Okay…I agree the idea of marketing to employees is exactly intuitive to most people. But if you stop and think about it, we should be doing this.
Why? Because the cost of hiring and training employees is VERY expensive. Sure, it would be great if our employees were simply grateful for the fact that we employee them and treat them fairly or better…. But the truth is that often isn’t enough to retain our best people.
Let’s put some numbers to this. Many experts suggest that the cost to train a new employee is 20% of their annual salary. This can include any hard costs for training but also soft costs including a manager’s time to train, the cost of mistakes/errors…. Plus, if you use any type of employment agency/recruiter you can easily spend another 20% of salary just to find and hire a new employee. So if you have a $40,000 position, you could be easily spending $8,000-$16,000 to hire and train that person. For most small and medium size businesses, I would venture a guess that they aren’t spending 10%-20% of that amount on “marketing” their employees. I’d rather spend $1,000-$2,000 a year lavishing fun things on my staff than training a new hire…what about you?
While the marketing I am referring to isn’t the same thing as the marketing we would do for customers and prospects so of the concepts and items we might use are the same. For instance, promotional products, with our company logo can be used as part of our employee marketing efforts. Promotional products are very popular because of the usefulness of the item. Logo apparel is another product that can be used with staff.
Were are the opportunities to marketing to our staff? At annual reviews or anniversaries don’t just give feedback and pay raises…also give a gift. At company meetings don’t just train or lecture, give a promotional product to everyone that they can use at the office or at home…it can help build pride for their company (and it gives the business marketing exposure). At holiday parties think about a gift that the spouse or family might appreciate. Your employees spend a lot of time and energy at work and being thoughtful to the family members is good employee marketing!
Finally, service awards is another important employee marketing aspect. What happens with your staff when they have worked at your business for 90 days, 1 year, 3 three years, five years, ten years, etc.?
