Grow Brand Awareness with Your LinkedIn Content Strategy
by Heather Timmerman Moller
We’ve all been there. You’re ready to make a big purchase. You do some research on your own, read reviews, and seek trusted opinions. You receive a brand recommendation: “I haven’t used them myself, but I have heard wonderful things!”
How do brands make champions out of people who aren’t even customers? Through continuous investments in brand awareness. Brand awareness is what cements your brand’s name in people’s minds and makes it the first one they think of when they are searching for solutions to their needs.
As the “long game” of marketing, brand awareness can be overlooked in favor of more metric-friendly demand generation campaigns, but at a cost. Over time, brand recognition is shown to increase perceived brand value, reduce acquisition costs, and ultimately improve a company’s overall financial standing.
It’s important to play the long game, particularly during times of economic uncertainty.
Invest in Content
Investing in your brand doesn’t have to come with blockbuster budgets. According to recent research, thought leadership is one of the most effective tools organizations can use to demonstrate value to its customers.
Luckily, LinkedIn has the tools for maximizing content engagement and trusted marketing partners to help craft and execute a content strategy that drives brand awareness.
Establish Your Goals
The goals of a brand awareness campaign are to:
- Broaden your reach: Get your content seen by those who are not yet ready to buy but may someday be in the market for your product or service.
- Gain followers: Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. More followers mean more opportunities to amplify your brand.
- Increase engagement: The more people who engage with your content, the more it gets seen, and the better your name sticks in their minds.
LinkedIn Pages
This is where you establish your brand presence, increase brand visibility, and start building trust with your audience on LinkedIn.
Content tip: Pages are a great place to feature content that reflects your understanding of issues that impact your industry and the customers you serve.
Cornerstone content on your page includes:
- Whitepapers
- eBooks
- Case studies
- Industry articles
- Helpful how-to content
LinkedIn Marketing Partner spotlight: SCORCH and Transmission develop branded content across a variety of formats, from infographics to eBooks to social posts. No matter the goal, our partners have the expertise to drive your page’s brand awareness content.
Sponsored Content
Running a brand awareness campaign on LinkedIn means getting your name in front of key decision makers — whether or not they’re currently in the market for what you’re offering. Sponsored Content is an excellent way to broaden your reach.
Content tip: Videos are a highly consumable way to inform, celebrate, or start a conversation. Video ads are a highly effective and measurable way to keep your brand top-of-mind.
Linkedin Marketing Partner spotlight: Animoto allows you to retain creative control while enabling you to produce compelling, branded content, using a template-based and budget-friendly solution.
LinkedIn Groups
Groups are where industry members meet to share ideas, keep up with trends, and stay on top of relevant events.
Content tip: Being an active member of several relevant LinkedIn Groups allows you to demonstrate your thought leadership and grow your network. Since Groups are not the place for self-promotion, it’s best to keep your content focused on industry issues that relate to your niche.
LinkedIn Marketing Partner spotlight: WIRED Consulting specializes in creating B2B content that makes your brand stand out as a subject matter expert – perfect for offering powerful contributions to LinkedIn Groups.
Find Your Audience
You want your amazing brand awareness content to reach the right audience. LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences targeting has the flexibility to support any number of marketing strategies.
Company targeting
Whether you’re running an account-based marketing campaign or simply want to target demographics that represent buying committee roles, company targeting will deliver your brand content to the right audience.
Using company targeting as part of your LinkedIn content strategy helps you build brand awareness with contacts at an account before you get to know them.
Contact targeting
Want to make sure your brand stays top-of-mind for your current prospects? Contact targeting allows you to upload information about existing contacts and direct your relevant, branded content to them.
Retargeting
Strengthen that relationship through your LinkedIn content by using retargeting. This feature allows you to deliver the appropriate content based on your target audience’s previous interactions with your brand.
Content tip: Creating a broad reach for a brand awareness audience requires a thoughtful approach. Consider taking a Marketing Labs course to learn more about Using LinkedIn’s Ad Targeting.
LinkedIn Marketing Partner spotlight: If you’re looking to layer additional targeting attributes over your lists to ensure you’re reaching the right audience, consider one of these marketing partner integrations.
Measure Success
Metrics matter when executing any content strategy – even in the slow-and-steady world of brand awareness.
While the returns on brand awareness campaigns aren’t always immediately apparent, research shows that measuring ROI over the length of the sales cycle can lead to more accurate reporting and greater marketer confidence that their strategies are working.
LinkedIn has tools that can help you ensure your content is making an impact. Campaign Manager offers insights into content engagement, so you can make adjustments to your strategy or replicate wins.
Some of these engagement metrics include:
- Reactions
- Comments
- Shares
- Follows
- Engagement rate
- Click-through rate
Content tip: More isn’t always better when it comes to content. Take a look at your high-performing content and find new ways to repurpose it to bring new insights to an already engaged audience.
LinkedIn Marketing Partner spotlight: Great content deserves stellar creative. VidMob has a creative scoring tool to help you leverage your brand’s best practices for better performance. Check out their video research to learn the types of paid video ads that perform well on LinkedIn.
Dig Deeper into Content Strategy on LinkedIn
If this high-level primer on developing a content strategy to drive brand awareness has you ready to learn more, we created an in-depth guide to content and creation on LinkedIn.
Download the “How Standout Content Boosts Performance” to learn how to use proven creative and content best practices into your marketing on LinkedIn.
Learn how LinkedIn Marketing Partners can help you with your content and creative planning.