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If you’re leading the charge on internal branding at your company, igniting management’s support should be simple. As we discussed last week, that’s the first step. However, getting your employees committed to the internal brand can be a bit more challenging. For a successful campaign, key personnel in every department have to be on board. Wondering how to spread brand promise to staff members in accounting, customer service and human resources? Today, we’re sharing a big piece of the puzzle.
It’s not an initiative. It’s not a program. It’s the brand.
As you shape your internal branding campaign, keep this in mind. If it’s presented as an initiative, it will be viewed as momentarily important but not fundamental to daily activities over the long term. Employees must develop a deeper understanding of the brand, the company’s overarching vision and how it plans to get there. Most importantly, they must understand their own role in reaching those goals. Once you build a platform on the company’s mission, you can help employees incorporate brand promise into every customer touchpoint. After this education and support, they’re more likely to make it a daily habit of their own.
It’s more than a workshop.
The best way to get your employees on board with the brand is to develop clear understanding of company vision, give everyone a role to play and emphasize long-term brand integration. Without careful attention to these steps, the “brand” can easily be perceived as a series of posters, workshops or videos – in other words, just another motivational “program” rolled out by management to boost morale. To avoid this, show employees that your brand is indeed a way of life.
Building a strong internal brand takes commitment from both management and employees. What are you doing today to make sure your brand promise is delivered?
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As we discussed Monday, the first step towards a strong internal brand is C-level support. Top executives must be responsible for driving the brand message internally and consistently over time. Wondering how leaders at your company can demonstrate brand value to employees?
Just as you would externally, launch an integrated internal campaign that enables leadership to communicate effectively with every employee on an ongoing basis. Here are two ways to get started:
A Brand Road Show
Kick off with a series of brand road shows, during which leadership visits all facilities and departments to discuss brand promise. This is one of the most important and effective ways to build brand awareness and commitment among employees. It’s the perfect time to help each employee understand the crucial role he or she plays in delivering the brand to the public and get them excited about doing so.
Putting leadership face-to-face with employees in an effort to create excitement for the brand can be very effective. Leadership is seen as an evangelist for the brand, which in turn creates brand disciples.
Stay in touch
Once management starts communicating with employees about the brand, it’s important that they don’t stop. This doesn’t have to happen all the time, but it does have to be consistent. A company leader could speak at quarterly meetings to encourage ongoing brand commitment, and an internal newsletter should be created and maintained. The newsletter should be developed with a dedicated focus on brand promise, getting employees to rally around it, and tips to make it paramount in everyday work.
Communicating brand promise from the top to every employee is crucial to internal branding success. What works at your company?
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By now, you’re convinced of the impact of a strong internal brand. Companies who are internal brand powerhouses – think Apple and GE – have employees who make every single customer touchpoint an expression of their brand promise. And it makes a difference. Those companies have developed communities of devoted people eager to use their products.
Believe it or not, your company doesn’t have to be at the mercy of word-of-mouth and reputation. You can shape from within. Active internal branding is accessible for companies of every size. This month, we’re sharing five key steps to building a strong internal brand, starting today.
Step 1: Get support from the top
A successful brand begins at the C-level. Employees must see leadership as driver of the brand. That makes it powerful and lets employees know internal branding is being taken seriously. C-level executives should pave the way for a strong brand by doing the following:
1. Clear communication of vision
Employees can’t adopt brand promise without clear communication of what it means and why it’s important. This message should start at the C-level and be directly communicated to every department, eventually trickling down to each corner of the company. As employees gain greater understanding of the mission, they’ll begin to accept it, get excited by it and implement it themselves.
2. Brand advocacy
We’ll discuss “living the brand” later in the month, but company leaders should make their brand advocacy known. When employees see their leader is excited by something, they often follow suit. Understanding the “why” behind the brand makes expressions of it authentic, and seeing a company’s leadership truly fired up by their mission makes a huge impact.
3. Driving the message internally
Even if the brand promise is clearly communicated by leadership to employees, the message must be presented consistently over time. Regularity and dedication shows employees that their leaders mean what they say, and that the brand is indeed worth talking about and presenting to customers in an exciting, genuine way.
On Friday, we’ll share two ways company leaders can drive internal messaging effectively. Hope to see you then.
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On Friday, we kicked off our series on internal branding. While many companies recognize the value of a strong brand, their focus is usually external. They often overlook the critical role employees play in shaping relationships with target audiences. Advertising and external communications are an important piece of the puzzle, but building strength internally helps companies make the most of one of their greatest brand assets — their people!
Bottom-line Impact
Every company’s goal has something to do with increasing the bottom line. To do that, they often look outwards, but the greatest impact requires a shift in thinking. Yes, customers lead to sales, but first, employees lead to customers.
From Awareness to Advocacy
The process employees should be led through goes something like this: start with general awareness, move towards acceptance and personalization and end with authentic advocacy.
How to Get There
You might think internal branding sounds like a great idea but feel unsure about where to start. You understand that employee advocates make every customer touchpoint an expression of your brand promise, and that employees with a strong connection to the brand stay longer and work harder. On Wednesday, we’ll discuss the first step to a strong internal brand: C-level support.
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Every company is worried about branding, and understandably, the focus is usually external. But let’s not forget – strength starts at the core. Building a strong internal brand has greater benefits than many realize.
The essence of branding is promising and delivering.
It’s a simple, yet powerful concept. Companies make promises to customers and do their best to keep them. The most successful companies understand that if employees are aligned with brand promise, every customer interaction becomes an authentic expression of that promise.
Customers need consistency.
Powerful companies craft every customer touchpoint to highlight their brand, whether it’s a website form, email, phone call or purchase. To create that kind of reliable, consistent framework, employees have to be on board. Internal branding is worth the investment.
Use what you have.
Here’s some good news – cultivating a strong internal brand might not cost as much as you think. You can do a lot with what you already have. Over the next month, we’ll be sharing five key steps to building an internal brand that works for you.
Does your company have a strong internal brand?
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Happy New Year, Chicago!
We hope 2014 brings happiness and health – along with all the marketing and business success you could ask for. Employees, friends and clients, here’s to you.
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Need a little reading material to take you into the New Year? To conclude our December theme, we’re back with four of our favorite blog posts on lead management from around the web.
This post from B2B Lead Blog, covering MarketingSherpa’s Lead Gen Summit in September, breaks down three crucial parts of lead management: key principles, ideal customer profiles and data to be collected. It’s a good starting point for beginners and a nice, succinct refresher for the pros.
Data, display ads and video are all becoming more instrumental in the lead management process. This post from Social Media Today helps you use them to prepare for the future.
Want to get to know your leads better? This post from Econsultancy will help.
Removing bad data from your database sounds is a great New Year’s Resolution. It’s hard to stay on top of it, but Marketo’s post takes you back to basics and provides motivation to get it done.
What helpful lead management posts have you found lately?
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Even if you’re adopting all the lead management tips we’ve covered this month, you won’t be successful without a bit of organization and consistency. If you’re a small company, it’s worth it to invest in a good CRM tool, and if you’re at a larger company, make sure you’re using yours to its full advantage. It should link to your marketing automation software and help optimize your content distribution by making the most of customer habits.
To make your lead management strategy organized and consistent, take a look at these three things:
Times and Frequency
How much contact is too much, too little, just the right amount? No company wants to annoy leads, and the perfect level of contact rests on a fine line. Thanks to CRM and marketing automation tools, this doesn’t have to be guesswork. Take a hard look at what times of day contact elicits the highest engagement from your leads, and at what frequency. Some companies reach out more than once per week, but some stop at once per month. Consult the numbers to find what works best for your community, build a plan around it and stick to it.
Future Plans
Once you’ve built a plan for timing and frequency of lead contact, your nurturing plan will be well on its way. Take it one step further, though, and make sure you understand what patterns of content distribution worked to get your leads’ attention. Did they like personalized newsletters or industry blog posts? Do they like to be called by name in emails, and how do they respond to phone calls? Form an organized view of what’s worked in the past, and use it to shape future plans for success.
What Content Works
Content marketing has gotten a lot of attention this year, and not without merit. After you’ve organized what kind of day-to-day content works best for your leads, take it further. Assess your content marketing plan and how it fits in with the consistency of your lead management strategy. Will your leads respond best to a white paper, an eBook, or a YouTube video? Figure it out, and make a plan for consistent delivery that adds value to their lives.
Organization and consistency takes your lead management plan to the next level. What tips work for you?
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Pausing our lead management series for this important message:
May today be full of family, friends and rest. Wishing you and yours a happy holiday!
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Lead management is a place where companies are usually willing to invest, but that doesn’t make it easy. It can get pretty uncertain, in fact, during the nurturing stage. When marketers don’t know exactly where prospects stand, it’s hard to meet their needs and convince them to buy. Prospects in this stage typically leave emails unopened, calls unanswered and wallets closed. Marketers should not get discouraged by those unopened emails – they actually play an important role in keeping leads engaged.
Email marketing is invaluable to lead nurturing. Getting into your prospects’ inboxes keeps you at the front of their minds, even if they’re not reading your content. Yet.
Here are three ways to nurture leads with email, even if they aren’t getting opened. Capture their attention and keep it:
1. Attention-grabbing Subject Lines
Nothing you don’t already know, but it rings especially true for those leads who aren’t totally engaged. If they aren’t reading your email, you have to make an impression in the only place you can: your subject line. Make it compelling, and don’t be afraid to get personal.
2. Optimal Delivery Times
Let your CRM tool work for you. Send email campaigns at the best times of day for your leads; they’re moving targets, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be strategic. While you’re at it, don’t forget to keep things mixed up when it comes to scheduling. Sending your daily, weekly or monthly email at the same time, every time is too predictable and can easily cost you a strong prospect.
3. Segmentation
Never doubt the power of segmentation. It gets the most out of your database. Send emails that are more personalized and more relevant. Content based on your prospect’s location, for example, might be just the thing to get their attention when they least expect it.
What lead nurturing tricks do you have for email?
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