7 Steps to Putting Together the Perfect Employee Campaign.

Jan 28 / Sally Acton
We often get asked to work on internal marketing campaigns for clients – this most often a values or culture led campaign, looking to get both understanding and buy-in from the employees. Marketing to your employees is a very important and often overlooked, part of employee engagement, but understanding that a campaign to your employees should be viewed as a marketing campaign is overlooked even more!

Here is Torque’s 7-step approach to getting it right:

Step 1 – Avengers assemble! (Choosing the right team)

To pull off an amazing campaign, you need to have the right team. Few companies have an Employee Experience department (although this is changing), so ideally you need a team that comprises of the following skillsets – HR, Communications, Marketing and Design.

Remember that the campaign needs to land well with your most important customer – your INTERNAL customer, so people with experience with campaigns are key.

Step 2 – What do we want?

Take a look at the situation within the business and assess what is prompting the need for this campaign, do your research and analyse why the campaign is taking place.

Next, take a good look at the desired outcome: What are the goals of the campaign? Are we looking for feedback, a behaviour change, engagement or simply an element of fun?

Once you have defined the outcomes and what success looks like for this campaign and for the business, you can move forward. If the campaign does not speak to a business need, something is missing from the research and analysis phase.

Step 3 – Who are we speaking to?

For me, this is the most critical part of the process. Identifying and understanding who you are going to be speaking to is absolutely essential. Nothing can disengage employees more than feeling like a campaign was only geared towards one part of the organisation.

We often see campaigns launch that are meant to be for the entire organisation, but logistically or culturally exclude staff that are not based at the main offices. This leads to huge divides within an organisation and normally has the opposite effect to what the campaign set out to do.

I suggest writing out a list of the difference employee audiences and considering what you would like them to think, feel and do when they interact with your campaign. This will help you adapt your messaging or thinking for each audience as you progress.

Step 4 – What are we going to say?

Stick to the basics and work off the 5 Ws and an H to make sure you cover all the details

(What, Why, Where, When, Who and How)

Remember to:

  • Keep your messaging clear and concise
  • Inspire and create a connection
  • Tell stories
  • Use multiple mediums
  • Consider using multiple languages

Step 5 – SCT (Strategy, Channel, Tactic)

How you deliver a campaign is often as or more important than what you are saying.

Firstly – can everyone access it? Is it inclusive of all of your front-line employees? What about those in logistics? Can it be accessed on a personal phone? What about their data? Is there printed collateral in many languages? Is there a video or audio option?

This is often where the campaign falls over, in the actual execution and channel selection. If only Head Office has the infrastructure to support the initiative, the campaign will not be successful.

Do not jump into producing materials before the strategy and communication channels are finalised – if needs be, do a survey to find out how your employees would like to be communicated with.

Side note here – if you are running a competition attached to the campaign, then this step is key. You must consider the elements of the ‘what must they do’ very carefully. Does everyone have the same resources to achieve the results or activity required? Is it fair? If you are using teams, are the teams equally skilled, sized and have a similar cultural make-up? If you are offering prizes, make sure that your points or prize allocation follows a strict rubric and that it is auditable, as you would with a consumer competition.

Step 6 – Does it work? (Measurement and Analytics)

You need to include a way to measure the success of the campaign that speaks back to what was outlined in Step 2. A campaign without measurement is basically just setting money on fire.

Step 7 – What is next?

A great campaign does not live in isolation, but rather forms part of your Employee Experience or Internal communications plan. Let your employees know what is next and also allow them to feedback to you about what they enjoyed or did not enjoy on the campaign, this will allow you to do better on the next campaign.

If you are getting stuck or need advice on any of the above, please pop me a message or send me an email and I will assist if I can!