Your employees are your most valuable asset when it comes to building and promoting your brand. They are the ones who interact with your customers, represent your values, and share your story. But how do you train them to be effective and authentic brand advocates? In this article, we will share some tips and strategies to help you empower your employees to become ambassadors of your brand.
The first step to train your employees to be brand advocates is to clearly define your brand identity . Your brand identity is the sum of your vision, mission, values, personality, voice, and visual elements. It is what makes your brand unique and memorable. You need to communicate your brand identity to your employees and make sure they understand and align with it. You can use tools like brand guidelines, workshops, stories, and feedback to help your employees internalize your brand identity and express it consistently.
?? How do you ensure your employees are brand advocates? Culture! Culture! Culture! You need to ensure you have the following and every employee clearly understand each point below. 1) Vision 2) Purpose 3) Mission 4) Values 5) OKRs 6) How 1 through 5 are connected to one another You also need continual, frequent communications connected with what you do every week, month, quarter and year to items 1 to 5. It's about walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Your employees should be the most passionate and persuasive story tellers about your company. In particular, they should all be able to answer the WHY? Why do we exist? Look up Simon Sinek and the Golden Circle - Always start with WHY? #leadership #marketing #brand
Proper induction and continuous involvement in the company’s day to day activities and in executing the overall plans to achieve the company’s vision, mission and potential.
Your employees are already your brand ambassadors. Think of your employee as your customer. Each employee is unique, their needs, their skillsets, their vision for their career. So first of all “Hire Right” hire the talent whose vision matches with the opportunities you are providing. Then “Mentor right” you have to be constantly on your toes to ensure that their talent is being rightly utilised and they are being pushed to expand their boundaries. You’ll see how quickly they’ll turn into your greatest ambassadors.
The second step to train your employees to be brand advocates is to encourage employee engagement. Employee engagement is the degree of commitment, passion, and loyalty that your employees have towards your brand. Engaged employees are more likely to be satisfied, productive, and motivated to support your brand. You can foster employee engagement by creating a positive and supportive work culture, recognizing and rewarding your employees, providing opportunities for growth and development, and soliciting their feedback and ideas.
Get them involved! Help them to understand the brand through fun, interactive activities that show them why branding is so important for a company as a whole. I'm talking quizzes, pictionary, whose that brand - anything that helps them to see the impact. For example, one of my favourite activities is getting up logos without the name and asking people to guess who they are - you'd be surprised how many people instinctively know a brand. Once they see the importance (i.e. like an Apple or a KFC), they'll be able to see how it can benefit the company!
Building brand advocates from within the organization is no joke. But with a solid plan in place, it can be done! First, figure out what makes people go gaga for the brand. Then, focus on building relationships with employees. Inspiring and surprising employees by exceeding their expectations is also crucial. Having a solid content distribution plan is key. By providing different support options, offering dedicated paid time off for volunteering, and partnering with employee resource groups, more employees can be involved in the advocacy program. With these steps in place, a community of brand advocates can be built that would make any company jealous!
The third step to train your employees to be brand advocates is to provide social media training. Social media is a powerful platform for your employees to share their experiences, insights, and opinions about your brand with their networks. However, you need to ensure that your employees are aware of the best practices, policies, and guidelines for using social media as brand advocates. You can provide social media training by offering workshops, webinars, manuals, or online courses that cover topics like content creation, storytelling, hashtags, tone, etiquette, and analytics.
I believe that one of the keys to engaging people in workshops is to keep them unconventional. By breaking away from traditional workshop formats and incorporating unique and compelling exercises, you can challenge participants and help them feel bolder, ready, and willing to face new challenges.
The fourth step to train your employees to be brand advocates is to equip them with resources. Resources are the tools, materials, and information that your employees need to create and share engaging and relevant content about your brand. You can equip your employees with resources by creating a content library, a brand kit, a blog, a newsletter, or a podcast that they can access and use. You can also provide them with incentives, rewards, or gamification systems that motivate them to participate and contribute.
The fifth step to train your employees to be brand advocates is to monitor and measure your results. Monitoring and measuring your results is essential to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of your employee advocacy program. You can monitor and measure your results by using tools like surveys, feedback forms, social media analytics, or employee advocacy platforms that track metrics like reach, engagement, conversions, leads, and sales. You can also use these tools to identify areas of improvement, best practices, and success stories.
The final step to train your employees to be brand advocates is to celebrate and appreciate them. Celebrating and appreciating your employees is a way of showing them that you value their efforts, contributions, and achievements. You can celebrate and appreciate your employees by highlighting their stories, testimonials, or reviews on your website, social media, or newsletter. You can also thank them personally, publicly, or with rewards like gift cards, vouchers, or experiences.