Imagine an army of people who is consistently, passionately and positively talking and sharing about your business. And the best part is you’re not even paying or coaching them to speak on your behalf.
It all comes naturally to them. A genuine outcome of how they feel, perceive about, and experience your brand - They’re more than happy to put in a good word for you… without any strings attached.
Most commonly, these people are termed as the brand advocates or brand ambassadors, but they also go with the name ‘Brand Evangelists’. These brand evangelists could be your customers, fans, social media followers, friends… or as this post suggests, your team from ‘within’, i.e. your employees!
Yes, who could be your top brand advocates and evangelists, other than your very own employees? As they live and breathe your ‘brand’ and company values for most of their waking hours… they don’t even need to buy or use your product/services like the customers, who when only satisfied with your products puts out a good testimony on your behalf.
It’s estimated that an employee is two times more trusted than a Chief Executive, and some estimates claim that you can increase your social media reach by 100 folds by turning your employees into brand ambassadors.
Below is an infographic from Ciceron which depicts how instrumental employees can be in building trust for an organisation:
What then does it take for employees to turn into your active brand evangelists? Here are three awesome tips to help you in that direction:
1. Nurture A ‘Culture’ of Strong Customer Service, Trust and Fun
There’s no arguing that only a happy employee is willing to talk about his/her work amongst their friends and fans.
Brand advocacy through employees is only possible if you can build an organisational culture that nurtures employees’ growth, establishes high standards of customer service, builds meaningful relationships through trust and ‘fun-loving’ workspaces.
Such company culture breeds passionate employees who love the brand they work for, and can be highly vocal about its products and brand identity, with the customers and social following that are in direct contact with them.
Zappos is one such company who has built a strong culture of brand advocates from its employees by cultivating an organisational culture that lives up to their core family values based on ‘humility’ and ‘humanity’.
The CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh says, “At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff—like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers—will happen naturally on its own. We believe that your company's culture and your company's brand are really just two sides of the same coin.”
2. Communicate That You ‘CARE’
Communication is ‘key’ in establishing the right employee expectations. It’s one thing to value the exceptional employees and the role models by giving a pat on their back, but it takes more than that to truly make them feel important…
A great way to make such ‘employee-value-proposition’ is through Rewards and Recognitions (RnR). For an organisation to turn their employees into ‘brand evangelists’, you need to treat them with rewards and recognitions, which will inevitably be their talking points at social media and gatherings.
The rewards can vary in nature; from perishable valuables, tangible assets and cash rewards to experiential rewards, such as adventure tours, restaurant treats, trips, getaways and attractive health and wellness packages, as these send high signals of ‘appreciation’ and create a lasting memory which they can share with friends and families.
The coffee outlet, Starbucks is another such company which is dedicated to creating brand evangelists out of their employees. An initiation with their UK Employee Programme is providing employees options to obtain qualifications while they work, as well as providing funding opportunities for employees to undertake community projects.
The move was followed by other brands suchas; McDonalds, Marks & Spencer and Birdseye, who also recognised that investing in such staff initiatives is crucial to fuel engagement from within and to nurture ‘employee brand advocacy.’
3. Create Spaces to SHARE
‘Brand Evangelism’ can only flourish on the grounds of ‘authenticity’. A paid professional who does not belong to your team may not sound as authentic or convincing as your internal team members, who go through the ‘thick and thin’ aspects of your business environment every day.
It’s essential to identify employees who already possess the talent and passion to tell good personal stories. You can make it easy for your employees to share their brand experience by encouraging them to use social media, adding ‘share’ buttons on the websites, supplying them with graphics and messages for marketing campaigns, creating a roster for them to write blogs to reflect on their work experience and customer’s feedback and testimonies.
When the culture is bent on encouraging employees to be actively involved to be the ‘faces’ of the company; a sense of ‘belonging’ and ‘ownership’ is achieved, thus driving the brand advocacy from within.
Another great way to expand employee advocacy is to allow the passionate amongst them to venture out and share their thoughts and experiences on external spaces like Medium or LinkedIn.
Finally…
Finding and cultivating ‘Brand Evangelists’ within your employee pool is the most effective way of accentuating your brand image – as they are the real voices who live and breathe your brand and can immediately resonate with your target audience!
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is element7digital.com.au
