Many of you would be wondering what is Employee Marketing. For the uninitiated, it is purely a term used to connect with our internal customers.
We generally have external customers who bring in the revenue. Internal customers are responsible for looking after the external customers and ensuring that they are engaging the external customers to spend the money and bring in the revenue. If we are willing to spend extensive amount of our revenue in developing marketing programmes to make sure that the external customers spend the money on our products and services, why are we not doing the same for our internal customers? Companies spend extensive amounts of money in developing strategies to keep "loyal" customers through various programmes. Bu customer loyalty does not exist in the strict sense of the word as w all know that we are only loyal as long as we get some benefits. That explains why each of us will have 3 credit cards (at least), many airline loyalty cards, countless store cards etc. What's happened to loyalty? Despite this organisations spend enormous portions of their revenue on retaining "loyal" customers.
As for our internal customers, what portion of our revenues go into keeping them engaged, well informed and recognised?
And they are the ones that will take care of our customers and keep them "loyal" and keep them coming back to our products and services. Hence, we need a very well coordinated and intelligent strategy to communicate, engage and recognise our internal customers. This is precisely what Employee Marketing is about. It is not just keeping them engaged and maintaining our culture. Its all about Marketing our product and services, which in essence is our company, How do we keep our internal customers connected with us in the strongest possible way. That is why we need a department in HR that specialises in this, specialists who understand the essence of Marketing and how to apply the principles to communicate, engage and connect with our internal customers. It is not just simply employee communications or employee engagement. It goes deeper than that. Understanding the psychology of human emotions, just as you do people in the market place, and connect with them.
Most companies are pretty good at recruiting and selecting talented and gifted employees. Once they come on board, how do we keep them engaged, how do we communicate with them and how do we manage and keep them connected with the organisation? We cannot have a one style fits all, especially in this age of the millennials and the Z generation, as it just doesn't work. Its a technological generation, who is IT savvy and who needs information and knowledge at their finger tips. What kind of employee marketing strategy do we need? Do the HR specialists know what needs to be done and if they do can they execute it effectively and professionally?
