Why employee advocacy should be part of your healthcare marketing strategy — and tips to get started

Why employee advocacy should be part of your healthcare marketing strategy — and tips to get started 

By Bridget Saroff

In healthcare marketing, leading with authenticity is important. Whether you're promoting an innovation in health tech, driving mission awareness, or helping patients access care, your success hinges on people feeling genuinely connected to your message.

Some of the most powerful voices to help build authenticity are often already on your team. Employees, investors, governing board members, and other stakeholders can be your brand’s best advocates. When they share your message with their own networks, it humanizes your brand, builds trust, and helps drive engagement.

In addition, amplifying important brand messages through these groups helps expand your reach. The data even backs it up; according to Social Media Today, content shared by internal stakeholders receives 8x more engagement than content shared through branded channels. Even better, according to MSLGroup, employee-shared messages have 561% more reach than the same messages shared through official brand accounts.

When done well, internal stakeholder advocacy can amplify your healthcare marketing and PR strategy. It can reinforce brand values, extend campaign reach, and if needed, act as a buffer against risk when positive sentiment is challenged online. 

Some of the most powerful voices to help build authenticity are often already on your team. Employees, investors, governing board members, and other stakeholders can be your brand’s best advocates.

Here’s how you can turn your team members into brand champions:

01. Provide key talking points

Not everyone on your team has a marketing background. It’s important to give employees simple, on-brand talking points and guidelines for adapting them to their own voice. These might include:

• A reminder of your mission and goals
• An overview of a current campaign and its talking points
• Key statistics or meaningful results
• Hashtags or links to include in posts
  
  

02. Make sharing simple

If you want people to share your content, it’s important to make it easy. You don’t need expensive software — just establish a communication channel and cadence for sharing information. For example:

• Send out social-ready content in newsletters or on an internal communications channel such as Google Chat, Slack, or Microsoft Teams
• Create a “share this” function on your blogs, press releases, or campaign materials, allowing readers to share on their social platforms with a simple click
• Remind stakeholders to re-share posts directly from the organization’s social media channels 
  

03. Incentivize sharing about your organization

Incentives can help turn passive supporters into active posters, so be sure to recognize and reward those who amplify your message regularly. Consider thanking those who share your news with gift cards or other tokens of appreciation. It’s far less expensive than paid advertising, and as noted above, significantly more impactful too!  

Empower your team to amplify your brand

The branding experts at KNB Communications can turn your internal stakeholders into the SEAL Team Six of healthcare marketers. Reach out to us today to schedule a customized workshop!