Getting back to the foundations: How to build brand engagement across your whole organization

Speaking from first hand experience, brand strategy is an area that can be really exciting, enjoyable and rewarding. But it’s not always easy to garner that same level of enthusiasm and passion across your entire organisation. Just because it’s your day job and it’s high on your priority list, it does not mean that others will share this same energy.

Getting buy-in across your entire organization can be a tough challenge requiring time and persistence, particularly if you are a global organization with many different groups. 

Here are some key points to consider to avoid your brand strategy becoming a distant memory across your team once they’re engrossed in their day jobs.

• Connect your brand strategy to your company values
• Share your brand story and translate into your employer branding
• Educate your audience to become advocates 
• Inspire and incentivize, it’s a worthwhile long-term investment 

Consider your brand in relation to your values and how you can measure this across your team. For example at ramarketing, our purpose is to create world-class work, so one of our values is to always be better than yesterday. It’s not just a throwaway comment for us, it’s in every single internal meeting, presentation and built into our development. 

Share your brand story with your team and bring them on the journey with you. The more they understand, the more likely they will engage and get behind it. 

With this education they will become advocates for your brand, and act as true brand ambassadors. When your team is out in the market everyday, spreading a consistent message, this will bring real tangible results in a multitude of ways. Not only will it support conversion, but it will improve customer service and can also improve staff retention rates as they feel inspired to work towards a common goal. 

Incentivize your team too. Celebrate those who live the brand, make it something desirable to work towards and reward them for doing so. It’s a worthwhile investment!

Buy-in comes from belief

If you can give your team a brand strategy to believe in, then the rest should be easy. This is why it’s so important to get them involved at an early stage, before you change anything externally to the market. 

Translating your brand strategy 

So, what do you do once you’ve established your brand foundations? Well, as we’ve hopefully highlighted by now, branding is not just conceptual, it’s strategic, so it’s time to take your brand and translate it into your marketing strategy with a thoughtfully-constructed multi-strand plan of action. 

It’s important to create a strategy that is focused on each audience group, delivering the right message, via the right channel – across the whole buyer journey. 

USERS

MESSAGES

CHANNELS

So often, we have very specific requests “we need to do an ad” or “we need to do more on LinkedIn”, and whilst you certainly may need to do those things in order to get the ROI you are looking for, we need to KNOW they are the right tactics, directed at the right audience with the right message. By investing time to research and strategize upfront, you will see greater returns in the long-term. 

The channel needs to come last. This is often approached in the opposite order, but tactical actions need to be thoughtfully considered and strategically crafted. Jumping to a channel or idea without this grounding or validation simply cannot garner the results you want and need. By devoting time to your brand strategy you can create a roadmap that is underpinned by messaging, differentiation and meaning – and this way you are set up for success.

If you’re confident that your brand strategy is in place and you’re keen to begin implementing some marketing initiatives, look out for the next post in our brand strategy series for some inspiration ‘Strategic marketing initiatives we’re seeing right now’.

Want the whole series on demand? You can watch our brand strategy webinar.