The Forgotten Market

Have you ever wondered why some businesses thrive while others struggle, despite their external marketing efforts? In this episode, we explore an area of marketing that is often overlooked - the internal market. We share stories about businesses that have missed the mark in acknowledging their internal market and discuss the importance of engaging and communicating with employees to align them with the company's mission, values, and visions.

We dive into the significance of internal marketing in creating a successful business, touching on customer feedback, employee loyalty programs, and the need for organizations to adjust their internal marketing efforts as they grow. As we discuss the importance of planning for internal communication, we realize that many businesses often carry out internal marketing without even knowing it!

Our hosts, Brenton and Ron, provide tips for businesses to get started with internal marketing, such as newsletters, meetings, and incentives. They emphasise that internal and external marketing strategies must be coordinated to ensure a consistent brand message. The key takeaway is that the internal market - your own employees - should not be overlooked, as they are your best brand advocates and representatives to customers and the external market.

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Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

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Transcript

Brenton Gowland: 0:01

Hey there Business Builders. Have you ever wondered why some businesses thrive and others struggle despite great marketing? Well, today we're exploring an area of marketing often overlooked the internal market. We discuss how marketing to your employees can help you grow your business.

Ron Tomlian: 0:21

Welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland: 0:26

And I'm Brenton Gowland

Ron Tomlian: 0:27

And Brenton, you've been away, haven't you? You've been to the Flinders Ranges. Tell me more.

Brenton Gowland: 0:33

I have been to the Flinders Ranges, as we discussed in our last episode, and I got saturated, absolutely. And utterly saturated.

Ron Tomlian: 0:42

There's plenty of that going around.

Brenton Gowland: 0:44

But I gotta tell you, it was so worth it. I was really blown away, we ended up going to Melrose which is at the base of the Flinders Ranges and we hiked mount remarkable, that was great. But on the second day, we went to this place which was almost like right out of Jurassic Park.

Ron Tomlian: 1:00

Alligator Gorge.

Brenton Gowland: 1:01

How did you know that.

Ron Tomlian: 1:02

Oh I've been there.

Brenton Gowland: 1:03

It is something I was shocked. Like, we just go down this big old path into the middle of this. I'd say it was like a rain forest. That's what it felt like into this gorge and then you just walk down the steps and you you step out into these red cliffs everywhere around you and these little narrow tunnels while part of it looked like that. Lord of the Rings scene in I think it was the third one The Return of the King where he walks into that hill of ghosts. It was so spooky and so cool. I was mesmerised. I thought it was amazing.

Ron Tomlian: 1:36

Wonderful part of the world.

Brenton Gowland: 1:37

Yeah, I'm hanging out to go back. I only really only centred around Melrose so it didn't go much further than that. And I was blown away with how many amazing things there are to look at and see and do so.

Ron Tomlian: 1:49

Some beautiful scenery. And there's so much during the Flinders. It's not funny.

Brenton Gowland: 1:54

You know, and I gotta say it's a good time of year, because we came back and we went straight to cabaret festival.

Ron Tomlian: 2:01

All right, yes, fantastic. I love the cabaret. It's my favourite festival of the year.

Brenton Gowland: 2:06

I know, they had this guy back Mark Nadler from New York, I think, originally from Iowa. And he hasn't been here for nine years. And I originally went to the cabaret festival. And he was the first artist that I saw there. And he stayed on for a couple of years. But then he hasn't been back for nine years. And so I thought I gotta go and see him. And it was, again blown away. And it just surprises me that more people don't go to I'd love to see a younger set really embracing that cabaret festival for those of you who are listening internationally. Now, I've been told, I can't verify this because I only know what people have said, apparently is the biggest cabaret festival in the world. Mark Madla when he was doing his show was saying that cabaret artists all around the world. They just want to come to this festival and give up two weeks to spend time here in our lousy weather and being at that great festival.

Ron Tomlian: 2:57

It's lousy weather but great venue and there's always something going on and great food there. The Soho supper club. Yes. Did you get along to them?

Brenton Gowland: 3:06

No, I walked past it, though have fantastic. We also went to see Ruben Kane, and I gotta tell you, that man is incredibly talented. That was an incredible show. So some great stuff going on there. And I think it ends this weekend coming. So this, I think it's Saturday or Sunday is the last days of it. So this podcast comes out this Saturday. So if you hear it really early, then you've got one day to go. And if you're listening internationally, I know I've been rambling on for a little while about this. But we're in a great place in the world. So if you ever want to come to visit somewhere really interesting, put South Australia on your map. But anyway, Ron, what are we talking about today?

Ron Tomlian: 3:43

We're talking about the Forgotten Market.

Brenton Gowland: 3:46

The forgotten market.

Ron Tomlian: 3:47

Yeah. And most people.

Brenton Gowland: 3:48

What have we forgotten Ron?

Ron Tomlian: 3:50

Oh, well, we have forgotten the internal market.

Brenton Gowland: 3:54

So you're talking about staff.

Ron Tomlian: 3:56

Yeah it's something that people when they think about marketing, they don't think about. And that's the importance of the people within your organisation, both in terms of their capacity to be more effective in terms of your marketing add to the customers, but also that you need to spend time, resources and effort thinking about how they are thinking about your organisation so that there is an internal lag, you have neglected at your peril.

Brenton Gowland: 4:25

Well, it's interesting that you call it or that we call it the Forgotten market. And just explain to me why you think it's the Forgotten market. I'll give you my take on it in a minute. But it's a very interesting title.

Ron Tomlian: 4:38

Because I've seen too often that it gets forgotten in marketing efforts.

Brenton Gowland: 4:43

Yeah

Ron Tomlian: 4:43

That it gets neglected. And then people wonder why their marketing efforts to their target audiences don't tend to work. And when they started doing some analysis, it turns out that the people have wide Hanten the marketing efforts are people inside the organisation who haven't been told what's going on, I've got some great stories. I know I remember some Yeah, about organisations have had things to do with that have neglected their internal market in their external marketing efforts at their at their expense.

Brenton Gowland: 5:17

And I think look that's titled The Forgotten market. I think it's not necessarily just forgotten, but I think some businesses don't realise that that is actually a market. And a lot of businesses will carry out internal marketing, not knowing they're actually doing internal marketing, because they haven't specifically thought or planned for what they're going to communicate necessarily, but they're just doing business as usual. So I think it's an apt title saying the Forgotten market. And I think it's a good topic to explore. So let's get stuck in.

Ron Tomlian: 5:51

So what is it what it was internal marketing? Well, that's a little definition I dragged up here is it, it refers to the strategic activities and processes, implemented within an organisation to effectively communicate and engage with employees, fostering a strong internal culture and aligning them with the organization's mission, value, and vision. So these are things you do to get your employees to adopt the right behaviours, because we're talking here about in service organisations in particular, but really all organisation, the internal employees, you want them to behave in a certain way. Exactly. And really, that's what marketing to a large extent is all about. externally as well, you'd like people to modify their behaviour. So they look at you, they buy your products and services, it's no different from internal employees. You want them to engage in certain behaviours. So it's about how you can influence them to adopt certain behaviours and attitudes.

Brenton Gowland: 6:57

Some people might argue that's just HR. Look, don't get me wrong.

Ron Tomlian: 7:01

I think HR and internal marketing go hand in hand.

Brenton Gowland: 7:05

Yeah,

Ron Tomlian: 7:05

Yeah. But it's about being deliberate about thinking about the communication in particular. And the activities that you undertake in order to get people aligned with engaged with the organisation. And those types of terms are exactly what HR professionals will talk about as well.

Brenton Gowland: 7:24

Yeah, interesting. It's interesting how all the things line up and work together. And I think if we're going further into that definition of what is internal marketing, or what is marketing to our staff, and so forth, you got to look at what marketing is as a whole. And marketing is an exercise where we're looking to communicate, and get people to carry out a certain action. So we want them to engage with us, or we want to affect community change. Some marketing is kind of how we go about doing that. Right. So if you turn that around to exactly what you're saying, it's about how do we get our employees? How do we get? In fact, it's how do we get our business to align with our actual strategy? I would say,

Ron Tomlian: 8:06

And strategy is an incredibly important thing, what you're going to do, in terms of internal marketing, will be significantly influenced by what you're trying to achieve in terms of a strategy for the organisation.

Brenton Gowland: 8:18

So in simplification, would it be right to say that internal marketing is simply our communication strategy for our staff? Our is it further than that?

Ron Tomlian: 8:29

I think it goes further than just communication. But needless to say, communication is an important element, a critical element this, but it goes to understanding, it goes to engagement, it goes to influence behaviour. So like I said before, so why is it important? Good question. Yeah, I think it's important, from my perspective is important, as much as anything, because it's about ensuring that the people who are serving your customers are in the best position to serve them effectively. Yeah. So that the attitudes right, capabilities are right. They have the right resources. You know, there was a really this comes down to I don't know if you've ever come across the concept of the service profit chain?

Brenton Gowland: 9:18

Well, only in our discussions to be honest.

Ron Tomlian: 9:21

Back in the 90s, a Harvard professor Hesketh wrote a HBR article.

Brenton Gowland: 9:28

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 9:28

Called the Service Profit Chain.

Brenton Gowland: 9:30

And let's just say HBR is Harvard Business Review.

Ron Tomlian: 9:33

I've fallen into my own trap.

Brenton Gowland: 9:35

Oh I love this. We had a discussion at the start of the episode and and we said Ron's going to swap roles with me and do the you know, keeping the structure of the podcast going anyways gets stuck into me about acronyms that he you are using acronyms. I love it. Harvard Business Review, keep going, so Hesketh.

Ron Tomlian: 9:52

Yes. So he talked about the idea that there's this circular process, and it starts with a Hiring the right employees, yes. And then supporting those employees with the right processes, yep, and the right resources, so that they are satisfied in doing their job. Yeah. And they enjoy the environment, the working, if you get that condition, then they are much more likely to provide good service to your customers.

Brenton Gowland: 10:20

So you can almost sum it up and say happy employees equals the business gets taken care of.

Ron Tomlian: 10:25

Yeah, and happy employees equals happy customers, happy customers equals return business, return business equals profit, profit is taken into back into at least some of it taken back into providing great resources, and the right sort of recruiting and the right sort of processes. And so the chain goes, Yes, why it's called the service profit chain. So providing service starts with making your employees happy and satisfied with the work that they do so that they can serve the customers more effectively.

Brenton Gowland: 10:57

And so if we then talk about why is internal marketing important, because that forms are one of the tools that helps that service chain, stay in motion? Yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 11:07

And it's critical for your external marketing efforts as well. Not only because it happy, satisfied customers, but because internal employees are often your brand advocates or should be your brand advocates, but they can just as easily be your brand detractors.

Brenton Gowland: 11:23

That's right.

Ron Tomlian: 11:23

But they got to told you the story about I was working for a large energy organisation. And we were launching a new product. And we were new into this marketing business development area. And so everything had to be secret squirrel, you know, sort of commercial and confidence. And we launched this product without telling anyone internally because we were worried that they might leak the information to the competition.

Brenton Gowland: 11:48

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 11:49

And it flopped. Badly.

Brenton Gowland: 11:51

Yep.

Ron Tomlian: 11:52

So we went out and did some research. And we asked our customers who were supposed to be buying this but didn't. So who told you not to buy it. And we talked about builders, we talked about plumbers, we talked about all sorts of different influences on the customers decision. All of them were great advocates, because we we'd covered that off all our external influences. We'd actually had significant influence on when it came down to it. This organisation had about 6000 employees at the time. And invariably, the customer said, Oh, I knew Fred, who knew John, who worked within your organisation. And I asked him about this new product. Yes. And what do you think John said?

Brenton Gowland: 12:37

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Ron Tomlian: 12:38

Yes. So it turned out that the customers were influenced by not someone that they knew, but someone that they knew within the organisation? Yep. And when they were asked, okay, what did these guys say? What did the internal employees say? They said, That's just something dreamed up by the marketing guys. Yeah. I don't know anything about it. And it's probably a load of BS. Yep. So we then went without any further budget, we then went in an internal marketing campaign for the next year. We didn't spend any more money. And what do you think happened?

Brenton Gowland: 13:14

I think it probably was a success.

Ron Tomlian: 13:17

We couldn't keep up with demand. Why? Because now the internal sources of information.

Brenton Gowland: 13:23

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 13:23

our internal people were brand advocates. Yeah. They were advocate, they had information that they were given that gave them the power to say, Yes, this is a fantastic idea. You should be adopting it. We did the internal marketing. And that made all the difference.

Brenton Gowland: 13:41

Yep. And look, that is the obvious version of internal marketing. So as you know, I've been running advertising agencies for years and working in that space. And I have run national roadshows where we've done brand launches, or we've done campaign launches, where we've literally with one company, I think they had several 100 staff all around Australia, we went to each state, and we advise them what was going to happen, we gave them telephone scripts for when people rang up and ask questions about the rebrand all that kind of jazz. And it went so smoothly, that kind of what you're talking about lining up the staff to basically be the ambassadors for the brand, but I don't even think in this particular case, I would define it as ambassadors. I would say that is a great example of unified marketing strategy, because you got to ask, how does the internal marketing line up with the external marketing? And the answer really comes down to really having a strategy that sits above everything, that you have your internal marketing and your external marketing, pointing towards or lining the staff up to deliver.

Ron Tomlian: 14:50

It's that same analogy that we use very early on when we started talking about marketing, which is having a laser focus. Yes, lasers are all about aligning Everything, aligning the light photons, yes, up in the same direction. And this is internal marketing, external marketing have to line up, which means you have to put some effort into it. So when I hear from an employee about a particular product or a particular service, it matches perfectly what I've heard in the advertising, you had a social media, so that there's coherence.

Brenton Gowland: 15:26

Yeah, I used to have this thing that I used to say to customers all the time, our clients is that if we go out with an advertising campaign to the market, and it's brilliant, and we say how great we are basically, you might not say that specifically. But basically, when you say you've got the best product, you're telling people how great you are, we can say all this, we've got the best service we've got, this is the experience, you're gonna have any of you come in to our business or you're interact with us. And that experience is not the way we've advertised, you've made yourself out to be a liar. So that that becomes a massive detractor, because if customers are led to believe something, and led to believe they're going to get the best service are led to believe that a product is going to be a certain way or led to believe that something will happen when they interact with you and it doesn't happen. You've basically you've might have lost one client. But as we all know, people talk a lot more about their negative experiences. And they talk about their positive experiences.

Ron Tomlian: 16:23

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland: 16:23

Which I am guilty of.

Ron Tomlian: 16:24

Yes. No, everyone is it's it's human nature to talk about the negative because it's much more interesting.

Brenton Gowland: 16:30

So that alignment, that internal marketing part is so important.

Ron Tomlian: 16:35

And here's another thing. I mean, we talked about our external marketing activities, but think about what organisations are finding most difficult at the moment. And that's attracting new employees. Oh, yes. Now, when I'm thinking about working for a particular organisation, who are the people, if I can get to them? Who are the people who have the most influence on my thinking about that organisation, it's the people who already work there. So if you want advocates for your organisation, you know, the the employer brand, if you want to, if you want advocates for your organisation, your internal employees are going to be your best and most influential advocates for that organisation, to external potential employees.

Brenton Gowland: 17:20

Yeah, cuz you think about when the employee goes to the barbecue, that's the big thing. And they're talking with all their mates. And they asked you about where you work, and you say, it's not so great. And people aren't gonna want to work there. I remember I worked at this one place. And I can probably say who it is because they are no longer in existence, but it's because they were bought and sold a few times. But it was the trading post here in adeleye. Like a newspaper. When I originally started there, I think it was 2625, something like that. And I remember walking around the hallways and people that I met in the hallways, it was about, I think 200 Coal staff, and I was part of a crew of five graphic designers. And people were saying to me in the halls, are you going to love working here, this is the best place and I was like, what Voodoo is this? And it wasn't just one person. It was a bunch of people who said that to me. And I was like, What is going on here? And I found out why. Yes, they did communicate with every one very well. But they took care of this staff incredibly well. And it all came down to the owner, he had a vision for his staff to be part of the company. And I won't go into all the bits and pieces he did. But there were incentives, there were loyalty programmes, all that kind of stuff, which we'll talk about in a minute. But then the company was taken over by his kids. And very quickly that culture started changing. And then it was sold to census, I think I'd left by that point. But I know that the culture deteriorated, deteriorated, deteriorated after that initial owner left, because the appearance was that the staff became less and less important, what they thought became less and less important, because marketing when we do it out in the external markets, we want to get feedback. We want to get feedback from our clients, right? We want to get insights from our clients, and then we act on it. So at that particular role, they were getting feedback, they were talking to the client, the staff, and they were acting on it and the staff felt listened to. And that's a big part of marketing, right? So a big part of internal marketing is maybe doing surveys, maybe seeking feedback. And it can you know, where it crosses into HR and might be one on ones, you know, collecting that data from all the people within the business finding patterns and going well, we need to do something about this because we can see a pattern emerging so we want to correct the ship. So there's a lot of aspects to it. But it's it's about actually marketing. I always say to people, the difference between advertising and marketing is advertising is basically about going hey, look at me. Marketing is about opening up a conversation and understanding each other understanding And if I can solve the problem you've got. So marketing internally is about understanding your staff and acting accordingly.

Ron Tomlian: 20:07

And what's interesting is that when organisations are small, two or three people, all this stuff is easy, because you're talking to each other every day and you're involved as there's excitement. As the organisation grows, you have to change the way you do things. Some things need to get more formalised Some things need attention on a regular basis, which you were doing just as a matter of course before. And I think internal marketing gets forgotten. And then you look at very large organisations, when people say, I don't know what's going on here. And internal marketing is not only been forgotten about it's neglected, it's sort of derived. And under those circumstances, organisations very quickly fall apart.

Brenton Gowland: 20:50

And look, this is one of those things that I end up talking about with my clients a whole lot, because one of the things that I'm really passionate about is seeing marketing take its place within organisations. And I think marketing should be sitting at the sea level within an organisation. And we've talked about that before. But the point of all that is, it's about making sure that you understand the importance because there are so many, let's be honest, as the business gets bigger, there's so many things that pull at the attention of the directors, the owners and other people, they've got so many things to think about. So, you know, what do we talk about what gets dropped? When pressure gets on like, well, there's cashflow issues, what's the thing that goes out the window marketing. And that's because I think marketing isn't seen the way it should be seen within organisations. So back to that point, if marketing is neglected one thing, it might not be understood that internal marketing is really important. But the second thing is there might be so many vying priorities. So it's a matter of how important is marketing and understanding that if you're a business builder out there, if you're someone who's looking at growing your business, growing yourself, all of that kind of thing, it's about understanding the importance of it. And that's what I would push.

Ron Tomlian: 22:05

And don't get the Forgotten Market internally. Yeah, well, they have you take care of that market makes your life easier? Absolutely. Because you're using the people inside the organisation to provide a product or service to people outside the organisation. If you're not looking after them. They are the people looking after your customers. If you're not looking after them, they're not going to be looking after your customers.

Brenton Gowland: 22:33

I think the internal group are the easiest group to market to, because you have the unique ability to talk to them in a way that you don't have with the external market. Because they're right there.

Ron Tomlian: 22:45

Absolutely. But you have to take that opportunity.

Brenton Gowland: 22:48

Yep. And the important thing that we talked about earlier, is you really need to think about what you're going to communicate, because it comes back to having a strategy because you can communicate and look, everything you do is some form of communication and marketing. But are you marketing the direction you want to go within your organisation? Are you just flying by the seat of your pants, and you know, we've got this fire, let's put it out, we've got that fire, let's put it out. And that's more damage control or just dealing with the noisiest thing at the time. Whereas marketing, internal marketing is structured and defined, because if you're marketing to an external market, you would have a content calendar, you would have a plan of attack over the next three 612 months about what you're going to do. So think about that. Do you have a plan internally for what you what your communication priorities are for this month, this quarter, for this financial year, for next financial year. And that's what we're talking about. It's having a structured plan for where you're taking the business, and what the staff within your business need to do understand how they need to behave to help us get there. So it all comes down to having a strategy and a plan for how you're going to communicate. And that's really the nub.

Ron Tomlian: 24:02

We talked before about branding. All Yes. Now branding is all about being able to say this is how we interact with our customers. Yes, this is the persona of our organisation. And under those circumstances, how do you get people to understand and align with that brand? That's internal marketing. So if you want to brand culture, you have to build that with your internal market

Brenton Gowland: 24:29

And it takes work anything good takes work, and to get your staff to be advocates like at the barbecue. And talk about you know, we're I walked around that business, the trading post and people were just coming up to me in the hallway and it was I've never seen anything like it when I started. They're actually having multiple people saying hello to you. You're a new employee, you're going to love working here. I've never seen that anywhere before. I've never worked anywhere since to be honest. But that would have taken a bunch of work and consistency over time to get their staff to that point. And these were people working in a call centre who are on the phones all the time, who were saying that kind of thing to me. And I was working in a different department. So it does it takes concerned or concerted effort about taking people in a certain direction. But the results are huge. If you have people telling people have good businesses they work for when they're at the barbecue or at the footy with their mates or whatever. It'll make people's ears prick up. Absolutely, because it's rare. Yeah, it is. But things like that, again, it just it takes effort. It takes planning, it takes consideration. And I guess that's the key to internal marketing. It takes consideration to go where are we going to go?

Ron Tomlian: 25:40

And it takes feedback to find out how you're doing, you need to continually assess whether your internal marketing efforts are hitting the spot. It's like you continually assess whether your external marketing efforts are hitting the spot.

Brenton Gowland: 25:52

Yeah, fantastic. So what tips then will we have for business builders out there to make sure that they're actually starting to prioritise their internal marketing efforts?

Ron Tomlian: 26:04

Number one, make sure you have a strategy in place. And then when I'm talking about a strategy, it's an internal marketing strategy that aligns with the external marketing strategy,

Brenton Gowland: 26:14

Which eventually aligns with your business strategy.

Ron Tomlian: 26:16

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland: 26:17

So you really have to have that strategic thinking in place business strategy, and then the marketing strategies that align with that. So that gives you direction, right?

Ron Tomlian: 26:25

Yes.

Brenton Gowland: 26:26

All right. So what's number two?

Ron Tomlian: 26:28

Trial out what you're doing. Pilot. Just do something.

Brenton Gowland: 26:32

So if you've never done internal marketing before, it's not been a problem, just not been a priority, not a problem. Just start to trial things. That's what you're saying?

Ron Tomlian: 26:42

Yeah, absolutely. The biggest problem, I think, with internal marketing, is that people go i and we'll do that later. It's not that important. It is it's critical.

Brenton Gowland: 26:51

So let's just say then, with that tip, what kinds of things can we do? Now I'll start off, it could be an internal newsletter, if you've got 20 or more staff that starts to become a thing, have an internal newsletter that you send out to people regularly, maybe once a month, once a quarter? What other things could you do?

Ron Tomlian: 27:08

have regular communication sessions with employees, depending on the size of your organisation where you're letting them know where the organization's going?

Brenton Gowland: 27:16

Yep. So you might have what monthly meetings, weekly meetings stand ups?

Ron Tomlian: 27:20

Depending on the size of the organisation, it might be using the regular meeting schedule, but having material that your leaders inside the organisation can talk to their people about.

Brenton Gowland: 27:30

That cascades down because I always talk to people about I think there's three key meetings that run a business. And that's your strategy meeting with your directors or your senior people. There might be a sales and marketing meeting and operations meeting. And then everything from those meetings cascade down. So you might take your front of house staff and someone from your sales and marketing meeting might pass on that information or have a feedback session.

Ron Tomlian: 27:52

And yeah, we've talked before about the whole idea of focus, communication focused conversations, include that as part of your communication to people about where the organization's going, and what's happening, what's important.

Brenton Gowland: 28:05

So what about employee of the month in certain departments,

Ron Tomlian: 28:10

Internal suggestion schemes, harnessing the knowledge that exists within the organisation, and then using that, to provide better services to your customers.

Brenton Gowland: 28:20

Yep. So there's a raft of things you can do for everything from incentive schemes, to communications lunches, where you might put on a lunch and have a 510 minute discussion, et cetera, et cetera, you might get in a guest speaker and start talking about where the business is going, and so forth. I spoke to someone just recently, who said they had a session with a HR person from a really famous company, and that really got them motivated and inspired. And it was just a lunchtime session where they had begets and stuff and just takes up an hour of time while people are having lunch where they get in a guest speaker. That's internal marketing.

Ron Tomlian: 28:54

And I think the final point is get feedback. Yeah. 100%, don't rely on what you think is happening. Find out from people, what they want to know, find out from people, what they've heard, verify, if you like that what you're trying to influence is actually getting traction.

Brenton Gowland: 29:12

And how would you get feedback in what ways.

Ron Tomlian: 29:14

You can use surveys, you can talk to people don't underestimate the power of just talking to people off the cuff. Yeah, you can use the internal review system that you use for performance feedback to your employees get feedback from them, while doing that.

Brenton Gowland: 29:30

One on ones. Yep. So and what I like about this is right, so in any kind of marketing scenario, you would have your strategy, your plan, and then you would have some sort of measurement system. This is why we get feedback, because then once we've got that feedback data in, we then make incremental changes. So back to your second tip. You said trial and test. So really, the getting feedback is part of testing that. Absolutely. So once you've got those tests, then you can make decisions about yet we'll tweak This will change that will move this is you're not going to get it right overnight. But as soon as you do start communicating, there's nothing worse than being a staff member in an organisation where you're guessing what's happening is all these closed door meetings. And there's not a feedback train with the boss or the CEO is giving feedback because he then start to, I always talk about being in the clearer in the fog when I go into seminars for people and so forth and talk about communication, if you're in the fog, which means that people don't understand what's being said. And they can only see things in a foggy way. Like there's always closed door meetings here. They are left to join the dots themselves. When they join the dots themselves, they are probably 99% of the time joining the dots in an incorrect fashion, and thats where gossip starts.

Ron Tomlian: 30:48

And negative fashion. We you know the old adage, what do you fill a vacuum? Avoid with its negativity? Yeah, in the absence of any information, people have a natural tendency to say, oh, there must be something wrong.

Brenton Gowland: 31:02

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 31:03

So don't allow that vacuum to exist, continually fill it up with your communications.

Brenton Gowland: 31:09

So that you control the conversation. That is internal marketing.

Ron Tomlian: 31:12

That's right. Yes. So on that note.

Brenton Gowland: 31:14

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 31:16

We have, I think illuminated the Forgotten market, so that people hopefully don't forget the internal market in the future?

Brenton Gowland: 31:25

Well, I think we've brought it to people's attention, as you say. So I think that's a good thing. And I honestly think if people focus on their internal marketing, it will have a cumulative effect. Whereas when you go out and as you said earlier, if you go out and you do your marketing to an external network, it's hard work. Like I think we spoke to Tanya in the last episode. And she said, When should you have started branding, or 20 years ago? Because it takes a while, right? You get the most result from sometimes just starting internally, because that spreads the word a whole lot quicker.

Ron Tomlian: 31:57

But don't forget, if you're building a brand, the brand is not just about what people see us perceptually it's also what they experience when they come to use your brand. Yep. And that is going to be highly influenced by the culture of your organisation by the internal marketing that you do.

Brenton Gowland: 32:16

Yeah. Well, I think that was really great. And now as for next episode, now, we had a bit of a problem this week, didn't we.

Ron Tomlian: 32:23

A technical glitch.

Brenton Gowland: 32:24

We were going to have a futurist on the show this week. But we actually had, and their from Sydney, and we had some technical glitches.

Ron Tomlian: 32:30

So our futurist is coming in the future.

Brenton Gowland: 32:34

Yes, they'll either be on the next episode or the one after once we get this glitch sorted out, but I'm really looking forward to that, because we actually had the conversation and it was incredible, absolutely fantastic. There was too many pops and clicks. So it sounded anomalies that were like, well, we have to do this Excel. Look forward to that. Yes. And I think we've also got a gentleman one of the people in our networker SA Business Builders network, and we need to talk about four day workweek.

Ron Tomlian: 32:58

So that could be a part of the future.

Brenton Gowland: 33:00

Well, I think it is a part of the future.

Ron Tomlian: 33:02

Its a part of the present for some organisation.

Brenton Gowland: 33:04

Yep, so these are going to be the next two episodes. One is going to be on the four day workweek and one is going to be a futurist in what order they come. I don't know.

Ron Tomlian: 33:11

It all depends on the technical glitches.

Brenton Gowland: 33:14

That's right. You'll have to you'll have to tune in and say anyway, we hope you have a great fortnight. Thank you for joining us.

Ron Tomlian: 33:21

It's goodbye from me

Brenton Gowland: 33:22

And it is goodbye from me.