Quick Tip: Keep Marketing To Your Staff During Your Employee Mentoring Program
Most organizations believe that marketing their mentoring program ends once the program begins, but that’s not the case.
It’s up to you to keep your program alive by continuing to recruit new participants, and giving those participants what they need to stay engaged.
Here's how . . .
Communicate To Potential Participants
It’s not enough to only recruit for your mentoring program before it begins, you also have to continue to bring in new participants.
Your program will typically have relationships that last 6-12 months and then the participants will leave. If you want to keep your program alive, new relationships will need to be formed by new participants.
Fortunately, you have already developed your recruitment mentoring strategy and you can continue to improve it as your mentoring program is running.
Communicate To Potential Participants
In order to increase the likelihood of your program's success, it’s important to continue your marketing strategy throughout the participants' time in their mentoring relationship. This promotes their engagement with the relationship and ensures that they have the tools and resources to continue to work to reach their mentoring goals.
Boost Engagement Through Content
One of the most important goals for marketing during your mentoring program is to increase the likelihood of successful mentoring relationships through engagement.
A great way to achieve these goals and boost engagement for your participants is through content marketing.
In order to successfully distribute content to your audience, you need to develop a content marketing strategy.
Your content marketing strategy should be based on your “why”. This will ensure that your strategy is in line with your overall goals.
When developing this strategy, be sure to also consider the goals of your audience. This will increase the likelihood that you are providing them with relevant content. When your audience feels like you are speaking to their needs, they will be more engaged with your marketing efforts and your mentoring program.
Creating A Content Plan
Within your content strategy, you will need to have a content plan. In contrast to the content strategy, your content plan is very calculated. Instead of focusing on the idea of “why” you are developing content, your content plan centers around “how” you will execute your content strategy.
Be sure that you have a content marketing strategy before you build your content plan.
Your content plan will focus on details such as…
- The topic areas you will cover
- The content you will create
- When and how you will share your content
- Any calls to action that will be included
A great visual way to manage the “when” and “how” of your content plan is by creating a content calendar.
See our 'Guide to Marketing for Your Mentoring Program' for an example of a content calendar.
Summary
Marketing before and during your mentoring program has a direct effect on the overall success of the program.
When marketing during your mentoring program, remember that…
- It is important to continue to recruit participants to ensure the longevity of your program.
- Distributing relevant content to your current participants will increase their engagement level and the likelihood that their relationship will be successful.
- You need to have a content marketing strategy before you can create a content plan.
Marketing is ever-evolving and your overall marketing strategy should do the same.
Periodically review your efforts to ensure that your strategy is continuing to align with your goals. If something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to make changes.
To learn more about our employee mentoring software or speak to us about how we can help you set up a mentoring program in your professional services firm, check out our employee mentoring program software.
