How to Master Internal Marketing
In-house marketing leaders expend a significant amount of energy managing internal relationships. Typically, that entails making sure other teams—like sales, human resources, and executives—get what they need from your team. While marketers might start the year with visions of goal alignment and cross-departmental collaboration, by Q4 marketing is often stuck back in a cycle of reactive wish fulfillment. Gradually teams drift from strategic plans, begin churning out what is needed to hit departmental and organizational KPIs, and finally burn out as the holiday season approaches. Whether you are currently living this reality or actively trying to avoid it, this blog post shares best practices for re-engaging internal stakeholders and demonstrating the year-round value of marketing collaboration.
Benefits of re-engaging internal stakeholders
Before talking about how to continually emphasize the value of marketing collaboration, let’s run through a few reasons why the effort is so important.
1. Invites actionable feedback
You might be thinking that you already get enough feedback from people who don’t entirely grasp marketing strategy– why would you ask for more? First, proactively showing that you’re ready to listen can be all that’s needed to diffuse a tense dynamic or deepen a positive working relationship. Second, gaining more regular insight into how marketing deliverables are received helps you direct time and resources to the most impactful projects.
For bonus benefit: Some research indicates that asking for ‘advice’ is more powerful than requesting ‘feedback,’ as it invites more future-focused, actionable responses. If you’re feeling bold, try asking another department leader for advice on how your team can work more collaboratively with theirs.
2. Fosters accountability
Department leaders make agreements about how their departments will support each other to achieve company goals. For instance, HR and marketing often have to decide who sends various types of internal comms or how often job openings should get promoted on the company’s social media channels. Getting on the same page can be a challenge, and it’s critical to show how you’re following through. Revisiting these agreements throughout the year can be a key motivator for leaders and teams to keep tasks on track, hit established deadlines, and proactively analyze and report results.
3. Cultivates agility
While checking in more regularly and intentionally with internal stakeholders could seem like extra work or pressure, it actually provides the opposite effect. When marketing leaders create multiple opportunities to assess progress and troubleshoot challenges with other leaders, the entire company adapts more quickly to external changes (e.g., regulatory, sociopolitical) and internal shifts (e.g., product direction, company structure).
“When marketing leaders create opportunities to assess progress and troubleshoot challenges with other leaders, the entire company adapts more quickly to external changes and internal shifts.”
4. Magnifies collaboration successes
If the only time you convene with other department heads is in larger leadership meetings or yearly planning forums, you’re going to miss a lot of opportunities to engender trust, highlight shared wins, and boost morale. Capitalize on the momentum of successful collaboration by recognizing and rewarding the teamwork and time it took to execute challenging inter-team objectives.
Best practices for re-engaging internal stakeholders
Depending on various organizational and team-based factors (e.g., size, scope, goals, resources), stakeholder re-engagement can look different. So, how do you know what’s right for you?
It’s easy to skip basic marketing steps when pivoting from potential customers to existing coworkers, but these four essentials should always be a part of a smart marketing leader’s planning process: product, price, promotion, and place. For each stakeholder or group of stakeholders you hope to interface and strategize with more regularly, answer the following:
1. Product
Determine exactly what you’re bringing to the table to showcase the value of strategic, collaborative marketing. Perhaps you…
- Build a live project tracker,
- Create a presentation template,
- Compile a detailed data report,
- Informally discuss main themes over coffee; email/chat about next steps,
- Provide written materials in advance; use meeting time to go over questions and ideas,
- Review materials in a meeting; send a follow-up survey to gather feedback or advice,
…or any other multitude of alternatives! Key things to consider here include how many stakeholders you’re working with, how often you plan to touch base, and how much time it would take to execute on the selected ‘product’ for each stakeholder.
Bonus best practice: Just like prospects or customers, internal stakeholders (especially SMEs and sales leaders) love to see a tangible ROI. Learn how to illustrate yours.
2. Price
To continue the table metaphor, the price is how much time or effort it will cost the stakeholder to ‘sit at the table’ or participate in your re-engagement efforts. Imagine you were reporting separately to the account management leader and sales leader about the results of a comprehensive sales enablement kit used to promote a major product release to existing and potential new clients. One leader is part-time, works in the office, new to the company and loves digging into analytics. The other is full-time, fully remote, has collaborated with marketing for years, and prefers high-level takeaways.
Given the variations in the two leaders’ involvement, availability, and preferences, you may choose different information delivery methods and feedback gathering tactics to optimize the price (time and effort required of stakeholder) and maximize the impact (value of re-engagement to both leaders/teams).
3. Promotion
Promotion is all about how you get people to show up at the table. It is the answer to the age-old question, what’s in it for me? When working to re-engage internal stakeholders, we recommend being as straightforward, clear, and concise as possible about (a) what you’re hoping to accomplish by interfacing more often and (b) what that interaction would look like.
For help building out (a), see the Benefits section above. For (b), start by transparently describing your offer (or offer options) and their respective ‘price(s)’.
“When working to re-engage internal stakeholders, we recommend being as straightforward, clear, and concise as possible.”
4. Place
The place is the table itself – the infamous ‘room where it happens.’ Place has a distinctly elemental and important function when applied to internal stakeholder re-engagement, as it primarily refers to how you choose to distribute information and facilitate conversation with other leaders and/or teams. For each internal stakeholder, consider these questions as a starting point:
- Where are recordings, dashboards, presentations, or other materials kept—and who has access to those repositories?
- Who gets to provide feedback or advice—and who sees the replies or submissions?
- How much information (if any) shared out by one leader is communicated to the other leader’s team members?
These best practices are tried and true, but keep in mind that they are fallible. Like a resume, your stakeholder engagement approach should be customized to fit the needs and goals of both/all parties participating. Take what works, leave what doesn’t, and as always, let us know how we can help.
