The Key to Effective Internal Marketing

This post originally appeared on the FirstPerson Advisors Blog. 

When you hear the word “marketing,” what do you think of? You may think about how your brand appears in the market, or attracting new customers, or promoting and selling your products or services. These scenarios are in fact great examples of external marketing, but there’s another market that’s just as important: your employees.

Your employees make your brand come alive. They are your greatest brand ambassadors. And if you don’t communicate to them just as much or more than you communicate to the market, you’re losing out on a key opportunity.

Unfortunately, internal marketing is poorly executed at most companies, if it’s done at all. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve adapted four established principles of external marketing to show how we turn them inward and apply them to our internal marketing at FirstPerson. If you keep these four concepts in mind when communicating to your employees, both your employee engagement and your overall brand loyalty will blossom.

Stop talking, start listening

As marketers, we conduct market research to understand our audience, using everything from website analytics to focus groups to broadly distributed surveys. It’s time to start doing this with your employees. Host CEO lunches where a group of employees has a chance to ask the CEO anything work-related. Hold small focus groups to get feedback on new programs.

It’s also important to utilize technology and other tools to help you gather and aggregate this information, the same way you would in your digital channels. At FirstPerson, we use an employee engagement survey tool called TINYpulse that provides employers with actionable data. It allows us to monitor employee engagement and happiness, gather the thoughts and concerns of our team, and it enables our employees to recognize their peers for personal or professional accomplishments.

Keep it simple

Just as we create concise, attention-grabbing ads to attract new customers, we should do the same with our internal marketing. Don’t put too many words into your communications; think bullet points instead of paragraphs. (Tip: If you read your message out loud, you’ll quickly know whether you’re speaking clearly and getting straight to the point.) And don’t forget to ask yourself, “Would this piece catch my eye, or would I glaze over the text?”

Apply the Effective Frequency Theory

Marketers use the term “effective frequency” when describing the number of times a consumer must be exposed to an advertising message before the desired response is obtained. Remember, even though you’ve thought through the messages to your employees a number of times, they’re just hearing it for the first (or possibly second) time. Sharing the message through various avenues three to five times isn’t just okay, it’s necessary.

Link internal and external marketing

While many companies have ditched the 12-month marketing plan in favor of a more nimble approach, we still take the time to pre-define the strategies and messages we plan on taking to market over the next three-to-six months. Replicate this process with your employees. Start by identifying the themes or topics you want to address. And don’t forget to incorporate the same messages that are hitting the market to the messaging your employees see. Don’t let your employees hear news about your company in the media (or on your Twitter feed) before they hear it from you.

It’s time to give employees even more of a reason to believe in your brand. They’ll be motivated to work harder and their loyalty to the company will skyrocket. It’s up to you whether or not your employees have a reason to care.

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