Great Brands Begin Internally

For many marketing departments, the primary focus is on building a brand that engages the target audience to create awareness and generate interest. Budgets, research and strategies are all aimed at building a brand that speaks directly to the external people it’s intended to reach. But we can’t stop there.

While targeting your audience is a critical part of the marketing communications program, building brand value takes more than just outward-focused strategy, messaging and tactics. Bringing the brand to life is more than a polished advertising campaign or catchy slogan. It is a fundamental delivery of expectations and promises you and your employees make to your audience each and every day.

The common saying that brands are “built” from the outside-in is very true. Aligning your brand to speak directly to your audience is critical. But for a brand to truly engage the target market, it needs to “grow” from the inside-out by connecting every employee touch point to your brand strategy.

Your employees play an integral part in the overall brand-building process.

“Firms with high employee engagement levels have 12% higher customer advocacy, 18% higher productivity, and 12% higher profitability.”

Gallup, Building Engagement in This Economic Crisis, February 2009

What can be done to ensure your employees become loyal brand evangelists?

• Engagement – engage employees at all levels during the brand strategy building process. Doing this helps solidify the important role they play within the brand, gives them a sense of ownership and provides valuable grassroots perspective you can’t find through standard research mechanisms.
• Education – Educate employees about brand value. The brand needs play a large part in your new employee orientation program. From the start, new employees should be educated about the brand and embrace your company’s brand promise to promote on-message brand advocacy.
• Recruitment – Hire employees, don’t just fill positions. When engaging new and potential employees, measure how well they fit into the company’s culture. And, when hired, employees should be evaluated and rewarded based on their delivery of the brand.
• Leadership – Provide great role models from the top down. Good employees look for and mirror brand leadership.
• Communication – Provide the needed internal tools online and offline required for employees to be brand centric. Employees must be given sufficient resources to infuse the brand into their everyday job functions. Tools that continually provide top-of-mind brand awareness for your staff will create an atmosphere for brand advocates who really increase overall brand value.

Successful brands build loyal relationships with customers. These relationships are built by employees who understand and believe in the brand and are passionate about delivering the brand promise at every touch point.

Invest in your loyal brand evangelist – Invest in your employees.