Are You Marketing to Your Employees?
Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about their target audience – determining key demographics, creating detailed buyer personas and crafting custom content that speaks directly to them.
That’s a proven way to drive leads and grow sales, but you might be missing a key audience that’s literally right in front of you.
Your company’s employees.
Your employees can be your greatest brand advocates (or a big liability) depending on how you communicate with them.
Don’t forget to market to them. Having happy, invested, proud employees can exponentially increase the power of your marketing to the outside world.
How to create brand advocates:
- Make sure they understand your brand. If you ask everyone in your company who you are, what you do, and what sets you apart, will they all give the same answer? Ensure your company has a brief elevator statement that everyone knows, understands and can use when talking about your business.
- Keep them informed. Have an exciting new project? Tell everyone. An upcoming event, a smart new VP, a nice testimonial from a client? Tell everyone. Whether you have an intranet, an email newsletter or weekly meetings, keep everyone in the loop. You can’t develop team pride if no one knows what’s going on.
- Get their buy-in and input. You don’t have to get buy-in on every single decision, but give employees a sense of ownership by including them in decisions. For example, consider sending everyone two versions of your next ad and letting them vote on their favorite. Find ways to include and listen to them.
- Inspire. A lot of corporate communication falls into the realm of administrative information. Everyone must attend safety training. Someone left their lights on in the parking lot. Don’t forget to log your time. What if you gave equal measure to stories of how your business helped people? Amazing things you’ve done. Amazing people you work with.
- Encourage them to share the love. When people work for a company they are proud of and inspired by, they want to share that. Take lots of pictures, do social media posts that capture the employee culture, and encourage the staff to share. Just a few employee shares can exponentially impact your reach.
Need help building your brand? We can help. Let’s Talk.
Diane Callihan
With more than 20 years of experience writing for some of the country’s top brands, Diane helped to shape Roger West’s content strategy, lead generation, and PR efforts as Director of Marketing. She currently serves as President of Callihan Content Creation.