The Complete Guide to Employee Marketing: All You Need to Know

It's not always easy to align the workforce with business objectives, but it's necessary if you want to succeed long term. 

One of the best ways businesses can achieve their goals is to provide a quality employee experience through effective employee marketing strategies. 

Employees who show commitment to their organizations — and understand how to achieve their vision and mission — provide the company with unique competitive advantages, such as higher productivity.

Creating the right internal marketing strategies depends on many factors, including employee job satisfaction, employee turnover rate, and the quality of hiring decisions. 

This article will explore the strategies for effective employee marketing that will help you drive business objectives and recruit, engage, and retain top talent.

What's employee marketing, and what does it entail?

Employee marketing — often called internal marketing — is a systematic approach to managing internal communication and successfully aligning your workforce with business objectives through effective employee outreach.

Communication teams go beyond the limitations of marketing campaigns to build an emotional bond with employees and get them excited about the brand.

What are the types of internal/employee marketing?

There are two types of internal/employee marketing: communication strategy and educational campaigns.

Communication strategy

This entails aligning employee communication with marketing goals to build stakeholders' brand awareness, customer loyalty, and goodwill. 

It's how marketers make sure that employees understand and apply brand messaging and values to achieve business objectives.

Essentially, how often you communicate about the company, what you include in those messages, and how employees respond to them represents your communication strategy.

A few ways to enhance your communication strategy include keeping up with the audience, empowering them to be brand advocates, and making communication a conversation. 

Educative campaigns or employee training 

Educative campaigns are engaging and informative. They bring together marketing and training efforts to provide employees with the knowledge needed to perform their job effectively and improve their quality of work.

Educative campaigns entail educating employees about the company's mission, vision, key objectives, and values through "real" interactions. 

The main goal of educational campaigns is to build a sense of camaraderie among employees by incorporating brand messaging into everyday conversations.

Some strategies include celebrating team success, milestones and employee anniversaries, and hosting events. This is the best way to promote shared values and reinforce key messages while fostering a sense of community among employees.

Why your company should prioritize employee marketing 

Employee marketing creates a sense of community and company pride. A company's brand stands for what it represents and how employees perceive it. It's important to not only communicate about the brand externally but also internally to build employees' emotional connection with their organization.

Below are some reasons your company should prioritize employee marketing:

Improved recruitment process

A strong hiring process helps companies attract and retain top talent. Without it, they'll spend more on recruitment, training, and developing new hires who leave shortly after.

If employees already know more about your company's culture and what it takes to do a great job, the hiring process becomes easier. 

By creating videos using Testimonial Hero, companies can attract top talent through employee testimonials such as this one:

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More engaged workforce

Employees who feel connected with the company are more likely to participate in company initiatives and campaigns that spread the word about the brand.

They're essentially committing to the work and aligning to the company's goals, vision, and mission. 

Employee commitment manifests in distinct ways, including increased hours at work and increased effort to do a great job. 

Increased employee retention rate

Employee turnover hurts organizational performance. It reduces team productivity and company profits. 

According to a survey by Hays, 34% of workers consider leaving their role because of the corporate culture. 

Employee marketing communicates certain shared values that are at the core of any company culture, and staff who buy into them will be happy to work there for a long time.

Better branding

Employee marketing helps companies create a more positive, productive, and profitable work environment. Employees will be the company's best brand ambassadors and spread positive messages about working with the company.

Creating better internal brand ambassadors and authentic company culture involves treating your employees how they want to be treated, among other ways.

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Employees who trust, respect, and are engaged with their company tend to have more positive attitudes about their work. 

This is because they feel valued, appreciated, and are comfortable in their work environment, which in turn improves their employer’s brand image. 

Effective employee marketing strategies

Employee marketing strategies should be creative, timely, and adapted to your company culture. To avoid creating negative buzz, companies need to be clear about what they want employees to say and how they should spread the word about the brand. They include:

Introducing core values

One way to establish company culture is by introducing core values and mission statements. 

At its core, defining company values is about being transparent with employees. Telling them what they are expected to do when working for the company and ensuring they can deliver on those promises.

For instance, if a company values being open with communication, employees are more likely to communicate openly on the job. This communication may involve sharing thoughts and ideas about their work and company initiatives, projects, and goals.

You can use Testimonial Hero to create engaging videos featuring your employees. Not only will this help establish company values, but it's also a great way to demonstrate brand messaging and tell success stories. 

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Check out this example below:

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Onboarding programs

An onboarding program is a perfect chance for employers to win the hearts and minds of new employees.

It gives new employees the opportunity to get acquainted with company procedures and culture. This will provide significant benefits regarding efficiency, effectiveness, and retention.

During this program, prospective employees learn about the company's history, core values, and mission statement. They also learn about their co-workers and their expected role within the business.

To stop the flow of new employees heading for the exits, employers can improve their onboarding processes by making it fresh, creating a memorable experience, and linking the process to company culture, among others.

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Testimonial Hero can help with the hiring and onboarding process by creating videos that feature employee testimonials and help showcase what your company is all about. 

This is a great way to educate new employees about your brand and create a positive company culture.

Employee engagement programs

Employee engagement programs are a great way of showing employees that they matter to the company. Companies can create engaging activities and events for their employees, which helps build a strong, cohesive workforce.

Disengaged workers will have no emotional or psychological attachment to their company. They're likely to be working solely for the benefit of their paycheque. 

Examples of worker engagement programs include things like office-wide contests, volunteer opportunities, training programs, mentor programs, and work-life balance programs.

An engaged workforce is a happy workforce. Benefits of employee engagement programs include increased productivity, high morale, a positive work culture, and reduced attrition.

Brand education

A good way to promote company culture is by educating employees about the brand itself. Employees need to know who they're representing, why it's important, and what they should do to protect the brand.

Not only does this provide employees with the tools to become better brand ambassadors, but it also helps them be more empathetic towards customers. 

Education on brands can help employees work better together and build a positive company culture.

Employee advocacy

Sometimes, all employees need is a little encouragement. By building and activating an effective employee advocacy program, companies can boost their brand awareness and increase sales, among others.

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An effective employee advocacy program rewards employees who share company content and interact with customers. 

Companies can achieve this by encouraging their employees to share company content across social media and review sites. By recommending a company’s products and services, they generate brand exposure.

Benefits of employee marketing strategies

A few benefits that a company will realize from the right employee marketing strategies include:

Increased productivity

Employee marketing strategies aim to make workers happy and more engaged in their workplace. If they get the buy-in into the mission, vision, and values from the onset, they feel part of the business and will be incentivized to give their best at work.

A study by Oxford University found that happy workers are 13% more productive. A few ways to gauge employee happiness include holding open discussions, conducting surveys, assessing performance, and observing engagement levels.

Successful employee marketing strategies culminate in improved productivity, which is realized through improved profitability, better time management, more output for the same input, and customer satisfaction.

Better company culture

Culture is the values, behaviors, and shared vision that contribute to the environment of an organization.

Employee marketing is all about open communication and aligning workers to the business’ core values, mission, and vision. All these set a great company culture since everyone is open about the collective company direction and understands the “why” behind it.

Benefits of a strong culture include employee motivation, desirable company image, and better decision making.

Improved customer experience

According to a report by Zendesk, 73% of customers are more likely to buy from a business because of a good customer experience. 

Employees are the interface between any business and customers. The way they interact and treat customers is a manifestation of how they feel about the business.

Employee marketing strategies like engagement initiatives, open communication, and onboarding programs strive to make them motivated and empowered to discharge their duties. Customers notice this too, as it manifests in a great customer experience.

Some benefits of excellent customer experience include increased customer loyalty and retention. 

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Operational efficiencies

The internal brand culture largely dictates the way staff members interact. Are employees working for the paycheck only, or do they have extra motivation beyond it? Are they willing to go an extra step to achieve the end goal?

If employees have a better understanding and passion for the brand vision, they can “live” it in their day-to-day activities. 

As a result, they'll structure what they do to achieve this vision, since they have a sense of belonging and, in some part, own the responsibility of doing their part to the best of their abilities.

Benefits of operational efficiencies include less friction between teams, reduced silos, and improved teamwork.

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Common mistakes to avoid when implementing an employee marketing strategy

Employee marketing isn't as easy as it seems. Mistakes can come in many forms and can ultimately hinder a company's success. A few common ones to watch out for include:

Lack of a diverse strategy

A company's marketing efforts must be diverse. This means that the strategy should consider people of all races, religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and cultural backgrounds, among others.

According to a study by Mckinsey, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 25% more likely to have better profitability compared to those in the fourth quartile.

Companies should make sure that their employee marketing strategies are diverse and inclusive if they want the same to be reflected in their customers.

A few ways to do this are shown in the image below:

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Inconsistencies with your internal marketing strategy

Companies need to be aware that an effective internal marketing strategy is based on consistent processes and strategies. This includes everything from how they communicate to their employees to the types of training they provide. 

The strategies should be defined at the leadership level and trickle down through the organization. All leaders have to understand the message and “live’ it through their actions and specific communications when they meet their teams.

You can avoid any inconsistencies by setting up a bespoke team to handle employee marketing, company-wide sessions to reinforce the message, and breaking down multiple business objectives into a few clear ones.

Shifting priorities

Many companies create their marketing strategies with the perfect plan in mind. However, since no plan ever stays the same, companies must be adaptable and willing to make changes as priorities change. 

Strategies that remain flexible and adaptable are much more likely to succeed in the long run.

Conclusion

The employee marketing strategies companies use must be flexible and adaptable to succeed in the long run. 

Employee marketing strategies must take the specific cultural environment of a company into account. This includes everything from how they communicate to their employees to the types of training they provide.

In sum, successful employee marketing campaigns focus on internal brand communication that engages employees. They consider cultural differences and consistent and effective strategies targeted at the right audience with the right message.

If you want to start an effective employee testimonial campaign to boost your employee marketing success, speak with an expert from Testimonial Hero today.