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EXTEND YOUR BRAND: Turn Your Employees Into Brand Ambassadors

 

Guest Post By: Cyndi Zidell

No matter what type of business you are in, your employees are your greatest assets. They humanize your company. While logos, taglines and marketing campaigns are important to your brand’s success, employees are the brand custodians that are responsible for delivering the brand promise.

To leverage your brand, creatively tap into your employees’ networks – both offline and online. It is a way to reach new markets, generate “buzz”, and put a real face on your business. In today’s world your business needs the human touch integrated with marketing your goods and services in order to succeed.

You will want to develop a healthy, supportive work environment developing enthusiastic, engaged communicators with a good work ethic. To determine Brand Ambassadors from your employee pool, you will want to directly engage them and obtain their input on such matters as: Performance of your business’ core values; customer service delivery – is your company delivering the highest level, and if not obtain their ideas for improvement; engagement of the workforce across all levels of the company or business.

Once you have identified your Brand Ambassadors consider the following areas to make the best use of their talents:

  1. Share the Knowledge. Find an opportunity to connect your employees with your brand. Starbucks CEO Charles Schultz states that, “The (Starbucks) merchant’s success depends on his/her ability to tell a story.”
  2. Build Community. Actively participating in the community in which your business is located enriches your company. Encourage your employees to volunteer and/or participate in team building community events. Collecting food or clothing for needy or displaced persons; promoting spay, neutering and pet adoptions, and fundraising for education or charitable events are some examples.
  3. Seize Every Opportunity to Communicate With Your Employees. Speak honestly with your employees about your business achievements as well as the opportunities and challenges your company faces. When you build a sense that your employees are important to your business, they will be more willing to work to meet your goals.
  4. Encourage Participation. Create a company newsletter or blog and allow employees to contribute, or offer topic suggestions. Identify employees with excellent communications skills to post on your social media sites strictly adhering to the your company’s standards for those types of communications.

A company should strive to create Brand Ambassadors from their employees no matter the size of the organization. When this is achieved, each employee will be positively marketing the company to their individual circles of influence creating larger opportunities for increased sales and profitability. When you find Brand Ambassadors within your company that have made a positive difference to your business’ performance, recognize those employees. Public recognition is an excellent way to encourage your advocates to keep up the good work and a way to inspire others to get involved.

 

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Take Flight With Your Elevator Pitch

Even if you’re good and take the staircase, you’ll want a brief, intriguing “elevator pitch” or branded statement when someone asks, “What do you do?”

Your goal with this elevator pitch as a lead-generation tool, is to leave the person with a clear synopsis of what you do, engaged and asking for more, in “Really, that’s interesting, tell me more…”

Recently, we participated in a networking seminar that touched on refreshing your elevator pitch, and motivated us to take another look to make sure it was adaptable to the setting we were in, relevant and consistently delivered in a genuine fashion.

A few key components your “under 15 seconds long pitch” should address:

  • Describe who you are, and what benefits you offer for your clients or customers: “I enlighten” or “We empower”
  • Describe the market you want to serve, your ideal client specifically: “small businesses” or “small businesses in the Inland Empire” or “lifestyle brands in LA County”
  • Describe what you offer, your unique selling proposition, what makes you different using flavorful but easy to understand words: “graphic design, marketing and brand awareness” or “creative direction, design and core messaging” or “personalized attention, savvy design and brand awareness”
  • Describe a solution or an answer that you can provide or offer – why they might care and what they’ll benefit by working with you: “so you can market your brand with confidence” or “so they can project the best cohesive brand image for building business” or “so they have a visually compelling brand that connects with their audience”

Once you have the key components of your pitch, arrange them into an effective, free-flowing statement along these lines…

“I provide savvy businesses in LA County with creative direction, graphic design and core messaging so they can market their brand with confidence.”

See you in the elevator!