In Part 3 of the series, "How to Build a Winning B2C Strategy for Outdoor Brands Using LinkedIn," with one of Forbes Magazine's recognized leaders on LinkedIn, Viveka von Rosen talks about building your company brand through your employee profiles. Some tips she discusses are:
- Create a strong brand by having your employees create personal pages. To assist them, companies should:
- Create a company background image, have it sized correctly and share with employees for use on their personal LI pages,
- Have a healthy 2,000 word "about us" section to share with each employee that they can use on their personal pages, and
- Have your employees link their personal page to your company page.
- Create a company content hub page and keep your employees alerted to when you have content available for them to share through their network.
Recently, a study by Hubspot found that LinkedIn visitor to lead conversion rate is 3 times more than Twitter and Facebook.
Selling your outdoor products and building your outdoor brand isn’t going to be multi-channel, it is multi-channel now. The change in consumer behavior and the channels that can be used to conduct sales is evolving as you read this article. While you navigate the changing relationship with your traditional dealer network, you have embraced the need to execute a B2C social selling strategy. However, the social platforms available have very different demographics and focus on the individuals engaged with them. If you are after a higher end, brand loyal demographic that will pay for quality, brand purpose and in the B2C space, then maybe it’s time to fully take advantage of the opportunities LinkedIn (LI) is providing outdoor industry brands e-Commerce.
Yes LI has millennials, about 38% of their entire user base is in this category. But rather than obsess over just the millennial segment, it's time to take a much closer look at the overall demographics of LI subscribers. ComScore has published some insightful research that demonstrates the power this population holds for outdoor industry brands for developing a B2C strategy.
- LinkedIn members are loyal brand advocates, willing to pay more for a brand they relate to. Eighty-six percent said, “When I find a brand I like, I stick to it.”
- According to comScore’s 2013 Buying Power Index, LinkedIn members have nearly 2x more buying power than Facebook.
- Members are more than 2x more likely to trust information provided on LinkedIn than other social networks, which drives purchases.
- Behind every business is a collection of consumers that have a favorite outdoor interest and brands
- LinkedIn members are 93% more likely to have a college degree than the average online adult, fitting part of the 20% high spend consumers in outdoor gear
Additionally, recently, Buffer posted a terrific podcast that listed some of the more intriguing LinkedIn user demographics. They were:
- Twenty-nine percent of online adults use LinkedIn
- Fifty-six percent of users are male and 44 percent are female
- Fifty-one percent of users have a college degree
- Thirteen percent of millennials (15 to 34-year-olds) use LinkedIn
- Forty-four percent of users earn more than $75,000 a year
- Forty-one percent of millionaires use LinkedIn
You can check out the original article "Why Your Outdoor Brand Should Be Using LinkedIn for B2C Now."
Here's the link to Part 1 of the series.
Here's the link to Part 2 of the series
