While business promotion is necessary and important, your employees can do the marketing for you, if you give them reason to.
Truly engaged and motivated employees serve as the most informed and influential advertisements for your business. They know the business and they know it well. Having these walking and talking advertisements who promote your products/services to their friends, family and acquaintances – costs you nothing extra than what you are already paying them.
We’ll first talk about how to get employees truly engaged, then what they can do to market your business.
It may seem simple, but listen to their feedback. They may have concerns you need to address or great ideas they bring to the table. Employee participation makes them feel valued and it’s a bonus to your business if one of their ideas succeeds!
Incentivise! We can’t always give employees monetary bonuses (if you can, do it!). There are other ways to motivate staff that can be equally beneficial. Extra time off, flexibility in working hours, attending functions or free product samples. This all leads to more engaged employees.
Make sure your workplace has an inviting culture. Small things go a long way. Encourage communication in your business. Make sure the business owners or senior management greet everyone every day. This makes employees feel comfortable and happy to work for you.
Regularly train and upskill your staff. Keeping work interesting, keeps employees interested. The more your employees understand about your products and services, the more they can promote them.
Ensuring your employees are happy and motivated, makes it extremely easy for them to market your business. Without asking, they may share and follow your social media pages. They will actively spread positive word of mouth about your business. If you’re a car mechanic and their friend’s car needs servicing, they will be sending them straight to you.
Your employees will be proud to wear company branded clothing. This all leads to “free” promotion from them. And if someone asks them a question about your business, they are the best informed to answer!
Unlike traditional forms of (expensive) advertising, your employees could be working for you in and out of hours – and they wouldn’t even know it. The key is to make them happy and motivated enough to do so. And as you can see, it’s not that hard or expensive!
