Employees are the bridge between your brand and your customers. Do they know how to reinforce your brand attributes to create a superior customer experience?
Here are seven ways to inspire employees to support your brand:
1. Teach employees the importance of your brand: Employees must understand why having a cohesive brand is important, and how they can help shape perceptions, both inside the organization through their interactions with their peers and externally through their work or in any conversations, social media posts, etc. Ensure that every function within the organization understands the value of a strong brand reputation. Conduct training around the brand, its purpose and its attributes, to ensure employees understand its importance. Teach them how to communicate in brand voice to project a consistent image and tone across all communication and stakeholder groups.
2. Amplify the organization’s mission, values, purpose through strategic internal communications: Ensure that the company’s brand is woven throughout all internal communication and interactions. Reinforce the brand purpose on the intranet, start meetings by touching on it, include it on screensavers – each of these methods will help you reinforce the brand promise in employees’ heads and hearts. When employees believe in the mission, vision, and values of the organization, they are much more likely to live by these standards.
3. Create channels and content to communicate directly with targeted employee groups: People respond to messages in different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all approach that will ensure all employees understand the brand and its purpose, so remember to customize communication and content to ensure it is seen and felt by everyone. Featuring the brand consistently throughout the organization, while also encouraging employees, managers, and the C-suite to walk the talk, will help ensure the message gets across to everyone.
4. Give them a line of sight to organizational goals, strategies, and programs: Often, it’s easier for people to support something when they understand the reasoning behind the choice. By providing employees with a clear understanding of brand and organizational goals and strategies, and encouraging them to share their thoughts, employees will become even more bought in, engaged, and dedicated to the brand.
5. Highlight why customers choose the brand: When employees understand why customers are selecting your organization as a partner, their belief in your company will continue to grow. Providing examples of the reasons for customers selecting to work with you or buy your product will highlight the brand promise in action. Employees can also use the knowledge of why customers choose your company to further promote your offerings to future customers.
6. Highlight each employees’ specific role: For employees to truly live the brand promise, they must understand how their role impacts the overall organization. To help them understand this, employees need context. They need to know the mission, vision, and values, and how these should guide everyone’s decisions. Try to showcase how each individual employee plays into a positive brand reputation. Stress the role they need to play in sustaining a consistent brand experience and reputation. Employees can only be engaged if they see how their work connects -- culturally, organizationally, and societally. To employees, it’s the why that matters.
7. Train leaders on how to promote the brand: Employees will look to leaders to see the brand promise in action. Thus, leaders may need additional training on living the brand. Educate them on the role of branding on the overall company value, and how a strong brand and its reputation can positively impact their work.
As the bridge between the brand and the customer, your employees can make or break the experience. Ensuring employees understand the brand from the customer’s perspective is a great way to help them live into the brand promise each and every day.
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