Many companies are putting a lot of effort into their marketing activities. The budgets for digital marketing are on the rise and influencer marketing is booming. However quite often, the most effective and authentic way to market your company is not paid attention to. YOUR EMPLOYEES.
Every employee serves as a business card for their company, and absolutely everybody who works for a company plays an essential role in developing the company’s brand. Neither marketers nor employees themselves think about the fact that we represent our company or employer also outside of work, and we are therefore like brand ambassadors. In reality, we shape the company’s image 24/7 with our actions and words. How we speak to others about our work in our free time or what we post on our social media accounts plays an important role from the viewpoint of the company’s branding.
If the personal values of the employees are aligned with the corporate values of the brand and personal branding of employees is integrated into the company’s employer branding and overall communication strategy, it can bring not only bring along real measurable results but also increase employees engagement and overall levels of satisfaction.
The current practice in the majority of companies is for marketing team members to email the rest of their companies with recommended content to share. This process simply doesn’t work.
Employee advocacy isn’t about self-promotion or the advertising for the company’s products or services. It’s about creating conversation around your people and helping them to find a deeper meaning of their job, formulate their why and their story and then share it with people in their circle of influence.
It is about empowering your people as conversation starters, influencers, and even thought leaders.
Richard Branson has famously said: “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
The latest data from the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer confirms his statement with hard-solid statistical data, indicating, that employees in the post-pandemic world are now considered to have an unpunprecedented material impact on a business. When asked to rank which group was more important to a company’s long-term success, employees topped the list over customers, communities a business serves and even its shareholders.
Your people is the heart and soul of your business. You’ve gone the extra mile to attract the best people — who regularly go above and beyond their every day responsibilities to take your company to new heights.
So put your people as a top priority and give them a voice and a platform, so that the rest of the world could learn how unique is your company and the people, who have chosen to work in it.
