Employees are prepared to act as brand ambassadors

By involving the work force, you empower them

ITH apologies to author Sherrilyn Kenyon, “If your employees love you, set them free – and reap the rewards of free advertising and brand advocacy”.

Given what I see on a daily basis at HaveYouHeard, the majority of South African companies are loathe to use one of the most powerful weapons at their disposal when it comes to word-of-mouth and advocacy marketing.

Employees make for very effective brand ambassadors and influencers, and the really good marketers know this and will add their fire-power to the brand building arsenal, particularly as trust in traditional communication is dropping significantly.

Nielsen recently reported that trust in personal recommendations is as high as 92 percent while trust in consumer opinions posted online is at 70 percent.

Contrast this with advertising messages in the form of TV advertising, radio spots and billboards, for example. Here, trust figures are all below 60 percent with the highest amount of trust placed in branded websites (58 percent) and the lowest in SMS ads on mobile phones (29 percent).

Other research highlights that the credibility of an employee is twice that of the CEO of the same company. It makes sense within a world where consumers are bombarded with advertising and messaging that they don’t trust, we marketers (and CEOs) should look to using our own personnel, those members of the public with existing and very individual networks where trust is already established.

It’s happening anyway. Some 50 percent of employees post company-related content on social media from time to time, 39 percent have shared praise or positive comments online, 16 percent have shared criticism or negative comments online, and 14 percent have posted something about their employer they wish they hadn’t. Still not convinced? Consider this: 72 percent of employees have recommended their employer company’s product or services, 68 percent have recommended the company as a place to work, 63 percent have made positive comments about the company and its products where others could see them, a full 60 percent have defended

Wthe company or its products to friends and family while 54 percent did so where others could read it and 52 percent voted for the company in a poll or a contest. It’s quite clear – employees are prepared to act as brand ambassadors. By involving your employees in generating brand advocacy, you empower them and make them equally accountable for the success of various business elements within your company. This sort of empowerment should naturally increase the quality of work and service produced, as employees feel responsible for the effect of their output.

Further, by allowing your employees to be active on social media, sharing their experiences as well as information from the company, the public sees a strong, positive company cul-

Ignite brand loyalty from within the company

ture. Logically, potential customers are then most likely to share the same attitude towards your brand as your employees do.

An added benefit of encouraging employees to act as brand ambassadors is that they tend to ensure management or leadership of the company becomes accountable, and doesn’t just pay lip-service to the word.

Keeping employees motivated, enthusiastic and happy is a neverending challenge for businesses; a disgruntled employee always has the option of aggressively spreading negative word-of-mouth. But, when a company treats their team fairly, this scenario shouldn’t arise; and the benefits of having the majority of your team advocating your brand far outweigh the slight possibility of one bad-mouther.

But there is a challenge that needs to be overcome to ensure a successful brand advocacy programme. The key problem is that as many as 63 percent of employees can’t explain what their companies do, nor what their goals are, while 71 percent of employees report that they are not being communicated to sufficiently by senior leadership.

Steps to take when encouraging employee engagement include:

1. Identify who are the influencers within your company.

2. Identify who has the ability to spread the most word-of-mouth.

3. Do not force advocacy, rather make it fun and reward activity (not necessarily financially).

4. Train and up skill your team – make it easy for them to be great.

5. Develop guidelines of what can be said and what can’t be said; give them boundaries and references, outline clear expectations.

6. Ask for input (areas of improvement, suggestions of ways of working, etc).

7. Serve your team with content, experiences and information in a way that makes them want to share it. So, just as you develop content for your consumers, do the same for your team.

8. Track and measure KPIs (sentiment, actions, leads, etc).

9. Frequently follow up, adjusting measurement and goals as the programme develops.

Several case studies show that utilising employees as brand ambassadors has positively benefited the company. Dell’s Social Media & Communities University used it to combat negative online commentary. This has decreased by 30 percent since the programme’s inception with 25 000 conversations about the company taking place every day.

At BestBuy, a chain selling predominantly electrical, electronic and related goods, retail staff are allowed to interact and engage with customer queries on Twitter. Consequently, customers are being attended to within minutes as opposed to simply within the hour. In addition, call centre and dedicated customer service staff teams have been cut to a minimum.

But engaging interaction on social media by customers, too, can also reap rewards. TomTom’s online forum handled 20 000 cases in its first month and saved the fir m $150 000 and Best Buy says its 600 000 users save it $5 million in advertising spend annually by recommending the chain or the products it stocks.

Get your team more involved with company culture, decisions and content generation to ignite brand loyalty from within the company. Reward employees for decisions they have made and seen through. They’ll soon associate these positive outcomes with their efforts, and repeat the behaviour to the benefit of your brand.

Stewart is managing director of HaveYouHeard