Businesses spend so much time and energy communicating with their customers, potential clients and other outside partners that they sometimes forget to bring their own team members up to speed.
But a major part of any organization is to keep its employees, corporate team members and board of directors in the loop of any major internal changes or goals.
With plant-based grocery sales outpacing total food sales by three times, it’s no wonder your vegan business is too busy to keep up with all the internal memos necessary to bring your staff up to speed.
But with a total plant-based public relations strategy, internal communications don’t have to be as rare as a four-leaf clover. Internal public relations should be a part of your overall approach and should reflect your brand promise every bit as much as any external communications.
Employee engagement
Keeping your employees in the loop about new vegan products or plant-based initiatives keeps them engaged and allows them to be more productive and provide better customer service. If your employees know your future plans, they can increase their own engagement by providing strategy ideas or thought leadership.
Informed and engaged employees are also more likely to stay satisfied with their positions and are less likely to look for other employment or resign.
Creating brand ambassadors
If your employees, board members and corporate team leaders are informed and engaged, they become built-in brand ambassadors for your ideas and innovation. Even though many of these groups are not in the sales department, they become defacto salesman because of their enthusiasm toward your future goals and plans.
They are more likely to share company news on their own social media channels, tell their friends about your company’s future products or services and offer ideas about how to share your news to the community.
Ways to share information
Marketing and sales departments often have planning meetings that focus on how to get the word out to the general public about their new products or ideas but skim over any strategy for informing the insiders. This shouldn’t be the case.
Internal public relations teams should also plan the best ways to communicate with stakeholders. Planning an email campaign, designing an employee-based Facebook page, designing a quarterly eNewsletter or developing an intranet location for employees and other team members are easy ways to communicate internally.
Let the professionals at Orange Orchard help you design a complete plant-based PR strategy that includes your stakeholders, as well as your customers. Contact us on our website or call us at (865) 977-1973 to see how we can help you develop a total public relations plan from vegetable soup to nuts.