Simon Sinek, an American author and organizational consultant said, “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” You have the power to build that love and turn employees into passionate brand advocates. But how do you make that happen? Below are three strategies to win your employees over.
1. Treat Your Employees as Well as You Treat Your Customers
Treating your customers well can be the difference between creating a strong brand and a mediocre one. The same goes for your employees. Treating them as well as your customers will create a long- lasting bond that will inspire them to treat customers as they are treated. Engagement is critical. By listening to your employees’ feedback, engaging in their interests and passions, recognizing their accomplishments, and encouraging them to better themselves, you’ll create a positive and healthy workplace. Internal marketing will lead to high performing employees, happier customers, stronger brand reputation and trust.
2. Encourage Your Employees to Treat Every Transaction as a Marketing Opportunity
Providing your employees with brand training, service standards, messaging and marketing support materials that will help them market your company is essential. Disney is a perfect example. With multiple properties around the world, every customer experience is the same – it’s the “Happiest Place on Earth” regardless of the location. Disney has set the standard for internal branding that brings guests back over and over again. Why? It’s the employees – the front line- who are the marketers of the experience.
3. Motivate Your Employees to Be Brand Advocates
Word of mouth marketing is the most trusted of ad formats. According to Neilson, 83% of people people surveyed say they completely trust or somewhat trust the recommendations of friends and family. Employee advocacy enables the aspects of a business that already depend on word of mouth marketing.
Developing a social media strategy to earn your employees’ advocacy is a good way to build your word of mouth marketing. By creating employee social media contests, involving employees in social media posts and reminding them to like, share and comment, more people will see your company’s content. Social Media Today reports that content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels. Employee advocacy is an important part of reputation-building.
Internal communications is sometimes considered the responsibility of HR, however, from a Branding and growth perspective it is a marketing strategy. Contact us today to help you build employee advocates that help market and grow your company.