By now you must know, Houdini is my idol. He is one magician who did it all, prestidigitation and running his career as a business. This post is going to be a bit on the “educational” mode. But before moving forward, we would like to say that the following article was originally written for managers of a large Manhattan company and their managers and employees. I am including it here because I think it is important to widen one’s idea is of a magician doing business. Houdini was a marketer and a manager of his employees and so can you. Or, if having employees is just not in the cards in these pandemic days, reading this post will hopefully get your thinking about the opportunities presented by partnering up with a business owner in your community who does have employees. You could get this person to consider doing a “magic campaign” with her or his employees. Here now is employee marketing.
First, what do we mean by the term “Employee Marketing?” We are talking about two major things: (1) internal marketing to your employees, and (2) once they are engaged to have them act as ambassadors for your brand when it comes to marketing outreach.
And of course, we bring up the question now: what if you are a solopreneur and do not have any employees? Good question. The response is that you can either give up and decide employee marketing is not for you or push forward and find a partner who does have employees. Another possible move is to get an organization you are a part of, such as a theater company, and get clearance to pitch company’s actors or theater technicians to become a part of the promoting experience. This works the best if the promotion you are doing is beneficial to the theater company’s members.
Regardless of the way you get them, once you have an audience of employees to pitch to, do so with care. The idea is that you are literally working toward getting employees to “buy in” and the more you can get them to do so, the more receptive they will be to help.
So, you have two phases to focus on: (1) get employees engaged, and (2) show them how they can participate in the marketing program.
As you might expect, I have at one time or another, been faced by this challenge. When working with a chain, for which they were the largest in in their industry in terms of locations in Manhattan, NY, I was faced with having to actualize the described two steps. Here is how I did it.
(1) Engaging employees. I did so in person in a room filled with the managers of various locations and did a presentation for them. The idea was that once the managers were convinced to go along, they could in turn talk to the employees at their location. I did use a presentation (you could use PowerPoint or Google Slides etc.) to the managers. I described to them how beneficial it would be for the staff at their locations to get involved with the marketing program. I told them how this could build location morale.
I had materials handed out for them to study which gives them clear cut instructions of what to do with their team. Needless to say, is, that this presentation was in-person, but the same approach can be used with managers being presented to online through an online presentation free software or paid one.
If you do, do an online presentation, be sure to let them know the financial percentage increase they will get (though this is with the corporate model of the organization incentive for managers to earn more if employees sell more). If there is not the built-in financial reward, you can show them how having their team be on board with the marketing campaign, they will in turn have a more motivated staff. This concept works best if the company’s business model is such that the employees getting more customers involved means higher retention for them as well as tips and so on.
Do not forget to get the best email for all the managers. At the finish of your online presentation you can then email them with materials being promised.
This now sets into motion the employees acting on what they have learned from the managers that you trained. You need to track this process to make certain that managers are approaching motivating their team in the best way possible.
If there starts to be a lag in the process, seek out to get the employees, via the managers, to have even more “buy in” such as having them involved in coming up with campaign concepts themselves. This could be made to have more of an incentive for participation if it is maybe a contest with the winner having come up with the marketing campaign concept that makes the most sense.
Hey, you could do this for your magic business, either with employee’s of your own or somebody else’s. You are only limited by what you can see yourself doing. If you can imagine it and can see it happening to you, you will able to take steps forward.