Faced with the continuous need to meet sales targets and audience expansion, businesses become overly preoccupied with external marketing campaigns and often neglect the internal marketing aspect. Your employees are like the cogs of an organization: they interact with customers and prospects; it’s unlikely for them to effectively convey the value of a company’s products or services if they feel undervalued.

Effective internal marketing strategies are equally important as external ones when it comes to gaining a competitive edge. By engaging with employees, you not only reduce employee turnover rates, but also empower them to achieve their individual goals. 42% of employees claim that development and learning is the most important benefit of working in an organization.

In this blog, we take a look at some powerful ways you can adopt to improve your company’s internal marketing.

Internal vs. External

To put it in simple terms, external marketing is done to attract an increasing number of people to your brand in hopes of turning them into customers using marketing tools and methods such as social media, content marketing, live activations, traditional advertisement etc. It’s where you try to convey the value of your propositions to the world.

On the flip side, internal branding or marketing consists of two main aspects: How to attract new staff and develop a great company culture to make employees feel valued and part of the business’s operations.

Similar to external marketing, you begin by understanding the state of your employee’s mindset and attitude (done via surveys). Equipped with this knowledge, you can utilize the data to form a strategic plan to enhance employee morale.

Have Conversations and Get Feedback

Although most organizations use emails and memos to facilitate communication, walking up to someone and talking to them increases a sense of openness and increases productivity. A face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication and helps to foster relationships.

An increasing number of multinationals hosts’ events outside of the office in an attempt to strengthen relationships with employees which help improve in-office communication. Also, encourage them to voice their opinions and listen to what they think about the current affairs of the company.

An effective way of increasing a sense of loyalty is to have routine stand-up meetings with the senior management where employees give feedback on how to better business operations and avoid potential pitfalls.

The meetings should reinforce a sense of transparency within the organization and be short as to not affect the workflow. It also aids in breaking down barriers between the hierarchy levels and allows for bonding between employees and their supervisors and managers. Why is this important? According to a study, 60% of employees consider leaving their jobs because of disliking their supervisors.

Offer Rewards and Recognition

Rewards don’t need to solely revolve around monetary benefits. Similar to a gift, it’s not the value of the offering that’s necessarily impactful but the idea behind it.

Rewarding the staff from time to time makes them feel valued because if your rewards are only based on money, they then can get that at any other workplace as well. Studies reveal that 44% of employees would leave their current jobs for ones offering a better pay, further emphasizing the need to make the employees feel recognized and valuable assets to the business.

Enhance Internal Communication

Internal communication is a vital part of the internal brand strategy and works similar to external marketing methods. Sending email updates, newsletters, putting up posters, discussing strategy with the executive etc. Align your content with the company’s key events and keep the employees updated. These steps can have the following benefits:

• Creating team unity: By making every employee feel like part of a team working toward the organizational goals, everyone is on the same page; different teams and departments are synergized. Such collaboration boosts overall communication and facilitates innovation.
• Builds rapport with employees:A disconnected and negative work environment decreases employee productivity. By reaching out to employees and developing a relationship based on trust, value, and appreciation, motivation levels increase which positively affects the company’s bottom line.
• Valuing Employee Contribution:Every company has a few hard-working employees who go above and beyond. Value their contributions. Encourage them to excel further. Each employee is different; some value financial benefits over recognition so reward them accordingly.

Kill Two Birds with One Stone

Some parts of internal marketing also count as external, which acts as your tool for attracting new talent to your business. It is worth mentioning that this process should not be initiated until you’ve already been successful in implementing your internal marketing strategy. Once that has been sorted out, focusing on the external part becomes easy.

Another vital aspect of internal marketing is to remain consistent. It’s not something you do once or twice a week and then expect to see major changes. Tweaking, monitoring, and updating are required similar to external marketing. The process becomes highly effective if there are people within the organization tasked with handling internal branding and culture.

Fortunately, external marketing methods such as consumer engagement and content marketing prove just as effective when done within the organization.

People in the marketing department already know how to implement this. The benefits accrued from creating a positive working environment are immense; something highlighted by the fact that nearly 86% of millennials would stay in their current position, if offered career training and development.

Connect!

Emailing a few slides isn’t sufficient enough; you don’t know whether they have been read or understood. Request 20-minutes for weekly meetings where you reach out to your team to keep them up-to-date with the marketing plans. Outreach programs not only help in keeping everyone on the same page, but also increase your credibility and standing within the organization.

Today’s digital landscape is brimming with opportunities and all it takes is an innovative mindset to have a meaningful impact on the audience.

Our content creation services in Alberta help equip your company with the tools necessary to develop both effective internal and external marketing campaigns. Contact us today!