A lot of marketing material talks about branding. Usually, it focuses on things like logos, slogans, catch phrases, symbols, and corporate image. Only rarely do marketers talk about the most important aspect of your corporate brand: your employees.
Yes, it’s cliche to talk about employees being your greatest asset, but they are literally the face of your company to your clients and customers. If your employees don’t project your corporate brand, no amount of marketing symbols and slogans will either.
Most companies seem to understand that employees and how they interact with clientele is important. Bersin & Associates published a study in 2008 that said, world wide, businesses are spending about $58 billion on employee training every year. The service industry, obviously, leads the pack with most in that sector spending as much or more on employee training as they do on marketing and advertising. Every business sector sees heavy investment in training, however.
We’ve all been to the off-site training session. They usually come in one of two flavours: the hotel experience and the business experience. They both are likely held in a hotel ballroom and catered by the facility, but despite this, they’ll offer two distinctly different experiences for the attendees.
In the hotel experience, which is generally the norm, attendees will be greeted by hotel staff wearing hotel uniforms and sitting them down at tables with hotel logos on the tablecloths and napkins. Pens, pads of paper, etc. will have a mixture of hotel and corporate logos on them.
In the business experience, attendees will arrive at the hotel and be greeted by fellow employees, seated at tables with corporate logos on the tablecloths and napkins, receive pens and pads of notepaper with corporate branding on them, and will hear from and be immersed in their company’s brand for the entire experience.
Sound like not much of a difference? Think about this: those employees are attending this training session in order to learn. Teaching them about the company is one thing, but immersing them in it is another. If nearly every aspect of their time at the off-site training session is branded by the company’s imagery and slogans, they’ll be very likely to mentally equate the experience and things they’ve learned with the company itself. This creates an energy that is not easily ignored – an energy that projects to clients.
For many organizations, the strength of the company’s brand rests on the values and behaviors of its leaders and staff. And with ever-shrinking external media budgets to influence the marketplace, employee evangelists have become an essential part of the brand strategy.
So what is the best way to reach your employees? Utilizing corporate training as a brand-building opportunity not only achieves greater bang for the buck, but also a more effective messaging environment. Employee training presents one of the few occasions to reach a captive audience with a singular message.
Making your employees into the flagship of your brand will build that brand faster than any other method.