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Your own employees need to hear from you

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When I speak to marketing professionals, I ask them who their most important audience is. Inevitably, most will say potential customers. When I shake my head, they’ll offer up current customers. But it is a rare marketing person who gets it right. It’s your employees. If they don’t get it, don’t understand what your company is all about and how you differentiate yourself in the marketplace, then it doesn’t matter what kind of marketing materials you produce — you are going to disappoint.

Your employees are the ones who either keep your marketing promises or don’t. It’s that simple. And they cannot keep a promise they don’t know about or understand. But when budgets get tight, what’s often the first thing that gets cut? Internal communications.

The other mistake we make is that we assume if we have told the employees something once, we don’t need to repeat it. Imagine telling your child just once “look before you cross the street” and then assuming they’ll be safe. Ludicrous, right? The same principles apply to us as adults. If we really want our employees to embrace our marketing efforts and the brand experience we’re trying to create, we need to repeat and reinforce that message over and over again. You should have an internal communications plan (or a segment of your overall marketing plan) that you follow and protect just as fiercely as you would any other tactics.

Don’t just use formal vehicles like your intranet and employee newsletter. Think beyond that to your employee recognition efforts, training opportunities and informal staff meetings. How can you infuse your brand and marketing messages into everyday life at your company?

Bottom line: they can’t help you get there if they don’t know where you’re headed.

Drew McLellan is Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group and the author of “99.3 Random Acts of Marketing.” He can be reached at Drew@MclellanMarketing.com.