The Role of Employee Advocacy in Marketing
Imagine a business without needing an extravagant marketing budget because all its employees serve as brand advocates for it – cutting costs while decreasing employee turnover and building customer loyalty all at the same time! Such companies could slash costs significantly while building customer loyalty over time.
Before embarking on an advocacy program, it is necessary to set specific, SMART goals that align with your organization. Here are a few metrics you might want to monitor:
Social Media
Employees using social media to promote the company increase its brand recognition, often increasing it by 561% compared to its own channels – leading to new sales and customers for the business.
Make sure your employee advocacy program is tailored to track essential metrics and meet its success goals, such as organic reach – how many people see and interact with the content shared by employees – as well as any conversations which arise as a result of these posts.
As part of your employee advocacy program launch, identify natural advocates within your company. It is wise to invite these people first into joining it as they will help market it internally and serve as examples for best practices to other employees. They should be ready to share content that portrays your company positively – for instance Ciena is an example of an organization which has seen great results through employee advocacy programs like these.
Email Marketing
Employee advocacy programs not only empower your employees to hone their professional profiles and forge stronger bonds among each other, but they can also bring great business benefits in many forms. By helping achieve marketing, sales, recruitment, and internal communications goals while strengthening employee/company bonds.
As part of your employee advocacy program launch, it is vital to offer some initial training for participants. This may include information on how to share content on various social media platforms as well as tips for dealing with online trolls.
Motivating employees to participate in your advocacy program by showing the results of their efforts can also help encourage and motivate participation. For example, showing them the number of customers attracted through their posts or placing them on an employee advocacy leaderboard should show them just how their efforts are having an effectful result for your business and should encourage them to keep contributing their best work! This should motivate and invigorate them further!
Content Marketing
Employee advocacy programs not only lower social media advertising costs, but they can also bring many other advantages. Such programs enable businesses to quickly build trust with new audiences while creating long-term loyalty among their customer base.
Beginning an employee advocacy program requires creating a clear plan. It should detail its purpose and its benefits to employees so they can quickly grasp its significance.
Employee advocacy platforms are invaluable tools for both brands and employees. A good platform allows brands to easily curate and distribute content, manage campaigns, set up leaderboard contests, monitor analytics, as well as help employees stay engaged with their company while building personal brands and sharing meaningful pieces that resonate with audiences. Dell understands this principle perfectly – their employee advocates have shared over 10K pieces of content driving traffic back to the website from social channels alone!
Influencer Marketing
Employee advocacy goes far beyond traditional influencer marketing strategies. By harnessing the talent already within your company, employee advocacy allows your company to drive traffic without needing massive advertising budgets for paid marketing campaigns.
An employee advocacy program requires considerable commitment from employees in its initial stages, so it’s crucial that you start small and involve the appropriate people early on. Ideally, look for those with strong social media experience who can assist others within their team to do the same.
An effective employee advocacy program empowers early adopters to lead by example and provide feedback, recruit new employees and more. With their assistance, you can establish the basis of an employee advocacy program that will ultimately meet your desired business outcomes. Successful employee advocacy programs follow an organized strategy which aligns with key marketing KPIs as well as organization needs.
