Category: Engagement

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Engagement Marketing Training & Development

Internal Marketing Tools of Engagement For Marketers (Part 2)

Last week I shared examples of how Marketing can start to build better relationships within the firm. In addition to this general outreach, it’s important to get employee buy-in and cooperation for each marketing program you implement. Here are several tools of engagement you can use.

Before launching any marketing initiative or program …

  • Share the rationale and goals behind this initiative with employees – clearly explain what you’re trying to do and why.
  • Communicate how Marketing’s efforts in relation to the program help support the firm’s overall mission and strategic plan – reinforce the message “we’re all in this together” instead of contributing to the perception that Marketing creates extra work for people.
  • Get employee input, and be sensitive and responsive to how their work will be affected by this program.
  • Provide the necessary training (and any incentives, if appropriate) so staff can effectively support the initiative.

Once the initiative is up-and-running …

You can’t just let it run its course and forget about it. As part of your monitoring efforts:

  • Stay in touch with what employees need to keep the program’s momentum going.
  • Share interim results and any fine-tuning that needs to be done and why.
  • Recognize and reinforce employees’ support of the initiative.

And when the program is over …

  • Share final results and “lessons learned” – for example, what worked & why (to replicate success in the future ) and what didn’t work & why (what to avoid and what to improve the next time)
  • Acknowledge employees’ individual and collective efforts in supporting marketing and organizational goals
  • Solicit employee feedback on how to improve future initiatives.

Employees who deliver on the brand promise can make or break Marketing. That’s why we need to consider employees “upfront” when planning and implementing any marketing initiative – so they’ll work with us, not against us.

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Engagement Marketing Training & Development

Internal Marketing Tools of Engagement For Marketers (Part 1)

My recent post on How Marketers Sabotage Themselves raised the issue that marketers need to engage all employees who deliver on the brand, including those outside the Marketing Department.

To get employee buy-in, we need to break out of our silos and strengthen marketing’s relationship with employees; i.e., we need to do a better job of marketing “Marketing” within the firm. Here are a few ways we can accomplish this.

  • Participate in new employee orientation to explain how every employee has an important role in delivering the brand promise. If someone from Marketing is unable to attend, educate whoever is in charge of orientation to share this message.
  • Host a real or virtual “Open House” so non-marketing co-workers can get acquainted with Marketing and its resources. Invite key people from other departments to your staff meetings to learn what Marketing is doing and vice-versa.
  • Share general marketing information info to let others know what’s happening in the marketplace, such as consumer/customer trends, competitive analysis, customer satisfaction results, etc.
  • Find ways to effectively recognize employees who positively deliver on the brand promise; e.g., “Brand Champions” or “Marketing Heroes.”

I’ll have more on this topic in my next post, so stay tuned …

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Engagement Featured Post

Coping with the Clueless in Charge

Does your organization’s management suffer from a credibility gap? They bring out program after program – jumping on the latest management bandwagon – then fail to follow through. Meanwhile, you and your fellow employees invest countless hours in these short-lived special initiatives on employee engagement, recognition, talent management or other fill-in-the-blank trendy topic.

With an uncooperative economy offering little job movement, it’s easy to become frustrated (the “enemy of engagement”) and cynical. Try not to dwell on the precious resources wasted in these “flavor-of-the-month” programs.

So what can you do to preserve whatever sanity you have left? Here are several suggestions:

  • Find humor in the situation – amuse yourself and your colleagues with what management is going to do next. Play games like Business Word Bingo or the Buzz Word Generator.
  • Consider management’s ineffectiveness as a learning tool that can make you more marketable … seriously, so you know what NOT to do in your next job.
  • Maintain perspective – keep in mind this is a temporary situation (although it may not seem that way). Eventually you can change jobs or retire.
  • Make an anonymous suggestion to get your organization featured on Undercover Boss or take up a collection to get a management coach. [Just kidding!]
  • Besides maintaining perspective and a sense of humor, find ways to de-stress; e.g., go for a walk in the fresh air or engage in whatever healthy activity brings you endorphins.

These are just a sample of attitude adjustment coping mechanisms. I welcome your ideas!

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Engagement Marketing

How Marketers Sabotage Themselves

I recently spoke to a group of marketers about our need to internally market the marketing function. Before we can begin to develop brand ambassadors or marketing champions, we need to engage ALL employees in what marketing does since each employee impacts delivery of the brand promise.

To better engage employees with our marketing programs, it’s important to understand how we inadvertently sabotage our own marketing efforts.

  • We fail to recognize that marketing is perceived as creating extra work for employees. I learned this lesson earlier in my career as a bank marketer. Whenever the Marketing Department would launch a new deposit promotion – offering gifts to customers for opening new accounts – most branch people were less than receptive. On top of their regular duties of meeting daily operational standards for efficient transaction processing, business development & sales goals, customer service standards and customer retention goals, we expected the tellers, customer service reps and branch managers to display, process, distribute and control inventory of whatever premiums that marketing had sent their way (stadium blankets, golf umbrellas, toaster ovens, VCRs, etc.). No wonder they wanted to bar the doors whenever they saw Marketing coming!
  • Just because the Marketing Department is part of the organizational chart doesn’t mean that employees know who we are and what we do. We forget that we need to continually educate others within the organization as to what Marketing really does … other than sitting around having a good time creating work for everyone else.

Our challenge is how do we engage employees who deliver on the brand when they have no clue as to what we really do and we have little/no authority over them?

As marketers we know how to develop and strengthen customer relationships; it’s not a stretch to apply this skill set to develop and strengthen employee relationships. But we’re so busy taking care of everyone else’s marketing needs that we neglect our own.

In what other ways does marketing sabotage itself? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experience on this topic.

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Engagement Marketing

Why Nonprofits Need Engagement-Part 2

Upon learning about my new book, Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits, my friend was puzzled. “I don’t get it,” he said, “especially when nonprofits are so mission-driven. Aren’t the people who work there more engaged than those who work in the for-profit sector?”

My friend’s presumption about nonprofit engagement is a common one. Regardless of whether an organization is profit-driven or mission-driven, the quality of workplace engagement depends on the organizational culture and how its people are treated. Nonprofits can’t claim any advantage based on employees’ and volunteers’ passion for the mission.

As nonprofit employee and consultant Jinna Halperin wrote in Voices from the Field: Nonprofit Workplace Culture – Why it Matters so Much to Us:

“All nonprofits are dysfunctional in some way or another and figuring out where to hang your hat requires one to assess whether the level and type of dysfunction is personally tolerable …

“I am no longer driven only by the mission of the organization. Having so many issues about which I feel passionate and on which I have worked, I have come to believe that employment happiness at nonprofits is more about how one is treated and whether one’s contribution is respected …”

An inspiring mission may attract talent employees and volunteers to an organization, but it takes much more to get them to stay. People need to feel they matter as much as their work.

Note: To get a look inside my new book on nonprofit engagement, stay tuned for next week’s post.

 

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Engagement Marketing

Why Nonprofits Need Engagement-Part 1

My love of nonprofits started in my teens when I volunteered to work at a summer camp for intellectually disabled children. Since then, I’ve served a variety of nonprofit organizations in a range of roles that include frontline volunteer, committee member, advisory member, board member, board chair, and in a professional capacity as a marketing & organizational advisor.

Here’s what I’ve learned based on my personal and professional experience:

1. Mission matters – it provides organizational focus and intention. It also brings together the people who share a passion for the mission and want to do something about it.

2. The people behind the mission also matter – the employees and volunteers who carry out the mission through their dedication and commitment.

3. People’s passion for the mission should not be taken for granted – employees’ and volunteers’ passion for the mission does not guarantee their continued commitment to an organization.

These valuable insights are the basis for my new book that I’m excited to introduce here. I wrote Share of Mind, Share of Heart – Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits to help nonprofit leaders, executives and managers better engage the employees and volunteers who carry out their organization’s mission.

My book will be published shortly. In the meantime, I’ll share more about nonprofit engagement and my new book in the next two posts.

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Engagement

Volunteers Know What Matters

The recent PR firestorm involving two well-known women’s health organizations (I’m not going to rehash the situation here) reminded me of an experience I had in my early years of nonprofit consulting.

I was asked to facilitate a special meeting between two nonprofits involved in helping people with cancer – one was an established organization, the other was a relatively new start-up. The existing nonprofit felt threatened by the new group. In my meetings with senior staff from the existing nonprofit, some people admitted they wanted the new organization to just “go away” – they were concerned about competing for donor and volunteer support. Fortunately, they accepted the new group’s invitation to sit down together and explore how they could both serve the community.

Can’t we all just get along?

I remember my feelings of trepidation as I prepared for the joint meeting – I was a facilitator, not a peace-keeper! But my fears dissolved after I interviewed a number of volunteers from both organizations. Their message was clear and consistent: “We don’t care who we work for as volunteers, we just want to eradicate cancer! So find a way to work out your differences.“

That was the message I shared with the two organizations at the outset of their meeting-of-the-minds. Their volunteers provided the critical reminder that purpose supersedes politics.

Both organizations took the message to heart. I’m happy to report that meeting was held more than 20 years ago, and both organizations continue to co-exist and collaborate in their efforts to serve people with cancer.

Special Note: National Volunteer Week is coming up soon: April 15-21, 2012. Special thanks to all volunteers who help make a difference in our world!

 

 

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Engagement

People, Purpose and a Positive Brand

Much has been written the past few weeks about Greg Smith and his public reasons for disengaging from Goldman Sachs – with a lot of the discussion centered on the importance of corporate culture.

Employees don’t work in a vacuum. For better or worse, they’re greatly impacted by “the way things are done around here” and what actions get rewarded and reinforced; i.e., behaviors that reflect a company’s culture and values.

Sure, a company needs profits to survive … but profit is only one of several components critical to sustainable success. A company also needs its employees, stakeholders, and partners associated with the enterprise to be aligned around a purpose that goes beyond pure profit. As these successful executives have learned:

“Maximum growth and high ideals are not incompatible; they’re inseparable. … A brand ideal of improving people’s lives is the only sustainable way to recruit, unite and inspire all the people a business touches, from employees to customers. Without that connection, no business can truly excel.” Jim Stengel, former global marketing officer at Procter & Gamble and author of Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies

“The companies that put profit before people are a vanishing breed. Companies big and small, with a multiple stakeholder approach to business, the ones that value their employees and customers as much as shareholders, are realizing that the financials only get better. If you want to make more money, focus on your people first. It’s not only the right thing to do. It’s good for business.” Paul Spiegelman, founder and CEO of the The Beryl Companies, in his article “Attention Goldman Sachs: Time to Buckle Down and Focus on Culture”

“Over time, as we focused more and more on our culture, we ultimately came to the realization that a company’s culture and a company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin. The brand is just a lagging indicator of a company’s culture.” Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO and author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

The bottom line: Focusing on people and purpose creates a strong culture and positive brand that helps drive profits.

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Engagement

Employee Engagement is Looking Up


Above the bottom line by David Zinger

“Dwelling above the bottom line
our contributions
our meaning
our routines
our relationships
our passions
our connections
our fears
our irritations
our time
our lives.
Business is looking up.
It doesn’t all come down to the bottom line.”

From what perspective does your organization view the bottom line?

[Source: Assorted Zingers  by David Zinger, with great cartoons by John Junson.]

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Engagement Marketing

An Almost Perfect Workplace

One of my favorite business books is Zappos.com’s Culture Book that is published annually. It’s written by Zappos employees who share, in their own words, what the company culture means to them.

I ask participants in my internal marketing workshops to consider if their organizations would be willing to solicit employee comments about their workplace culture, publish the results, AND THEN make them available to the public? The responses reflect how confident and proud managers are of their organizational culture.

Occasionally I encounter people who joke about companies, like Zappos, that are known for having a strong employer brand. Typical comments include:

  • “Yeah, they’re the ones who put the ‘cult’ in culture!”
  • “I wonder how much Kool-Aid the company trucks in?”
  • “Where DO they find all those happy employees?!”

I find the folks who make these jokes to be cynical, even downright dismissive, as they struggle to comprehend an engaging place where employees actually enjoy going to work.

Yes, Virginia, there are such workplaces … and most of their employees appreciate how fortunate they are to be working in such organizations.

Just as important, these employees also know that an engaging workplace doesn’t ensure an idyllic one. Engaged employees accept that not every day will be perfect. As a Zappos employee acknowledged in the latest Culture Book:

“A lot of people might say that Zappos employees work in an unrealistic culture, where everyday frustrations don’t occur and cupcakes grow from rainbows in our break room. While I’ve yet to see the cup-cake-producing rainbow, I can say that we do have all of the same pet peeves as everyone else, but because of our Zappos Culture, we rise above it and overcome.”

Well said!

[2010 Culture Book excerpt used with permission. © 2012 Zappos.com, Inc. or its affiliates.]