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You may think marketing is purely customer-focused, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Internal marketing — that is, marketing directed toward the people working for your company — can be a very useful tool for many businesses.
The content you use in an internal marketing campaign needs to be carefully considered. You shouldn’t simply advertise your products and services to employees nor reiterate information already provided in their training. Listing virtual office telephone system features, for example, is not a good example of internal marketing, no matter how impressive these might be.
Rather, internal marketing content should be focused on improving employee engagement. A worker who’s disinterested in the company they work for will not give their all, so your job should be to create content that gets them enthused and interested again.
In this article, we’ll provide a few examples of the kind of content you can use in an internal marketing campaign, the best way to deliver it, and the reasons you should be investing in internal marketing today.
The delivery of marketing content is as important as the content itself.
What Type of Content Can I Use for Internal Marketing?
The biggest difference between internal and external marketing is the kind of content you should focus on. With the latter, the emphasis should be on what your company can do, so advertising the benefits of your products is a priority. With internal marketing, the attention should instead be on your employees and providing information that will benefit and motivate them.
The best example of this is the most common form of internal marketing: the company newsletter. This is a brief periodical that shares news about the company (staff changes, product releases, etc.) and, more importantly, provides a place to celebrate employee achievements.
The opportunity to be rewarded and recognized is essential for effective employee engagement, as it gives workers a reason to be invested in their jobs.
Advice articles are another form of internal marketing content you can send out to employees. Try to find (or create, if you have the ability) short articles that provide tips on smart working procedures or improving output. Sharing an article on how to boost productivity with mindful working is a good example of this.
You can also use internal marketing content to encourage discussion about company decisions. This kind of content is the most direct way of getting employees to engage, as it’s essentially a feedback request. An example would be putting a poll on social media asking for employee opinions on department reorganization or the latest product release.
How Can I Effectively Deliver Internal Marketing Content?
The delivery of marketing content is as important as the content itself. Firstly, pick a communications channel (or selection of channels) that ensures content is seen by the majority of employees. Secondly, create a marketing calendar so you can organize the dates and times this will be delivered.
You have lots of options when it comes to selecting the channels you send content through. If you provide employees with a company email address, this is a good way to send content and ensure it’s seen by at least some of your workers, though it doesn’t guarantee it will be read. Putting content on social media is a more modern alternative, but requires you to create a social media group specifically for employees.
If you want your marketing content to actually be consumed, consider sharing it during video conferences, when you know employees will be in attendance. In an office environment, you can hand out a physical copy during in-person meetings. This mandatory consumption of content guarantees your message is delivered, but the forced nature of this dissemination might harm employee engagement.
Start early: introduce marketing materials to employees as part of your onboarding process to-do list. If you hold in-person training sessions, trainers should be made aware of the content you’re looking to share and how to access it. Having an automated employee onboarding process is useful in this regard as you can program marketing content — like product information and productivity advice — directly into the automated system.
Finally, make sure you schedule gaps in your marketing calendar. Too much content can be annoying and distracting for employees, especially if it’s sent out during a large or difficult project. Poor timing can mean you don’t get the full benefit of internal marketing.
Be sure to track results in the same way you would for your user engagement strategy.
What are the Benefits of Internal Marketing?
There are tons of benefits to good internal marketing, both for you and your employees. As mentioned above, improved employee engagement is one of the most notable. When workers feel your company cares for and notices them, this leads to a renewed faith in your brand.
Employees that are engaged will be more productive and tend to provide better customer service, as they truly believe the company can benefit the customer (just as it has benefitted them). Furthermore, internal marketing can educate your employees on what you do, so the information they provide to customers is more accurate, relevant, and helpful.
If you’re providing the right content, internal marketing can even protect your team from burnout. Articles with mental health tips mean employees have information available to stop them from becoming overwhelmed. Providing recognition of employee achievements in company newsletters can also provide motivation and deliver a sense of satisfaction.
Marketing isn’t Just for Customers
Although we’ve detailed the differences between customer and employee-focused marketing above, the underlying concepts are very similar. So, when you’re researching marketing strategies for consumer-targeted content, remember many of these can be applied to internal marketing too.
At the heart of both kinds of marketing is that your company is beneficial to the people it engages with, whether that means purchasing from the company or working for it. If you keep this idea at the center of your campaigns, you’re sure to see many benefits.
Jenna Bunnell is the Senior Manager for Content Marketing at Dialpad, an AI-incorporated cloud-hosted unified communications system and call center scheduling software that provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives. She is driven and passionate about communicating a brand’s design sensibility and visualizing how content can be presented in creative and comprehensive ways.