Four Reasons Why Marketing Teams Should Know All Of Their Colleagues
It’s commonly accepted that marketing teams should be abreast of all of their company’s products, services, mantras and targets, but knowing their colleagues – especially team leaders, interesting characters and inspiring storytellers – is a significantly undervalued asset.
There are four main reasons why those working in a company’s marketing department should make it their business to get to know as many of their colleagues as possible. Firstly, these colleagues can be used for media interviews and marketing materials – if they provide consent, of course. Secondly, this content can very easily be repurposed into internal communications. With this content in hand, images and visual content can be approved across the board, from social media to blog posts and newsletters. Finally, every successful marketer needs to be able to call in a favor every once in a while – making more friends means making more opportunities.
- Interviews and featured employees
Conducting interviews with employees, profiling heads of departments and allowing previously unfeatured members of staff to write guest columns or opinion pieces in your staff newsletters might seem like a lot of work, but if you structure your marketing output accordingly it should not be too difficult to fit in.
It is thought that a less frequent newsletter is more impactful with readers, meaning you can take the time to do your colleagues justice and create engaging and human-centered content that is more likely to be read.
- Improved internal communications
Internal communications are difficult to get right – you’re not trying to sell a product or a service in the same way as you are with external communications – but this more niche market also means that featuring popular and interesting members of the staff body will be even more useful.
If you’re unsure how to tailor internal communications or how to find the right interviewees, find out if your company has a complete organogram. An organogram is a table or chart, quite often kept by HR, which shows the hierarchy of staff members in different departments. These charts should be commonplace in companies that use modern HR software to track and profile staff members, and while there will be certain pieces of information that HR will have to keep from you for data protection reasons, it is worth asking for a redacted copy to help you find useful internal contacts.
- Better images and visual content
Articles with visuals receive almost 100% more views – attracting viewers and directing them to click on links is key to achieving good search engine optimization and generating leads for your business.
Therefore, you should be looking to use all the visual aids that you can on your website. You may be surprised at how many of your colleagues are willing to be ready made case studies or stand-in models for the day, posing with your products or presenting an overview of your services.
- Increased ability to call in favors
Finally, making knowing people your business is a smart move for a marketer. As shown above, calling in favors such as standing in for a photo or being interviewed for a newsletter article can become commonplace, so knowing people personally is a useful asset.
In marketing, meeting deadlines and reacting quickly to market situations is essential, so knowing you have friends within the business to rely on is a reassuring thought. By knowing colleagues from all departments, answers can be found quickly and there will generally be better communication and understanding.
