LinkedIn's 'Unified Branding' Guide: How Top Apple, LEGO Brands Do It
The concept of "unified brand" is somewhat unfamiliar to Chinese brands, but it is a new concept to build brand and influence recently promoted by the LinkedIn platform.
Because on LinkedIn, the content of the brand homepage is not only for its own customers, but also for potential customers, partners, employees and investors. So to help build a more cohesive and unified brand across different groups, LinkedIn has created this official guide.
In today’s article, we will combine this guide with real-world examples from some of the world’s top brands to explain how brands can build a unified brand and expand their influence on LinkedIn.
Background data: Building a unified brand: a direct way to reduce costs and increase efficiency
LinkedIn divides the audience of a unified brand into three types: consumers, talents and businesses. For these three, after the construction of a unified brand, the data shows:
It can be said that building a unified brand has a great impetus in enhancing the brand’s influence and data on social media, and has become a direct way to reduce costs and increase efficiency. So how to implement it, LinkedIn has prepared the following four elements:
Get creative and stay consistent
Stimulate empathy and use the power of emotion
Stick to "always on"
Make the brand more human
Uncover creativity and maintain consistency
Brand-level creativity often revolves around only one key point. Apple is a half-bitten apple, Coca-Cola is a white streamer on a red background, Intel is the sound effect of "dengdengdengdeng"... Looking back at the creative grippers of top brands, we will find that the continuous use and emphasis of unique and simple ideas can make several The memories of generations of audiences are linked together to form a unified brand image.
The graphic below shows a simple idea that top brands have built on:
- Stimulate resonance and use the power of emotion
Even B2B purchasing decisions are not purely rational, but a combination of rationality and emotion. LinkedIn provides a B2B purchasing decision journey in the guide, which shows the stages of the journey, where the sales touch points and marketing touch points lie.
As you can see from the graph, sales touch typically kicks in from the second half of the buying journey, “Comparing Offers.” Marketing touches, on the other hand, run through the entire purchasing journey. In this process, it is also very important to stimulate resonance and use the power of emotion.
For example, LEGO links its products with the education of the next generation. On the one hand, it shows its own brand's attention to public issues, and on the other hand, it also strengthens the cultivation of young consumers' concepts. In other words, LEGO is cultivating its own brand into the "childhood" of the next generation of consumers.
On the other hand, LEGO also often showcases the stories of its employees. In the previous content, we also explained in detail - the case of Lego successfully "out of the circle" through the personal homepage of employees during the epidemic. From the perspective of employees, showing the joys, sorrows and sorrows that the brand does not have can make the brand resonate with the target users in the process.
- Adhere to "always online"
With a unique creative grip and a resonant emotional experience, how do you expand the value of brand marketing on LinkedIn? That is to make sure your audience can always see this, stick to "always on".
According to LinkedIn, the cost of running an "always-on" marketing campaign decreases over time, while the effectiveness increases over time.
McDonald's is an example of the brand's "always-on" strategy, which it claims serves "99 billion people."
Through Marketing Cloud, we can research McDonald's LinkedIn page data for nearly a year. From the number of posts and the type of posts, it can be clearly seen that McDonald's annual posting volume has reached 300+, which is updated almost daily. At the same time, it has also increased its fans by 250,000+ in the past year, and implemented the "always-on" strategy to the end. This move has made McDonald's a good influence on LinkedIn and has become the number of fans on LinkedIn's fast food brand homepage. highest brand.
Fourth, make the brand more humane
Behind the brand are people, and the audience for the brand is also people, and people are willing to work with people who make them feel good. Therefore, brands should not forget to show their human side when conducting B2B marketing.
How to show it? LinkedIn offers four angles:
Epilogue
Customers are not the only audience for a brand. Especially for B2B brands that focus on conversion, if they can expand the scope of marketing to talents, other brands and potential customers, and maintain brand consistency in front of these people, it will further expand their influence and improve marketing effects. . Reply to the keyword [LinkedIn Unity] in the background of the official account to download the full version of the guide
As a global social media data marketing management platform, Marketing Cloud supports functions such as multi-account management, internal collaboration, public opinion monitoring, and fan interaction management of mainstream social media platforms including LinkedIn.