I have long been interested in the power and importance of developing a strong company culture.
Throughout my career, I always looked for ways to improve the culture at the places I worked. I firmly believed that a happy, engaged and motivated workforce would produce better work.
There are plenty of studies to back up this idea.
But sadly, in each role, I didn’t have the power or authority to make the changes I desired and my recommendations fell on deaf ears.
In fact, that is one of the biggest reasons I started Blue Kite Marketing — I wanted to build a business with the company culture I had always dreamed about. I wanted to create a healthy, positive environment for great people to do meaningful work.
But as I have talked to countless businesses and worked with numerous organizations to build and implement their marketing strategies, I’ve realized that a strong company culture has another benefit too — it also has a dramatic impact on the effectiveness of the company’s marketing efforts.
How Company Culture Impacts Marketing
Not sure what I mean? Here are three very tangible ways corporate culture can make a positive impact on how you market your brand.
1. Culture guides your marketing messaging.
Company culture is how you live out your brand values inside your company. In other words, your employees demonstrate culture in how they think, act and show up to work every day. Essentially, culture is the heartbeat of your brand.
On the other hand, marketing is how you convey your brand message to the rest of the world.
In other words, your branding and marketing efforts should flow from your company’s core values and the culture you created.
Why?
Because your organization’s marketing efforts should be an accurate portrayal of your culture and brand. Otherwise, you risk creating marketing campaigns and efforts that are inconsistent with your values as a business.
Let me give you an example.
We were working with a former client on a marketing campaign, but it was becoming challenging for us to do our job well.
The company culture had become so corrosive. Employees were unhappy and quickly abandoning ship. And slowly, clients were beginning to follow suit.
We could have created another marketing campaign to try to attract more leads. But what good would it have done when the atmosphere was so toxic?
Clients and customers can quickly pick up the mood and atmosphere of a business. If employees are unhappy and the culture is negative, more marketing would have simply shined a light on that.
Essentially, if we had gone through with the campaign, we would have been bringing more people in contact with the business, only for them to realize the company didn’t live up to its brand promise.
That’s why it’s critically important for your branding, culture and marketing efforts to be perfectly aligned.
2. A strong culture makes you a more desirable business partner.
In addition to creating a cohesive brand, a well-defined culture helps you attract clients and customers that buy into your way of doing business.
When your culture is well defined, it makes your marketing messages stronger because it gives prospective customers a better idea of what you believe as a business.
Recently, Fortune Knowledge Group and gyro surveyed 500 executives about the importance of company culture. The results, published in AdWeek, show how company culture has a strong impact on building business relationships:
“The majority of our respondents (60 percent) said that knowing what a company stands for is much more important in choosing a corporate partner than whether it’s innovative (21 percent) or dominates its market (20 percent). And, 81 percent of the executives said that companies that are successful at building long-term relationships make a direct correlation between what they believe in and the way they conduct their business.”
In other words, if a prospective customer knows what you believe and value as a business, he is much more likely to do business with you — even in your values aren’t completely in alignment with his.
In fact, that’s why we just shared our core values and beliefs at Blue Kite. We want people to know what we stand for as a business so people can better determine if we’re a good fit.
And, once you land new customers, a strong culture will help you keep them.
Another study found that companies who have a shared mission, vision and values are nine times more likely to have high customer satisfaction ratings.
Ultimately, people want to know what you stand for as a business, which ultimately leads to a more trusting, stronger relationship.
3. Strong culture creates employee advocates.
It has long been said that a strong culture is one of the best ways to attract and keep top talent at your company.
In fact, studies show that culture matters even more to employees than salary.
That alone is powerful.
But, a strong culture with a happy, engaged workforce also creates a team of advocates for your brand.
In fact, one study shows that highly engaged employees recommended their company more to others than disengaged employees.
When you have happy, motivated employees, they will naturally talk about where they work more.
Ultimately, what this does is multiply your company’s marketing efforts. Instead of relying only on corporate channels to talk about your brand, you have an entire workforce who is happy to spread the word about your business.
This can easily translate to increased awareness for your brand.
Your employees can be the biggest marketing asset for your brand.
Companies simply need to invest some time into training to help turn employees into brand advocates.
You
Can’t Afford to Ignore Company Culture
There are dozens of other reasons to improve the culture at your organization.
But, if you want to improve how you market your business, start by building a stronger culture.
It will make all the difference.
PS — We will be talking more about company culture in the coming weeks. We’ve also got something new in the works that we think you’ll love. Want to be the first to know about it? Subscribe here.
