While executives recognize the need to keep people informed about the company’s strategy and direction, few understand the need to convince employees of the brand’s power-they take it as a given. Unfortunately, in most companies, internal marketing is done poorly, if at all. Employees are unified and inspired by a common sense of purpose and identity. We’ve found that when people care about and believe in the brand, they’re motivated to work harder and their loyalty to the company increases. In other cases, it may be they don’t actually believe in the brand and feel disengaged or, worse, hostile toward the company. In some cases, this is because they simply don’t understand what you have promised the public, so they end up working at cross-purposes. Without that connection, employees are likely to undermine the expectations set by your advertising.
Why is internal marketing so important? First, because it’s the best way to help employees make a powerful emotional connection to the products and services you sell. Yet in our work helping executives develop and carry out branding campaigns, my colleagues and I have found that companies very often ignore this critical constituency.
When you think of marketing, you more than likely think of marketing to your customers: How can you persuade more people to buy what you sell? But another “market” is just as important: your employees, the very people who can make the brand come alive for your customers.
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