Your employees are your greatest marketing assets and brand ambassadors.
Marketing is difficult. There’s so much to consider including website design and development, content creation, social media engagement, branding, digital advertising, and on and on. Many organizations choose to partner with outside firms that focus solely on marketing, like Acorn+Arrow. This is often a wise decision, but it doesn’t mean that your internal teams are left out of your marketing efforts. On the contrary, all of your employees are part of your marketing team – or they should be.
Social Media
Social media has evolved to the point where many businesses have huge amounts of followers that consume their content on a regular basis. But if you’re trying to build your brand and increase followers, your employees have far greater reach as individuals than most small businesses. Every employee in your organization should follow all of your social media accounts, but don’t stop there. They need to engage. Like, comment, share, hashtag, and tag other people every time new content is posted across social media.
Even if your accounts have thousands of followers, when your employees share your content, the reach is multiplied exponentially – increasing the chances that new people see, click, and engage with your business. And that’s the goal of social media – engagement.
Brand Ambassadors
Everyone on your team represents your brand. As soon as they join your organization, they begin representing you. With that in mind, how they communicate with people, interact with your customers, and represent your business matters.
Being a brand ambassador can include employee attitudes towards customers, but can also extend to proper use of your logos and branding elements. Beyond those interactions though, everyone in your organization should know what you do and be able to speak to people about it in simple terms that everyone can understand.
Take time to develop clear and simple language and statements about what you do. Circulate that message throughout your company and make sure everyone knows it. This ‘elevator speech’ can serve as an icebreaker when talking to friends, colleagues, or potential customers.
Take Advantage of Easy Opportunities
While many marketing efforts can require lots of effort, there are simple things you can do that empower your employees to assist in your marketing. One example of this is to include logos and taglines in email signatures. So much communication is achieved through email – it’s also a good idea to strive for overall consistency in email signatures throughout your organization. It’s an important, yet often overlooked piece of marketing collateral.
You can also use logos and taglines as wall art within your office as desktop wallpaper on your company’s computers. Doing so reinforces your messaging and reminds your team members of what you’re doing, and why.
While your employees may be removed from the day-to-day development of marketing materials, they play a huge role in the marketing effort. Everyone in your organization is part of the marketing team, or at least they should be. If they’re not pitching in, you’re missing a golden opportunity.
If the time comes that you’d rather partner with an experienced team to jumpstart your marketing efforts, contact the Acorn+Arrow team. We know how you’re feeling. We’ve been there and we’d love to help drive your growth.
