Internal Marketing: What the heck is it and why should I care?
Around technology:
- You want employees to embrace new information technology.
- You want instructors to acquire the skills and motivation to teach online.
- You want far-flung team members to collaborate more effectively across distance.
- You want senior managers to (finally) make friends with their own email.
Around any process or change:
- You want stakeholders to understand and appreciate what you do for them.
- You want board members to make informed decisions about a big challenge.
- You want a newly merged workforce to feel like one team.
- You want everyone on the inside to buy into an important initiative or change.
- You want to know why these things aren't happening as fast or as fully as they should.
- You want solutions that bring about positive change in a timely manner from the inside out.
Internal marketing is the way to get there.
Internal marketing is one of the persuasive arts. It shares traits with both its parent, Just Plain Marketing, and with its dark cousin Propaganda. But internal marketing is an inside job. And it is a good thing. It is the art and science of influencing hearts and minds within an organization. It is the agent of positive change from the inside out.
Internal marketing should provide your people with:
- Information—a clear picture of your story, problem or plan
- Alignment—agreement on it
- Motivation—the desire to see your ideal future come true
...all the elements people need in order to do the invisible part of their job: the part where they act as believers, cheerleaders, strong performers and agents of change. This process involves getting, sustaining and expanding their buy-in up front and holding onto their enthusiastic support for the duration.
Forget customers for a minute—forget patrons, clients, patients, students, whatever you call the people who buy what you sell. Let all the outsiders get along by themselves for the moment while you turn your attention to the men and women on your own team. Without them, you don't really exist as a force in the world. You may have a great product or service, but it's just a limp balloon until you fill it with the breath of all the managers, staff, board members, stockholders, and, if yours is a not-for-profit outfit, volunteers and loyal donors who make things happen for the organization. They are what give your organization its liftoff, its staying power and its push.
They can't do it alone, however. They need to know where they are supposed to be headed. They need to know why. And they need to know how to get there.
Internal marketing ought to operate on more than one front. If done right, it provides information, alignment and motivation at every stage, every level of...
...the organization as a whole
...every aspect of the organization
...every initiative within the whole.
Internal marketing applies to every function, department, campus, program, service, strategy, tactic, and plan. Sounds big. Sounds hard. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't—that depends on how you approach the process. Just remember this: the job is important. As important as any on your plate. It is the tap root of change. Change—for the better—from the inside out.