Internal Marketing: Learning to Manage Customer Relationships

When people think of marketing, they think of advertisements, press releases, flyers, or other eye catching marketing tools that attract new customers and clients. While these external marketing efforts are important, there is much more to marketing than just making your business or brand look appealing—you have to keep your customers coming back; a process called internal marketing.

Internal marketing is conducted within a business and is as vital to a company as external marketing (i.e. – ads, press releases, flyers, etc.) Commonly referred to as customer relationship management (CRM), internal marketing is just that—analyzing and maintaining a connection with your existing clients. However, internal marketing goes beyond customer relationships to include communication between employees as well.  Employees must be able to work together as one unit with the company’s mission in mind. Since internal marketing starts with a company’s brand and is reflected by employees.  It’s important to keep this in mind when hiring.  

As with other marketing efforts, internal marketing starts by identifying core values and a mission statement. While these values may change and grow as your business evolves, every employee’s actions should reflect your mission and brand. It may be time to re-evaluate these values if the company has strayed from them. Having a well-defined mission and brand not only helps consumers know what to expect from your business, it also helps your employees provide customers with better service.

It is imperative that your business continually nurture the existing customer and client relationships without forgetting about new ones. You must be able to expand both groups to prosper. Start by evaluating existing communication methods, and rework them if necessary. Gain feedback from customers, and even employees, to learn where you could improve your business.  We as a company survey both clients and our own staff to gauge how effective we are as a marketing company.  This valuable information always ensures that employees are trained in customer service and customer relationship management.

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