Passionate commitment of your staff due to internal marketing

Once known as the “fifth p”, the “people” are the most important marketing tool nowadays. The original four marketing tools “product, price, place, and promotion” would be nothing without committed staff. Therefore, the importance of internal marketing grows steadily.

As a shareholder of a full-service ad agency I recently analysed our critical success factors. After reading some customers’ feedbacks I realized that our longstanding, motivated employees and both their passionate work and creative solutions are the key to our success. Customer appreciate these people and award us with their loyalty.To make the marketing tool “people” a successful one, one needs a professional internal marketing strategy. It includes the selection, teaching, and motivation of the employees. The following six advices can help you to improve your own internal marketing.

1. Employ the right people

Clearly define the competences your employees must have. Employ the right people and use their abilities. Jim Collins illustrated the process quite nicely: «First: Get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus. Second: Get the right people in the right seats on the bus.»

2. Motivate employees

Motivate your employees and make sure that they ar satisfied. This reduces change within the team, which indirectly leads to a higher customer satisfaction as well as customer loyalty.

3. Promote employees

Encourage and teach your employees on a regular basis. Only employees who are up-to-date, have the required knowledge, and have high social competences can improve your team.

4. Employee Planning

Define how much the employees should be incorporated in your enterprise, and how you want to treat them. This includes the scheduling and the guidelines for rewarding your employees.

5. Analyze customer needs

Promote the marketing stance of your enterprise and raise your employees’ awareness for the customers’ needs.

6. Exceeding customer needs

“Going the extra mile” means offering the customers more than they expect – this should be embodied by every company. Think about how you can impress your customers and give them more than they would expect.

You can only incorporate internal marketing if your defined corporate culture is lived by everyone of your company. Motivated employees are a must for reaching this goal. The “feu sacré” must be caught by the customer. Employees need to infect customers with their passion, only then you can gain your customers’ trust.

In the end the content customers will share their happiness with your work on social media platforms, and you will profit from word-of-mouth advertising. Just keep in mind: What goes around comes around! Happy employees lead to happy customers – promote this by a professional internal marketing strategy.