In today’s times, every brand is working tirelessly to promote its brands. Digital marketing is helping businesses to design their brand identity as they like and reach more people than ever.
However, there is another traditional and powerful way of marketing that businesses need to remember.
Word-of-mouth.
Responsible for 13% of sales worldwide and $6 trillion annually, that’s a number you can’t ignore. But how can you increase its effectiveness for your brand?
You can turn your employees into brand advocates and leverage word-of-mouth marketing in your brand’s favor.
Let us start with the definition. Continue reading to know more about it.
What is Employee Advocacy?
Simply put, employee advocacy refers to the practice of promoting or advocating for your brand through your employees, i.e., the people who work for your company.
Your employees can be powerful instruments to help you grow your brand and boost your sales and popularity.
They are trained professionals who know in and out about your brand. Using them can be hugely advantageous for your business as the information they spread about your brand will be accurate.
Your employees are aware of your brand’s principles and values, and the information that they have about your products and services cannot be compared.
Here, we have some valuable tips for you to turn your employees into advocates of your brand.
Tips to Transform Your Employees into Brand Ambassadors
Letting your employees take over for you can sometimes make the process of brand-building easier. Employees can turn out to be great heroes and save you from lots of expenses.
There are many areas where employees can outshine you and turn out to be really impactful. This is especially true when it comes to marketing.
You talking about your brand could feel biased to the customers. However, other people advocating for your brand can be an enormous motivator for others to invest in your brand.
But there’s more to it than meets the eye. Here are some valuable tips to transform your employees into brand ambassadors.
- Create A Positive Culture
A positive work culture can motivate your employees to be active participants in promoting your brand. When employees feel appreciated and trusted, they voluntarily advocate for your brand.
To achieve the trust of your employees, you must stay transparent and open about your brand. This transparency enables your employees to feel included. A good work culture can benefit your business in team-building and ignite an emotional value for your brand among employees.
- Display Office Glimpse on Live Social Wall
It’s the most useful ethic in the history of work ethics; practice what you preach. If you want your employees to advocate for your brand and work for it just like their own, consider doing the same and setting an example for them.
With the help of a live social media wall, you can display other employees being advocates for your brands and the perks of doing the same and motivate others to do the same.
You can create a social wall with a social media aggregator tool like Taggbox. It allows users to collect social content from various social media channels and create a captivating social wall that you can display on any digital screen.
So, you can use the content created by your employees for your brand as a token of appreciation and display it on the social wall to motivate others.
- Invest In Employee Branding
Employee branding is a prominent motivator for employees to become advocates for your brand. Investing in exciting perks for your employees is a must if you are expecting your employees to advocate for your brand effectively.
You can set KPIs for your brand advocates and offer them unique perks in return. Introducing a set of perks like offering them employee vouchers, freebies, and meaningful discounts to keep the motivated.
- Set Team-Building Time And Activities
Another immensely crucial factor of brand advocacy is to make the employees feel like a part of something bigger to act like advocates for your brand.
Starting with team-building activities can be tremendously favorable for your business. A good team and work culture is the biggest reason for employee retention. When employees are happy at their workplace and experience a good working environment, they tend to stay there for longer.
Statistics show that onboarding new employees is 3x more expensive and can poorly affect your business. Hence, holding engaging team activities for your employees is a great tip for team-building and employee advocacy.
- Ask For Feedback
According to studies, asking people their views on a subject is a great tactic to boost their interest and spark meaningful conversations. You can make your employees feel valued and appreciated by asking your employees for their genuine feedback on your products or services.
It is not just advantageous to make your employees feel seen; they will also actively use your products to give you better feedback and spread awareness about products.
This feedback can also help you improve your services and become a better brand for the market.
- Offer A Loyalty Program
If you want your employees to become brand advocates for you, then give them a reason to do so. Introducing a loyalty program can be highly effective and a major motivator for employees to continue putting in the good words for you.
This loyalty program can offer your employees discounts and redeemable points on every completed purchase by a customer because of their reference, or you can set a barter system as a loyalty reward for your employees.
Nothing can be better than employees feeling appreciated for their loyalty to the company and receiving appreciation in return for their hard work.
- Remember Special Occasions (Birthday Or Work Anniversary)
There are many ways to make your employees feel appreciated. However, making the effort and making them feel special on their special occasions, such as birthdays and anniversaries, tops the list.
But simply remembering these occasions is not enough. And sending a greeting card is definitely a popper. Go out of the way and offer them a unique gift that they can remember and feel compelled to share with their friends and connections on social media.
This gift can be a personalized version of your product for your employees or something equally special that they can boast about on their day.
This is a two-way advantage for you. You can please your employee as well as make it to their social media and gain some visibility yourself.
It is rightly said that employees make the company. We opt for so many ways to market our businesses to reach more audiences and to reach them most effectively. There are many ways of marketing, like influencer collaborations, sales, and social media campaigns. Businesses look out for external factors but often forget about the most powerful source of marketing – their employees.
Employee advocacy can eminently create a difference for brands and is a marketing strategy in itself.
People Also Ask
Why is employee advocacy beneficial?
Employee advocacy is a great technique for employees to improve and widen their career profiles. It allows employees to network with people and build meaningful professional relations. It is a great chance for employees to enhance their skills without leaving one career path.
Benefits of Having Employees as Brand Advocates
Your employees can be immensely empowering for brands to help them become better brands for the market.
Your employees are trained professionals who know about your company’s values and principles in accurate detail. Using them can be hugely advantageous for your business as the information they spread about your brand will be accurate, positive, and believable.
Author Bio
Prakash Rawat is a savvy digital marketing specialist. For the past two years, he has been specializing in SEO, PPC & Marketing Strategy. He has a super sharp analytical mind and a finely tuned creative eye for marketing initiatives that optimize brands.
You can reach out to him on Linkedin.
