B2B Marketing: Branding & LinkedIn was Digital Marketing Mayo’s last event for 2019. It took place in the Westport Coast Hotel on Wednesday, November 20th.
This was an interactive workshop on branding with Kerry Manning, and market research using LinkedIn with Alastair McDermott.
Developing Your Brand
Kerry Manning, a marketing specialist and former Head of Marketing at Lafferty, examined how to establish and communicate your brand.
Your brand is one of the most valuable assets you have and it is so much more than your logo as the logo is only a small visual part of brand, like the window of a shop. Start at the root of the brand. Personality stands out and in every business, Kerry emphasized that your values and personality will roll into your brand.
What people think of your company is all part of your brand, that includes customers, employees, suppliers, friends, and the only way to find out exactly what they think is to ask them as feedback is everything.
Personal Brand
Kerry advised that even if you are in a company, you still need to have a personal brand. When it comes to personal brands, the brand is you, & you as a commodity, and your photo will be your logo.
Kerry covered several issues to consider when developing your brand:
- Where do you find your customer?
- What problems do they have?
- What values that you have match your product?
When you get the solution to the problem your customer has, then your brand will evolve. You will sell the problem that you solve, not the product. Then, your brand needs to build enough of a personality so that the customer will trust what your saying.
It is critical that the content that you put out on social matches your brand. In fact, everything that you put out there, whether it’s a comment, or a share on social, that’s what’ll come across for your brand so you need to make sure it’s relevant. This will come back to your values.
If you are authentic & be yourself that will be the best way to build your brand long term. People often have to hear the message many times before it sticks with them.
Who Owns Your Brand?
You also need to consider who owns your brand – make sure you have a home for it that you own, such as your website. And from your website you should develop your list building before sharing across social. It’s important for every business to remember that you don’t own any social media apps. They could be deleted at any moment so no matter what following you have you would lose it all unless you build your brand on your website and email marketing.
The importance of your brand is vital as it builds a firm foundation for your marketing strategy. When it comes to business strategy you first need to know what you want to achieve: why you are in business and what your main goal is.
The answers to these questions will help you develop your strategy and showcase your brand to the right people at the right time.
LinkedIn & Surveys
The second speaker, Alastair McDermott explored how to use LinkedIn, surveys & automation to perform research, grow your connections, and build your email list.
Build a Network
According to The Strength of Weak Ties (Granovetter, 1973) you are more likely to get opportunities from people you don’t know very well than those you know very well. Building a network, even if you don’t know people very well, can be very beneficial.
Connecting with People
Before you begin connecting with people to grow your network, you need to prepare your LinkedIn profile. Alastair suggests that you consider the following steps when building connections:
- Spend time preparing your bio, profile picture and banner header. When requesting connections, they will often look at your profile before deciding to accept your request so make sure to make your profile clear and interesting
- What you say when you reach out to connect is very important – keep it short, solve a problem, and don’t immediately ask for someone’s time as that’s valuable.
- Personalize your connection request with their first name.
- Don’t connect with people who don’t have profile photo – they are probably not active on LinkedIn.
- Limit your connection requests to 5% of total connections per day.
- Keep your total open outgoing connection results under 2,000 at all times.
Publishing Content to LinkedIn
When publishing content to LinkedIn, Likes & Comments are very important, so one suggestion is that the last thing in your posts could be a question asking for reader comments.
“Find People Nearby”
Alastair finished up the evening with a quick demo on how people at an event can add people on LinkedIn quickly which the attendees were only too happy to try out so they could connect with other people in the room that evening.
Connect with Alastair on LinkedIn here and sign up to his email list on MarketingForConsultants.com
You can view an abridged version of Alastair’s talk on YouTube:
We’ll Be Back
This interactive workshop was the last event for 2019 but the Digital Marketing Mayo team are still working hard behind the scenes to bring you more trainings and workshops in 2020 so be sure to stay in touch for more information.
