What do Apple, Google, Ikea, Ingersoll Rand and L’Oreal have in common? They have an employer brand that rules the marketing world. Wikipedia defines employer brand as a “term commonly used to describe reputation as an employer, and its value proposition to its employees, as opposed to its more general corporate brand reputation and value proposition to customers”.
Why market the employer brand?
- Establish your culture and flaunt it to attract potential talent.
- Essentially, employer brand marketing communicates the character of a company. While you may have a robust, profitable business in place, empowering/showcasing the people who help in achieving that, makes the world take notice.
- Employer brand marketing helps humanize a company and showcase its character to target groups who are likely prospective customers, employers or stakeholders. If the awareness of your organization is limited to the products or services it offers, then you are perceived as nothing but a logo unit, a building or the products you manufacture. Not a happy place to be in!
- Marketing your employer brand encourages engagement and association with relevant target groups
- Employer brand marketing prompts employees to engage with brands on social media or other non-work platforms and hence increase the reach of your brand to their networks. Recognizing employees and nurturing relationships encourages employees to give back to the brand.
Let’s go through some quick tips on how this can be done. At Inception, we apply our marketing thinking to the challenge of presenting and promoting an employer brand. We spend the time to understand the key aspects of the employer brand and then ideate to create content buckets accordingly. Some of these could include:
- Employee Pride
- Testimonials from employees
- Case studies of employee growth
- Stories of teamwork
- Employee Awards
- Thought Leadership
- Internal employee policies (One must be careful here though as some of this may be confidential information)
- Leader quotes
- Event showcase
- Company goals
- Company vision etc
- Organization Culture
- Fun at work
- Day in a life of…
- Water cooler conversations
- Brand Values
- Examples of values that are encouraged
- Examples of how these have been implemented by the organization and (or) employees
- Values showcased in the making of products
- Values showcased in customer dealings/partnerships
Different topics warrant different treatments. While policies could be showcased in an interesting infographic, leader speak is perhaps better showcased in a video format. The possibilities of using different media formats are limitless; also offering marketers varied possibilities of breaking the monotony and sharing rich content that inform and entertain.
We highly recommend Glassdoor, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook as the platforms to use for employer branding content. One can and should repurpose a content piece to make it platform specific. So, while a video is the way to go on YouTube, an infographic maybe better on LinkedIn. Also, remember to link to your career page where necessary.
Once you have a stellar employer branding strategy in hand it is important to know and tick off everything you should be prepared for. Check this space for updates on the same and to know when you have nailed your employer brand.
