Internal Marketing

As I go about developing advertising campaigns for radio and websites, I often dig deeper and find out if the folks inside the business are aware of the advertising and marketing efforts their company is doing.

Sadly, more often than not, this is not being communicated. So I will do my best to include everyone in the loop so that those on the front line with the customers are as knowledgeable as those that signed the advertising agreements. When everyone is on the same page, results will improve dramatically.

Read more from the THINKING Blog:

Great Employees = Happy Consumers

Posted: 14 Jul 2008 04:09 PM CDT

Companies spend millions of dollars each year identifying their brand, and then communicating their brand promise through various media. Employees are the primary “media” in the majority of brand contacts. Raise your hand if you think a majority of your employees understand your brand promise well enough to live it and articulate it clearly.

I don’t see many hands up.

Tons of research has been done on this subject. Typically, the results indicate that more than 75% of employees are achieving much less and feeling far less enthusiastic about their work than they could be. One Gallup study suggests that if all your employees were “fully engaged,” your customers would be 70% more loyal, your turnover would drop by 70%, and your profits would jump 40%. In a 2006 study, Gallup reports that, “the lower productivity of actively disengaged workers costs the US economy about $328 billion.”

Research also has found that consumers who felt fast food restaurant employees did a great job were five to six times more likely to come back to that brand. At banks where employees stood out, the customer was six to 20 times more likely to continue the relationship.

Additionally, great employees also tend to engender “passionate” customers. For example, customers who praised store-level associates were 16 times more likely to be passionate about the retailer’s brand.

My analogy is this: drop a pebble into a pond and the largest splash occurs at the point of contact and then radiates outward in circles. The point of contact, from a branding perspective, is inside your company. Get employees on board from an emotional perspective and they carry their passion out to the next circle: customers. Passionate customers carry it beyond to prospects through word-of-mouth.

Effectively communicate your brand position with your employees, and unleash some passionate financial results.

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