When Brother Australia decided to increase their focus on the business market, they knew they needed help with their LinkedIn strategy. Enter Lucy Bingle, stage right.
Brother has been a global byword for sewing machines for over a century now, but they’re also a major player in office machinery, particularly printers, where they’ve long specialised in the SOHO sector.
Five years ago, the company decided to expand into the broader business market. Stefanie Matthews, Brother’s Marketing Manager for Printing, Labelling and Mobility, knew that LinkedIn would be a key pillar of the new strategy.
“We had a big following on Facebook,” says Stefanie, ”but we realised that it was largely the sewing community engaging with us. To start engaging with the business community, we needed another social media avenue, and for this audience, LinkedIn was clearly it.”
A fresh approach
After trying another agency, Stefanie was disappointed with the results and struggling to see the value, when a colleague recommended the Lucy Bingle agency.
“We got in touch with Lucy and quickly realised that she not only knew what she was talking about, but really believed in it,” says Stefanie, “we could see that she was invested in building our LinkedIn presence and, importantly, that we could trust her and her team.”
Stefanie had a clear vision of what she wanted from her LinkedIn strategy, and looked to Lucy Bingle to develop it.
“There’s not always a one-to-one relationship between marketing and sales,” says Stefanie, “and with LinkedIn we were looking for increased brand presence and increased engagement, not just with resellers and consumers, but also with our own employees. Lucy has achieved all of this and more.”
Continuing to rise
In the two years that the Lucy Bingle team have been working with Brother, follower numbers and engagement levels have risen consistently and continue to rise.
“There aren’t a lot of ways to have a two-way conversation with consumers and resellers,” says Stefanie, “LinkedIn gives us this ability, and the way Lucy has presented it inside Brother has really got people enthused and involved in the conversations. Lucy managed to overcome a fair bit of initial scepticism, and the degree of employee engagement we’ve seen has exceeded my expectations.”
The human touch
Stefanie particularly likes the way that LinkedIn conversations help to humanise the brand and increase the level of interaction.
“Our resellers can see that they’re valued partners and part of the Brother family. We particularly notice this when we host events: our partners can interact with the people in the business after the event through LinkedIn. We live and breathe our motto ‘at your side’ and this really comes across on the platform
Thought leadership
The Lucy Bingle team manage the day-to-day operations of the LinkedIn page, curating and adapting content to fit Brother’s strategy.
“We encourage Brother employees to find material they think might interest or benefit our community,” says Stefanie, “and it’s not always specificallyl about Brother. Our colleagues in other countries also often share our material, which is a powerful endorsement of its quality. We even had another agency notice how we were generating some really good thought-leadership and trend-setting material and use our page to understand our brand more.”
Measurable success
And when it comes to measuring success, Stefanie only has to look at the reports Lucy Bingle provides each quarter.
“Lucy gives us a detailed breakdown of the campaign, click-throughs, follower rates and engagement rates. They’re not only above the industry benchmark, but they consistently go up. That’s evidence that people are engaging—why would they follow us or comment on an article if it wasn’t of value to them? People don’t follow you without a good reason, and Lucy Bingle gives us that.”
Part of the family
Above all though, Stefanie enjoys the way the Lucy Bingle team works so closely with her team.
“Brother is a company with a strong, inclusive culture. A lot of the staff, myself included, have been here for a decade or more, and we’re basically all family. What I like most about Lucy’s team is that they’re part of that.
“Working with Lucy Bingle is not your typical ‘client-agency’ relationship,” says Stefanie, “they know our aims and we work really well together. We feel like they’re part of our team and very much part of the Brother family.”
