Why employees are an organisation’s first step to brand advocacy

With every engaged employee sharing brand content, brands can achieve a surge of greater web traffic, writes Ajit Narayan, CMO and Program Head at Socxo. 

Brand Advocacy as a marketing solution is gaining traction among businesses large and small. Marketing, Sales and HR are discovering various sub-facets of this solution to gain more favourable traction in a crowded, highly competitive and hustler prone market place. 

However, the one simple solution that fits all is Employee Advocacy. Simply stated, it is the system of engaging your employees and making them ambassadors of your brand. And, more importantly, this is easier to leverage than external stakeholders of your brand like partners, customers, influencers. 

Therefore, this is the first step to getting your chops whetted and working on Brand Advocacy. The other solutions need brand managers to look at identifying and building the fraternity of ambassadors first and then training them on how to make it work as a win-win for both the brand and the advocates. 

As an added benefit, this also enables companies to streamline their employee and internal communications programs to deliver more engagement and promotes employer branding while also helping in building the master brand. 

While social media is often leveraged as the prime medium for employee advocacy, employees may also use other platforms – both online & offline. 

Here are four big reasons why one should start-off with an Employee Advocacy programme: 

It Boosts Employee Engagement 

Employees who are engaged with the brand are more passionate about their work, and their careers, which can give a big boost to your business. Employee advocacy prompts employees to be highly involved with brand content, encourages them to share their ideas, perspectives and has a significant role in improving the employee-employer relationship by inculcating transparency. 

Enabling employees with insight, contribution opportunities, guidelines and valuable content will keep them happier and more engaged, which will improve overall productivity. 

Transforms Employees Into Thought Leaders 

Its most important benefit is to employees themselves. As engagement, employee ambassadors are the key for any organisation to succeed in a crowded marketplace. Although employees may be happy to contribute in promoting your brand, they would also appreciate if it creates value addition for them. 

Through a structured programme, employees can be transformed into true brand advocates and future thought leaders within their walk of life. 

Happier customers 

Existence of every great business or brand is due to a base of happy customers. 

By encouraging your employees to participate in employee advocacy programme, you can improve their engagement to improve their interactions with customers positively. In fact, the fastest way to boost your business is through happy customers. Happier customers are a clear sign of authenticity and establish your brand as trustworthy. 

A Nielsen study cites that 84% of people trust recommendations from friends, family, colleagues over other forms of marketing communications from brands. This reinforces the need for brands for survival in the digital ecosystem. 

Improves Brand Visibility 

With the world rapidly shifting gears towards a digital footprint, sustaining the same is one of the major challenges for every modern marketer. 

With so many companies sharing content, posting, and competing for web space, how does your brand stand out or establish itself as a differentiator? 

Employee advocacy helps brands garner high visibility and to keep their brand name in front of people consistently. 

Your brand and content have a better chance of being seen through people networks instead of just paid promotions. This helps people recognise your brand and develop a sense of trust as your brand content is being shared by people and not self-promoted by the brand. 

With every engaged employee sharing brand content, brands can achieve a surge of greater web traffic. By creating valued & sharable content, prospect leads will be more likely to engage with your brand.

 

Also Read:

SOCXO Solutions bags the Brand Advocacy mandate for Clarion Technologies

Social media is a double-edged sword

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