Marketing to Your Internal Customers

Marketing to Your Internal Customers for Effective Organizational Communication
Each year, companies spend millions of dollars on communicating the benefits of their products to an end user…but what about when they communicate to their internal customers—their employees? It is crucial to communicate effectively internally as well as externally. If you get the message across well to your employees, in turn, it sets the standard of how they communicate with consumers. Here are some tips on how you can use your company’s marketing and branding skills to achieve effective communication within your organization:

• Use simple messages: “Taste Great, Less Filling”, “We Try Harder.” According to a 2005 survey of the Most Influential Taglines, these are among the top 10. Having a short, succinct message helps employees remember the message. If you are communicating a culture change for example, try coming up with a short title or tagline about it so that it becomes easy to understand. Longer messages tend to get lost in the crowd.

• Repeat those messages: By repeating the message over and over in different circumstances, you reassure the audience that this is not just a fleeting “Flavor of the Month” change. Talk about the message consistently after the usual Annual Company Town Hall Meeting to help your employees live the message on a daily basis.

• Use consistent language: Give credibility to your message by defining and using consistent vocabulary. Starbucks, for example, uses the term “tall” to mean the smallest serving available—and even though it’s counterintuitive, it’s caught on everywhere because they are persistent about their vocabulary. Using consistent language helps eliminate confusion as more and more people repeat the message throughout the organization.

• Build champions: Who doesn’t want to “Be Like Mike?” To give credibility to a company-wide change or announcement, find people who are respected and well liked to champion your idea. Even though major communication begins at the top level, it helps to have “local leaders” also pitching the message.

• Use visuals: Remember that different people communicate differently. Some understand better visually and some need to hear messages. Companies like BMV and Atari talk advantage of this and have created widely recognizable logos to represent their communication. While you don’t have to come up with a logo for every announcement you make, remember that visually showing how everything fits together or depicting a timeline is usually more effective then a wordy description.

If you ask five people on the street about Nike’s latest marketing, most likely you’ll hear “Just Do It” from everyone. What will you hear if you asked five of your employees about your latest organizational message?

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