Last year LinkedIn acquired PointDrive - a firm dedicated to developing innovative solutions to further enhance the online customer buying experience. As of recently, PointDrive is now available on LinkedIn.
This brings social selling to a whole other level, allowing marketers to give prospects essentially a seamless 'one stop shop' of information from videos, to presentations, to one-page PDFs, all housed on one personalized, branded page. Depending on where you are in the buying cycle with the prospect you are engaging with, you can develop a very tailored presentation in PointDrive. Up to eight cover images can be made available for your team to customize different presentations, and as an administrator, you have the ability to keep other team members from uploading their own imagery to keep consistent with brand guidelines.
The information can then be shared through InMail or email via a customized URL showing the prospect only the information relevant to the conversation - and if using email, the user does not need to login to their LinkedIn account (if they have one) in order to view the presentation.
This eliminates the need to send lengthy follow up emails with dozens of attachments potentially overwhelming and confusing the recipient.
It also takes away the risk of not being able to send very large files due to the possibility of them being blocked by the prospects email server. Overall, it's just a better, more, personalized experience for the seller and prospect - and of course, it's completely mobile-friendly.
Below is a snapshot of how a presentation in PointDrive could look. You can lay out the content anyway you like, and reposition it as appropriate allowing for a cleaner, polished look.
Multiple variations of presentations can also be created and updated keeping the content flow smooth and fluid. You can manage your own presentations as well as keep track of your team's presentations with ease. Depending on the nature or sensitivity of the information being share, you can also control the security of each presentation by making certain ones expire after a period of time, or making them un-downloadable.
Another neat and important feature as a seller and marketer is that PointDrive allows to measure the 'success' of your content sharing through data-driven analytics. You have the ability to track engagement of the presentations you share by viewing the number of clicks, downloads and even the duration a content was viewed for - something you would not have visibility into had the same information have been emailed.
As social selling becomes increasingly important in our digitally-driven world, PointDrive could very well serve as a powerful tool in the buying process. PointDrive is accessible through LinkedIn's Sales Navigator and Enterprise editions. Give it a try.
Feel free to also take a look at a post published from last year, on how IT professionals can further leverage social media by embracing the concept of 'attract marketing' which is here to stay.