Are you including your staff in your marketing budget?

Which employee do you think is more valuable for a company, one who loves the company and the products or one who doesn’t but with good luck manages to pretend to?

Do you hire people who love your brand and products or do you find that irrelevant if they have the right skillset? If it is the former, how many still do when leaving the company?

Hiring people who speak for your company, keep your customers happy and coming back, and help create positive headlines are worth more than any marketing campaign. However, they are a marketing campaign and one that is well worth budgeting for.

A designer who can relate to the customer and wants the end user to be happy will do anything to make the design as user-friendly as possible. They will create something they would be happy using. Someone might be a great designer, but if they don’t care, how can they create something truly valuable? You will want them to want a good experience for your customers and without that, there won’t be good results for your company.

Every employee that goes home (literally or not) at the end of the day is spreading a message, and if that message to their families and friends is that they hate their work and workplace, that can’t create too many potential customers from those people, can it? They also won’t recommend any good potential employees to you, meaning that you will most likely spend more time and money sourcing them.

If the people who were your customers, because they loved the brand and products, apply for work and then see a whole different side of the coin, you don’t only lose employees. You lose customers too.

“I am convinced that companies should put staff first, customers second and shareholders third - ultimately that's in the best interest of customers and shareholders.”

-Richard Branson

An employee who lights up when they talk about your products and goes the extra mile to convince potential customers to see what they see in it, is an investment. An employee who can’t be bothered to care and only works for the paycheck is an absolute waste of money. Regardless how little you pay them. They are very unlikely to bring you any real long-term value and can in the worst case cost you more money than they’ll ever generate. They are a real PR risk and a probable cause for disastrous customer reviews.

The way the staff is treated can make them your fans or do the opposite. Making them bigger fans than they were when they came in is a good business decision. Instead of spending insane amounts on marketing campaigns while ignoring the people who were already won over, it might be better value for money to take care of the staff who will do a lot of the work for you as well as help to retain the customers who have already found you.

Next time when shopping for staff rewards, instead of asking how much it will cost you, it is worth considering how many of your employees it’ll make happier and staying in the company.