How Internal Marketing Helps You Build a Strong Brand From the Inside Out [Experts Weigh In]

Download Now: Free Marketing Plan Template [Get Your Copy]

As an ‘external’ marketer, I have to say that I hadn’t given much thought to internal marketing until I started writing this article.

My first thought was … that’s not my job. But the more I dug into the subject, I realized that’s not entirely true.

Anytime I share a new content series or blog campaign across our internal channels and encourage my colleagues to help promote it, that’s internal marketing.

When I lead onboarding sessions for new hires or recognize my teammates for their great work as part of our performance review process, that counts too.

*quietly adds internal marketing to resume*

Here’s everything else I learned about internal marketing — the benefits, the strategies that experts recommend, and a few more examples of what it looks like in practice.

Table of Contents

What is internal marketing?
Who is responsible for internal marketing?
Why is internal marketing important?
Benefits of Internal Marketing
Internal Marketing Strategies
Internal Marketing Examples

Internal marketing and employee experience work together. Your internal marketing strategy should take into account every connection point that an employee has with your company — from onboarding to the exit interview.

Internal Marketing vs Internal Communication

Here’s how I used to simplify the difference between marketing and communication back when I was a baby marketer:

Marketing is brand promotion.
Communication is information sharing.

The same goes for internal communication and internal marketing. They go hand in hand, but the two aren’t an exact match.

Going back to our definition of internal marketing above, it focuses on the act of promoting a brand to employees with the goal of encouraging them to buy into the company’s culture and values.

For example, an internal marketing play could be giving employees free access to your products for personal use. That’s alone isn’t technically internal communication.

The purpose of internal communication is to keep everyone informed of company updates and aligned with core objectives.

If HR sends a company memo announcing a new process update, that’s an example of internal communication that doesn’t really fall under internal marketing.

I’m using qualifiers like ‘technically’ and ‘really’ because the reality is that these two processes work together and often blend into each other.