Essay
Internal marketing
Internal marketing is marketing conducted within an organisation to encourage staff’s identification with the brand and improve their customer-oriented behaviour in representing and communicating the brand externally to consumers.
For a brand identity to be communicated consistently and credibly to external stakeholders, it must be understood and correctly enacted by staff.
Reading 17: Internal Marketing
Benefits of internal marketing
It helps to promote a coherent brand identity
It provides a focus for staff’s diverse organisational role and activities
It supports relationship building with customers
It enables staff to feed back information to the organisation and contribute ideas to improve customer-orientation
Reading 17: Internal Marketing
Benefits of internal marketing
A deep understanding of the brand and identification with it within an organisation helps staff to convey a coherent brand identity externally. This is particularly important for service organisations which rely heavily on staff’s behaviour and attitudes for expressing the brand identity.
Having a clear understanding of the organisation’s goals and brand helps staff appreciate how their jobs contribute towards them and provides a unifying focus for staff across different functions within the organisation.
Person-to-person interactions between customers and staff are better able to build relationships and stimulate loyalty than are person-to-organisation interactions.
Frontline staff can be valuable sources of information about consumers and competitors and help organisations to address consumers’ needs more successfully. They can also play a vital role in collecting customer feedback data that can be used to turn customer detractors into promoters of an organisation or brand.