Now that you know how important it is to make employees ambassadors of your brand, the next step is to develop an internal brand campaign. If what you communicate externally isn’t understood internally, how do you build a company that lives what it does? More importantly, how then do you commit employees to emulate the brand and become your company’s greatest advocates?
One of the most important aspects to the success of a company often starts from within. Employees who know your business and who understand the roles they play in helping it achieve its goals are thereby motivated to help the company succeed. It is essential that you explore strategies and tactics to increasing employees’ understanding of who and what the company does, educating them around your services and then focusing on short and long term action plans to increase awareness and engage employees to live the brand characteristics and core values.
Help your employees articulate your brand promise, by beginning with these steps:
Step 1: Marketing is Your BFF
Marketing and internal communications can sometimes have a tenuous relationship. But this is the time for these two organizations to become BFFs. Work with the marketing team to determine the key external messages, and internalize those key messages into a primary message that is broad enough to resonate with employees, and structure that message into easy-to-understand formats. Review the external brand creatives and determine what components parlay into internal communication pieces that educate employees on the solutions your company offers as well as the products that support those services.
Tagged as:
ambassadors,
brand management,
brand strategy,
employee ambassadors,
Employee Engagement,
internal communications,
social media ambassadors
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Employees as Brand Ambassadors [Logical String]
Brand is like an iceberg – 10% of it is visible externally and 90% hidden. And these 90% determine how the 10% is perceived. The 90% is all about people, processes, policies, organization, etc.
During the course of interaction with a brand, a consumer has several moments of truth – those vital moments that give insights about the hidden 90% of the brand iceberg. More often than not, the moments of truth are encountered by interacting with employees of the organization for one thing or the other. And this is one reason why employees are key players who can significantly shape up the perception of a brand.
A brand experience has to be complete to be effective i.e. it delivers the promise at every point of interaction the customer has with the company. The product or service may fully satisfy your need or want as promised, but if the customer encounters a bad receptionist during one of your interactions with the brand, a question mark may pop up in the mind of the customer. The challenge is to give a standardized brand experience at every point of interaction with the brand. And it can only be done if the all employees have brand orientation – what the brand stands for and what it promises to deliver.
Tagged as:
ambassadors,
brand management,
brand strategy,
employee ambassadors,
Employee Engagement,
internal communications
Source:
Employees as Brand Advocates by Jenny Schade.
While attending a market research seminar recently, I noticed the cellular phone company employee sitting next to me pulling out her phone to place a call. I commented that the phone was made by one of her employer’s competitors. “Oh I don’t actually use our phones,” she laughed. “Too unreliable.”
It’s unlikely that any of the people who overheard her comment will ever buy one of the phones that her company makes either.
An organization’s brand is one of its most valuable assets and what differentiates it in the marketplace. As this story illustrates, the brand promise that an organization makes to consumers is not only delivered through products and services, but also through the behaviors of the employees — or brand ambassadors — who represent the brand with every move.
After all, an organization can devote unlimited advertising proclaiming that it is customer-focused, but nothing conveys this more clearly than the customer service hotline or the company receptionist’s greeting. Ultimately, identifying what makes a corporate brand valuable and then helping employees to become active advocates who live and breathe the brand promise results in better employee and customer experiences.
So, how does an organization successfully engage employees so they understand the brand and act as advocates on its behalf?
Tagged as:
ambassadors,
brand management,
brand strategy,
employee ambassadors,
Employee Engagement,
internal communications
