Trends in Branding and Marketing for 2021 — Employee Advocacy and Purpose Alignment

5/8 — Employee Advocacy, Brand Ambassadors and Purpose Alignment: How to Create a Purpose-driven Brand

This is the fifth of a series of articles in which we discuss three macro trends impacting the world of business, viewed from the lens of branding and marketing, interpreting desk research specifically for 2021. In this article, we discuss the need for Purpose Alignment through Employee Advocacy, for Brands and Marketing in 2021. And how to do it.

Welcome back!

In this series of articles, we offer advice for anyone with a strategic responsibility for marketing, branding, design, or marketing technology – to navigate the playing field and have an impact on the world around you after 2020.

Read the introduction to this series of articles here:

In the second article, we discussed the first two macro trends we consider for this series: uncertainty and current prevailing philosophies or ‘the ideas lying around’. Read article 2 here.

Article three, about the third category of macro trends; the most important technology impacting marketing and branding in 2020 and beyond, can be found here:

In the fourth article, we started tying it all together. What do these three macro trends mean for branding and marketing strategy in 2021?

All of these three trends point very clearly in one direction: the incredibly urgent need to create (more) Purpose-driven brands for success in 2021 and beyond.

Now, how do we create a Purpose-driven brand?

Purpose-driven Marketing: Employee Advocacy and Brand Ambassadors

Here’s a statement that might throw you off a little bit:

“Making your brand Purpose-driven is essentially the same as making your marketing about Employee Advocacy.”

Which, incidentally, is also the starting point for every marketer’s wet dream: employee and customer ambassadorship.

Why is making your brand purpose-driven the same as making your marketing about employee advocacy? Because being a Purpose-driven brand is all about alignment: from company purpose to employee’s ‘Why’; and from employee’s and company mission to customer goals.

Everything you do as a company or organization has to be aligned with what you say your Purpose is. And this alignment starts with the alignment of people and their drives and actions.

Just in case it’s not 100% clear yet at this point: This also means that Employee Advocacy and/or Brand Ambassadorship starts from the inside out; with creating a Purpose-driven brand — starting from HR and Leadership and extending well beyond traditional marketing and branding roles.

Employee Advocacy programs and Brand Ambassador content are merely the (outward) expressions of a Purpose-driven and Purpose-aligned organization.

The Value of Purpose Aligned Branding and Employee Advocacy

Quick recap: Why is Purpose-driven a good thing to be, again? Purpose-driven brands reach up to 300% more growth in revenue, and are able to connect that to higher employee satisfaction.

And what makes Employee Advocacy such a coveted thing? Marketing efforts with a focus on Employee Advocacy are able to garner far more impact in terms of views, engagement, and leads.

Company branded messages reach 561% further when shared by employees versus branded channels. 31% of high-growth firms have a formalized employee advocacy program. (source: Hinge Marketing)

Next to that, almost 86% of employees who participate in an employee advocacy program cite the increased social presence as having a positive impact on their career. As if that weren’t enough, a psychological effect comes in to play when people become a part of these kinds of programs, which makes them feel more connected to the company, intrinsically.

— So employee advocacy is truly a win-win-win solution.

Great. But… Now, how do I do it?

How to create a Purpose-driven Employee Advocacy Program: laying the foundation

Before you start actively using content from employees to strengthen your brand, you need to work on Purpose Alignment from the inside out. Here’s how you lay the foundation in five steps:

1. Team up with leadership and HR, build an internal platform

The first thing you need to to is make your Purpose-driven brand come alive from the inside out. Explain to leadership (Board & Management) what you aim to do, what the benefits are and how they can help. Keep meeting with these internal stakeholders regularly to keep them aligned and on board.

“Only Management can change the system”

- W. Edwards Deming.

2. Unlock inspiration & knowledge

The next thing you must do is to unlock your coworkers’ innate inspiration and knowledge. This refers to knowledge or inspiration around customer needs (market), your brand identity & capabilities, but also knowledge about the necessity and inspiration for great marketing & branding.

Make this a part of your Employee Advocacy/Purpose Alignment kick-off event and internal communications program.

3. Tap into coworkers’ intrinsic inspiration for strengthening your brand

Having your coworkers inspired to do what they can to strengthen your brand, starts from within. It’s in the match between your organization’s DNA and your every individual coworkers’ DNA.

This is something you do in close collaboration with management and HR.

4. Unlock people’s understanding of the value of great marketing content

People need to understand the value and added benefit of marketing/branding activities to want to get on board. Here are few things you can do to get started:

• Regularly name leads/customers/sales that were demonstrably the results of marketing efforts.
• Make sure that marketing, sales and other teams are more aligned by having them literally sit together in a team meeting regularly — although not too regularly.
• Create and share a clear and communicative marketing & sales dashboard — this could be an excel sheet or something much more sophisticated and interactive.

5. Unlock your coworkers’ latent knowledge and inspiration about your field

Often unbeknownst to even themselves, through years of experience in talking to people in a certain industry or field and talking about the same sets of problems, they gain invaluable insights and knowledge.

You can start by unlocking this knowledge by simply interviewing your coworkers. Next to that, create an event to kick everything off and get the energy going — and follow the following ten steps:

Purpose-Aligned Branding with Employee Advocacy: 10 steps

1. Lay the foundation with leadership Lay the foundation with the Board, Management, HR and other departments as laid out in the steps above.
2. Create a kick-off event Create a one-off event and/or more long-term employee advocacy program. Create an event, and make sure you make the following case above anything else: Every single one of your employees has something of value to share about the field that you work in. You just need to unlock it and get it out, and marketing can help.
3. Roll-out internal communication Create and roll-out internal marketing campaigns, getting people excited about using the right brand assets for staying on brand, and/or for contributing to the creation of killer content.
4. Share knowledge and inspiration Use your marketing and branding skills & knowledge to inspire your coworkers about the importance of it.
5. Create templates Use your marketing, branding and design knowledge to create the templates your coworkers need to create content that communicates effectively, looks great and is always on-brand.
6. Use a DAM system A Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform like Lytho is a great place to store these, and to ensure your templates are always used in the exact right way. Templates in a DAM platform are generally a great way to help stay on-brand.
7. Share knowledge Share your knowledge proactively by creating trainings and workshops for your coworkers on how to use templates and create effective content. I once created a blog template & a writing training that together reaped so many great stories me and my whole team were amazed!
8. Check and Edit Be sure to do the final check: have a copywriter check an article written by another coworker; have the graphic marketer do one last check-up on graphic designs, and have the CMO or head of brand chime in on a campaign before it’s launched. Quality matters.
9. Integrate Integrate the content your coworkers create into your existing marketing & branding efforts and campaigns, to ensure maximum visibility and maximum ROI for your coworkers’ efforts. Nothing beats a colleague beaming with pride because his or her blog or video racked up X thousand views or because their whitepaper or webinar got your organization a brilliant lead!
10. Automate Now, once you’ve done all of this, or even just some of it, I’m sure you’ll start seeing results. But to 10X your results and to consolidate them — be sure to be smart and efficient, and automate everything that can be automated.

In the next article in this series, we’ll talk about how to use marketing tech in a way that supports your Purpose-driven brand strategy and Employee Advocacy program.

Purpose-driven Branding for more connection & succes — Especially in 2021

Now more than ever, successful people, organization, and brands have to make an extra effort to connect and stay connected. In order to succeed with that, make your branding and marketing efforts based on Purpose Alignment and Employee Advocacy, especially now in 2021.

Businesses, Marketing and Brands will need to be much more human-centered and Purpose-driven to connect with stakeholders and have a significant positive impact in 2021 and beyond.

Apart from using technology as a multiplier for humanity and an authenthic, human connection, we view the alignment of Corporate Brand with Personal Brand — and thus the alignment of Organization’s missions with indivivual stakeholders’ personal ‘Why’s’ and Values — in other words; Brand Advocacy or Brand Ambassadorship — as paramount to your brand’s success in 2021 and beyond.

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