Online marketing campaigns may be obvious to marketers at one end and to customers at the other, but don’t forget to inform the employees in the middle as well.
Companies are guiding what their employees are doing on line. How about letting employees know what the companies themselves are doing on line?
Many organizations establish social media policies to guide their employees’ use of channels like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, plus blog comments and posts. In most cases, they’re trying to avert legal problems, save face and keep things from getting out of hand when employees take to their devices in search of fame, whether for themselves or the organization.
It doesn’t always occur to them that this goes in both directions. Herewith a cautionary tale.
“We didn’t know about the online promotion.”
We had to wait 10 minutes for a table at a local restaurant, part of a national chain, the other night. In the past, I’ve never had to wait longer than two minutes.
The hostess was in her early 20s, and I asked her how business had been lately.
“It’s been really busy all month long. We’d all rather be busy than idle, but it’s a little bit surprising.”
I mentioned the Facebook page, coupons and offers the company had been promoting to its following of over 60,000 fans.
“Yes, they put a lot of things up there: coupons, special menu items, raves from customers. We all know about the newspaper ads that customers use, but we don’t find out about e-mail and social media promotions until people start bringing the coupons through. We’re like, ‘OMG, they’re doing this promotion or that special?’ We’re glad to be busy, but we don’t always see this coming.”
“You’re an important part of our online marketing strategy.”
This struck me as an oversight. If you’re developing advocates in your online world of customers, shouldn’t you also develop them among your employees? Especially the ones who don’t spend time on your website.
Maybe all you want employees to do is execute: heat up the soup, take the coupons, seat the customers, clean the tables, repeat. If so, then there’s no reason to educate them in what you’re doing on line. At headquarters you can measure customer uptake and response six ways from Tuesday, and refine your offering based on the data alone. So why tax your employees with one more thing to juggle?
But there are easy ways to give your employees a heads-up, like creating a segment for them in your database and pushing notices to them at the time clock. You can apprise them of your online marketing efforts and send the message that they’re an important part of the organization’s online strategy.
Which they are.
Social business goes beyond just the Marketing department, as David Meerman Scott points out. It’s true that your focus on digital marketing, click-through, conversion and data warehousing leads you to sales and customers. Be careful not to become so distracted that you lose sight of the trenches, where your employees win those sales and retain those customers.
