Change Management is all about getting buy-in on your initiative: from leadership throughout all the levels of the company. If there’s no buy-in and no trust in your initiative, you might as well quit right away. Very often we think about reaching out and marketing to your external clients, but have you given any thought on how to market to your internal clients, your employees?
Marketing and Change Management go hand in hand with your change initiatives. Why? Because it’s going to give you visibility on your project and help you gain that very precious buy-in. The definition of marketing itself is all about promotion. And in this case it’s promotion of your initiative, creating buzz and a positive atmosphere around your change plans. Your implementation will stay top of mind and thus will have more chance of succeeding.
In this post I’ll show you the negative impact of not having any marketing initiatives within your company. And I’ll give away some valuable marketing actions you can start to turn your change initiative into a guaranteed success, with the full support of the majority of your employees.
Effort in the marketing campaign
We are all bombarded with ads and content everyday. So if you want your change initiative to stay top of mind, you’ll probably have to put in more effort rather than only sending out a boring email to your employees. Believe me, throughout my career I have seen companies that have invested heavily in serious marketing efforts that contributed highly to the adoption and the change initiative. Other companies that didn’t see the value of such actions and disregarded our comments, had to deal with the consequences a couple of months later.
Still not convinced? Let’s see what change management would look like without marketing? Your initiative would have no face, no mascot, no logo, no motto, no catchy sentence, no posters in the coffee area, no branded mugs, anti-stress balls and mouse pads. There would actually be no brand at all. There would be no visuals reminding your employees of the change you’re fighting to bring in. There would be no buzz, no noise, no excitement. Everything needed to create momentum would be absent.
You really need that excitement and momentum to get better results. It’s a rational decision to make marketing investments in your change initiative to ensure you get a higher success rate!
Of course not all marketing initiatives might make sense to you, but here are a couple of things you should definitely think of:
Brand the initiative- make it fun!
Branding is all about giving a face to your change initiative. Pick a logo, a color code, something visual to make the eye recognise that an email, event or gadget is referring to your change initiative. Let your employees come up with the ideas as involving them in the change is the first big step into making your change management initiative thrive. Develop a creative concept and brand that reflects your change pitch, that connects to business goals and adds an element of fun.
The funner the branding, the better! Why? Because the brain has more mindspace to learn when the environment is positive and fun: exactly what you need to bring change.
Choose the right channel for the right audience
There is no such thing as over-communication, especially when it comes to change. When organising your communication strategy, keep in mind that people communicate differently: some prefer to read a short email, others prefer to watch a short video. Make sure that you’re reaching out to all the different audiences with the appropriate channel. In addition, posters and brochures are also a good idea to make your initiative visual and more appealing, especially to those creative people in your company.
Reward
I think reward is part of change management and marketing as it needs to be communicated clearly and appeal to the right audience. Compensation for participation, for involvement will help you kick in some motivation. Specially when change management gets hard and takes your employees out of their comfort zone.
A great example was from my former job where they wanted a new sales methodology to stick. My client asked a number of small exercises to be done and submitted over the months to the sales director. The employee that submitted all the exercises and had the best mark got a voucher for a weekend away- all expenses paid- with his family. It was such a great motivation, specially for high competitive salespeople, that the change management was a success and so was the contest.
Get your team onboard
Bottom line is that change management has become the new marketing capability. The millennial marketing team will need to adapt as change becomes more and more recurring. If your employees have the right setting in their work environment for your initiative and if you manage to get them excited about the change, it will enable them to embrace the change easier and faster.
At Devoteam G Cloud, as a premier Google Cloud partner, we are specialised in change management and transforming companies large and small into future-proof workplaces. For that, we use Google Cloud solutions like G Suite as well as a proven implementation strategy and execution. But Digital Transformation is not about technology alone: with our change management efforts we make sure the transformation really takes place and sticks for everyone.
Contact us now, we’d be delighted to have a chat about your needs and map the possibilities of G Suite & Google Cloud for your company. We’re curious to hear about your projects and to see how we can help!