The most important marketing role you haven't heard of (yet): The People Marketer

Most mid-to-large size companies have an internal communications team. Sometimes it sits within HR and sometimes it sits within Brand and/or Marketing. Wherever this team sits, they are a critical part of the organization, focused on driving engagement, awareness and participation in key company meetings, efforts and initiatives. These same companies also have teams of marketing experts focused on creating campaigns that reach external prospects and clients to entice and engage them in key company products and services.

As we move into the future we are seeing a hybrid role emerge; The People Marketer.

The People Marketer takes the best two worlds (internal comms and marketing) and focuses on creating marketing campaigns specifically for employees within an organization. This effort, when executed effectively, creates a set of brand loyalists and advocates that are more powerful than even your most viral campaign.

The push toward to the People Marketer has been happening slowly, and for quite a while. Retail companies started to enable the basic elements of this trend out of necessity years ago to keep call centers and local stores updated on the latest marketing offers to boost customer service. Telecommunications companies picked up on the trend when social service became a reality. And, a variety of both B2B and B2C companies moved this effort forward when they embraced reverse mentoring  to help capitalize on the benefits of multi-generational employees in the workplace. Yet, none of these has fully embraced people (internal) marketing until recently.  With the rise of employee brand advocacy as a powerful new channel with new tools, such as Dynamic Signal’s Voicestorm and GaggleAMP, that make it even easier for employees to participate as brand advocates, we are seeing an acceleration in this trend.

How can the People Marketer be so valuable? Consider this. Every company strives to have increased rates of employee engagement. When employees, especially millennials, feel their company is engaging in activities that add value, they tend to be happier with their decision to work at that company. What if there was an internal team who treated each employee as if they are one of the key segments of buyers for your company’s product or service? Now, instead of just reading an email about a new offer, the employee can participate in the offer (ex. We’re going to run an ad in XYZ newspaper, be one of the first to see it, snap it and share it on Twitter, sell it to a client first… and get a prize). This internally crafted marketing campaign delivers numerous following benefits:

1)     Increased authentic owned and earned media mentions that can be more persuasive than any of your other marketing channels (as Edelman’s 2017 Trust Barometer clearly shows, your most credible spokesperson for your brand are your employees.)

2)     Increased visibility of the marketing effort by your employees social networks (which includes customers and prospects who might not see your marketing campaign)

3)     Increased upselling and cross-selling by your Sales and Client teams who can now proactively take the message to market, or weave it into their outreach.

4)     Increased innovative ideas from inside the company (giving people a chance to participate fuels innovation)

5)     Increased employee satisfaction through targeted communications, increased transparency and a little more fun.

For marketers, this new type of team could open the doors to new and more powerful ways to break through the clutter externally; like a Trojan horse. Many of the most successful campaigns, like IBM’s Smarter Planet campaign, or the highly debated Taco Bell’s Doritos Taco originated from internal conversations or ideas. Now it’s time to follow leaders like Starbuck’s, Walmart and IBM to take this concept to a new level and recognize one of our most important segments.

For human resource and human capital professionals, this new type of team could provide the angle needed to help create a sense of pride and ownership in the critical efforts of the company.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the benefits to the sales and client services teams, who will benefit from these efforts. Now, a boring email announcement will turn into a chance to experience exactly what your customer or prospect does. You’ll be more insightful, and ultimately more successful.

As the lines continue to blur between HR and Marketing, I am curious to know if your company engaged in People Marketing? If so, I’d love to know more about how it’s going.

I've chosen a few of my favorite articles that dive deeper into this topic:

• Forbes: How Starbucks, Walmart And IBM Launch Brands Internally And What You Can Learn From Them
• HBR: Selling the Brand Inside
• Chron: How to Create an Internal Marketing Strategy
• Dental Economics: Why Internal Marketing is More Important than Before