Over nearly two decades in the branding industry, I’ve seen way too many highly imaginative marketing departments and ad agencies give it their all to develop and launch impactful sales campaigns, only to see them fall flat in terms of results. Many of those campaigns brought customers through the door as intended, but the increased traffic didn’t convert to the kind of sales that the organization had hoped for. Why? Because after walking through the door, those customers received subpar service from employees and walked straight back out, refusing to spend money with a brand that doesn’t value its customers.
What many marketers seem to forget is that even the most creative, imaginative, or strategic advertising, marketing, or communications campaign can be completely derailed by disengaged employees delivering poor or mediocre service. As I tell my senior leadership clients and the audiences at the conferences where I speak, it is unreasonable to expect disgruntled, disillusioned, or otherwise disengaged employees to deliver the type of customer experience that will convert casual consumers into raving—and paying—fans of the brand.
As the saying goes, your customer experience will never exceed your employee experience. Or, as Sybil F. Stershic, author of Taking Care of The People Who Matter Most reminds us, “The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.” If your organization wants to get a higher ROI on its sales campaigns by improving its customer experience, it will first need to improve its employee experience!
This is where HR enters the equation and why your branding and HR teams should work more closely together in a relationship that I call “Bhranding” (Branding + HR = “Bhranding”).
Why branding and HR should work more closely together
To the untrained eye, HR and branding professionals such as those involved in marketing, advertising, and communications initiatives have little to do with each other. After all, most branding professionals’ priorities revolve around engaging customers, while HR professionals most often deal with matters relating to employees. But, once you take a closer look, you’ll realize that the roles of branding and modern HR are intertwined, with the success of branding professionals being highly dependent on the work done by HR professionals.
As the author and strategist Michelle Smith notes, “Enduring brands are built by people—not ads, clicks or views. Marketing has traditionally taken the lead in communicating the corporate brand promise, but when it comes to delivering on those promises, it’s people from all around the organization who have to do the meticulous work of successfully bringing the brand promise to life.”
When HR does a good job of people engagement by creating a culture where employees are excited about the work that they do and are willing to go the extra mile for customers, marketers’ campaigns are more likely to benefit from the type of enhanced customer experience that leads to increased sales.
Research backs up this idea that engaged employees deliver better customer service. A study by Gallup shows that companies that scored in the top quartile of employee engagement enjoyed 10% higher customer loyalty/engagement than companies in the bottom quartile. These companies with higher levels of employee engagement also benefited from 18% higher productivity related to sales and 23% higher profitability overall.
5 ways marketing and HR can cooperate to boost sales
As a passionate advocate of branding and HR professionals working more closely together, I routinely advise businesses to tear down the walls between their marketing and HR teams and have these two groups work in tandem, rather than in silos, to cocreate programs that benefit the entire organization.
Here are my top five recommendations for joint marketing/HR programs you can implement at your own organization to engage employees and, by extension, improve the ROI on your sales promotions.
1. Internal Campaign Launches
Before launching any customer-facing campaigns, marketing and HR can launch the campaign to employees first, increasing its chances of success. Marketing can preview the campaign to employees and explain the campaign’s branding or sales goals; HR can translate these goals into mindsets, behaviors, and attitudes that employees need to adopt to bring the campaign to life through their interactions with both colleagues and customers. This simple and thoughtful act —which a surprising number of companies skip over—can help employees feel informed, valued, and emotionally connected to the brand, improving the chances that they will support the campaign in any way they can.
2. Sales Training Sessions
Once the campaign is launched internally, marketing and HR can work together to design training sessions for upcoming sales events. During these sessions, the marketing team can work with employees to ensure that they are fully aware of the specific features, benefits, and selling points of campaigns. That way, employees will be equipped to sell the benefits of the products and services being promoted, and confidently answer any queries that customers may have.
As part of these training sessions, HR can clarify how employees’ attitudes, actions, and behaviors contribute to delivering on the promises being made publicly by the sales campaign, improving the probability that employees will not only be aware of the upcoming campaign but will also be engaged and ready to go the extra mile for customers.
3. Employee Recognition Campaigns
When employees are recognized for excelling in their roles, they are more likely to repeat the behaviors they were recognized for. This recognition is also likely to inspire their coworkers to model those behaviors. Employee recognition campaigns can become even more potent when marketing and HR work together to craft them.
By focusing marketing’s expertise in communications, storytelling, and engagement inwards towards employees, and combining it with HR’s understanding of employee performance, marketing and HR can cocreate employee recognition campaigns that spotlight and celebrate employees who live the brand and truly support their organization’s sales campaigns.
4. Brand Storytelling Initiatives
HR teams who are on top of their game often have access to inspiring employee stories of customer service, innovation, and teamwork in one corner of the workplace that never reach the wider organization. Marketing can work with HR to help transform these stories into engaging internal content pieces for the entire organization that benchmark and celebrate the behaviors and traits needed to build the brand and enhance marketing’s sales promotions.
Depending on your company culture and the resources available to you, these content pieces can include employee success stories, customer impact stories, peer recognition features, short-form videos, internal social media posts, digital newsletters, behind-the-scenes content, customer testimonials, and even employee podcasts.
5. ‘Brand Lovepoint’ Development
Great marketing teams understand what customers expect at each brand touchpoint, while great HR teams are able to inspire employees to deliver remarkable customer interactions. By collaborating on workshops, training programs, and internal messaging, marketing and HR can identify the key moments where employees interact with customers. Once those moments have been identified, marketing and HR can work together to improve those experiences, transforming ordinary customer brand touchpoints into what I refer to as “Brand Lovepoints.” These are moments that exceed customer expectations, create emotional connections, and leave customers feeling valued, appreciated, and loyal to the brand. When everyday customer brand touchpoints evolve to become Brand Lovepoints, your chances of increasing sales can rise dramatically!
In summary, the best way for marketing and HR to work together to increase sales is for marketing to help employees understand the brand promise, and for HR to help employees deliver on that promise. When marketing and HR work closely together, organizations stand a much better chance of creating more engaged employees, better customer experiences, and stronger sales results.