What is Internal Marketing?

While the impact successful marketing can have on company revenue is well known, it is often overlooked as a method of reaching internal employees. Your employees are often the face (and voice) of your organization, interacting directly with customers and prospects. It is difficult for employees to genuinely speak with prospects about the value of your products or services if they do not have a strong relationship with your organization. Think of it this way: would you rather have an employee who enjoys coming to work each day and believes in your organization interacting with your customers and prospects or an employee who feel unvalued and underappreciated?

Internal marketing involves many of the same elements as an external marketing campaign, expect that the audience is your employees rather than your prospects. The process for internal marketing is also similar to the process you would conduct for external marketing. It is important to first of all understand the current state of your employee’s attitudes and mindsets. Conducting a survey of your employees is an important step to understanding areas that need improvement.

After you have this knowledge, you can use the data to drive your strategic plan to improve employee morale and opinions. Additionally, this data will serve as a benchmark by which you can measure the success of your campaign at regular intervals.

Next Steps: Develop a Plan

Once you have an understanding of the areas that need improvement, the next step is to develop a campaign, complete with strategy and tactics. Some tactics you may want to use could include employee newsletters, focus groups, online employee forums or regular CEO presentations. This plan should be developed through collaboration and buy-in of your executive, Human Resources and marketing teams.

Companies that have done this extremely well include Hubspot, who recently published their internal culture document which their co-found spent over 200 hours working on (embedded below), and Zappos, well known for the company culture with an extensive section of their website devoted to their seven core values.  While your company’s culture documentation doesn’t necessarily need to be this extensive, they are good examples to build on.

The Results: Improved Culture as Well as Bottom Line

There are several ways that an internal marketing initiative can improve not only your employee morale, but also your bottom line:

1. Rapport with Employees

Building a positive environment within your organization can yield improved productivity from employees. When employees enjoy coming to work and feel valuable, they are more motivated and productive. In fact, this Forbes article states that “happy employees are more productive employees, which positively affects the bottom line.”

2. Team Unity

It can be difficult to ensure that all employees feel part of a larger team working toward a common goal. This is especially true at larger companies, those with multiple offices and employees across the country or even the globe. By ensuring that all employees are on the same page regarding the organization’s overall goals and strategies, you ensure that they feel more like a team working toward a common goal as opposed to disjointed units. Bonus: Enabling collaboration between departments and office locations also helps to improve your company’s overall communication and innovation processes.

3. Pride in Work and Success

It is important to recognize employees who have gone above and beyond. This shows that you value their contribution, encouraging them to continue to work hard while also encouraging other employees. While you may feel like you have to reward employees with monetary prizes or gifts, sometimes a simple mention in the company newsletter or an email will be enough.

Need help developing an internal marketing plan for your organization? Contact Launch today! Be sure to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook to stay up to date with the latest B2B marketing tips and trends.

Are you wanting to add marketing automation to the mix but don’t have any available internal resources? If so, outsourcing to a marketing automation consultant may be useful. With the recent growth of marketing automation, which is expected to reach 50% market penetration in 2015, there are many companies that claim to have the knowledge and experience to conduct successful marketing automation implementations. Therefore, it is important to look for the following three qualities to ensure that a marketing automation consultant can actually deliver what they promise.

1. Experience With Marketing Automation Software and Marketing

It is essential that the marketing automation consultant you engage with has in-depth experience conducting successful implementations. A track record of successful engagements is one of the most powerful indicators of a company’s likelihood of implementing a successful engagement for your organization.

In addition to experience with marketing automation software specifically, you should ensure that the company has extensive experience with marketing fundamentals, as these are the building blocks to a successful marketing automation campaign. An in-depth understanding of the principles of marketing and experience running successful integrated marketing campaigns increases the likelihood that they can deliver a successful marketing automation campaign for your organization.

2. Focus on Your Needs

Every marketing automation implementation is different, so it is important to find a marketing automation consultant who offers customizable packages that can be adapted to fit your organization’s needs. Whether you are seeking to expand or engage your existing database, every implementation will be different. A one-size-fits-all approach to marketing automation does not consider these differences and will not be able to drive the exceptional results that a customized campaign would.

Additionally, the company you engage with should be committed to giving your organization one-on-one attention and operating as a partner in order to generate exceptional results. By working together collaboratively, you both stand to benefit, as the consultant will have a deeper understanding of your needs and your marketing automation implementation will see successful results.

3. Define a Plan of Action

Another quality to look for is a marketing automation consultant who sets out with a defined plan of action for your campaign. The development of a strategic marketing automation plan is essential for a successful engagement and should cover specific strategies that are important to your organization’s goals.

During the development of this plan, all important parties should be involved, including representatives from both your internal marketing and sales teams. The alignment of these two areas of your organization is important to a successful marketing automation implementation, as both are responsible for aspects of the campaign. Additionally, both of these teams should be included in the ongoing engagement and kept informed of its progress.

By ensuring that a marketing automation consultant has the qualities listed above, you increase the likelihood that your organization’s campaign will drive the needed results. With such a large investment of time and money required to run a marketing automation implementation, it is important to work with a company who will actually deliver on the promised results.

Read more about our marketing automation consulting packages and be sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to stay up to date on the latest marketing tips and trends.

Marketing campaigns require a large investment in terms of cost, effort and reputation, so it is important to think strategically before beginning any marketing activities. Key to this process is the development of an integrated marketing plan, which outlines the strategic goals your company has during a specific time period, the marketing activities that your company will conduct in order to reach these goals, as well as a detailed budget. When building an integrated marketing plan, it is important to answer three questions in order to ensure that your marketing plan focuses on strategic goals, not the tactical implementation.

1. What are Your Goals?

When building an integrated marketing plan, it is important to first take a hard look at your sales (revenue) goals, both long- and short-term. Once you have determined how much revenue you want to generate in a specific time period, then it is time to determine the number of leads you need to generate. Based on previous conversion rates and average deal size, you can determine the amount of leads you will need to reach these goals.

2. How Can You Achieve Them?

Once you have determined your goals as well as the number of leads that you need to generate in order to reach those goals, you will then need to determine the number of leads that each marketing activity will need to generate. By considering all the media you can use to reach those goals, as well as your audience’s likes and preferences, you can develop an effective media plan that will reach your lead generation goals.

3. What are You Going to Spend?

Now you can look at building your budget. Many organizations tend to start at this step and focus only on getting the most activities out of their budget. However, it is important to think strategically first and keep your ultimate goals in mind while building out your budget. Doing so will ensure that your plan will deliver the needed amount of leads.

By taking the time to think strategically when developing your marketing plan, you help to ensure that your campaigns contribute to reaching your organization’s revenue goals while also aligning with your organization’s key messaging. Read more about developing a successful marketing plan in this article.

Need help developing your organization’s integrated marketing plan? Contact Launch today! Be sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to stay up-to-date on the latest marketing tips and trends.

Are you getting the best possible results from your email marketing? Testing several variables (such as timing, subject line, email “from” name) is a great way to find the mix that reaches your audience most effectively.

However, it is important to keep a few best practices in mind when variable testing to ensure the results are valid. Here are our recommendations to make sure you get accurate data you can use to optimize your email campaigns:

Test One Variable at a Time: When it comes to testing emails, it is important that you only test one variable at a time so that you can get an accurate understanding of how the variable affected your email performance. For example, you can test the “from” name of your email, and gain insight into which your audience responds best to by analyzing the open rates. Once you have identified the top performing “from” name, you can apply it to future emails and in the next email test a new variable, for example the subject line. By limiting each test to one variable, you will be able to accurately assess the results of your test and fully understand how simple changes can affect your email performance.

Have a Large Enough Test Group: In order for your test to be accurate, you must have a large enough sample size. For email variable testing, a sample size of 500 is a little on the low side but still a good place to start. The larger your sample size, the more likely your results will be statistically accurate. If you don’t have enough members in your database, the results you may be inaccurate and send your email marketing strategies in the wrong direction.

Randomly Select Members of Your Test Groups: When splitting up your recipient list for variable testing, do so randomly. If using an email marketing platform, it is likely it will have a random list generator function. If, on the other hand, you need to manually select members, make sure you sort them in a way that it is truly random. For example, it is not recommended that you sort by company name or titles, as you are likely to have too many similar contacts in each list. However, if you sort by email address or last name, you are more likely to have a random sample.

Track and Analyze Results: It is important to monitor what variables you have tested and how they have changed your email marketing results. To do this, it is recommended that you keep a log of the variables you have tested for each campaign, the results you saw and any observations you have made along the way. Doing this will help you keep track of what you have tested and provide great insight into what you should test to continuously improve results.

Regular testing is critical, as the industry changes frequently. By following the steps above, you will ensure that your email campaigns are getting the greatest ROI for your marketing team. Read more about email testing in this article.

Need help with your email marketing strategy? Contact Launch today! Be sure to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest B2B marketing tips and tricks.