How much does employee advocacy actually cost?

There’s a new Comms kid in town, and she brings promise of engaged employees and brand awareness on unparalleled levels. Not only that but the right kind of folk will, over time, fall in love with your organisation and everything you stand for. Welcome to the age of employee advocacy….

Needless to say you’re well informed about the benefits and buy into the concept. But the reason you’re here is because you really want an answer to “how much is this actually going to cost me?”. So without further ado, let us explain. First there’s the cost of the technology itself. Trying to run a successful employee advocacy program without an advocacy platform is ill advised (many have tried and that’s why people like Visibly exist). How much the platform costs is likely to be influenced by how much you are going to use it – so put some thought into the number of employees who’ll be advocating on your behalf and just how much content they’ll be producing.

Next you might want to factor in the cost of training ad support, most organisation need their hand holding over the first few months, whether this be for platform training or strategy (note we have our own internal training and comms team). Gamifying the employee advocacy program no doubt takes things to another level. Many of the best advocacy platforms will have this functionality embedded as standard. The question of whether to reward your best advocates can partly be answered by understanding the costs involved. They needn’t cost the earth, but must be factored in. Then there’s the less tangible costs. Think of the time that needs to be put into developing guidelines on what makes great content (no doubt another Flat White for the Marketing Director). You’ll also need someone to build employee advocacy into your on-boarding process. Not forgetting that this is a cultural shift towards more openness, authenticity and transparency – and that kind of stuff doesn’t happen overnight. So there you have it. Some thoughts on just how much it costs to introduce an employee advocacy program into your business. Of course when it works and is working well, the ‘return on investment’ is clearly worth it.

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