When almost any organization unleashes its marketing folks or agency on a new branding, content, social media, or public relations campaign, everyone’s attention is generally turned in one direction. The main questions on everyone’s lips are “How do we engage new prospects?” or “How do we get customers into our stores more often?” or “How do we steal market share from competitors?”
The question that should perhaps be asked and answered before any of those is “How do we get buy-in from our employees and staff?”
It seems like this should be an obvious first step but, in actuality, internal audiences are rarely seen as a critical segment when it comes to corporate messaging or content. Whether it’s assumed that all employees will automatically educate themselves on a company’s marketing campaigns, or management fails to see any need to gain their approval or consensus, businesses that fail to bring their staff up to speed are shooting themselves in the foot.
The reason is that customers today often base their relationships with your business through your employees. As important as your brand may be, it’s your employees that make that brand real. If you’re not keeping employees informed and on board with your marketing communications objectives, let alone the overall mission and purpose of your company, that disconnection will inevitably find its way to customers. When your employees aren’t able to articulate or support your external marketing messaging or objectives with customers, you’ve got problems.
That’s why savvy businesses put as much effort, rigor, and creativity into their internal communications as they do with their external marketing programs to ensure that everyone is rowing the boat as knowledgeably and uniformly as possibly. They seek input and dialogue among their employees to ensure that they take to heart the narratives behind customer engagements and messaging and thoroughly understand their roles in bringing benefit to customers.
More insight into the importance of seeing employees as a critical component of your marketing programs can be found in this article. Just as no football coach would ever prepare his team for the season by revealing and explaining the plays to just the quarterback and center, no business should proceed with a marketing or content program without ensuring that all of its players are in on the game plan as well.