Internal Branding

      

      Internal branding means communicating your company’s brand to employees. With internal branding, the company’s management seeks to shape employees’ brand perception and, in turn, enhance their ability to communicate it to customers. Purposeful internal branding can build loyalty, increase productivity, and enhance recruitment and retention. However, fitness center operators tend to forego all of these benefits by focusing on external vs. interval brand communication, thus impairing a center’s ability to fulfill its brand promises to customers.

      Internal branding gives employees recognized responsibilities for communicating the brand. The result is that employees strive harder to achieve facility goals, boosting operational performance. Another gain of internal branding is in sales. Whereas in some operations sales knowledge is restricted to the front desk, the sales team and the manager, through internal branding, all employees take an active role in sales and reinforcement of promotional messages to customers.

Brand Language

      Effective internal branding requires that the brand be clearly communicated to employees. Increasing the brand resolution - how clearly employees visualize and understand the brand – is crucial to ensuring that they can make a positive contribution to the realization of the brand’s promises.

      An important element of this communication is product knowledge. This includes facility knowledge, like the number of resistance machines, pool water temperature and number of lockers; facility information, such as opening hours, personal training options and spa therapies; and values, or phases that represent fitness center culture and values.

      This product knowledge needs to be shaped into precise, clearly understood terminology and phrases. Much of this should already be available in promotional literature, training materials and operating manuals. This information equips employees with the terminology and phrases that facilitate delivery of sales information and interaction with customers. As a result, all employees can provide consistent and confident communication of the brand to the customer.

      Internal branding needs to nurture the right cultural and operational behavior to reflect your fitness center’s image. This requires a review of work procedures and practices to ensure that there are no barriers to brand fulfillment. For example, if the brand dictates that the facility provides a quiet, peaceful environment, employee work practices and interpersonal skills need to be designed, trained and encouraged to match this need.

       An added benefit of internal branding is that it enables employees to regulate their own work performance, and readily identify areas of conflict between brand promise and brand delivery. Through continuous feedback, the brand will progressively come into sharper focus for both employees and customers.

Evangelists

      Internal branding needs leadership from senior managers, who are the first line for brand evangelists. A brand evangelist has a deep understanding of the brand, and is a sincere advocate of its values. These brand leaders help to refine the brand’s resolution. This can be carried out through structured internal brand-building sessions where product knowledge is imparted. It can also be fortified through incorporating internal branding into on-the-job feedback (while walking through the facility, for instance). Senior management can also select other employees to carry the internal branding message, with the long-term goal being to galvanize every employee into becoming an evangelist.

      First-hand experience boosts employee enthusiasm for the brand, and it is the most effective brand communicator. An effective internal branding technique is to let employees use the facilities and services. When a new piece of equipment arrives or service is introduced, let employees try it.

Congruence

      With internal branding, there needs to be a match-up between what the fitness center promises to provide, and what employees understand they should provide, and what employees understand they should provide. This is vital with hotel fitness centers that are just one component of a much larger business. There are several hotel departments that have an indirect role in the fitness center’s operation (front desk, marketing department, etc.). Internal branding ensures that the different components understand their respective roles, so when, for instance, housekeeping staff provides turndown service, they can respond to a guest’s interest in the hotel’s fitness facilities.

      The requirement for internal branding grows when a new package or service in introduced in the fitness center, particularly if it affects traditional work roles and procedures. Any such introduction needs to be preceded by a tailored internal branding module so brand perception among employees adjusts accordingly.

            Internal branding is a long-term commitment. Brand messages to employees need to be regularly reinforced and assessed so that erroneous information and misunderstandings can be cleared up. When internal branding becomes a permanent feature of fitness center marketing, a higher degree of differentiation is achievable, which can improve marketplace competitiveness.