Giving employees a voice through brand advocacy with Glenn Gaudet

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to midsized agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. We’ll show you how to make more money and keep more of what you make. We want to help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable, and if you want down the road, sellable. With 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute. Welcome back. Thanks for coming on back week after week. I am very grateful. Believe it or not, we are listened to in over 115 countries, so thank you all from wherever you may be listening from. I am super grateful that you keep coming back for more.

In today’s episode I want to focus on an opportunity to make a retainer relationship either with existing clients or new clients. If you are an agency that’s been around for a while, odds are you have seen the percentage of clients that have ongoing retainers sort of erode over time. More and more agencies, any time I am with a group of agency owners one of the topics is man, it’s tough to manage a business when everybody is going from project, to project, to project, and there’s no doubt that that is true. So, the reality is for many of us we are looking for ways to have an ongoing retainer based relationship with clients, A, because the truth of the matter is we can be more helpful to a client if we are consistently contributing to their growth or their marketing programs. Two, quite honestly and selfishly, it’s better for our business. It’s easier to run our business when you have at least some percentage of your revenue that you know month in and month out is going to come in, but it’s harder and harder to find things that a client values enough or that are sticky enough that you can expect and a client is willing to sign some sort of ongoing retainer agreement.

So, the topic that we’re going to talk about today I think lends itself really well to that. So, I want to dig into that in a second, but first, couple reminders for you. Number one, I have some great workshops coming up in January. The first one is talking about how to build and nurture your sales funnel, and you are going to leave the workshop with a built out sales funnel. So, you’re going to have all the activities, and a calendar, and all of that. You’re going to have a target list of prospects, so you’re going to do a lot of hands-on work in this workshop. So, if you sign up for that one, come ready to roll up your sleeves and work.

Then right after that, so that workshop is on a Thursday, Friday, and then on Monday, Tuesday of the following week we are back with Mercer Island Group and they have done a lot of work looking at the prospects buying journey. So, how do brands, big and small, think about choosing and agency and what does that buying cycle look like? What is that buyer’s journey and how long is it? Most importantly, what are some key milestones in that buying journey that we should be concentrating on? What the Mercer Island folks are going to talk about is how do you win the attention and favor of your prospects in each of those milestones. In some cases, in milestones where you aren’t even consciously aware that they’re out there. So, that’s going to be fascinating. Both of those are in Orlando Florida. If you know by now if you are a regular listener, it’s January, so Drew is going to be at Disney World because it’s cold in the Midwest.

So, both of them are in Disney property at the beautiful Grand Floridian Resort, and there’s a weekend in between those two workshops. So, I’m just suggesting that maybe it would be a beautiful thing to go to the Thursday, Friday, build out your sales funnel, play at Walt Disney World Saturday and Sunday, and then wrap up your learning with our friends at Mercer Island Group on Monday and Tuesday. You can go over to agencymanagementinstitute.com, click on the training tab and you can read all about those and get registered.

Okay, so let me tell you a little bit about my guest today and his depth of expertise around this. So, Glenn Gaudet owns a company called GaggleAMP, and it is a software that helps brands or agencies create employee engagement programs or advocacy programs around your digital content. So, oftentimes I think we see our clients creating content and then they’re frustrated that their employees won’t retweet it or share it on their Facebook page or things like that, and Glenn and his team have spent the last nine years sort of looking at what it takes to create a great employee advocacy program.

So, I’m sure we’ll talk about the software a little bit, but that’s not really where the focus is going to be. The focus is going to be what does it take to have a great program and how can we as agencies sell that into our clients and how do we help them make it successful, because it’s my supposition that this is great retainer work. This is not a one and done, you’re not going to build this and then let them drive it themselves. This is something that you would do. So, while you’re creating content for them you could marry up the content creation program that you have with this employee advocacy program and say, “Hey, we’re creating all this great content for you, so we also want to make sure that it gets a lot of exposure and a lot of engagement.” And now it is not just about sharing, it’s much bigger than that. We want people commenting, and engaging in each other’s content and all kinds of activities like that which will amplify the company’s brand, the company’s voice and also service the employees as well.

So, that’s why I wanted Glenn to come on the show because I want to pick his brain about how do you build out one of these programs and what are some of the things that we want to make sure we avoid when we’re doing this for clients as we are suggesting it as a new strategy and then the tactics behind it. What are the things we should lean into? What are the things that we should avoid tripping over? So, I can’t wait to have this conversation. Let’s jump into it.

Glenn, welcome to the podcast, thanks for joining us.

Glenn Gaudet:

Drew, thanks for having me on the show.

Drew McLellan:

So, I know that on some of our offline conversations sort of prepping for today’s conversation I know a lot of your work and a lot of the software that you’ve built is all around this idea of getting internal audiences to be advocates for a brand’s content. So, kind of to tee up what I want to talk about today, I want to talk a little bit more about what that’s all about and what it looks like.

Glenn Gaudet:

Sure.

Drew McLellan:

Then also from the agency’s perspective, from my listener’s perspective, how do we build a strategy around this and how do we package this up and help clients deploy it successfully if it is a strategy that makes sense? So, first let’s talk about kind of what internal advocacy looks like in terms of employee advocacy programs and some of the wins and losses, pitfalls around that. Then I’d love to get your thoughts about how as an agency owner or leader, which is who everybody listening is, how do they think about this in terms of taking this idea to their clients, how do they guide their clients through it? What are some of the pitfalls that perhaps they should be mindful of all of that? But, let’s start with it sounds simple, employee advocacy program, but define it for us and then I have some follow-up questions.

Glenn Gaudet:

Sure. One of the things that I’ve seen in the company that I have now, I started nine years ago. So, I’ve seen this progression that’s taken place, and probably a better word is evolution of the space. When people think of employee advocacy, a lot of times there’s different points of view at it, and I think it’s from where you come is the kind of filter that you put on it. So, I’m glad you’re giving me the opportunity to define it, at least the way we see it, and that is if you think about digital marketing today, most companies have all of these folks or employees who are onto themselves their own digital beacon.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

So, these are people that have some level of activity digitally, whether it’d be through a social network, or surfing the web or something. So, from our point of view, the way we see this is how do you make it easy for a company to actually get their employees to be part of the digital marketing efforts? Now, I think we need to abstract that up because you can’t do this in a silo. These digital marketing efforts need to be tied to the digital marketing strategy, which needs to be tied to the corporate strategy.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

Because you’re trying to design what? Outcomes. If you can design outcomes, then whether you’re doing it through maybe a traditional paid approach or organically through all of these beacons, which are your employees, you still want to make sure that everybody’s on the same page and trying to go after the same types of outcomes and leveraging the same strategies, at least at the top level.

Drew McLellan:

Okay, so that was a lot of jargon and buzz words. Give me a specific example of what a company might want to do and how the employee advocacy would play a role in that.

Glenn Gaudet:

Sure. Lead generation. Let’s say you want to do lead generation, and maybe it is part of the strategy that somebody has come up with to do lead generation is to do things like webinars, right?

Drew McLellan:

Okay. Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

Pretty common thing.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

You create some content, you’ve got a webinar with some sort of a signup page, you’re going out there, you’re doing some amount of probably either paid social, or paid search to try to drive people to that.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

Well, you can certainly have your employees share that, right? And I think what most people think of employee advocacy is oh, I will just get all my employees to share this thing and that’s employee advocacy. The reality is, if you really want to make it effective you want to tie engagements to all of this. So, what are the kinds of things that you can have your employees do to help get a broader audience for, in this case, a webinar? And it would be interacting with the content. Maybe the content’s put out by the brand, maybe the content’s being put out by just a handful of employees, and the other employees are actually going to go in, maybe they’ll like it, maybe they’ll comment on it, they’ll drive up the engagements, and as a result what happens? The social networks then see that.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

They’re getting a lot of engagement. What happens? They show it to more people. I mean, it really is that simple from that point of view, but most people forget about the second part, which is the engagements. They always think about the first part, which is I’m just going to pump a lot of content out there.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So, if I understand it right, what you’re saying is employee advocacy program is creating, and I know that your tool GaggleAMP does this, but even in the broader sense.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah, just in, yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Right. I’m going to create some … I have a measurable end goal, which is I want 500 people in a webinar. I’m going to create some content about the webinar.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yes.

Drew McLellan:

I’m going to tease some of the content, I’m going to talk about who the teacher is of the webinar, all of those sort of things, and then I’m going to in some way, shape or form tee it up to the employee base to not only maybe push it out or share, or invite their network to participate, but to also engage with the brand’s sort of official, air quotes, content around the webinar, saying either commenting, liking, whatever it may be, all to basically influence the algorithms of the social networks. Yes?

Glenn Gaudet:

Well, it’s a combination of things. I think there’s certainly an algorithm component to this, but more importantly if you think about humanizing this. So, you talk about putting this out in the brand, and you can certainly do that, but one of the things you can do is you can have the person who is actually in the webinar put it out, and then you can have your employees participate in conversations around that person.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

What that does, it starts to humanize the content. So, when you start to humanize content, what happens? You start to create relationship. It’s hard to do business if you don’t have a relationship.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

And so, part of what we’re trying to do with employee advocacy is we’re generating lots of digital engagements, which create digital relationships, which hopefully turn into business relationships.

Drew McLellan:

So, if I’m the factory line employee, or I’m the entry level accountant in that big accounting firm, why do I want to do this?

Glenn Gaudet:

So, I think that’s a really good question, and that is something that I think needs to be part of the overall employee advocacy strategy, right? When you start thinking about it, is what’s in it for me from an employee perspective?

Drew McLellan:

This is the place where I would imagine that some brands have tried to do this on their own and it has fallen flat on its face.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

So, for us as agency folks to be able to go in and sell it to a client, and have the client go, “Yeah, we tried that. Nobody did anything.”

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

So no, I don’t want to pay you for a strategy, and I don’t want to talk about it. So, how do you recommend, what would we bake into the strategy, if we were taking it to the client, to have better outcomes than I suspect sometimes happens in the home grown efforts?

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah, no, it’s got to be win-win, right? It’s got to be win for the brand but it also has to be win for the employee. The way you create win-wins is you’re having the employees do things which improve their visibility on their social networks, it improves their ability to be their own thought leader within their network. So, it raises their profile and enhances their personal brand along with the professional brand, and the brand of the company.

So, when you start thinking in those terms you actually start thinking about content and engagements a little differently, because it’s not about buy my widget anymore, it’s really about helping the employees to have genuine and authentic conversations by giving them some basic tools and tips and some guardrails to have those out there as it relates to the company and the industry that they’re serving.

Drew McLellan:

So, in your experience, because I’m sure you gather lots of data inside the tool.

Glenn Gaudet:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Drew McLellan:

Let’s say that a company has 100 employees, what’s a reasonable expectation of how many of them would participate in a program like this? Because I’m sure it’s not 100%.

Glenn Gaudet:

No, and you shouldn’t set an expectation that anything is going to be 100%, right? Send out an email. What percent actually open the email?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

So, I think if you’re going to be successful in this you have to set your expectations correctly.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Well, and again, I’m thinking about it. If I’m the agency pitching this to a client.

Glenn Gaudet:

Exactly.

Drew McLellan:

You want to set the expectations up on the front end.

Glenn Gaudet:

Absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

So what has your data shown you?

Glenn Gaudet:

So, it’s going to vary. It’s going to vary based on the industry that they’re in, because you used the term factory floor earlier, right? If you’ve got 100 factory floor people versus 100 knowledge workers who have computers during the day, you’re going to have a different engagement strategy for each. So, you’re also going to have to look at the company themselves. What is the company culture within there? I mean, we’ve seen, and you’ve probably seen this too. This company is out there that they’re thinking about doing an employee advocacy program but their company policy states that nobody can access Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Twitter while they’re on company computers.

Drew McLellan:

Right, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

So, I think you have to take a step back and look at some of the environmental and cultural factors that they created in the company to see what you can set as an expectation.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah. What I always love about those policies is that everyone on the planet carries a phone in their pocket, which is a computer, they don’t need to use yours, but nonetheless.

Glenn Gaudet:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

And see if the company even has a social media policy because they might have had a social media policy that was written eight years ago that basically says our social media policy says you can’t do anything on social media.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Right. So, there’s all these factors that come in, but getting back to you, I’m not trying to dodge the-

Drew McLellan:

I knew we’d get to the answer.

Glenn Gaudet:

But what we see is because the culture makes a huge difference within the organization if people have affinity for the brand.

Drew McLellan:

Right, if they’re proud of where they work and-

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a reasonable expectation to say that you’re going to have between 40 and 60% participating in this, right?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

You’re never going to have 100% and that shouldn’t be the goal, but here’s what happens. You start with some amount of or some percentage of the group and then conversations take place amongst the employees and that’s what actually drives it. So, the bigger question is it’s not the percentage of the uptake of a successful program, but setting your expectation that whatever that number that you’re shooting for, you’re not going to have it within the first month.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Yeah, it’s going to build over time.

Glenn Gaudet:

It’s going to build over time, absolutely. So, that’s where an agency I think can be really successful, is in setting those expectations correctly, because if they come out of the gate and say, “Okay, well, you know our client is 10,000 employees, so we’re going to get 10,000 employees on the program in the first month.” No, you’re not, and the reason why is one of the things that you’re going to do as an agency, and this is where you need to set expectations, is the program that we design and kick off in day one is going to be a different program that we are doing 12 months from now.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

So, that is where that expectation comes into play, setting those success criteria, but more importantly, setting the expectation that this is going to evolve, because what’s going to happen is we’re going to start by making a few assumptions. As this program goes in the first month, two, six months, we’re going to be validating some of those assumptions, we’re going to find out we’re wrong in some areas, we’re going to find out we’re incredibly right in other areas. Then we’re going to start evolving the program. Again, this has nothing to do with the tool, by the way. This is all about the program.

Drew McLellan:

Right, absolutely.

Glenn Gaudet:

And you’re evolving this as you go because you’re having those conversations with the employees who are participating, and you’re also having a conversation with the employees who aren’t participating, and you’re learning that there’s certain content in certain types of engagements that people like because they’re getting the positive affirmation back from their followers and friends that oh, hey, I didn’t even know you were working here, or hey, that’s a really interesting topic, can you tell me more about this. Then they start getting more engagements, they have people reaching out to them, digitally. They have people following them now that they hadn’t had before, and all of a sudden that’s where the value proposition really sets in for the employee. It’s like my company is helping me to actually improve my own brand out there.

Drew McLellan:

And I would assume that part of what you’re watching is you’re watching the kinds of content you have available for the employees to interact with, and you’re paying attention to what they are drawn to, what they do share or comment on, what gets very little internal engagement, and then you’re tweaking the content strategy around that, right?

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah, and the thing is, I mean, some of this is content 101, right? So, most companies know that if all you’re doing is sharing content that goes to a pay-gate of some sort.

Drew McLellan:

Sure, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Then it’s not going to be really successful. Why would you think that would be successful with your employee advocacy program? More importantly, what you want to do is you want to help find the voice for the employee, and remember it’s the employee’s voice not the company’s voice necessarily. So, you have to think about that again, both from a perspective of the content but also the engagement strategy. So, let me give you an example. You might have some subject matter experts within the organization that the agency has identified. It’s some topic and this company’s got some really core assets from an employee point of view that can really they can talk about this. The agency may find through their listening efforts on behalf of the company that there is a conversation going on either in a maybe LinkedIn post somewhere or there’s a conversation going on on a blog, and what you do is you can have that set of subject matter experts go in there and join the conversation. Now, notice that’s not their 1,000 other employees.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Those subject matter experts, and then if it’s on a platform like LinkedIn what you can do is you can have the rest of the employees help drive the engagement around that by liking that and sharing that conversation. It’s much more authentic than just having everybody share the same piece of content.

Drew McLellan:

So, what I’m hearing you say is that part of a great employee advocacy program is not just creating content, not just the brand creating content so the employees can engage with it, but also finding other content on relevant topics that out third parties are creating.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yes.

Drew McLellan:

And then encouraging your people to engage in that conversation.

Glenn Gaudet:

Absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

Share their expertise and then have other employees amplify that interaction.

Glenn Gaudet:

Why do we think as a company or even as an agency that the only conversations around a particular product or industry are taking place within the world that we control?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

They’re not.

Drew McLellan:

Right, but we’d probably like it to be that way.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah, certainly. If we control everything.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

But the reality is what you’re doing with your employee advocacy program if you’re doing it successfully and you’re adding value to your clients is you’re helping direct the energy of these conversations and engagements to the places where the conversations are already taking place. So, part of what the agency is doing is identifying where they are and developing the appropriate strategy to do it. Now, in some cases you may not want 1,000 people to engage with anything. You may only want to have five, right? So, this is where if you’re going to do an amazing job for your client there’s a lot of thinking and research that can really go into this that can really make the difference between a program that just is designed to share content that the agency is pushing out to them already as a part of their retainer fee and actually putting some higher level thought that’s connecting back to the strategic goals of the organization.

Drew McLellan:

So, do you believe this … So, as I’m listening to you think, I’m thinking wouldn’t it be interesting to have basically an employee advocacy program that also included some of your raving fan customers? Have you ever seen that happen?

Glenn Gaudet:

Well, yeah. I mean, there is actually there is customer advocacy. I mean, that’s a thing, right? So, you can actually use a similar approach with your customers. You can do the same thing with channel partners.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

Right? It’s really anybody that has an affinity for your brand, your organization, but here’s what you don’t want to do, is you don’t want to put them all and create this one big bucket and have everybody just share the same content.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

Really want to think about this. What are the kinds of engagements, what are the kind of content that you want people to engage with that are customers versus your employees, versus your channel partners?

Drew McLellan:

Well, and I would even think with the employees if I’m building a program out for a client I’d be like well, I may want the C-suite to engage with this kind of content. I may want my customer service team to engage with this kind of content. I might want my marketing and sales people.

Glenn Gaudet:

Absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

So, even within the employee base or the-

Glenn Gaudet:

It’s not one bucket.

Drew McLellan:

Right, you’re going to have multiple buckets. So, in theory I could have six or eight buckets, one of which might be raving fan customers, one of might be … So, if I’m going in to sell this to a client, what I might say is, “I’m going to create an internal audience advocacy program that would be parsed out with different groups of employees.” But I might also include great repeat customers, brand advocates and all that, right? I could also expand it out and say look, we have lots of opportunity here. This also sounds like a ton of moving parts.

Glenn Gaudet:

It can be, and depending on the size of the organizations you can add elements like oh, there’s regional aspects to this. There’s different business units. So, the complexity can increase, and I think that’s where the value of an agency can come in, is to really understand a lot of these moving parts on behalf of the company.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

And that becomes a service that is frankly once you get in there it’s hard to pull it out.

Drew McLellan:

Right, because if you’re managing the whole process it would be difficult for them to divorce themselves from you and still have it going.

Glenn Gaudet:

That’s right, because what you end up creating is the agency has the institutional knowledge that even the employees in the company don’t.

Drew McLellan:

Right, right, right. I want to talk a little bit about how employees react to this and sort of some ways that you’ve seen companies or agencies successfully roll this out to the employees, because I’m guessing this is not so much what you say but how you say it sort of a thing. Let’s take a quick break and then when we come back let’s dig into that a little bit.

Thanks for tuning in to Build a Better Agency. I just want to take a quick second and remind you that throughout the year AMI offers workshops for agency owners, agency leaders, and account executives. So, if you head over to the AMI website and you check out under the training tab you’re going to find a calendar of all of the workshops we offer throughout the year. We cover quite a wide variety of topics, everything from biz dev to creating a content machine for your agency, to making sure that you are running your business based on the best financial metrics and dashboards that you can. We also have a workshop on agency owner management hacks, all the best practices that agency owners are using to run their businesses well and profitably. Of course, you’re always going to find our account executive bootcamp and our advanced AE bootcamp. So, go ahead and check it out on the website and hopefully one of those will meet a need for you and your agency and we’ll see you soon. Let’s get back to the episode.

Welcome back everybody. Glenn and I right before the break were chatting about employee advocacy programs, and if you remember what I was saying was I’m curious about how you sell this internally. I would think that there are some employees who are like, “Nope, Facebook is mine. I’m not going to talk about work.” Or it feels like the man is telling me what to do, or this is my social media channel, you can’t hijack it, to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, I’m curious, how would we as agencies help our clients introduce this successfully to the internal audience and what are sort of some of the bumpers or dos and don’ts that you’ve seen where people have either really knocked it out of the park or tripped over themselves?

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah. I think you hit on it before the break actually. So muck of this is a positioning, right? You have to position this correctly with the employees. They have to understand that yeah, the company is going to get some value out of it, but you as the employee are going to get even more value out of it. If it’s put into that context, then there is an opening for listening because if you just come in and turn around, hey, we want everybody to pump out this content.

Drew McLellan:

Retweet this stuff, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah, retweet all that, and maybe one of the things you actually ask them to do at some point is retweet something, but if that’s your entire strategy, there’s not a lot in it for them.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

So what we’re doing if we’re doing an employee advocacy effectively is we are propelling not only the brand of the company but the brands of the employees. More and more I think that’s becoming a recognized asset within the organization is the employees as influencers themselves.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

We always think of influencers as these external things. They are the consultants out there, the research advisory folks, the big bloggers, employees are also influencers.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

And if you don’t think the employees are influencers, guess who’s talking to your prospects? Guess who’s talking to your customers?

Drew McLellan:

Right, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

It’s your employees.

Drew McLellan:

And your prospective employees, right?

Glenn Gaudet:

Absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

In today’s market you want them advocating for that as well.

Glenn Gaudet:

Absolutely. If you have an employee out there that is real, that understands what they’re getting out of this and they see that direct value because of the conversations that are incoming to them. I mean, one of the biggest frustrations that anybody has when they’re on social is like is anybody even looking at this stuff, is anybody listening?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Right? And then all of a sudden they start to, because they’re more active now, they not only see more followers but they have people, they have prospects saying, “Hey, I didn’t even know that you all thought this way.”

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Can we talk, right? And then all of a sudden that changes the value proposition again from I’m just doing this for the company to I’m also doing this for me. When an agency can really set that stage effectively, that’s when you’re going to get the take up that you really want for an employee advocacy program. I will tell you right now, if you do this incorrectly you’ll have a very short lifespan for your employee advocacy program because it’s all about the company.

Drew McLellan:

So, I’m guessing though that there are some people who are like I don’t want to be an influencer, I don’t care about my personal brand.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yes.

Drew McLellan:

Are there ways to gamify this or are there other incentives other than that?

Glenn Gaudet:

Sure.

Drew McLellan:

Again, as I was saying to you before we hit the record button, I was poking around on the website, at your website, and based on some of the videos I was watching and things like that, it looked like there are other ways to encourage people to do this. Can you talk a little bit about some of the other avenues of encouragement that an agency might bake into their program to get employees engaged?

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah. I mean, so with our platform we offer things like a leader board.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

What’s amazing to me when I first started this is how powerful that competitive spirit is within certain companies. It’s amazing. If you’re not on the leader board, boy, I’ll tell you, there’s something going on there, right? So, we also provide a reward system in there. So, you’re basically getting points for all the activities that you’re doing, and that contributes to not only your status in the leader board but also to a reward program that frankly is defined by the agency or by the company and you can say well, if you get so many points you can get X, right? What we recommend to people is don’t give away money. Hit the company closet with all the swag from the last trade show, that makes actually really good incentives.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Other things are things just like recognition. We’re going to put you in the company newsletter. Everybody who gets X by this period you’re getting in the company newsletter. You’re going to get that public attaboy, attagirl. So, so much of this just is just being a little more creative in the offer. That’s where I think the agency has a unique opportunity because they understand their client. They understand the culture, and they’ll understand the kinds of things that will get those employees pretty excited about this.

Drew McLellan:

So, obviously the reason why we would advocate to a client that they do this and that they pay us to do this on their behalf is we’re trying to drive to results. So, what kind of results, when you guys have helped brands execute an employee advocacy program, what kind of results are you seeing on behalf of the brand?

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah. I mean, so some of the basic things that you might expect because they can drive a lot of traffic, you’re going to see things like lead generation. If you’re measuring share voice you’re certainly going to be driving up the conversations. So, that’s a huge thing.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

You’re also going to be seeing things that, again, it’s one of those things where the insights of the agency, what is the company looking for from a corporate perspective and then how do I align my employee advocacy program to optimize for those outcomes?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Again, those are going to vary, but that’s the thing, is you don’t want to silo this. You want to tie this back to what the company is trying to achieve. So, in some companies they could care less about lead gen and it’s all about shared voice. Other companies it could be well, that’s really nice, but really what I need to do is I just need to get more engagements with my existing customers. I want to make sure that I’m having active conversations with them. So, it’s going to vary by what the overall goals of the company are going to be and then that comes down, again, if you’re doing this right from an agency point of view, you’ve aligned your strategy to the marketing strategy, which hopefully is aligned to the corporate strategy.

Drew McLellan:

Right. You know, as I’m listening to you talk I’m thinking so many clients are struggling to find and retain great employees. Then this would be a great, just from a recruitment point of view, of getting you on the radar screen of prospective employees, and then when they go to check out, because they’re going to go to your website or they’re going to go to your social channels, imagine going to a Facebook page of a company and seeing all the employees engaging with that page and talking about whatever it is, the-

Glenn Gaudet:

Or do a day in the life campaign.

Drew McLellan:

Right, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

What’s it like to work here?

Drew McLellan:

But I think about, it’s you’re right, it is sort of figuring out what are the brand’s goals and then how do we magnify that voice by getting the employees who are … In today’s world of ratings, and reviews, I mean, that every man credibility is so high that I think a lot of people, and I know when we did some research with agency folks and we said, “What is the number one driver to you choosing to take a job at an agency to stay, take a job at a new agency?” It really was what the employee said about that place.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

So, I think there is a lot of power for a lot of different corporate goals.

Glenn Gaudet:

That’s right.

Drew McLellan:

In magnifying the employee’s voice. Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah, and I think that you can’t understate the impact of that employee experience, because that’s certainly going to help on the hiring side.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

But it also helps the existing employees to feel better about why they’re working there, because they’re seeing how other people are also relating to the same entity that they’re working with, right?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

So, I mean, these are benefits that really come back to understanding your client, and when you understand your client you understand some of those things that they really value, and they need some help kind of getting more energy behind. I think that’s where your employee advocacy program should really start from, that place.

Drew McLellan:

Well, from the agency’s perspective this is not a one and done thing, this is not a project this is-

Glenn Gaudet:

No.

Drew McLellan:

… inner work, this is ongoing work where not only are you helping create the content, but you’re also driving sort of the internal program that gets the employees to engage with that content.

Glenn Gaudet:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

So, A, you’re going to get paid to create more content, B, you’re going to create to navigate the actual program, you’re going to get paid to do all of the employee communications and engagement, whether that’s the gamification, like we were talking about, or whatever it may be. So, from an agency perspective this is a great way to kind of get your hook into a client in a way that they’re going to have a hard time disengaging with. The other thing I was just thinking about as I was sort of rattling of those lists is it also is a great way for an agency to engage with other departments, besides the marketing and sales department.

Glenn Gaudet:

Oh, absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

Because now you’re talking to B suite, now you’re talking to HR, now you’re talking to customer service. So, there’s a lot of upside to an agency for creating a valuable program like this that you know is going to deliver results for the clients. It’s great for the client but it’s also great for the agency.

Glenn Gaudet:

Well, and I think sometimes agencies put themselves in this box of they are the content creators.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

When you actually have an active employee advocacy program, guess who starts adding to the content creation engine?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Right? And then so you become the packager, if you will, of the great content that’s coming from the employees now.

Drew McLellan:

Right, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

So, again, it’s just you got to … It’s all out there, you just got to change the way you currently view things because I think the challenge with agencies that the agencies out there that are frustrated are typically just they’re caught in who they were five years ago versus who they need to be today.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, and I think also if we’re really doing content the way I think it should be done, which is we’re really helping clients create a channel where they can create a community of interested parties. Now all of a sudden the channel is much more robust, right? So this media channel is much more robust because it literally is being fed from all sides.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yes.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah. It’s not a one-way street, it really isn’t, and it’s got to be two-way.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Because as good as the agency is, the agency still doesn’t work in the company, they don’t necessarily have, as much as they can have the ethos, it’s different when you actually are working in the company, but the agency still needs to tap into that and draw that out, and an effective agency will do that in a good employee advocacy program.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah, this is fascinating. So, how have you seen people stub their toe on this? Because this all sounds awesome.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

If the listeners are going, “Yep, I have a couple clients I could totally see how we would do this.” What are some pitfalls they need to be mindful of or to avoid, beyond the just telling everybody to do it? We talked about that a little bit.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah. The two ones that you can usually see coming a mile away are expectation setting, they set the wrong expectation for themselves and their bosses and everybody else, and the other one is thinking of this as a more as a campaign as this kind of point in time static thing rather than a dynamic program that’s going to grow over a long period of time. Those are the two areas where when you see that happen it’s hard to recover from, because somebody comes in and sells to the C-suite, we’re going to do an employee advocacy program, we’re going to get all of our employees on this, and it’s going to be awesome. Then they find out well, hey, you know what? We got 20% on, but we didn’t get the other 80%. So, instead of setting the expectation that in the first X period of time we’re going to get this percent, they’re getting the same result but it’s viewed as not being successful, even by that person, because they set their own expectations in the wrong place.

Drew McLellan:

Right, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Then the other thing is oh, we’re just going to come in and we’re going to get all the employees jazzed up about helping us with this campaign, and then we’re going to park it for a while, and then when some other campaign comes up a year and a half from now, then we’ll jump into it again. So, those are the two areas. When you see people kind of in that mindset, you see that this is not going to end well.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. The other one I can think of that thinking from the brand’s perspective, I wonder sometimes if clients would go, “Oh, this will be cheaper in the end because we won’t have to pay the agency to do as much X, Y, Z because our employees will just sort of natively do it.” As opposed to this is actually an investment. If you’re going to manage it well and properly curate the content, encourage the employees to do and interact and share and all that, this actually is a fair amount of not manual labor but human brain power, sort of figuring out how to navigate this thing.

Glenn Gaudet:

Wait Drew, you mean this isn’t all going to be replaced by AI soon enough or marketed by AI? No, I mean-

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, exactly.

Glenn Gaudet:

… it’s a really good point, which is there’s thought that goes into this, there’s research that goes in, there’s listening that goes in, active listening. To your point, the cost of this when you look at it, you may say, “Huh, well, I am going to need the agency, and I am going to need that.” But what’s going to happen over time is when they start actually doing the comparisons of the employee organic activity that’s taking place through the employee advocacy program and your paid programs, and you start comparing those. Now all of a sudden it says hmm, actually that’s a better investment over here in the employee advocacy side. It doesn’t mean I’m going to get rid of paid because that’s a lever that I want to be able to kind of pull and I can increase, decrease, whatever, but the employee advocacy program, that’s my stable horse. It’s constantly a driving force.

Drew McLellan:

The other thing that I think about is one of the things we know about today’s employees is that they want to be more engaged with the brand that they work for. They want to believe in its mission and its purpose. So, if you create content that is mission driven, that is helpful to people, I would also think that one of the side benefits is that you may end up with employees that are more engaged and feel more connected to the brand, and you might actually be able to improve retention.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah, and I touched on that earlier, is when you get this win-win.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

It really does show itself in so many other areas.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

You mentioned retention. Part of it is it’s like I think people sometimes undervalue culture in an organization, and it is so important. When you actually get an employee advocacy program and people are feeling benefit that’s being delivered to them from the company beyond the paycheck, wow.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Right? I mean, that really has impact.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So, as we kind of wind this down, tell everybody a little bit about GaggleAMP and how that tool in particular would serve this sort of a program.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah. I appreciate that opportunity. So, just a little bit of background. I founded the company back in 2010. So, we’re coming on our ninth year now.

Drew McLellan:

And it turned out just the way you thought it would, right?

Glenn Gaudet:

You know, what’s funny, not even close in terms of …

Drew McLellan:

Right, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

But the interesting thing is we started as the original mission of the company is still the same that it is now. If you look at most technology companies there’s usually pivots.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Glenn Gaudet:

And we’ve really focused on how do we help companies get their employees to be part of their digital marketing effort. So, we had that view back in 2010, we have that view now in 2019, and we’re taking it forward into 2020. I mean, it’s just, it’s one of those things where I’ve really appreciated because in order to achieve those objectives, the product has changed over time.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

We started when the product first came out there were three things you could have your employees do. You could share message on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, that’s it. Well, you can’t do everything by sharing anymore, and we’ve seen this evolution take place. Now on our platform you can have your employees do over 50 different activities. Yes, there’s some content sharing in there, but more importantly you’ve got a whole suite of various engagements both on social networks and on web assets, which are really, really powerful. I’ll give you an example. One of the activities is write a review on Glassdoor about what it’s like to work here.

Drew McLellan:

Oh, interesting.

Glenn Gaudet:

I mean, something as simple as that.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Can go so far because when do most people write their review on Glassdoor?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, the day after they get fired.

Glenn Gaudet:

That’s right.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, right.

Glenn Gaudet:

So, if you think about it from that perspective, having a platform that can align with the various needs of the agency to fulfill the strategy, that’s what we’ve built here. It’s multitiered, which means you can manage this for a small group, you can manage it for a worldwide group with all different sub-segments in that. I mean, it’s-

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, when we were talking there earlier I was trying to imagine the Google Sheets or the Excel spreadsheet.

Glenn Gaudet:

Oh my goodness.

Drew McLellan:

What it would take to sort of manage the complexity of this.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yes.

Drew McLellan:

And thinking I totally understand why there’s a tool like yours out there, because this is a lot of stuff.

Glenn Gaudet:

There is a lot of stuff, and there’s a lot of tracking.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

The other thing too that you have to take into consideration, nobody is going to hand over their social media passwords to you. They don’t want you to have it.

Drew McLellan:

Right. And you probably don’t want to have it either.

Glenn Gaudet:

You don’t want to have it.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah. That’s so true, you don’t want to have it. But believe it or not, I mean, I’ve actually run into some companies where they’ve asked employees to do that. With our platform it’s always up to the employee. So, the company can make recommendations, but the employee always has the opportunity to say, “You know what? No thanks.” They can provide anonymous feedback as to why they didn’t, which is really powerful, right? Remember I talked about the program you have day one is not the program you have after 12 months, because of that kind of feedback, and we also we’re able to track the impact that different messages and different activities are having. So, are these activities driving clicks? Are they driving engagements? How many of our employees actually shared it? But what we don’t do is we don’t say, “Oh well, Johnny and Suzie didn’t share this message.” So you maintain that anonymity because you want to make this a very good experience for the employee so they don’t think that “big brother” is making them do anything, and more importantly, if they don’t do something.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Glenn Gaudet:

Right?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah, fascinating. Glenn, this has been really interesting. So, my brain is just whirling in terms of so many agencies today are really being forced into a project, by project, by project relationship with their clients and are looking for ways they can add incredible value to clients but also that they can have some sort of recurring revenue tied to that value. This whole idea of an employee advocacy program is a perfect way to do both ends of that equation.

Glenn Gaudet:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

No, I agree. What you’re going to find is that if you put together the right program for them, this is going to hold.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

You’re going to have a very long-term relationship with your client because you’re going to be an invaluable part of what their ability to achieve their goals are going to be.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, absolutely. This has been fascinating. So Glenn, if folks want to learn more about you, if they want to learn more about GaggleAMP or the work that you do, what’s the best way for them to track you down?

Glenn Gaudet:

Well, they can certainly reach out to me on LinkedIn, just do a LinkedIn search for Glenn Gaudet. I’m also available on Twitter with Glenng, that’s G-L-E-N-N-G. We actually have a few resources that I think agencies might find interesting and those are available on a URL that we created specifically for this podcast. It’s GaggleAMP.com/build.

Drew McLellan:

Okay, awesome.

Glenn Gaudet:

It’s GaggleAMP.com/build.

Drew McLellan:

So we will put that in the show notes everybody so you can track that down.

Glenn Gaudet:

If you do reach out to me, tell me that you heard this conversation so I can give Drew some credit.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, that would be lovely. We can start an advocacy program for the podcast.

Glenn Gaudet:

I could. What can that be?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Glenn Gaudet:

I wonder how.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right, this has been great. Thanks so much, Glenn.

Glenn Gaudet:

Drew, thank you.

Drew McLellan:

You bet. All right guys, this wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. Really some interesting ideas. I know so many of you are struggling with the project by project billing and are looking for ways to add amazing value for your clients, first and foremost, but also ways that are so valuable that the client is perfectly comfortable committing some sort of an ongoing relationship with you. So, I think that Glenn gave you a lot of ideas of how to do that. Big shout-out and thank you to our friends at White Label IQ for being our presenting sponsor. As you know, if you are looking for somebody to wholesale design, dev, whether that’s web, or app or anything like that, software as a service if you have an idea around that, or PPC, they are a great source for that. So, head over to whitelabeliq.com/ami for the special deal they have just for you with a bunch of free offers.

I will be back next week with another guest to get you thinking a little differently. Also, if you have not left a rating or review for us on the podcast channel of your choice, remember that we give away a free workshop, whether it’s one of our on demand workshops or a seat in one of our live workshops. Every month we do a live, a random drawing. We don’t do it live, well, we’re alive when we do it, but you know what I mean. We do a random drawing of everybody that has left us a review. So, grab a screenshot of your review, email it to me at [email protected] and we will make sure that you get in the drawing. All right, I will be back next week with another guest. In the meantime, enjoy the life that you’re building for yourself and make sure that the agency supports that. Okay, talk to you next week.

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build a Better Agency podcast. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to midsized agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.