Internal MarketingTips to Align Your Staff to Your Brand Values and Vision.

Internal Marketing is the method of engaging staff with your brand values and vision by communicating internally. Internal marketing is a proven way to successfully improve employee engagement and brand advocacy of organizations’ brands which can lead to improved sales.

There’s more to internal marketing than just telling staff your brand values once. It requires a communication campaign, that is; a series of messages communicated in engaging formats that will communicate the goals and aspirations of your organization in a way that will resonate with your staff.

Goals of Internal Marketing

1. Change Management

When you want to encourage culture change or introduce a new system or software, internal marketing can be an effective way to gain acceptance of working new practices and encourage behaviour change through effective communication.

2. Build Your Corporate Image

One of the most common understandings of internal marketing is marketing to your ‘internal customers’ however it goes further than this. Building a corporate image is about building knowledge and understanding of the company’s goals, strengths and aspirations.Conveying this to staff helps them understand the company’s place in the market, your competitive advantage which leads to increased ability to communicate this to your external customers.

3. Develop an Internal Marketing Strategy

Decide on and document the collaboration and commitment needed to make external marketing strategies work.

Your strategy for internal marketing should include: determine goals, agree on resource needed, create your story to help staff execute.

Tips to Improve Internal Marketing in Your Organization

For your internal marketing to be effective, you need to project the ideas of your brand to your staff so they will in turn, project these values to your external staff.

Essential ingredients for improving internal marketing: motivation, coordination, information and education.

1. Clarify Your Company Values and Goals

Before you think about your internal marketing strategy, you need to be certain of your values and goals as a company, most companies have a good idea of their goals but may not have them written down – this is a good place to start.

2. Develop an Engaging Company Narrative

Now that you have your goals clearly laid out, you sould incorporate these into a company narrative to communicate these aspirations. Your narrative should answer the following questions:

• Why are we here?

• What can we accomplish?

• What do we need to do to accomplish this?

3. Create a Communication Campaign

Think like a marketer. The best way to get your messages across to your staff are through engaging communication formats which support your company narrative. These should be repeated over time to remind existing staff and new staff about your goals and values and include them in your narrative.

• Make sure you are clear on your values• Decide which of your messages need to be communicated at the

highest frequency – which are most crucial• Choose a variety of channels and formats to engage staff, for

example: videos featuring your CEO can be a very effective way of communicating important messages to staff.

• Repeat your messages through different channels to ensure visibility – some more important messages will need more

• Measure your staff knowledge of these ideas, and adjust your campaign to ensure the right messages stick.

How to create a campaign for your communications:

4. Teach by Example

Practice what you preach. Your goal should be to get your staff to live your values, the best way to do that is to lead by example and ensure your management staff adhere to your rules too. It’s important that your staff members know how they fit into the narrative.

5. Personalize Messages

Establish the involvement of each department with the company’s strategy and focus on relevant messages for each department. For example, sales people will need information about your products, upskilling, being knowledgeable about all products/services the company offers, and competitive strategy.

Watch this short video on our new product

Staff that deal with customer information need to be trained on the steps to take to ensure they can keep that information secure.

4. Use Multiple Methods

Decide on a few communication methods e.g. print posters, company wide desktop screensavers, emails, training sessions, quizzes, or videos.

Screensavers are visually engaging and are an effective way to remind staff to take action

5. Keep it Interesting

Create eye-catching ways of communicating your messages e.g. cartoon characters, well-known internet characters, interesting examples of big security breaches, random phishing tests, interesting facts about the impacts of security breaches.

Interesting facts help communicate points and will stick in employees’ minds

6. Measure Your ImpactTo ensure you are getting the most out of your campaign, measurement is essential. You should measure:- Reduction in breaches- Increased staff awareness – by quizzing staff - Readership of communications – some internal comms software

(including SnapComms) has this functionality- Survey staff to see which messages they engaged best with

Information Security:as easy as ABC

ALWAYSBECAREFUL

Simple slogans can help make your lessons memorable to staff members.

To learn more about how SnapComms can help you improve infosec awareness, visit our website:

SnapComms.com/solutions/employee-security-awareness

SnapComms is a global leader in internal communications software, serving 1 million users in many of the world’s largest organizations across 45+ countries including several fortune 500 companies.