5 reasons why employee advocacy is the next logical step for B2B companies

All progressive B2B companies (ie those selling products, services, solutions and professional services to other companies) who are benefitting from the use of content marketing, inbound marketing, social media marketing and email marketing and are asking the “Where to from here?” question, should be seriously looking at employee advocacy.

If you are not familiar with employee advocacy, there are a number of cloud-based employee advocacy platforms now available which enable brands to extend their marketing messaging through their staff members. The employee advocacy platform serves up content to registered staff members who can then easily share content with their individual networks using email and social media. Employee advocacy platforms such as Dynamic Signal allocate points to registered users, which injects a bit of fun and competitiveness, as users are able to monitor their points and standing on a leaderboard.

Here are the five reasons why companies should be implementing an employee advocacy platform.

1. People trust individuals before brands

Word of mouth marketing still trumps company marketing. People trust people more than a brand. An employee advocacy platform effectively transfers your marketing messages to your employees who share with their personal connections. Besides the trust factor, there is a far greater chance that people will consume content shared by a personal connection. Furthermore, personal connections are far less likely to unsubscribe or unfriend.

2. Extending your reach

Consider an organisation such as IBM, SAP and Deloitte who have implemented employee advocacy platforms and employ tens of thousands of employees. Each post on the platform that is shared by a staff member is multiplied by the following:

• The average number of connections on LinkedIn is 930
• The average number of followers per Twitter user is 208
• The average number of Facebook friends exceeds 100

Assuming you have 1000 active users who are sharing on Linkedin, each post on your employee advocacy platform will reach 930 000 LinkedIn accounts, and each share comes from a known and trusted source.

3. Enabling employees to grow their personal brand

Many organisations encourage their employees to use social media to grow their personal brands. By serving up relevant content to your staff members, you are providing them with value-adding content which they can easily share with their email contacts and social media communities. This process exposes their social media profiles to a large community on a regular basis, thereby building their credibility and the propensity to be seen as a truster adviser and thought leader. Not only will the staff member stay “top-of-mind”, their personal networks will grow and potential clients will contact them should they require information or assistance.

4. Better “bang for buck” for thought leadership

All too often, an organisation’s thought leaders produce good content which is duly published on the organisation’s website and/or blog, shared on social media and with email subscribers, and hopefully, given more exposure through the efforts of your PR company. The fact of the matter that even with all these channels, good content does not reach all of your intended audience. Employee advocacy provides another channel to your market through thousands of personal networks.

5. Social selling

It is a known fact that is it becoming more and more difficult for sales teams to get appointments with busy decision makers, and when they do, they have to make the most of the opportunity. Furthermore, in the initial stages of a sales cycle, potential buyers are not engaging with a sales person yet and are in the research phase of the sales cycle. An employee advocacy platform is ideal for sales teams to connect with and spoon-feed relevant content to potential clients. This enables them to build credibility, be seen as a trusted adviser and stay “top-of-mind” when the prospect is ready to buy.

Here are a number of benefits as explained by employee advocacy provider, Dynamic Signal:

Human Resouces and company culture

Let proud employees endorse your company as a great place to work and help with recruiting. Employees are 27% more optimistic about the company’s future.

Social Selling

Establish and extend relationships with prospects and customers on social media. Drive 11x more content amplification for your company.

Lead Generation

Increase sales leads and conversions having an always on marketing channel, driving 5x website traffic and 25% more leads

Brand Awareness

Humanise your brand and increase awareness through your employee’s authentic voice. Increase brand awareness by 14x

Event promotion

Drive 20% – 50% registrants and attendees to events and webinars with real time sharing

What are your thoughts on employee advocacy? Do you have any personal stories to share? I welcome your feedback.