Internal marketing is a crucial element of an effective marketing strategy and shouldn’t be ignored. In fact, it should be something your company prioritises, so let’s get on it right now!
This blog is going to cover everything you and your business need to know about internal marketing, so grab a cuppa and switch your brain to sponge mode!
It’s sad to note that internal marketing is hugely underutilised, despite it being an important tool in our marketing box of tricks. Internal marketing is particularly relevant to B2B companies for boosting lead generation and reaching a much larger audience.
Internal Marketing Basics
So what exactly IS internal marketing? To put it simply, internal marketing is when a company “sells” itself to one of its largest groups of stakeholders – the employees. It aims to ensure employees understand and believe in the company philosophy and mission, resulting in better engagement and no doubt productivity with their work.
Would you like to:
- Drive genuine enthusiasm for your company’s product or service?
- Enhance your reputation as an employer?
- Increase your employee buy-in on your goals and objectives?
Then investing in internal marketing is the answer! When employees fully support the company’s future plans they are better able to provide value to your potential customers. Which in turn will contribute to better conversion rates.
As a reminder, customers’ attitudes toward a company aren’t solely based on the product or service offered, they are also based on the overall experience they have with the company. It’s quite likely that a current or potential customer might interact with employees in several, or even every department of a company, which all contribute to formulating their view of it.
A customer interaction with an employee can be in person or online over email or through your social media channels.
Here are a few examples to on educating your employees about your company:
- Clearly and consistently communicate the company’s long-terms goals and values
- Open up dialogue on corporate policies and leadership – be willing to accept criticism
- Ensure employees know that their contributions count and are vital to company success
- Encourage employees to use your products or service and give their feedback – great for market research!
The above should hopefully be in place already as internal marketing nowadays requires getting your employees involved in the whole process. So read on to find out how to take your internal marketing to the next level.
Key actions for effective internal marketing
Time for some statistics… 74% of buyers doing their research online (Source: Eurostat), and 84% of people trusting recommendations from friends, family or colleagues over other forms of marketing (Source: Nielsen). Did you know that content shared by employees receives a whopping 8 times more engagement than content shared by brand channels? (Source: Social Media Today).
Employees should be your most trusted sources and it’s critical to ensure they genuinely believe in the company’s values and commit to the mission. Empower them to talk freely about your brand online and be your ambassadors.
Once you’ve established your workplace culture, it’s important to put on some social media training. Then you can entrust your employees to talk about your brand openly online and actively encourage them to share their thoughts. They can offer valuable insights into your company’s ethos and build trust with prospects, leading to benefits like increased lead quality and more traffic to your website.
Don’t stop there – continue to engage employees. When staff believe in your brand and are empowered and feel trusted to be its human voice, they will naturally become brand ambassadors who can and will vouch for the business and its product/service during and outside of the working day. Instilling a strong internal marketing strategy can massively improve your visibility online, increase your lead quality and boost your website traffic.
To execute a successful strategy, you need a plan of action. This will enable you to implement your steps in good order and will provide a reference point when evaluating your progress and effectiveness. As always, if you need any help with designing your tactics or rolling out a solid internal marketing strategy then we are here and would love to support you. Just drop us an email hello@zephi.co.uk or speak to our friendly team on 01889 280010.
