Why internal communications should think like marketers

I served two years of my career in marketing, and l didn’t like it one bit.

I lived in a sea of numbers, managing a small profit-and-loss team. Nearly every week we presented multi-page PowerPoint slides on how we would increase revenue and what we were doing to mitigate losses.

What on earth was a former internal communicator doing here? I didn’t fit; I was Oscar in a room full of Felixes. Fortunately, I was blessed with a patient and supportive boss, who educated me on the marketing process and tried to get me to understand a balance sheet. He even helped me navigate my career path back into communications.

The gift of that challenging experience was the value of a marketing mindset in my communications world. Since then, I’ve often asked my fellow communicators how we’d operate differently if we reframed employee communication like this: We are no longer internal communicators. Instead, we are marketing experts asking our employee/consumer base for their support and discretionary effort.

What would we change?