Eye-catching and powerful ads, frequent and lively engagement with your followers online, and exciting events and special discount offers are all well and good in marketing for attracting, nurturing and retaining your customers. However, no matter how many positive experiences you might share with a company, it can sometimes only take as little as one negative experience with a discourteous employee, to completely turn you off from that business, and spread your negative sentiments to anyone who would listen. Marketers will therefore do well to remember that before all the fancy ads and impressive gimmicks, it is your employees that can often make the difference between a customer’s great shopping experience or a terrible one.
This is why it is so important to ensure that your employees possess the right attitude when it comes to serving your customers or clients. Employees who feel no connection to your business are not likely to have any genuine interest in your company’s growth. And if your employees, as the face of your company, are not willing to help promote your brand, then your customers won’t have much confidence in your business either.
The answer is to therefore market your business to your employees just as you would your customers, and get them excited and chatty about your brand. Doing so can boost your overall marketing strategy in several ways, which we will speak about below.
Improved Customer Experience
Happy employees equal happy customers, and the more connected your employees feel to your company, the happier and more motivated they will be in their jobs. This happiness can positively influence the way your employees interact with customers and make them more engaged in finding solutions to customer problems, inevitably boosting customer service and satisfaction.
The culture and atmosphere of your business are therefore very important when marketing to your employees. If your culture is one for micro-managing, punishing rather than rewarding or keeping employees ignorant about important happenings within your company, then employees will feel no obligation to exert extra effort towards your company’s growth. However, if you market your business as one which believes in rewarding staff achievements, getting members involved in important brand decisions, building bonds and creating camaraderie through different activities (such as special events, loyalty programmes, occasional outings, etc.), you will find that your employees will naturally want to provide exceptional service to your customers.
More Creative Ideas Through Increased Engagement
Two heads are better than one and in marketing, many heads are better than a few! So the better informed all your employees are about what your business is trying to achieve, the more involved they will feel and the more eager they will be to add their valuable input into how your brand’s performance and overall growth can be improved.
Marketing to your employees, here, is simply being able to effectively communicate your company’s goals, values and objectives to your employees and ensuring they stay engaged in helping your business to achieve those goals. You can encourage this engagement by designing and implementing "Staff-only" elements. of your marketing campaigns, and well as "Feel good" initiatives that centre around your brand.Trust them to complete important tasks on their own, rewarding them for achievements, no matter how small; contributing to their career development through offering relevant courses and, yes, increasing their compensation can go a long way.
Strong Brand Ambassadors
If you can make your employees fall in love with your brand, there is no need to doubt that they will go out there and make others fall in love with it too. This is exactly what you want as people tend to trust the word of individuals more than they would an organization as a whole. To encourage your employees to spread the right message to the public, communication and overall strong company culture are key. Not only should you ensure that your employees clearly understand your brand’s core values and mission, but your company should also create a positive and inclusive environment which provides growth opportunities and encourages engagement through different team-building activities. Creating such an environment is sure to raise employee morale and make them a lot more willing and open to singing your company’s praises.
Employees are Customers too
Employees are really no different from your customers. They, too, have varying wants and needs and, like your customers, are willing to give their continued service to you once you can meet those needs. The difference is that employees, as your first marketing offensive, can act like your own personal springboard from which you can propel your marketing efforts much farther into the air of success, than you possibly could have, without their cooperation.