psst..Let’s talk about Internal Comms and Marketing

The relationship between internal comms and marketing for me has always been a really fascinating one. Early on in my career I was lucky enough to have both sit with me and it gave me the opportunity to explore how internal comms and marketing can effectively work together to achieve your goals.

I do, however, think the link between internal comms and a strong brand presence is often overlooked. Even though the benefits of internal staff satisfaction on customer satisfaction have been widely documented for years throughout literature.

So what is internal comms?

Well to put it quite simply internal comms is how you share information with employees and in the charity sector volunteers to enable them to do their job effectively. But to me it is also more than that as it is communication, it is by default two-way and is about actively listening to colleagues, problem solving together and encouraging engagement from everyone who works for the company.

I think over the last few years, we have really seen a massive shift away from traditional models of internal comms (top-down approach) to internal comms having more of a focus on change management and culture comms. This to me is really interesting, as business is all about change, the last few years have brought about an unprecedented amount of change and people are being asked to be agile and flexible, but this process needs to be managed and the right culture needs to be established.

To me internal comms are much more than a newsletter or regular top-down communication, it is about creating the right culture and creating strong engagement with the brand across the organisation.

Ways that internal comms can benefit your marketing activity

Internal comms can help you to create a common purpose between staff. I think we often forget the value of a strong vision or mission statement, but if you look at companies like John Lewis, every staff member knows it and every staff member knows how they are contributing.

This is really important, because we want diverse teams, ideas and roles, but what we are trying to avoid is having a fragmented culture. By having one purpose everyone is unified in their mission, even if the how bit is different.

This probably sounds obvious, but happy staff go the extra mile. This means happy staff mean stronger levels of customer satisfaction and we all know the old saying it costs more to find a new customer than to retain an existing.

Staff that are engaged with the brand are great ambassadors for the brand and can ultimately help you to reach more people with your brand content. If they are engaged they may let you tell their stories and they will engage with your external facing content, helping it to go further.

There is also a growth in people referring to our "employer brand" - this is people's recognition that it is an employees market right now and recruitment is hard, people are expecting more than ever from companies and what your offering needs to match their expectations, but they are not going to just take your word for it. They are going to look at what staff are saying about you, they may even reach out to current and past staff.

Common pitfalls of marketing and internal comms

I feel like one of my biggest bugs, is when something new get announced externally before internally, whether this is a new strategy or service development. This puts your customer-facing staff in a really awkward position, as they are unable to answer the questions people have, but it also dilutes the power of those messages if your staff can't champion it. My top tip is to give your staff time to absorb updates, ask questions and familiarise themselves with the changes before going external.

If you're working in isolation to internal comms then there is a good chance that your duplicating up on work, whether this is case studies to use internally during a national week, when your using different ones externally. To doubling up on artwork and written content. I am not saying internal and external messaging should be the same, but just think how much easier your life would be if you all started with the same key messages and case studies, with one person taking the lead. (Also gathering content takes time, so I am all over getting the most use of it.)

Lack of clarity, this is the final pitfall that I see happen a lot. It quite simply not knowing what each others objectives are and not exploring together how they interlink or support one another.

Top tips for forming stronger relationships between internal comms and marketing teams

My top tip is that is always about talking more to one another. And you cannot beat a lunch out every now and then, even it is just a bag of chips on the seafront. But schedule regular catch-ups away from the office, in an informal setting where you can really discuss what is going on in your teams and the challenges.

Involve each other in developing your strategies, so you can see where you can support or benefit each other, but you also have a clearer idea of what the challenges and opportunities for each department is.

My advice is always to start small and build up your collaboration from this. It will allow you time to get to know each team's style and how to effectively work together. Start with one joint objective and really focus on delivering and building that trust. That way you will organically start supporting each other more and taking forward what is working.

Timing, as already mentioned, timing between messages going out internally and externally is really important, so map this out!

Get in touch today if you would like help with your internal comms activity.