Tag: employees as brand ambassadors

Brand Ambassadors vs. Influencers – What’s the Difference?

We hear a lot about influencers in today’s digital marketing environment, especially related to such channels as Instagram and YouTube. Influencers leveraging these sites include well-known names (in certain circles) like MrBeast, Jake Paul and others who not only have massive followers but are making a massive amount of money from those who want to leverage those followers.
While most small businesses aren’t likely to either build or gain access to these top influencers, they do have the opportunity to leverage another powerful group– brand ambassadors.

Continue reading “Brand Ambassadors vs. Influencers – What’s the Difference?”

What Your Employees Don’t Know Could Hurt You: How Effective Communication Builds Strong Brand Ambassadors

I’m often surprised that the most overlooked audience, when it comes to communicating with key constituents, is the internal or employee audience. Companies are generally pretty good about recognizing that they need to communicate with customers and prospects, but employees tend to be an afterthought. This may be because of the assumption that since employees are part of the organization they somehow “know” what’s going on. After all, it was in the newsletter or on Slack, wasn’t it? The fact of the matter, though, is that companies can’t leave it to chance that employees are paying attention to the messages they’re sending, or that they understand which are the key messages that they should be paying attention to. Continue reading “What Your Employees Don’t Know Could Hurt You: How Effective Communication Builds Strong Brand Ambassadors”

Best Practice Advice for Handling Crisis Communications

We seem to live in an increasingly contentious world these days. Unfortunately, it’s also a world where news travels fast; bad news travels especially fast. The speed of communication in the 21st century is fueled by “citizen journalists” and crowdsourcing. Everyone and anybody can have a platform these days. And just about everyone these days is armed with smartphones that offer the ability to capture, record, and share whatever may be going on around them. Sometimes that can create positive exposure for companies and their senior leaders and spokespeople.
Sometimes that exposure, unfortunately, is negative and viral.

Continue reading “Best Practice Advice for Handling Crisis Communications”

Every Employee a Brand Ambassador: A Message for Healthcare Providers (and others)

Think your clinical staff members—primarily doctors and nurses—are the only ones, or the most important ones to impact the patient experience? Think again. Every single one of your employees and volunteers has an opportunity to influence the patient experience while on the job, and off. In fact, every single one of these individuals has the opportunity to influence patients’ choices when they are considering a new provider or care facility.

While on the job, and off. Continue reading “Every Employee a Brand Ambassador: A Message for Healthcare Providers (and others)”

Branding “From the Inside, Out”: Two Important Considerations

Generally, we advise clients to view their organizations, products and services from the “outside in.” In other words, they need to put themselves in the position of their desired audience and consider what is important to their audience, rather than what is important to them. Too often organizations talk about how they need to “communicate our value proposition.” The truth is, it’s not their value proposition that matters– Continue reading “Branding “From the Inside, Out”: Two Important Considerations”

Should Rank-and-File Employees Be Speaking on Behalf of Brands?

The question of whether front-line, everyday employees should be speaking on behalf of a company and its brand has been in the minds of business owners and executives for years. On the one hand, harnessing the full weight of a company’s workforce can put a lot of bodies into the marketing effort. At the same time, companies often fear the potential negative, counter-productive impact of “rogue” or un-coached employees. Think of the employee complaining about her job on her Facebook page, or the insider who gives friends and neighbors the “real story” about his company at a backyard BBQ. Continue reading “Should Rank-and-File Employees Be Speaking on Behalf of Brands?”

Walking The Talk: Do Your Actions Match Your Words?

PricewaterhouseCoopers U.S. chairman Robert Moritz recently discussed the issue of engaging younger employees in an article for Harvard Business Review titled “The U.S. Chairman of PwC on Keeping Millennials Engaged.” While the article contains a number of intriguing insights, one point that stood out from a marketing perspective was Continue reading “Walking The Talk: Do Your Actions Match Your Words?”

Are you practicing effective B2E marketing?

I  heard a term recently that I had never heard before, but that I wish I had come up with: B2E marketing: for “Business to Employee.” Most are familiar with both B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business) marketing and, of course, the concept is the same. This new acronym, though, really hits on a very, very important audience that many businesses overlook.  But, while I’ve spoken, written and consulted widely on the important role that employees can play as brand ambassadors, I didn’t coin the term. Darn! That said,  Continue reading “Are you practicing effective B2E marketing?”

Don’t Overlook the Value of Internal Communication!

One of the frequently, and unfortunately, overlooked audiences for many organizations is employees. They are the “first line of defense” for ensuring that your key messages are accurately and energetically conveyed to external audiences. Yet, many organizations fail to effectively enlist employees in these efforts. Continue reading “Don’t Overlook the Value of Internal Communication!”

Why Employee Engagement Should Be Part of Your Marketing Mix

Despite the fact that study after study continues to support the critical role that employees play as ambassadors (or detractors) for the organizations they work for, not all organizations are focused, as they should be, on their staff first. If you’re interested in boosting your marketing, you need to first start inside–with your employees. Seem a bit counter-intuitive? Maybe. But consider that, particularly for Continue reading “Why Employee Engagement Should Be Part of Your Marketing Mix”