Marketing Begins at Home: Building an Internal Brand

Here’s an article that Greg Morton, TriNet’s VP of Marketing, just wrote for the PEO Insider.

Branding a PEO isn’t a matter of harnessing a million dollar advertising budget and blasting commercials on American Idol.  Branding is a matter of corporate reputation, in which every positive action that the company makes establishes trust, credibility, and support among its customers. Those customers talk to other customers, and those customers talk to other customers, and—all of a sudden—word-of-mouth has created your company’s brand.

Conversely, if your corporate reputation gains momentum while being based on bad product and poor customer service…well, you also get a brand. It’s just not the one you want.

So how do you begin to spread your corporate reputation?  Typical marketing activities certainly play a role, as does the overall strength and quality of the HR services that you deliver. But you also have another indispensable asset: your own employees. Building a corporate reputation—and therefore a powerful brand identification in the marketplace—begins right at home.

Spread the Message
You might take it for granted that each and every employee at your company understands the PEO value proposition. The sales person, the benefits specialist, the workers compensation maven, and the front desk person all play an important role in the company’s operations and understand the value of its services. Or do they? If you really ask each of them to give the company’s “elevator pitch,” how alike do their responses sound?  And if their responses are substantially different from one another, does that mean that their messages to a prospect or a customer may be different as well?

And even if they do deliver the right message, it’s also no small matter that they understand the company’s larger picture. Can they discuss your company’s biggest competitors intelligently? Do they understand the strengths and weaknesses that differentiate your company in the industry?  Do they understand your vision for the company’s future?

Having everyone aligned in terms of your company’s message isn’t a matter of subjecting your staff to “Clockwork Orange”-style brainwashing, but it is crucially important for building the framework of a solid brand.  Your employees interact with customers, and talk to their family about their company, and spread the word among their personal and professional networks.  And let’s face it—as a PEO organization grows, its internal complexity grows as well.  Such complexity can lead to relative isolation among departments, further confusing issues such as the company’s value proposition, its competitive difference, and its marketplace perception.

Each and every one of your employees is as much a “brand evangelist” as your press releases or your corporate web site. What happens if they end up singing from different hymn books?

Feed and Nurture Your Intranet
One of the ways you can ensure that your employees are in sync is to maintain a robust, frequently published, and widely used Intranet.  It’s great to gather the troops together every now and then to discuss the financial details of the company and hand out free lunch, but important company messages require significant repetition.  An Intranet can be a relatively cost effective way to keep the company’s message out there and ensure that all employees are working towards the same goals.

This doesn’t mean that the Intranet should be rigidly controlled by a cadre of iron-fisted dictators.  You will certainly want to create and promulgate consistent brand standards, and give the site a nice, readable, and inviting feel.  But people won’t read the thing unless they have a stake in it. To that end, try to create an Intranet system where employees themselves have a hand in writing and publishing the content.  Not only does this remove the burden of maintaining the site from the I.T. department or the executive team, but it also helps the Intranet truly represent the company’s voice.

Oversight needs to remain a part of the project, but consider the ownership employees will feel in the Intranet if they have the ability to publish their own branded newsletters, communicate to other departments, and contribute to the front page “news” of the company. The Intranet will become a destination for them—the first thing they read in the morning—and that means that the Intranet will be a trusted source of information when important messages need to be communicated to the entire staff.

Hold Contests
See who can answer pop quizzes about the company, its objectives, and its differentiators.  Reward people.  Make them feel part of a revenue-focused culture that prizes clarity and uniformity of vision. 

One of the best contests to hold pertains to internal referrals.  Can you encourage your employees, even your non prospect or customer-facing staff, to compete for prizes and money by sending qualified referrals over to the sales team? That Information Technology guru has a network of contacts at smaller companies; so does the General Accounts person in the Finance department.  Once these individuals understand the nature of the company they’re working for, they may very well leap at the opportunity to send qualified business into the sales pipeline.

Show the Human Side
While revenue may be a welcome side effect of an internal referral competition, it also represents an excellent opportunity to humanize the company for your staff.  “HR Outsourcing” or “Professional Employer Organization” sound, conceptually, like arcane business concepts that have no actual impact on real human beings. The reality is completely opposite.  Our industry is one that helps companies, and by extension the people and families who work with them.  We should be constantly communicating that message to our employees.

Otherwise, they may instead view the referral process and brand reputation as a chore.  The more clarity they have in regards to how we help the business community, the more likely they are to become brighter brand beacons. The best brands and referrals are real and heartfelt.

Reap the Rewards
You can see why all of this effort is worth your while. If your employees are on the same page about what your company is and what it stands for, that leads directly into your efforts to generate qualified referrals for the sales team. And as we all know, referrals are the lifeblood of the PEO business.

But aside from the short-term revenue benefits, building an internal brand is also important because you have, by default, designated each and every one of your employees to be bearers of your company’s brand. Their actions and their perception of your company will directly impact your corporate reputation, and therefore create the kind of company brand you dream or about or the kind that will give you night terrors.

A positive brand identity leads to loyal customers, strong referral sources, and strong internal growth that positions you for the public market or an industry acquisition. With those kinds of goals in the offing, it’s definitely worth your while to take care of your employees, so they in turn will take care of your brand.