of quality, credibility and experience that you have on offer, which is invaluable especially in times where customers grapple with more choice and uncertainty than ever before.  

 Here at Curzon Marketing , we offer a solution whether it is on a temporary or permanent basis to provide expert marketing so your business can keep on growing.

Get in touch to find the effective marketing solution for your business and brand growth.

Twelve Tips of Christmas

This festive season, we wanted to share our twelve top tips for building brand growth and marketing strategy, as our Christmas gift to you!

We know this year has brought many trials and tribulations, which has taught us to be more resilient and resourceful in times of crisis. But we feel fortunate to have come through it and look forward to starting 2021 with a positive outlook.

Keep reading to find out our top tips for growing your business into the new year…

Tip #1.       Always Put Your Brand First

When it comes to marketing strategy, we always take a brand first approach. This means we focus on the core strengths of every brand we work for. We craft the strategy, develop the brand drivers, and create campaigns all whilst keeping the brands first and foremost of all marketing activity. Click here to read more from our blog post, the Power of Putting your Brand First.

Tip #2.      Build Your Brand Online

There were many aspects of this year that have been unprecedented, but one which has at least had a positive impact on businesses is the growth of online sales. The Office for National Statistics showed that UK sales, as a percentage of total retail sales, was tracking at 19% - 21% before rocketing to 33% through April and May, as the impact of Covid-19 took hold. Earlier in the year, we also share a blog post ‘5 steps for building a brand online’ which you can read here.

Tip #3.      (Relevant) Content is King

As the saying goes, content is king, but only when you are sharing relevant and engaging content, which fits with you brand. Over the years we have worked with some well-known food brands, such as Sutton Hoo Chicken, Metcalf’s Popcorn, and Mackie’s of Scotland, so we know a thing or two about creating mouth-wateringly good food photography, which you can read about here.

Tip #4.       The Power of Video

As far as content goes, brand and product videos are still the most engaging form of content. Give your marketing a boost and find out more, by clicking here to read our ‘8 Reasons Why You Should use Video Marketing’ blog post.

Tip #5.       Keep Focused on Goals

There are so many parts to building your brand and developing your marketing strategy, you can easily get lost between to-do lists. Make sure you set clear goals and objective, for each quarter and each year, which have measurable outcomes. This could be a general goal of increasing your brand awareness, which could be measure by an increased number of unique users to your website or growing your following on social media platforms

Tip #6.       Sell Through Social

Social commerce is only on the rise, with the recent updates on Instagram, Facebook stores, and Pinterest all converting into e-commerce platforms. While your audience is already engaging with your brand, why not make a quick sale and strike while the irons hot? Find out more from our Social Commerce blog post, click here to read.

Tip #7.       It’s Okay to Outsource

Sometimes you might feel like a one-man-band, acting as a brand ambassador, head of sales, social media manager, and graphic designer; and more often than not, there just aren’t enough hours in the day! We discuss the benefits of outsourced marketing teams in a recent blog post, which you can read here.

 Tip #8.       Being Responsive is Key

After such an unusual year, one lesson we have learned is the importance of business agility, being aware of the current climate and understanding how you should respond is key and will be crucial in a post-covid world. Read our top tip on Tactical Marketing here.

Tip #9.       Be Data-Driven

Now, more than ever, data analytics is an important aspect of your marketing strategy. Understanding your audience, and how they engage with your brand is vital when it comes to strategy and campaign planning. Data also give you the ability to segment your customers based down and target them with relevant and personalised communications.

Tip #10.   Measure Your Results

As mentioned in point five, setting goals and measuring results is important when it comes to brand growth, and seeing if your marketing is making an impact. Click here to read our blog post on the four simple ways to start measuring your results.

Tip #11.   Review your Brands Health

Is your marketing in good shape?  Earlier this year we launched the Brand First Marketing Health Check, a useful tool that allows you to review your marketing efforts and where you could spend more time and energy. Click here to complete your free health check.

Tip #12.  Invest in the Future

Investing in your brand is investing in the future of your business.  Ensure you continue to put time and energy into positioning your brand and ultimately brand growth. This will solidify your area of expertise and continue to attract the right kind of customers.

If you would like to discuss ideas for your brand, we’d love to hear from you, with no obligation on your part and no expectation on ours. Click here to contact us.

5 steps for building a brand online

With 30 years of marketing experience behind us we throw a spotlight on the growth opportunity for brands online and how to capitalise on the growing home delivery market. How can you grow your online sales?

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that UK online sales, as a percentage of total retail sales, was already tracking at 19% - 21% before rocketing to 33% through April and May, as the impact of Covid-19 took hold. Research specialists, Mintel, forecast online grocery sales through the grocery retailers is expected to grow by 33% in 2020 accounting for 16% of all grocery purchases. So, whether you sell direct to consumers or via retailers there is huge potential in getting it right online. What can you do to improve your online brand?

Growing your own e-commerce business is achievable and accessible but only if you work at it consistently. This is a huge topic but here are our five tips for success:

1.     Think Brand First!
We believe brands should always, always start with a crystal clear view of what makes them distinctive and then communicate that as succinctly, creatively and memorably as possible, whether online or offline. The ability to communicate and transact with people online is nothing without a compelling and enticing brand proposition at its core. There are many digital tools to work with but they are just that, tools. Their success and effectiveness depends on the quality of the material, your brand, they are given to work with. Our advice is invest time in making your brand as distinctive, attractive and relevant as possible to the customers you seek.

2.   Build traffic
Know your audience and how to reach them then invest in the activities that will pull people in to your site time and time again. Social media advertising, (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube), email marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising are all flexible, affordable options for many businesses now, with the ability to drive sales and help you learn even more about your customers and their preferences. Your brand and your content is what makes you attractive and relevant but the you need to be visible too! The more you know about the people that love your products, the more you’ll be able to find more like them. Social media polls, online reviews, postcode analysis, customer surveys, website & social analytics...these are all techniques readily available to help brands learn more about their customers.

3.    Deliver a great experience
It’s one thing to bring traffic to your site, and another thing entirely to get people to buy when they are there. Think about the websites you like to buy from and how easy they make the process of shopping – from browsing the range, to studying the product detail, reading others’ reviews right through to the checkout experience and sales confirmation. Can shoppers navigate your site easily? Do you make it easy for them to get straight to the shop? And what is the mobile experience for your site?

4.     Love the numbers!
Growing sales online is a marathon not a sprint fueled by a love of the vast array of numbers. Web traffic data, social media engagement, e-mail open rates, online conversion and average order value levels; just a few of the many metrics available to help determine what delivers an effective return. But it’s because every brand and business is different that what works for one may not work for another. Digital marketing comes with plenty of data to help understand what works and what doesn’t so use it. Is one ad creative more effective than another? Is Facebook advertising better than Youtube or Instagram? Which pages on the website attract more traffic or sales? What’s the best day and time to send emails? Test & Learn!

If you love the numbers you’ll learn what works and your chance of online success will be vastly improved.

5.      Invest in content….regularly!
The phrase “ a picture is worth a thousand words” can be traced back in history to a Chinese philosopher yet it is as relevant today in this digital world as it has ever been. Good quality image content, either photographic or video are hugely valuable assets for brands today. Producing good quality imagery imagery week in, week out, for social media, email marketing, web content or digital advertising need not be prohibitively expensive but it does require commitment, planning and some investment. These images will create a lasting impression, they will help cement your brand in the minds of your customers and will resonate and communicate far more than a list of features or benefits can ever achieve. They are the fuel for your brand, so don’t hold back.

Additional notes for food brands, selling through online grocers:

It may come as no surprise that to capitalise on the growing online grocery retail sector (the home delivery offer of Ocado, Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda and Waitrose etc), the principles described here remain just as true as for your own e-commerce.

• Plan carefully about how you present your brand; develop imagery and content that is fit for purpose in the online grocery retailer environment.

• Pay attention to the detail – get the right descriptors and key terms in to your product listing.

• Invest in retailer-specific online marketing or advertising (though tread carefully, it is fearfully expensive!) .

• Test & learn with any investment – which search terms are the most effective? How do get your brand to “stick” in the shopping list?

We understand consumer brand marketing, working with many of the UK’s leading food and drink brands as well as some of the most innovative farming and family-owned SME food businesses. Gressingham Duck, Mackie’s Ice Cream, Fairfields Farm Crisps, Sutton Hoo Chicken Metcalfe’s Popcorn, Paddy & Scotts Coffee, Kettle Crisps, and Stokes Sauces are just some of the brands we have worked with.

If you would like to discuss ideas for your brand, we’d love to hear from you, with no obligation on your part and no expectation on ours. Click here to contact us.