You tell your customers what makes you great, but does your employees know?

The marketing department's message is critical to the entire company. If you tell your customers what makes you great, but employees don't know and believe in that message, chances for the success are minimal. While companies invest large amount of resources marketing to customers, hardly any attention is given for marketing to their employees. Is it not strange?

Without a compelling communication, the employees are in the dark about the promises made to customers. How, then, can they be expected to deliver on them? And when apart from sales, service representatives, receptionists, design staff etc & everyone else connected to the organization don't deliver as promised, customer starts losing trust.

To have a strong, unbeatable brand, you need employees who understand it & are motivated to live it daily. To develop that workforce, you'll need an employee communication program.

> A clearly articulated brand statement.
Just as you have a single-minded message for marketing to consumers, you must also have a well-defined message for employees. The message, which is impossible to be misinterpreted! Not just vision & mission statements.

> Internal employee communications should be as good as outside marketing efforts.
People today are overwhelmed with communication junk, and your employees are no exception. To communicate effectively with them, forget routine newsletters and easy-to ignore announcements, and think about the same tactics that attract consumers' attention. Think of employees as the market and the brand as the message. Then communicate that message in an engaging, motivating, inspiring way.

Motivating employees to become evangelists should be a goal just as high on the list as motivating customers to choose your product and company. And the benefits go beyond maximizing the brand in the marketplace: when employees care about and believe in the brand, they are motivated to work harder and their loyalty to the company increases.

> HR must be on team.
If every employee is a brand messenger, the type of employee that is hired is critical. What type of experience do customers expect? What type of people does it take to deliver it? Is HR recruiting those types? HR must be sure the employee orientation includes a brand message that let's people know the kind of company they're joining and how they fit into its overall goals.

> Top management play very important role.
Employees take their cues from the top. Policies and procedures certainly let people know what kind of company they're part of, but nothing sends a stronger message than the actions of management. Immediate superiors have great influence on how employees perceive what 's okay and what's not.

> Before you sell to your customers,sell it to employees!
Marketing to potential customers sets the stage for their experience. So it's obvious that before you make that brand promise, you want to have the infrastructure in place to deliver on it. Employee communications are usually an afterthought, if a thought at all, when in fact they should come first.