Marketing 101 for HR

Today, HR professionals and other business leaders need to know more about all aspects of business from finance to economics to marketing.  I’ll be the first to admit that when I was in college and taking many of these courses, along with courses in human resources, I did not really have an understanding of how each would apply to my career.  With that, I am certain I could have paid more attention to them at the time.

Fast forward into my career and it became clear immediately that if I wanted to be promoted and succeed, I could need to be a business person first, HR pro second.  I was fortunate to have several work opportunities that taught me these skills.  If you are starting your career, or even want to brush up on these areas, it’s not too late.

Today, I’m sharing my ideas on what Marketing 101 looks like from the HR perspective.  Here are some tangible things you can DO to create your own marketing plan for your HR team:

1. Create a list of your internal customers.
2. Now, looking at that list, indicate the people you or your team need to “win over” or “win back”.  Work with your team to come up with specific actions you can use with each person to move the needle.
3. Create or strengthen relationships with your company’s traditional media- the marketing team. Offer to meet with members of the team to learn more about how they focus on new and existing clients.  Seek messaging that they use that can also be used internally by your team to create consistency.
4. Build using social media channels to communicate to candidates as well as employees.  There are many ways to do this.  Here is a post I wrote on how to get started.
5. Think about your department services.   How is HR packaged today?  What would your internal customers say?  How do you improve that?
6. Create communications to share your HR department mission with all employees.  For example:

• to support leaders through coaching and partnership
• to support ee’s through education
• to provide training
• to aid in career counseling for leaders and staff
• to ensure legally compliant company practices

By using simple business practices, you can easily strengthen your approach, and your team’s approach, to human resources.  What are other ways you achieve this?