marketingweeklive | Tick Marketing

Internal Marketing, why bother?

Throughout University, and many modules of different marketing formats, one area that has never been covered, is internal marketing, and the benefit it can have on the both motivation and communication given to your employees. Whilst I agree that external marketing will always have monetary gains, from experience, I believe that this is dependent upon the Industry you are in, and that in some industry’s, especially the heavily manufacturing industry, internal marketing could be as/if not more important.

When I refer to internal marketing, I believe it can be summarised as: an employee motivational tool to effectively satisfy its customers. So it is not just about displaying information about the business, or about news and events that are happening (although they do play an important role), it is about providing your employees with information that will focus their judgments and decisions on customer satisfaction. Having the recognition and therefore the motivation to go beyond your day-to-day duty, could change the perspective a customer has of your organisation. If this can be achieved through simple recognition, and a greater emphasis on pushing key information to your employees, then this should be facilitated within your organisation. As identified by ‘thesocialworkplace’, employee recognition is not just about employee motivation, or working harder, but could also give an increased employee retention, which is now very hard to sustain within the UK’s ‘itchy feet’ culture.

So does your organisation focus heavily on external marketing? Does it not do any marketing at all? Would you, as an employee feel more wanted and valued if you had access to up to date information or are you in a position to offer greater information to your employees? Internal marketing will only create a more informed workforce, and the time and resources to manage such a project, are far smaller than the potential ROI that it could have.

It’s not a complicated topic, but it is one that I think is often overlooked because it is not seen as a physical or monetary gain, and this is a real shame.

James

Ps. I’m as shocked as you are about how serious I was just then. My comical genius will be back soon, but just then, for five minutes, I enjoyed being serious.

Marketing Week Live 2014

The Countdown has begun!

On the 25th and 26th June, I will be attending my first Marketing Week Live exhibition at the Olympia Grand in London. The event has four main conference stages, and this is my real interest and purpose of attending this event. I want to be able to listen to experienced industry experts about a wide range of topics, that could not be heard anywhere else.

There are four conferences happening every hour so choosing which ones to go to has been difficult, however I think that this is my final list:

Wednesday:

10am Creativity in the digital today (David Pemsel, Deputy Chief Executive of the Guardian News and Media)

11am Can responsive web design be engaging (Andrew Towers, Head of product development at the Trainline)

12am Taking the transience out of client-agency relationships ( Dominic Grounsell, Marketing Director at the RSA Group)

1pm Aligning Social and Brand for ROI ( Simon Nicholson, Media Director at Honda Europe)

2pm Putting Innovation at the heart of growth in a cluttered market (Mike Magee, Vice President of Marketing at Mars Chocolate Uk)

3pm 6 Fundamentals of great social media management ( Julia Monro, Head of social media and PR at Pret a Manger)

4pm Brand friend forever (Sarah Mansfield, Uk Media Director for Unilever)

Thursday:

10am Creating power brands to stand out from the crowd (Ed Pilkington, Marketing and Innovation Director at Diageo)

11am Getting the X factor in Mobile (Nick Dutch, Head of digital at Domino’s)

12am Building great client agency relationships (Andy Portsmouth, Vision Express and John Owen, Dare)

1pm Ten latest trends in website and user experience ( Jamers Cherkoff, Course Director at CIM)

2pm Stories aren’t just for kids! (Bernadette Andrietti, VP and Marketing Director at Intel)

3pm Bringing the customer into the boardroom (Amanda Mackenzie, CMO of Aviva)

4pm Engage 6-24 million visitors online per week (Simon Swan, Head of marketing at the Met Office)

If your still with me at this point you’re doing well! But what I hope I have achieved, is a list of conferences that are both relevant to my current situation at Bridgnorth Aluminium (Such as Branding and ROI) as well as visiting talks regards agencies, social media trends etc, as this is where I wish to work in the future. From my perspective, I am most looking forward to the conference regarding client-agency relationships, as I have worked both with and for an agency, so Andy and Johns views will be fascinating.

I will be tweeting throughout the day, and attempting to summarise each talk within the 15 minute breaks in between them, but If I don’t, it’s because I’m drinking Relentless or stressing about where I should be next. All that I can confirm is that I will have a large notepad with me so there will be some comprehensive blogging going on after both days.

This is my first experience of such event and I seriously cannot wait for it to start so if you are interested in my views during the event follow my twitter at: @__jamesellis__ . Also look out for my swanky badge! I wish it didn’t have the Intern bit on it though, what a mistake that was. I could have gotten away with being the marketing director or even the CEO!