Employee advocacy offers the chance to grow your team culture, reputation and sales for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.
But what does it involve, and how can you tell if it’s right for you?
At Hubbub Labs, we’ve successfully run employee advocacy programmes for ourselves and our clients, and seen positive results in terms of reach, engagement and return on investment (ROI).
With that in mind, we’re sharing our learnings to help you decide whether your organisation could benefit from an employee advocacy programme.
What is employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy is when employees actively represent and promote their organisation through their own voices and networks.
At the most basic level, that might mean reposting company content on LinkedIn. But at a more strategic level, it involves employees:
- Sharing insights from their work
- Commenting on industry trends
- Highlighting projects or achievements
- Engaging in conversations relevant to their expertise
- Building their own professional presence in alignment with the organisation’s values
The key distinction between employee advocacy and corporate branding and marketing is ownership. Content is created by individual employees and shared via their personal accounts, rather than by your marketing department on your corporate account.
For that reason, employee advocacy works best when it’s voluntary, aligned with your organisation’s messaging and supported by a clear framework.
Renewed relevance in the age of AI
Employee advocacy used to feel experimental: an optional extra alongside more established marketing approaches.
However, the rise of AI has lowered the barriers to publishing. Now, organisations can generate campaign copy, thought leadership and articles in minutes. Audiences are exposed to more content than ever before, but much of this AI-generated content feels interchangeable, and a lot of it is giving people the ick.
This has created a paradox when it comes to marketing: Content production is easier than ever, but building credibility now takes more effort, and authenticity is a non-negotiable.
That makes the human factor more valuable than ever. And what better way to get more humans into your marketing mix than involving your employees?
Authenticity comes from real voices
Research over the past decade has consistently shown that people trust individuals more than institutions.
94% of marketers agree that trust is key to success in B2B. And people trust – and buy from – people, not corporations or AI.
Your employees are real, credible representatives of your organisation, particularly when speaking about their own expertise and experience. And your customers want to hear from them.
LinkedIn data shows that content shared by employees often achieves significantly higher engagement than the same content shared via brand accounts. Companies can see up to
560% more reach and 8x more engagement than messages shared on brand accounts.
That’s because employee networks are personal, and engagement is more meaningful.
From a reach perspective alone, the numbers are compelling. An organisation with 150 engaged employees may have access to tens of thousands of second-degree connections across industries and geographies.
You just can’t hope to replicate a network of that size through a single branded page.
But there are risks, too, like the potential for employees to go off-script. While that’s part of the authenticity factor, it’s important to put some guardrails in place to protect your brand.
A structured, thoughtful employee advocacy programme can help you reap the rewards while avoiding the risks.
How to tell if your organisation is ready for employee advocacy
Not every organisation is the right fit – or in the right place – for employee advocacy, and that’s ok!
If your organisation isn’t ready for employee advocacy, you won’t get the best out of it. But if you’re interested, here are the three questions we ask every organisation before we get started:
- Do you have an open culture?
This is sometimes the hardest question for marketing managers and leadership to answer. It’s about taking a clear-eyed look at your own organisation and asking yourself:
- Are my colleagues invested in this organisation’s success?
- Is there a high level of trust? Does leadership trust the wider team, and does the wider team trust leadership?
- Do we have a permissive, high autonomy culture, where people are allowed to follow their instincts? Is it acceptable to try something new — and maybe fail?
If that trust isn’t built into the company culture, then employee advocacy probably isn’t right for your organisation. The leadership team will be too worried about the risks, and your employees will be too inhibited to share their experiences and expertise.
In a hierarchical, low-trust culture, asking employees to be the ambassadors of your brand will feel performative, and they’ll disengage.
But if they feel psychologically safe, if the leadership team encourages dialogue and open conversation, if everyone has a shared sense of purpose, then the conditions are perfect for the start of your employee advocacy programme.
- Are you ready to play the long game?
Employee advocacy is best understood as a component of a long-term marketing strategy.
At Hubbub, we’ve seen short-term wins both with our own programme and with clients who’ve followed it. However, you should not expect to see transformative results in week one. Instead, you’ll need to invest time and resources in a properly planned programme which offers participants:
- Training and support
- Clear guidelines
- Leadership participation
- Content frameworks
- Recognition and rewards
As your employee advocates build their confidence, their audience and their credibility, you’ll start to notice the brand benefits — and they’ll only compound over time.
With patience, you’ll see sustained reputation growth that is authentic, organic and impossible to achieve through paid advertising.
- Do you have brand and messaging frameworks ready to go?
Employees don’t need scripts, but they do need clarity on the story you want them to tell about your organisation.
If you’re thinking about employee advocacy, ask yourself if you have the following things on hand and ready to distribute to participants in a programme:
- Clearly defined brand values
- Messaging frameworks
- Content pillars
These marketing materials are the foundational texts for employee advocacy. They allow employees to interpret core messages through their own perspectives, creating a diversity of voices while maintaining strategic coherence.
Without these materials, your messages might contradict one another, and your advocacy efforts will fragment, diluting your positioning rather than strengthening it.
If you don’t have these materials ready to go, don’t worry; we can help you create them. Just book a discovery call to explore how we can help.
Employee advocacy: Grow your reach for less than the cost of conventional advertising
Employee advocacy lets you tap into your greatest resource: your employees. To make it a success, you need to have the right culture and resources in place.
If you’re not there yet, we recommend working on these three areas and laying the foundations for a successful programme – you’ll achieve better results once you’re ready to get started.
Whatever stage you’re at, we’re here to support you. From defining your brand to publishing your first posts, Hubbub is here to help.
Get expert support to launch your employee advocacy programme.
