The importance of alignment through big internal campaigns
Firstly, let’s examine the definition of internal marketing: the promotion of a brand’s vision, objectives, products and services to its employees. It is the process of building an emotional connection and sense of confidence in the brand and what it has to offer, with the purpose of increasing employee engagement with the company’s goals and fostering brand advocacy.
Creating a platform to promote your brand and products to specific client segments is the engine that keeps the marketing wheels turning and a key driver of keeping your brand front of mind, as well as helping attract new business for the organisation. It would be prudent to make a significant effort to include key internal stakeholders and employees on the journey with you, to ensure both buy-in from the organisation and a consistent voice when explaining what it is that your organisation stands for.
Marketing leaders have a difficult time justifying how valuable their client-facing work is and securing the appropriate budget for client activation, but it can be even harder to market internally. Internal marketing plays a huge part in getting employees to understand your brand, buy into your message and own their role as brand advocates. It is crucial, yet often overlooked.
In some instances, by applying the principles of consumer advertising to internal communications, leaders can guide employees to a better understanding of – and even a passion for – the brand vision. It is essential that internal and external messages are aligned. If you tell clients one thing and employees another, you risk sacrificing your brand’s integrity.
The relationship between sales and marketing within this context is paramount and by working together and closely aligning and unifying these teams on strategy, messaging and objectives, you can deliver high impact marketing activities, energize employees, boost sales effectiveness, and ultimately grow revenue for the organisation.
Creating company-wide integrated internal campaigns to drive engagement and internal cohesion with employees, ahead of external promotion, sets the tone for a successful platform upon which to launch a campaign. Well-run campaigns that take both internal and external audiences into consideration are the oil that greases the wheels of the business, bringing all functions and objectives together and preventing any part of the funnel from triumphing over another.
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