4 Ways Marketing Can Contribute to Company Culture

At this point, the notion of “company culture” is widely recognized as an effective way to promote retention, increase employee engagement, enhance brand equity and drive overall business growth. No matter your industry, role, or business model, you’ve likely come across the concept of company culture on more than one occasion.

While there is no single source of truth when it comes to exactly how to define your culture, experts say that an all-encompassing culture code should include the following elements:

• • • Mission statement
    • Core values
    • How to work and live by your values
    • Any company traditions
    • Any additional shared beliefs

You’ve Defined Your Company’s Culture, Now What?

Distilling your company’s values, beliefs and aspirations into one written package of “culture” can be tricky, but what’s trickier is actually ensuring that the values and behaviors of said culture are consistently upheld by those within your organization.

Once you’ve got culture code documented in writing, how does one go about translating those ideals into everyday behavior? The truth is that each company is unique, so it will look a little different for every business. However, what can be confirmed is that practicing company culture must be a collaborative process, no matter your industry or business model — it’s not just HR’s responsibility, it should be a company-wide effort. If done right, your company’s culture should shine through just about every decision made on behalf of the business.

While there are tons of different best practices on reinforcing company culture, one of the best ways to promote your company’s culture both internally and externally is through marketing.

Culture is the internal-facing component of what your company is. It’s how you talk with each other, how you talk with your employees, prospects, customers, partners and so on. And then, that culture gets translated into your brand which is the external-facing part of your organization. Brand is how you talk to people, so the one-to-many communication rather than one-to-one. If done right, your brand and your culture should be closely entwined.

Considering that marketing content is likely to be the first thing a prospective customer or employee will interact with upon discovering your brand, marketing is the forefront of your brand, and ultimately, your culture.

With that in mind, by addressing your company culture through marketing content, you can better enable current and future employees in upholding your company’s values. Here are 4 actionable ways that marketing can contribute to company culture.

Incorporate Visual Reminders Wherever Possible

There’s a reason why people always say you should write your goals down somewhere that you’ll see them every day; visually reinforcing your goals is one of the best ways to effectively achieve them, and the same goes for cultural goals.

Whether you have a physical office or your company is remote, find opportunities to remind your peers of the values you’re striving to uphold. Whether it’s incorporating your culture code into the wall art in your office, in your sales enablement content, or even creating a custom startup message in Slack, incorporate visual reminders of your culture code wherever your employees are most often.

Make Your Social Content Social

Making your social media content social may seem a bit redundant, but hear me out.

B2B industries aren’t exactly known for being uber personal. Often times, B2B social content gets a bad rap for being largely product-centric and promotional.

However, showcasing your company’s culture is an excellent way to personalize your social media content and remind your followers that there are real live people behind the product. By publicly sharing culture content, you can effectively demonstrate and promote the behaviors, projects or ideals that best uphold your culture code both internally and externally.

If you want to take things one step further and further, make this initiative a company-wide effort. By giving everyone in the organization a chance to openly contribute to culture content, you can better promote employee engagement.

Repurpose Your Culture Documentation

Any savvy marketer knows that an effective content strategy includes a healthy diversity of topics — why not include culture? Your brand should be intertwined with your company’s culture and mission, so it makes incorporating culture into your content mix a no-brainer.

And the best part is, you don’t have to start from scratch. The documentation is already there, now, your job is to figure out how to recycle it. How do the values within your culture code relate to the product or service you sell? How are they relevant to your prospect base? What aspects of your culture best complement your brand?

Challenge your team to consider the different ways culture can relate to your existing editorial content and go from there. By doing so, you can better diversify your content strategy and ensure that your company’s values remain at top of mind for all that are involved.

Infuse Culture Into Your Product

Anyone will tell you that their business is not simply the product they sell or the service they provide. No, much more goes into building a client relationship than a simple transaction and exchange of goods. What fills the spaces in between is not what you provide, but how you provide it.

In this day and age, buying is an experience, not a singular action. Consider how you position your product to your prospects. How do your company’s values shine through in the way you talk about your product, the way you sell it, the way your customer success team treats your customer base? Identify those areas or actions that embody your culture and name them.

By tying your product and the customer experience to your company’s culture code, you can ensure that all who are involved in the customer lifecycle are set up to successfully uphold your company’s culture.