Discipline of Internal Marketing - Essay Example

The notion of internal marketing is broader than just communication tactics and employee meetings to build employee satisfaction. Instead, internal marketing deploys strategic tools to assist the organization in achieving its objectives.

Internal marketing assists organizations in creating an environment where a good idea can be made a better one. When organizations test themselves internally, they create an environment of discovering opportunities. Internal marketing helps in building team spirit. It empowers the employees to take a view of the organization from the perspective of an owner. When employees are more engaged with the organization, their care, and concern for the organization rise.

Nowadays, most companies believe in satisfying internal customers (employees) first and after that, they choose to satisfy their external customers (customers). The concept behind this idea is that when the internal customer will be satisfied, then the external customers will eventually get satisfied by the quality of service provided by internal customers to them.

Internal Marketing helps in keeping employees happier. Happier employees will keep their customers happy. Internal marketing makes employees consider themselves as an integral part of an organization that motivates them.

Apart from media communication, customer service is all about building long-term relationships, connections, and trust. Internal marketing enhances employee recognition which ultimately helps in improved and better customer service (Thomspon, 2010).

Planning for internal marketing requires five stages. They include:
- Creating an internal marketing plan scientifically for achieving production goals.
- Establishing budget.
- Develop at least 10 custom-designed strategies which can work together.
- Three key areas must be selected and focused which primarily includes relationship building (with employees as well as a customer), outreach, and employee recognition.

For planning internal marketing, the management of the organization, the employees, and the customers must be in harmony. Only in this way, an organization can become customer oriented organization. Other important elements to be included in the marketing plan include; target perception, internal marketing objectives, program measurement, communications strategy, etc (CBS News, 2007).

According to Varey (p.80, 2000), there are some important barriers to implementing internal marketing. Organizations face a lot of resistance to the acceptance of internal marketing organization-wide. Resistance to change from the side of employees is the major obstacle in the implementation of internal marketing.