Are you ignoring an important marketing channel?
Tell your story internally to amplify it externally
You have probably heard many versions of the story of President John F. Kennedy’s first visit to NASA headquarters in 1961. He was there to deliver an iconic speech to inspire the nation to rally behind the Apollo missions. While touring the facility, he took a wrong turn and ran into a janitor going about his business. The president reportedly introduced himself and asked the janitor what he did at NASA. The janitor’s reported response:
“I’m helping put a man on the moon!”
The janitor didn’t answer with any one of a myriad of tasks that he was likely responsible for during his shift. Instead, his response was an indication that he understood these tasks to be part of a much bigger vision for NASA and the important role he played in achieving it. Legend has it that this is the moment that inspired JFK’s famous refrain “…ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
True story or not, the janitor’s response underscores the importance of all employees feeling connected to your organization’s vision. But it also points to another important but often missed opportunity for Marketing. Filling your organization with people who understand the broader vision requires actually communicating that vision — and repeating it over and over again. In short, it requires you to market internally.
Why focus on internal marketing?
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone in the company understands your message. Spreading your message internally helps everyone connect what they do to your broader vision, but it will also deliver many additional benefits.
Ensuring everyone is aligned
Try this easy test within your organization. Walk around and ask your colleagues to tell you the five things they are working on that are really critical. Will they name the same five things? For a bonus question, ask them how what they are working on contributes to the company’s success? Is everyone aligned? A brilliant vision and strategy will be pointless if it isn’t understood and shared by the people that matter — the people doing the work to realize the vision. Your goal is to rally those people to believe in the same future you do.
Communicating your vision and strategy won’t happen in one announcement. It’s a process. One that could take months, sometimes years. Prepare yourself and your team for a long-term campaign. Be willing to go over the same ground more than once and in many different forums. Not everyone will get it and support it the first time around. None other than David Cancel, CEO of Drift, once referred to his role as the “Chief Repeater Officer”.
It takes most people many reps until it’s possible to hear something — truly hear it. Also, as your company grows so too will the size of your organization. People will come and go and maybe even change roles along the way. So don’t assume they’ve heard much less understood your vision and understand their role in achieving it.
Fostering brand advocacy
There are lots of ways to compete in todays’ technology markets. You can compete on features and functions — having a better product. You can compete on price. You can compete on service or implementation speed. Or you can compete using brand as a differentiator. I would suggest that might be an important approach if your market looks something like this:
The Martech 5000 is a popular visual representation of the ~5,000 companies in the global marketing technology space — this image is from 2017. By the end of 2018 that number had swelled to ~7,000. If you are in this market or one similar to it, you best compete on something other than (or at least in addition to) features, function, or price. And your brand is a good place to start.
If you are going to bet on your brand, you have to ensure everyone in the organization is telling an authentic and consistent story to everyone they encounter — in Customer Success to customers, in Sales to prospects, in Finance to investors, in the C-Suite to the entire company, and so on. Your employees ARE your brand, but in order for them to feel connected to (and enhance) your brand, they need to know your story and how to tell it to others. Employees who are enthusiastic about their company, its offerings, and the brand are more likely to share that enthusiasm with their networks. Don’t ignore internal marketing as an effective part of your external branding and marketing efforts.
Testing your message
One of your goals in marketing is to build trust with your target audience — your buyers and eventual users. But don’t forget to do the same internally by sharing and testing your message early and often. You’re an experienced marketer who already spends time talking to your customers and your prospects. But many of your colleagues also interact with your customers on a daily basis, and they do so from a different perspective than yours. They hear first-hand what your customers talk about and how they talk about your product. They hear your customers’ frustrations, and they are acutely aware of your customers’ pain points.
Take the time to meet with internal stakeholders to get their feedback and reactions. This approach has the added benefit of slowly letting everyone know what’s coming before it’s released externally. It ensures you have the team’s trust (and hopefully buy-in) before the big launch. If you can’t get them to understand and buy-in to your message, how can you reasonably expect people external to your company to do the same?
Expanding your marketing team
Marketing is probably not the biggest department in your company, especially if you are in technology. What if you could expand the size (and reach) of your Marketing department simply by sharing your message internally? Your non-marketing colleagues are your best sellers that you probably didn’t even know about. And each of them can carry your message to their network.
Let’s face it, Marketing doesn’t make the sausage, we just tell you about the flavor, why it’s better, maybe even tell you a story about how the way your company makes it is different. Your buyers are probably more interested in hearing from your engineers, your data scientists, your designers and others who are closer to the details of your product and your technology. And these individuals are more likely to free up their time to help you create content and spread your message only if they understand your message, your marketing strategy, and how they can help you amplify it.
Summary
You’ve probably heard companies say “quality is everyone’s job.” If you don’t think that applies to Marketing, then you are missing out on a significant opportunity to align everyone toward a common goal and purpose and amplify your brand beyond what Marketing alone can accomplish.
