You might think that marketing your business is solely the responsibility of yourself or your marketing team, but the truth is that all of your employees can get involved in your marketing efforts. Unfortunately, getting your employees to do this is often easier said than done. If you want to change this trend and get your employees spreading the word, check out the following five tips and tricks.
1. Incentive Employee Marketing Efforts
An easy way to encourage employees to market your business is to incentivize their efforts. This can be done by offering rewards to employees who bring in leads or customers. In order to do this, however, you’ll need to create a system whereby leads or customers can specifically cite who got them in touch with your business. You might also consider making the incentive program a competition throughout the office.
2. Hire the Right Employees
Although you already know what qualities to look for in your employees during the hiring process, one that you may be overlooking is the desire to see the company succeed as a whole. Many workers enjoy their jobs, but at the end of the day, they just want to get their paychecks and go home. These employees are normal and keep the company afloat, but they aren’t driven to actually see the company grow into the future. In order to avoid this, consider looking for employees who have a proven track record of accomplishments that helped previous employers. Also, consider hiring employees with degrees in business, like a Master of Business Administration.
3. Encourage Teamwork
If an employee feels like he or she is part of a team in the workplace, it’s more likely that he or she will be excited about marketing the business. When employees feel left out or marginalized, they are not only less likely to market the business, but they may even talk negatively about the business outside of work. This negative talk can then go on to have the opposite effect and actually hurt your company. To combat this, make sure that you are encouraging an atmosphere at work that includes everyone in the achievements and successes of the company.
4. Utilize Employees in Your Marketing Materials
In the age of social media, it’s easier than ever to market a business, so why not encourage your employees to help out by including them in your marketing materials? For example, you could create marketing videos that include employees. This will encourage employees to share your videos with family and friends online because, well, most people want to show off that they were included in an online video. The same can be done by including pictures or information about employees (with their permission) on marketing collateral that they can then hand out to family, friends and business contacts.
5. Keep the Information Flowing
Finally, your employees can’t market your business if they don’t know what’s going on in the company. For this reason, make sure you have regular meetings or send out regular internal newsletters about what you’re business is up to. This is especially important if you have a large company with segmented departments. For example, if you have a new product or service coming out, an employee may be very excited about telling everyone about it, but the employee can’t share the news if he or she doesn’t know about it. The bottom line? Keep your employees in the loop and they will be more likely to market your business.
By following the above tips and tricks, your employees can become a very powerful marketing tool to grow your business. Always remember to value your employees, and in turn, they will value their opportunities to market your company and make it stronger.
