Employee Advocacy is the it-trend in marketing right now.
It’s an awareness strategy that’s become impossible to ignore.
(well, awareness, sales, talent attraction… I digress)
So much so that Gartner predicted that 90% of B2B organizations will incorporate employee advocacy into their marketing strategies by 2023.
And yet, many are still trying to leverage employee advocacy without a tool in place.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing! 👏
It’s great to see so many people making the first steps to success!
However, if you want to scale this and drive maximum results…
You’re going to need an employee advocacy tool 💪
Here’s why:
Jump to:
Analytics
Without a doubt…
This is the most important one.
If there’s one thing every marketer cares about, it’s attribution.
Without an employee advocacy tool with an analytics function, you’ll never be able to see (or prove) the impact of your and your employees’ efforts.
Seeing how your program performs will also help you refine your strategy. For example, if you saw that a particular employee was generating heaps of engagement, it would be in your best interest to keep them using the tool! 🙏
More importantly, it will highlight which content resonates with your employees’ networks (which will include your target audience). We’ve repeatedly seen it where clients have tweaked their broader content strategy based on their performance in the employee advocacy program.
Better still, a tool like DSMN8 comes equipped with personal analytics features, meaning that every employee can see the impact they’ve made. This can be a tremendous asset when it comes to keeping people motivated, as it tells your employees in real-time that they’re making a difference 👇
Plus, with DSMN8’s customizable UTM tracking, you can take your analytics to the next level by customizing and configuring UTM parameters however you choose.
DSMN8 allows you to add your custom parameters for your UTM links, and you have the option to filter these across things like teams, groups and content sources within the platform.
By doing this, you can have different UTM parameters depending on what your content is tagged to and even which URL it’s using! 📈
Content Variation & Personalization
Okay, so here’s a big one, and I kind of feel like this should be top of the list because this is probably the MOST common one 😬
Imagine finally getting more of your employees to post your content on social media, only for it to look like spam in their audiences’ feeds.
Why? Because you’ve asked them all to share a piece of content simultaneously.
If you consider that there’s typically a significant degree of overlap between employees’ networks, then this can appear inauthentic and forced, like they’ve just been told or forced to share that piece of content by their employer 😱
With an employee advocacy tool like DSMN8, you can ensure that each employee’s share looks totally unique.
DSMN8’s ‘Dynamic Display’ feature means the same content can be posted to social media but shown and said differently by each employee. Without Dynamic Display, your employee advocacy program quickly loses its authenticity.
Think of it as the difference between your employees looking like Stormtroopers…
Or a team of Jedi Knights 💪
Content Segmentation
Content segmentation features allow you to get the right content in front of the right people.
Sure, this could, in theory, be done manually (e.g. you send a piece of content to a bunch of people in sales if you want them to share it), but it would be both time-consuming and challenging to scale.
With most employee advocacy tools, you can assign users to specific teams and groups so that they only see content that is relevant to them and their networks.
Gamification
Okay, so this one is a debated one because the results of gamification can vary depending on the company and the people involved.
However, some questions people often ask after managing an employee advocacy program for some time are:
“How can I get people involved in this new initiative?”
“How can I keep people coming back to this app?”
“How can I drive maximum results from this?”
Well, you make it fun 🔥
Gamification in the form of leaderboards and rewards is a tried and true way to get more people involved with your program.
Leaderboards showcase top sharers and highlight those who are making the biggest impact.
This works because the friendly competitive nature of winning drives more activity.
Plus, gamification can quickly improve adoption rates and can seriously help you get your program off the ground. It creates a buzz, which leads to curiosity, and then interest! 📈
One DSMN8 client offered up their latest tech and smartphones as prizes, which tripled user adoption rates!
Related Podcast Episode
Ready to get started with employee advocacy?
Schedule a call with one of the team.
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Roger that!
Lewis Gray
Senior Marketing Manager and Employee Advocacy Program Manager at DSMN8. Lewis specialises in content strategy, growing brand visibility and generating inbound leads. His background in Sales lends itself well to demand generation in the B2B niche.
