DO THINGS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Marketing is undergoing a transformation in 2019 that is set to be one of the biggest seismic changes we’ve seen since social media first landed. In the last two years, the social landscape has been shifting to people communicating on dark social, directly one-to-one on their private messaging apps.

As more consumers transition to this private networking, brands are waking up to the reality that they can’t continue to run their digital marketing as they have been. At Qubist, we are hearing from more and more businesses as they seek to evolve new engagement strategies that allow them to reach and engage customers and crucially to track conversations and links on these messaging apps.

The stats on messaging app usage is compelling - messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct Message now have more than 5 billion monthly active users worldwide according to HubSpot.

If you want your messaging to be heard on social in the coming year, you have to start to do things differently. At Qubist, we have 20 years experience as content marketers and social media consultants before we built the Qubist employee advocacy app. Employees are now a powerful influential group and, when empowered with the right advocacy tech tool, will drive personal and relevant engagement with customers that you can measure.

Take a look at the #LifeatSky hashtag and you’ll see a very active feed with employees busily tweeting across a huge range of topics from volunteering at beach cleans and women sharing their experiences on the Engineer Training Programme to snapshots of workplace gardens, teams attending award dinners and updates from presenters and correspondents such as Kay Burley, Sarah Jane Mee and Beth Rigby.

What comes across is authentic enthusiasm from staff who have been empowered to share their experiences and tell their own stories in a natural way through an employee advocacy programme. #LifeatSky reflects Sky’s vision and values and, importantly, its trust in its colleagues to speak for themselves with passion and integrity.

We are often asked, will employees want to share brand content to their own personal networks?

Having successfully guided global companies through this process to roll out their employee advocacy programmes, below we look at the key reasons your staff will want to get on board and share your content in the long-term.

Paid advertising is suffering huge spending cuts as marketers question its relevance and effectiveness for today’s consumer. P&G has cut its agency spend by $750m in the past three years and plans to increase that figure to $1.2bn by 2021.

The exponential rise in ad blockers demonstrates consumers are voting with their feet to experience content in ad-free environments. In an age of transparency and fake news, mass advertising feels ham-fisted and just doesn’t cut it any more. To compound this, paid costs are rising sharply as platforms reach maximum ad load. Facebook CPMs increased by 171% during the first half of 2017 alone according to adstage.

Employee advocacy has gained traction for CMOs as a more direct approach to consumers, which delivers stronger ROI. Below we take a look at how it delivers on the bottom line.

This is one of the most frequent questions we get asked from clients starting an employee advocacy programme. The good news is there is a minimum of resource and time needed to create content that is effective and there is a huge amount of existing content you’ll be able to use for your employees to get going. Sound good? Let’s get started.

A significant amount of content relevant to employee advocates can be sourced from existing content that can be re-used in your programme, whether you want to use it to drive your marketing strategy or for talent acquisition.

If your company’s employees are already sharing brand content organically, it’s a great indicator of a good cultural fit for a more structured advocacy programme in your company. The value in rolling out a formal programme is to use the tech and methodology that sits behind it to scale up, measure results and build a sustainable approach.

Candidates are 40% more likely to put in an application if they are familiar with the company brand according to a recent Glassdoor report, so for talent acquisition getting an employee advocacy programme in place will have huge benefits. Here are some reasons to get started from Qubist’s experience working with the UK’s leading brands.

Don't miss out next week on our live webinar with Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter and best-selling author and Andrew Seel, CEO at Qubist to discuss how to build the business case for employee advocacy. 

Leading brands such as Dell, Mastercard, General Electric, ASOS, Sky, Unilever, L'Oréal and Benefit Cosmetics are embracing employee advocacy to gain a competitive advantage. Find out more at the live webinar ‘Employee advocacy and influence: why now is the time to empower your team’ takes place on 3 May 2018, 4pm (BST), 8am (PT).  If you can't make it on the day, sign up and we'll send you a recording straight after.