Eleven Ways to Use Employee Created Content to Grow Your Customer Relationships
Employee Created Content (ECC) is the emerging marketing trend that many marketers are beginning to deploy as part of an integrated marketing mix. This robust approach unlocks the relationship value of an organization’s most valuable asset, its people. Your employees are the ones nearest to your customers and know the most about them. All the smart marketing systems, AI, Deep Learning and Neural Networks combined can’t match the personalization of a single employee’s direct interactions. Simply put, if you want to maximize personalized marketing, Employee Created Content is for you.
Here is a sample of ways that ECC can bolster your current marketing efforts:
Scale
Whether you have one employee or one million, ECC provides an unmatched scale for your marketing efforts. Distributed content creation provides from 10-100X the reach of corporate marketing alone for current Photofy Partners.
Localization
Content created by local employees adds local relevance to broader marketing initiatives. Back to School is a key drive period for retailers, specific dates, schools, and events bring it to life for individual communities.
Search Optimization
Geo-driven ads are a great way to reach people with local search and interest targeting. ECC adds relevancy to advertising while expanding the footprint beyond brand channels. Original content, not just resharing pre-packaged brand media, build local search strength and brings branded content in line with the shopper’s journey.
Channel Relevance
Facebook, Amazon, and Google dominate digital ad spending but people spend a ton of time and attention on many other channels including ones not visible to tracking or within the marketer’s view. Employees naturally share content where they participate and get traction. ECC provides not only invited access to these channels but also insights about media mix beyond crowded and noisy traditional digital channels.
Creativity
None of us is as creative as all of us. Community content offers inspiration and motivation to all members of the group along with providing a massive library of creative ideas for all to use and build upon.
Brand Consistency
In al likelihood, employees are ALREADY creating content. One recent Instagram search of a national beauty salon revealed over a half-million brand tagged images from its franchises across the country. The content was pretty good but imagine the impact with simple brand tools and templates. Furthermore, providing a toolkit, training, and guidelines creates brand standards and a process for control and compliance, not to mention visibility. With a content library in place, you can monitor and curate employee-generated content (EGC) to ensure it meets your standards for quality and messaging before promoting it on your channels.a content library
Employee Engagement
Every engaged organization seeks to involve its employees in all aspects of its business and empowers them to take action to delight customers. Most frontline employees are fantastic marketers. Every day they connect with customers, solve problems and personalize shopping experiences. Content creation is a natural extension of their job description.
“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.”
– Peter Drucker
Marketing Efficiency
In the ever-increasing arms race of digital marketing, the old ways of doing things are not keeping up with the demands and expectations of today’s shoppers. Fresh, original and personalized content is not only critical to their journey, but relevance also wanes quickly without it. Marketers MUST find new ways to expand their productivity to keep up and automation while helpful, is not the complete answer. Empowering engaged employees to help is a huge competitive advantage.
Private Channel Access
So much attention today is inaccessible to marketers. Text groups, private channels, and settings exclude brand participation for good reason. Every opportunity to connect with a shopper should NOT be taken. ECC offers access to the value addition of personal relevancy. The best brand advocate is a friend or family member, not an influencer with no real brand connection.
Language
In a global marketplace, language nuances, slang, and local norms are virtually impossible for marketers and systems to get right at scale. Employee Created Content doesn’t have this problem as it is fashioned by people with a first-person understanding of your audience, tone and context.
Fun
Many employees are proud of their career and company. Easy to use content tools help them express themselves in creative ways while building an overall brand community footprint. Who doesn’t like being part of the process instead of a cog in the machine?
