Internal Marketing: Everything You Need to Know in 2022

Too often, B2B businesses neglect internal marketing, choosing instead to focus on external strategies. But that’s where the money is, right? 

This isn’t always the case.

In fact, companies that implement internal marketing and have happy employees are 22% more profitable than those that don’t. 

Overlooking internal marketing in your company can have a massive negative impact on your business. But, what does it take to implement an effective internal marketing strategy? 

This article covers everything you need to know about internal marketing so that you can start leveraging its benefits as soon as possible. 

What is internal marketing?

Internal marketing is the promotion of a business’s vision, goals, mission statement, and company culture to your internal audience (your employees).  

It focuses on building loyalty, satisfaction, and engagement with your employees so that they can better understand your products or services and communicate this with your customers. 

Essentially, internal marketing creates a “healthy” company that can effectively provide services and products to customers. 

The difference between internal and external marketing

Internal marketing focuses on “selling” your products or services to your internal customer, while external marketing focuses on selling to your external customer. 

With external marketing, your marketing methods, branding, messaging, and personal interactions are all geared toward creating brand awareness and earning new business from potential customers. 

An external marketing strategy usually begins with obtaining leads and moves toward turning those leads into paying customers. Therefore, your advertising material throughout your platforms should be attention-grabbing and aim to move potential customers through your sales funnel. 

On the other hand, internal marketing focuses less on grabbing attention and more on establishing and building relationships with your employees who are already aware of your business. 

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Both internal and external marketing are crucial in the B2B industry, and you should set a fair budget for both methods. 

Benefits of internal marketing 

Let’s have a look at the top five benefits of internal marketing: 

1. Aligns employees with company values and goals

Your employees are your greatest assets. By inspiring them with a clear and compelling brand mission and story, they automatically gain a deeper sense of purpose at your company, which helps them form an emotional tie to your brand. 

As a result, this makes your employees more engaged and gives them a reason to want to excel in their roles. 

Thus, with the help of an internal marketing campaign, you get to enjoy a strong workplace culture where employees feel united and proud to be a part of something bigger. 

2. Increases employee performance and profits

Since the B2B industry can be highly competitive, you must provide exceptional products or services to your customers. However, you need to remember that your services can only be as strong as your employees make them.

This is where your internal marketing comes in. Thanks to an effective internal strategy, your employees will be motivated to work harder and offer the best possible service.

In turn, their increased performance will help your company gain more sales and make more profit. 

3. Reduces staff turnover

When your employees feel valued, they won’t go searching for better opportunities elsewhere. 

In fact, studies indicate that employees can no longer be bought with money, as the majority of employees will stay at their current job (provided they’re happy and valued) even if they’re offered a 10% raise at another company.  

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In a nutshell, internal marketing will help you to continuously remind your employees of the benefits of working at your company — which creates ultimate brand loyalty. 

4. Increases customer service and satisfaction

With internal marketing, customer satisfaction improves as a whole. 

Effective internal marketing helps your employees believe in your products and services, which makes them more enthusiastic about delivering excellent service to customers.

When customers are satisfied with excellent service, they’ll be more likely to recommend you to others, creating a snowball effect where minimal effort is required from your side to gain brand awareness. 

This leads to brand advocacy, which helps you save money since you won’t have to allocate a massive marketing budget to your external methods. 

5. Improves brand consistency

Did you know that brand consistency can increase your annual revenue by 10–20%? 

Internal marketing will help you create brand consistency as your employees will know your company’s vision and align their actions with it. 

They’ll have a clear plan and know exactly what’s expected of them, including how they should portray your brand effectively and how they should treat customers. They’ll also know how to explain your brand in the best way when an opportunity arises.

Key components of an internal marketing strategy

Let’s walk through five key components of internal marketing:

Component 1: Brand education

For your employees to be passionate about your company and its offerings, they need to understand your company’s mission and history. 

At the end of the day, your employees are your brand ambassadors. Therefore, you want them to feel like they’re a part of something bigger so that they’re proud to represent your company.

For this to happen, your onboarding process needs to be strategic and precise: 

• Pre-onboarding: Start by supporting your new employee when filling out all the necessary paperwork. Give them adequate time and send them a document or video that explains more about your company and what they can expect. 
• Welcoming them: Provide your new employee with an orientation phase (of a week or less) to help them acclimate. Help them better understand how your overall business processes work and introduce them to their new teammates. 
• Position-specific training: Take your employee through a well-drafted training plan that shows them what it takes to thrive in their position. Store the training materials in a place where the employee can refer back to them at any time. 
• Ease the transition into their new position: Give the employee clear expectations. Do this by setting up SMART goals for them to visualize what productivity, success, and quality looks like in your business. 

Component 2: Clear communication

Effective internal communication is the single most important factor in your internal marketing strategy. Without it, your employees will be confused and won‘t be able to enjoy their jobs. 

With the rise of the global pandemic, many businesses have started relying on internal marketing communication apps, such as Slack, to increase employee engagement. 

By using such apps, you can inform your employees of business developments and proceedings at all times. 

An added benefit of using these apps is that they allow you to measure employee engagement, which gives valuable insights into creating effective future internal marketing efforts. 

Component 3: Employee recognition 

When employees put in the hard work and hours, they want to feel appreciated. In many ways, your appreciation and their ability to grow within your organization mean more to them than additional money. 

In Work Institute’s 2021 Retention Report, it shows that a mere 7% of employees decided to leave their jobs due to compensation, whereas 18% decided to leave due to opportunities for growth, recognition, and job security. 

This proves it’s important that your business has employee recognition programs in some shape or form. 

For example, your employee recognition program can include writing thank-you letters to your employees, giving them small gifts, or throwing employee award shows. 

If you want to kick it up a notch, you can offer managed incentive programs where your employees get bigger rewards for their hard work. An example of this could be boosting sales personnel’s commission by 3% if they bring in a certain amount of sales over a specific period. 

Component 4: Internal bonding activities

Your internal marketing plan should include activities that help your employees feel like part of the team. 

These activities will give employees the chance to get to know one another outside the work setting, which will make them comfortable around each other and increase their communication levels. 

Activities can include things like: 

• Mystery dinners
• Laser tag
• Trampoline parks
• Board game tournaments
• Cook-offs
• Karaoke nights
  

You can even have virtual team-building activities, such as virtual scavenger hunts, virtual escape rooms, virtual dance parties, etc. 

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The point of these activities is to get your employees to kick back, relax, and have some fun with each other.  

Component 5: Learning and development programs

Opportunity for growth is a big factor in employee retention as well as company growth. 

In fact, 64% of L&D pros agree that Learning and Development programs are no longer a “nice to have” but rather a “need to have.” 

The main reason being that it helps your business offer better services to customers. 

The second reason is that it helps reduce staff turnover. 73% of employees say they’d be more likely to stay at their company if they offered skill-building activities. 

Best internal marketing tools

Here are three internal marketing tools that you should consider using. 

1. Company email newsletters

Employees spend a large portion of their workweek searching for internal communications. They want updates about company news, events, and information. 

With a company newsletter, employees get insights into the latest company events, initiatives, training programs, and more. 

This way, all your internal marketing channels are synchronized, and employees feel like they’re always in the loop. 

Your newsletters can include company PR, articles, videos, or podcasts to create a unified brand image. 

Additionally, your newsletters can also serve as a great employee feedback platform where you can encourage employees to give comments, build conversations, and fill out surveys. 

2. Videos

Video marketing is powerful. So powerful that 87% of marketers use video as one of their main marketing tools for internal and external purposes. 

This is because videos allow you to create powerful messages and effective brand storytelling in an easily digestible way. 

With the help of videos, your employees will have a stronger emotional response to everything that you want to convey, whether that be through training, company policies, internal events, etc.

Additionally, you’ll also be able to create employee testimonial videos that’ll help give you a competitive advantage and attract top talent to your company. This will help you deliver better results to customers. 

3. Staff surveys

It’s important to know how your employees see your company. This includes what they like, what they dislike, and how they perceive your products, company goals, and values. 

Based on the answers you receive, you’ll see any misalignment between your desired brand image and how your employees see your brand. 

There are different survey types to consider: 

• Staff engagement surveys: Measure how engaged or disengaged your employees are and determine what can be done to fix it. 
• Employee satisfaction surveys: Measure how happy employees are with their managers, benefits, and performance evaluations. 
• Staff morale surveys: Determine whether your employees feel recognized and respected at work. 
• Employee experience surveys: Determine whether your employees are happy with their hiring, induction, and training experiences. 
• Work culture surveys: Determine whether your employees feel positive toward your organization and whether they feel like they belong. 

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Create your internal marketing strategy

Internal marketing is here to stay. Your employees always need to be a priority if you want to experience maximum business growth and success. 

By investing in your human capital and implementing a successful internal marketing strategy for your business, you’ll be able to build your brand’s reputation and keep your employees happy, all while growing your profits.

Need us to help you create effective internal and external marketing videos for your internal marketing strategy? Reach out to us today!