Organizations often need to pay more attention to leveraging employee engagement.
No doubt that data drives successful marketing (in B2B, B2C, or some combination of both). It is why calculating ROI and delivering effective campaigns, data-driven marketing teams have an advantage.
There are spreadsheets, calculations, and analytical decision-making behind the artistry of decision-making. Organizations spend so much time and energy but forget to emphasize employee engagement.
When businesses approach their staff like cells in a spreadsheet, everything falls apart, including their marketing performance.
This blog post explains why leveraging employee engagement is essential to a company’s marketing efforts and campaigns (and how to do it).
How Are Employee and Customer Experiences Linked?
According to a recent ServiceNow and ESI ThoughtLab study, balancing customer and employee experiences resulted in a higher market share and lower costs for 41% of the leading organizations.
According to an MIT study, organizations that provide a remarkable employee experience more than double their customer satisfaction (industry-adjusted NPS).
A great marketing plan offers value to customers, so every method that improves the customer experience and boosts customer referrals and favorable reviews should be prioritized.
How Not Leveraging Employee Engagement Affects Marketing Teams?
When companies forget to leverage employee engagement, it hinders marketing efforts in the following ways:
Employee motivation: The relationship between motivation and employee engagement requires no or minimal explanation. Demotivated individuals with employee experience concerns have difficulty contributing to their team, regardless of their talent or expertise.
Employee productivity: There is some overlap with motivation here, but productivity issues are the result of poor communication, teamwork, and transparency – all of which fall within the employee experience domain.
Employee turnover: A weak marketing team stands little chance of long-term success. Employee dissatisfaction leads to turnover, which creates disunity within the team. Additionally, roles and responsibilities are confusing in such a scenario, and so marketing campaigns fall short of expectations.
Why Leveraging Employee Engagement Makes Marketing Endeavors Worth It?
Companies with exceptional employee experiences have an intrinsic marketing benefit. In contrast, to lead generation efforts, this advantage helps marketing leaders in developing and retaining high-performing teams over time.
Companies that succeed at engagement attract top-tier candidates and long-term workers. Furthermore, employee engagement benefits both the business and its employees.
Right now, talent is on the move.
People want to work for companies that deliver an employee experience that meets or exceeds their previous experience. Therefore, employees who are considering leaving compare their present company’s employee experience to others in the market.
Last but not least, employees conduct their own background investigations on prospective employers: Websites such as Glassdoor and other social media accounts serve as employer resumes. That said, such platforms come with their own pros and cons for the companies looking to hire.
How To Encourage Employees to Become Part of Your Marketing Efforts?
For leveraging employee engagement for your marketing endeavors, it is first necessary that they are part, preferably willingly, of that campaign. You can achieve this in the following ways:
1. Find your employees’ passion
Before you encourage employees to become invested in your marketing, ask them if they are satisfied with their current position.
Many employees work solely for the purpose of having a job.
So, sometimes employees only care about money and have little to no passion whatsoever. Therefore, first and foremost, you must remove this constraint.
Ask each employee if they are enthusiastic about their employment. And if you answered yes, you are ready to go. If not, better ask if they would be interested in doing another job in your organization.
Perhaps they would like to do something different. So, make their wish come true. And once they’ve landed their dream job, it’s your turn to ask for a favor in exchange without being too demanding.
2. Marketing by employees should be made more valuable and enjoyable
Announce a competition with undeniable prizes related to your brand.
The competition must be as simple as a piece of cake so that employees will not be hesitant to participate.
3. Social media should be used to celebrate accomplishments
Employees must be rewarded for their accomplishments. But using a public platform to share their achievements is always a great idea.
Engage in some socializing, and share your team’s accomplishments on social media.
Praise them in detail for what they accomplished and how dedicated they are to their work.
Employees will support your marketing initiatives when they witness them. And they will definitely share your posts on social media with their friends and family.
There is no need to push. That, however, should be taken care of.
How about their personal lives?
Employees have a personal life, yet they like to share bits and pieces of them online. Their birthdays, anniversaries, trips, and so on are all documented on social media. So, show them you care, share their memories, and wish them well.
This strategy will provide you with two benefits: one from your employees as they recognize their importance and another from your consumers in the form of empathy. As our brand will receive attention from sources, you were unaware of it in the first place.
4. Encourage staff to distribute content that has been carefully selected
Most of your employees spend a significant time of their day on social media. So why not leverage it?
Look at this as an opportunity. While using social media, your employees are captivated by a multitude of ideas offered on the internet.
All you need in this regard is to ask them to share the content that has been carefully and specifically made for your company’s marketing. And this will lead you to even make the most of your employees’ social media presence (and that too without paying them for this activity!)
5. Encourage internal communication
Employee communication is a source of growth for both employees and businesses. When employees get together, they flood each other with ideas. And while it could also include gossip, ideas are created from then on!
In fact, you should schedule a tea break to allow staff to socialize.
The evening is a time to recharge. Nothing beats communication for a breath of fresh air. It clears their mind of the chaos of the day, allowing room for fresh ideas.
You may make use of a tool for employee communication (such as WorkHub Connect), which allows them to communicate as well as share whatever they want to see adopted in the company. And it could be a new plan, their viewpoint, concerns, or consumer feedback.
Leveraging Employee Engagement: Advantages of an HR-Marketing Collaboration
HR is involved in recruiting and retention. But employee experience influences and connects every department. Therefore, there is a potential to form a synergistic relationship with marketing and HR in the following ways:
Brand consistency and message – During the interview process, candidates look for consistent branding, messaging, and overall company culture. This not only exhibits professionalism and teamwork but also attracts candidates with greater staying power because they choose organizations that match their personalities and career aspirations.
Collaboration on culture films – Creating videos to highlight business culture or to present a “day in the life” of a regular employee is a mutually beneficial campaign. Essentially, HR receives a tool to help with recruiting, and marketing promotes brand consistency.
Employee advocacy- Employee advocacy is another area of common interest. Marketing teams are attempting to boost campaign performance by leveraging employees’ social networks and word of mouth. Basically, HR departments utilize employee advocacy involvement as a measure of engagement and later aim to improve it on a yearly basis.
Lastly, when marketing leaders focus on employee experience as a crucial component of marketing success, they may witness greater cross-departmental collaboration and innovative marketing strategies that improve customer experiences.
Leveraging Employee Engagement: Beyond Marketing
An engaged workforce not only helps make the marketing of a company successful, but it also does wonders for an organization beyond it.
Below we look into the benefit of having engaged employees for a company besides the marketing aspect:
a) Enhanced Profitability and Productivity
According to studies, disengaged employees cost US businesses $450 – $550 billion per year. And these losses are attributable to lost productivity, missed days and hours owing to illness and absenteeism, disturbance due to workplace negativity, and increased staff turnover.
On the plus side, employee engagement is increasing in the United States as a result of a strengthening economy and a greater understanding of how to increase employee satisfaction, which is fantastic news since engaged people make for not only a happier workplace but also a more profitable one.
Last but not least, organizations with engaged employees outperform those without by more than 200%.
b) Better communication and working relationships
A toxic workplace is bad for employees at all levels, and it’s also bad for businesses.
Strong leadership and excellent employee relationships are critical in keeping employees happy and motivated at work, as well as making them feel like they are part of a team that wants to work together to reach a common objective.
80% of employees who are dissatisfied with their direct supervisor and are disengaged at work, while 70% of those who lack faith in senior leadership are completely disengaged.
c) Lower employee turnover
Businesses spend $11 billion every year on hiring and training new employees owing to staff turnover alone.
Reduced worker turnover is vital not only for financial reasons but also to avoid the consequent loss of valuable skills, knowledge, and experience. Because when valuable people quit your organization, they take their talents and expertise with them.
Replacing each individual can take a significant amount of time, money, and resources in recruitment and training, not to mention the lost productivity in the meantime.
A workplace culture that encourages professional advancement, open communication lines, and openness can all contribute to better workplace relationships and increased employee engagement.
Today, making employees stay isn’t as simple as offering a competitive wage and an on-site gym.
The working generation of today loves flexible hours, a positive work environment, and working for a company that they are pleased to be a part of. It is why 90% of millennials say they would consider accepting a pay reduction to work for a company whose mission and values line with their own.
To conclude, this is the key to meaningful employee engagement in 2019 and beyond. Unsurprisingly, therefore, 54% of employees who are proud of their company’s contributions to society are engaged at work.
Why leveraging employee engagement is essential to your influencer marketing strategy?
Influencer marketing has expanded dramatically in recent years as companies have realized that customers appreciate authenticity and the opinions of ‘actual’ people more than traditional advertising.
However, social media influencers have come under scrutiny as they accept more and more brand collaborations, many of which do not appear to be in line with their principles.
For many, influencers have become as untrustworthy as advertisements on television or in publications.
Notwithstanding that influencer marketing may have become less trustworthy, it is not dead.
However, we are now witnessing a newer form of influencing – employee advocacy.
Employee advocacy involves promoting the organization and representing the brand. It may be achieved through social media or a planned employee engagement content marketing strategy.
Employees who are engaged are hardworking, loyal, and dedicated to business improvement and customer pleasure. Such employees add more value to both the organization and its customers.
After all, who better to scream your organization’s praises than an employee who sincerely believes in the importance of what you’re attempting to accomplish?
It is consequently crucial to invest in employee engagement for employees at all levels. Clearly, leveraging employee engagement goes far beyond just one marketing campaign.
How BRAVO Helps You in Employee Engagement And Successful Marketing?
The first rule that should be clear by now for levering employee engagement for a company’s marketing approach is to develop an engaging and satisfied workforce.
With that, it is not hard to grasp that only the employees that are happy with the company they’re working with can become a better addition to the company’s marketing efforts. It is because employees that are happy are the ones who are engaged and satisfied.
So, before leveraging employee engagement, it is important that your employees are engaged at the workplace.
BRAVO is your best choice when it comes to developing a satisfied and happier workforce. It helps you celebrate their efforts, hard work, and achievements. And that keeps them on the track that makes the company happy with them and vice versa. Lastly, making use of such a workforce to make a company’s marketing success becomes just a matter of time.
In a nutshell, while leveraging employee engagement goes a long way for your marketing endeavors, BRAVO lays the foundation of this entire strategy.
Learn more and better about BRAVO here by booking its free demo to perform successful marketing by leveraging employee engagement in no time!
