What is internal marketing? Best practices & strategies to try
In today’s fast-paced world, internal marketing has become an integral part of internal communications to promote the company's goals and values to its employees.
Want to download this as a PDF? Get the free guide to Internal Marketing: Top 5 Trends
Internal marketing is the promotion of a company, its goals, product updates, and important announcements to its own employees and staff. The purpose is to increase brand understanding, brand alignment, and help employees feel more engaged with the company.
Internal communication involves methods used within a company to share information, news, and updates with employees, ensuring they are all informed and working together towards common objectives.
On the other hand, internal marketing uses marketing principles to promote a company’s values, culture, and brand identity to employees, building a sense of unity and pride among them. Internal marketing provides an edge in the market by aligning employee values with those of the company, boosting engagement and motivation, and enhancing the company's reputation as a desirable employer.
By adopting examples from marketing strategies and tactics, internal communications teams can create more effective and engaging communication campaigns and communities (around DEI, well-being, recognition, and other work-related topics encouraging employees to express themselves) and other initiatives that resonate with employees and help build a strong company culture.
Internal marketing is often handled by an internal communications team or the human resources team. But, the best strategy is when cross-team collaboration happens across human resources, internal communications, and even IT to ensure the team has the necessary tech tools for internal marketing.
- More creative and engaging communication campaigns lead to higher employee engagement, as employees are more likely to pay attention to and respond positively to messages that are presented in an engaging and memorable way.
- Increased understanding of a company's purpose, goals, values, and strategies. By presenting this information in a clear and compelling way, internal communications teams can help employees feel more connected to the company and understand how their work contributes to its success.
- Improve employee morale and create a more positive work environment by promoting the company's values and goals. When employees feel that their company is invested in their success, they are more likely to feel motivated and engaged in their work.
- Attract and retain top talent, as employees are more likely to be drawn to companies that prioritize their engagement and success.
Top 5 Trends for Internal Marketing
Learn how you can take the best of marketing principles and apply them to your internal communications strategy. Download the free guide.
Best Practice #1: Mobile-First Communications
Mobile-first communication is the future of internal marketing. Originally, mobile first was a term used to talk about designing websites in a way that would ensure they display correctly on mobile devices. Now, it’s not even a question that a vast majority of people are accessing websites via mobile, and now the trend for mobile-first communications is geared towards employees – making sure that employees can login to meetings and participate from anywhere; employees who work on the frontlines, without a computer, can still get company announcements’ and more.
According to a survey by Deloitte, 91% of respondents use their smartphones to access their work email, and 67% use them to access work-related content. With the rise of remote work and the prevalence of mobile devices, it's more important than ever to make sure your internal communications are mobile-friendly. Moreover, in many industries, a significant part of the workforce does not have a desk and mobile is the only way to connect to their company and peers.
To have effective internal marketing, it’s imperative that all employees can receive your messages, no matter their work location or device that they use. Your internal marketing strategy should include a plan for how to distribute mobile-first communications.
For example, LumApps has a mobile app that allows employees to access the platform directly from their mobile device or tablet. You can create a campaign strategy to send updates and information to employees by physical location, work location, or even let them set their own preferences for how, where, and when to receive notifications.
How can LumApps help?
LumApps is a mobile-friendly platform that enables employees to access internal communications from any device, anywhere, at any time. The LumApps mobile app provides a branded, profiled, frictionless, and engaging access to mission-critical information, resources, communities, and business tools. As a result, frontline and mobile workers get simplified and direct access to key information, resources, communities, and apps to do their work and share knowledge and best practices.
Example: how mobile-first communications is being used for internal marketing
In 2018, Idex decided to completely revamp its internal communication platform. Previously available only to support functions and on desktop computers, the purpose of the new intranet solution was to unify all communication for all employees, both in the office and in the field.The mobile application allows employees to access all their documents and the latest company news wherever they are. Learn more about inIDEX.
Best Practice # 2: Video Content
Video is one of the most popular forms of content, and it's becoming increasingly important for internal communication. According to our recent survey, 91% of employees believe there are benefits of accessing video content at work. Video can help to simplify and humanize complex messages, increase engagement, and create a more personal connection with employees.
How can LumApps help with video content?
LumApps allows you to easily share video content with your employees, making it easier to communicate complex messages, embody core values, and increase employee engagement. LumApps allows you to:
- Deliver seamless, searchable, and accessible video messaging to any device: Empower your employee engagement strategy with autonomous video management, including organization, enrichment, access control, distribution with native web and mobile players and analytics, all integrated with your LumApps platform.
- Grow talent with a culture of knowledge sharing: Foster a culture of inclusivity, knowledge-sharing, and employee autonomy with easy-to-use video capabilities baked right into your LumApps platform.
- Secure organizational knowledge and prevent shadow IT: Manage and administer secure and encrypted video, empowering support departments (Comms & HR) and Lines of Business to autonomously, efficiently, and securely manage video without shadow IT risk.
Example: how video content is being used for internal marketing
Instructure, a leading SaaS company in the education sector, needed a streamlined way to connect employees across multiple continents. Instructure created a strategy for streamlined video content management on their LumApps platform for two main use cases:
- Onboarding and Change Management: When a new hire joins the revenue company, they access the Onboarding Community within LumApps and access product-related enablement videos.
- Service Updates: The Instructure services team makes updates to its offerings and processes on a regular basis. These updates are communicated effectively via video, rather than by articles.
Learn more about Instructure’s use case
Best Practice # 3 : Personalization
Personalization is key to creating effective internal communications. According to a survey by SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging. This applies to internal communications as well. By tailoring your messaging to specific employee groups, you can reduce noise, increase engagement and ensure that your message is heard.
How can LumApps help?
LumApps allows you to personalize your internal communications based on user profiles, ensuring that your message is heard by the right people at the right time on the right channels.
LumApps streamlines communication efforts by delivering targeted messaging through multi-channel broadcasts in the tools where your employees work (such as Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, or Slack). It allows you to plan internal marketing campaigns and deliver a personalized employee experience with a deep understanding of employee profiles and relevant information, reducing noise.
Example: how personalization is used in internal marketing
In December 2020, Stellantis launched the first version of their employee experience platform: The Hub, powered by LumApps. But the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to adjust their communication strategy, especially when Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Peugeot merged to create Stellantis. The Hub now needed to serve the purpose of uniting employees behind a new, singular company and enable communities to create a sense of belonging.
The team leaned into personalization to support their internal marketing strategy with decentralized content creation, emphasizing engagement and peer-to-peer interaction, local and regional content displays, language choices, and adjustable notifications for users.
“The Hub is one connected site fully integrated together with LumApps as the platform. That led to a connected experience, seamless common user experience, personalized content which was very new and different to us and we found out to be very important. It has news, tasks and interaction all in one place and it's really easy to collaborate and get work done together as one company.” - Beth Ann Bayus, Global PR and Communication Director at Stellantis
Learn more about The Hub.
Best Practice # 4 : Collaboration
Collaboration is essential for effective internal communication. According to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute, companies that promote collaboration are 5 times more likely to be high-performing. Collaboration helps to break down silos, improve communication, and increase productivity.
How can LumApps help?
LumApps enables collaboration by providing a platform for employees to share ideas, collaborate on projects or practices, and communicate with each other in real-time.
LumApps encourage all employees to easily share their knowledge, expertise, and experiences with their colleagues. Posts, articles, events, and videos are simple to share, promoting a culture of learning and cohesion at every enterprise. From day one, every employee can join a project-, practice-, or topic-related community space and begin contributing.
Example: How internal marketing can increase collaboration
Proximus: Keeping its promise of the best communication experience for its customers and employees
Proximus has a strong sharing culture between entities and currently counts 436 active communities on their LumApps platform: WAP+. As Microsoft Teams is used to collaborate on shared deliverables, WAP+ communities are focused on sharing knowledge, giving support, and creating a sense of belonging. Every employee can take the initiative to start a community, as long as there is a need, a clear objective and interest to manage it.
Best Practice # 5 : Data-Driven Decision Making
Data-driven decision making is becoming increasingly important for internal communication professionals. According to a survey by Forbes, companies that use data-driven decision making are 6% more profitable than those that don't. By using data to track the effectiveness of your internal communications, you can make informed decisions about how to improve them.
How can LumApps help?
LumApps provides analytics and reporting tools that allow you to track the effectiveness of your internal communications, so you can make data-driven decisions about how to improve them.
LumApps enables you to connect platform data with your preferred business intelligence tools (such as Tableau, Qlik, or Microsoft Power BI) to help you make informed decisions and nurture highly targeted and hyper-personalized employee interactions.
Leveraging AI, LumApps synchronizes information from various channels, devices, and applications (such as Microsoft Azure Active Directory, Google Cloud Identity, Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, and more) across the entire business and translates it into a secure, holistic view of each individual employee. This allows you to orchestrate and deliver contextual communications across touchpoints and create tailored experiences along every step of their online journey.
All of this is available in your centralized in-platform custom dashboard for daily employee experience platform engagement monitoring, with advanced segmentation, goals settings, and deep monitoring.
Learn more about how to put your data to work.
Conclusion
Internal marketing trends are constantly evolving, and it's important for internal communication professionals to stay up-to-date on the latest developments. By implementing mobile-first communication, video content, personalization, collaboration, and data-driven decision making, you can create more effective internal communications that engage employees and drive business success. LumApps provides a comprehensive platform that can help you implement these trends in your company, enabling you to communicate more effectively with your employees and improve overall performance.
LumApps specializes in providing the systems necessary to keep employees thriving and engaged, regardless of their role, location, language, and device. Book a demo with our team to learn more about how Internal Communications and HR leaders can use LumApps to build a truly supportive enterprise.
Top 5 Trends for Internal Marketing
Learn how you can take the best of marketing principles and apply them to your internal communications strategy. Download the free guide.
We would love to know more about your goals. How can we help?
