Increase Your Competitive Advantage with Internal Marketing

Internal marketing strategies are just as important as external ones when it comes to competitive advantage.

Marketing is everywhere, all the time. At last year’s Super Bowl, you might remember that the power went out for a little while. During this blackout, Oreo published a tweet that instantly went viral: “You can still dunk in the dark.”

A super-clever, perfectly timed strategy that marketed Oreos to current and potential customers during the year’s biggest sporting event.

That’s usually what we think of, though, when we hear the word “marketing.” We think of external strategies (like ads and commercials) that advertise products to people on the outside of a company, not the inside.

But those people on the inside need to engage with the company’s message just as much as (if not more than) current and future clients. If you don’t engage your employees first, you will have no advantage over your competitors.

Marketing to your employees first

So how do we get our employees aligned and committed to the company message? Internal marketing.

“Internal Communication, Information Satisfaction and Sense of Community: the Effect of Personal Influence” emphasizes that strategically cultivating internal communication produces a number of positive results, both internal and external:

“The competitive advantage of strategic internal communication comes not only from the obvious benefits of employee satisfaction and productivity, but also from the positive contributions that well-informed employees can make to a company’s external public relations efforts.”

Simply put, you get three major benefits from strategic communication and internal marketing:

1. Increased employee satisfaction
2. Improved employee productivity
3. Informed employees who automatically become “brand ambassadors”

Well-informed employees are actually your best ambassadors and PR representatives about your company and its products or services. This means that your “internal marketing” should get just as much attention as your external public relations efforts.

Figuring out the weak spots in your current internal communication plan

“Communications is a strategic function, and that change only works when it is aligned with employee understanding, actions, rewards and recognition.” (Source: Edelman Insights, Comprehending Change 3.0)

So how do you figure out if your internal communication plan needs improvement?

“. . . The majority of internal communication remains dominated by technical, journalistic-like skills, such as producing slick employee newsletters instead of concentrating on developing relationships with employees and strategically planning the objectives of internal communication.” (Source: Laoise O’Murchu)

Based on this statement, you should ask yourself the following question:

Am I focused mostly on producing cool materials for my staff to look at or am I really developing relationships with them and getting their feedback?

Here are a few tips to put you on the right track.

Starting by sharing the information the right way

So I can just send my employees company updates by email once a month and be done with it, right?

Wrong.

Frequent, two-way communication is crucial to get the best results possible. And without context, any information you send will not help employees understand why it matters to them or why they should care about it.

“Internal communication is not a one- way information dump. It’s critical to capture feedback and to ‘involve and consult’ your employees rather than ‘tell and sell.’” (Source: Dennis Rutzou, The Poor Relation of External Comms)

Don’t just dump information into your employees’ laps and expect them to know what to do with it.

Aligning the strategy with the people for great results

Effective internal marketing is not only possible but crucial to the success and profitability of your organization. Effective communicators increase profits. Engaged employees improve your bottom line. And companies with engaged employees outperform the competition by as much as 202% (according to Gallup).

So don’t wait until the next Super Bowl crisis to get your marketing strategy in order. Start now by improving internal marketing to gain that competitive advantage.

What are some internal marketing strategies that have worked for you or your company? Feel free to leave a comment. We would love to hear from you.

Today's blog post by Rebecca Whittenberger