Are your employees ambassadors?

One often overlooked marketing resource is a company’s own employees. Often, organizations don’t tap into this - sometimes vast - opportunity to promote their brand and image. 

But short of pasting those little temporary tattoos on each staff person’s forehead, what do we mean? Well, for starters, make sure your employees can give the elevator speech about what the company does. It might seem really obvious, but as brand professionals we shudder to think about how many different answers the executive team alone can provide.

Getting everyone on the same page doesn’t happen overnight. Use every opportunity you have to reinforce the messaging to internal audiences, just as you would with external audiences. Plug the key messages into the newsletter, into CEO remarks, into internal announcements, the Web site…everywhere.

Another option that works very well is a training session that is dressed up like a party. Gather all of your employees together at the end of the day and put out a good spread and some libations. Start by explaining how important each employee is as an ambassador to the brand and then get to work practicing their elevator speech about the company. If you pull it off, employees will have fun and learn something at the same time. And, they’ll be an even more powerful asset than ever.