Word-of-mouth marketing drives £5 trillion in annual spending worldwide. That’s a big number. The question to ask, then, is this:
Are you encouraging your employees to advocate for your brand?
If not, you’re missing a trick. Your employees can be a powerful aide in supporting and growing your business. Sure, your website, blog, and other marketing efforts are critical for building authority and brand awareness, but you’ve also got an untapped resource in your employees.
Afterall, you’ve already done the hard work in hiring and training them, so why not help them claim bragging rights, too?
Here are seven ways to turn your employees into brand advocates.
It’s easier for your employees to be advocates for your company when they trust and understand it.
If you’re squirreling away strategic objectives and trying to give staff the minimal amount of information necessary, you’ll make them feel unloved. Consequently, work will feel more like ‘just another nine-to-five job’ than something they love and want to invest themselves in.
With the right strategy, however, an open, happy culture is right around the corner.
Encouraging your staff to advocate for your brand shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s also important to create a dialogue with staff so you can learn about what factors encourage brand loyalty.
To help encourage employees, consider:
Of course, your messaging needs to remain on brand and target your clients first and foremost, but if it doesn’t detract from your social strategy, also consider what your staff would like to see (and share).
It’s leadership 101 – never ask your tribe to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself.
Ask yourself: are you currently a brand advocate for your own business?
If not, don’t expect anyone else to fall in line and advocate for the business, either. If you’re not making the effort, why should they?
To remedy this, you need to showcase your investment in your own company to others. Excitement is contagious. Get excited about the work you’re doing, and others will likely follow suit.
Maybe this means posting in a Slack channel about how proud you are of the team, or it means trying to encourage staff to collaborate on business development and direction. Whatever it is, it’s up to you as business owner to ensure staff feel valued enough to advocate for the business.
If your business is in the doldrums, it’s going to be an uphill struggle to encourage brand advocates.
You must do what you can to give your staff something to be excited for and shout about.
Maybe it’s something financial like rewarding excellent performance, something fun like a summer party, or something exciting like an innovative new project.
It’s hard to know what’s working and what isn’t if you don’t track results. In business, KPI’s are everything. So, track KPIs carefully, and to improve your results, incentivise staff to bring in new business.
To incentivize your staff effectively, you need to focus on what excites them. Maybe that’s a free gym membership or maybe that’s a free Amazon kindle – find what your staff love, and then double-down on it so they’re motivated to advocate for your brand.
To be a great brand advocate, it helps to give your staff the tools and skills they need to help them promote the company in their own way.
This might include things like:
Pushing your staff into becoming brand advocates is perhaps the best way to put them off doing it. Also, don’t dictate what they want to share.
Trust your employees to present your brand in a positive light and only get involved if you feel what they’re doing is damaging or seriously misrepresenting your business.
Building a powerful brand is easier when you let your employees do some of the lifting.
It’s a great way to save money (brand-building can be expensive), and it will also help you develop a stronger culture as everyone pitches in to share what they love about your business.
But there’s more to developing a great culture than getting your employees on side. For more on building a successful culture and HR department, download our guide below.