By Erin Beattie, Founder and CCO, Engage + Empower Consulting
I’ve been thinking about how we talk about internal communications and external communications as if they’re two different things.
In practice, they feel less like separate disciplines and more like the same work showing up in different places.
Same organization.
Same values.
Same reputation.
Just different audiences and different moments.
Internal communications is how people inside the organization make sense of what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what’s expected of them. External communications is how people outside the organization understand what you do, what you stand for, and what they can count on.
Different rooms. Same responsibility.
And here’s the part I keep noticing.
I might be missing it, but in the conversations I’m part of, I don’t hear people talking about internal marketing very often. I hear a lot about internal communications. A lot about culture and engagement, but I don’t hear the work of shaping belief and choice inside organizations named, even though it’s been there the whole time.
That got me wondering if we’ve drawn some of these lines more sharply than we need to. Between internal and external. Between communications and marketing.
When in reality, it all feels like the same human work moving through different moments.
Same work, different moments
Communications is often described as the work of building understanding. Helping people make sense of information, decisions, and change.
Marketing is often described as the work of shaping perception and influencing choice.
The American Marketing Association defines marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
IABC often frames communication as the discipline that helps people understand and act.
Those definitions point to something important.
Communications helps people understand.
Marketing helps people decide what to do with that understanding.
Not competing disciplines.
Different moments in the same process.
And that applies inside organizations just as much as it does outside.
The part we rarely name inside
Inside organizations, we talk a lot about internal communications. And we should.
But there’s another layer of work happening at the same time.
It’s the part where people decide whether they believe in the direction.
Whether they feel proud to share the work.
Whether they trust the people leading it.
Whether they want to stay.
Those are not just engagement questions.
They’re belief and choice questions.
In other words, they’re marketing questions too. Just aimed inward.
That doesn’t mean slogans on walls or forced enthusiasm. It means helping people understand the value of what they’re part of in a way that feels real enough to stand behind.
Why this matters more than it sounds
Trust research makes this easier to see.
The Edelman Trust Barometer has shown for years that trust is shaped less by what organizations say and more by who says it and whether that voice feels credible. In the Canadian context, especially, trust in leadership and peers strongly influences whether messages land and whether people act on them.
One line from Edelman’s work puts it this way: “[t]rust is the most important currency any organization has.”
That is not just an external branding issue.
That is an internal reality.
At the same time, professional research from communications bodies consistently shows that internal communications is often undervalued and under-resourced, even though leadership visibility is one of the strongest predictors of employee trust.
You can frame that as a communications problem.
You can also frame it as a marketing problem.
Because when leaders don’t show up consistently and credibly, employees don’t just miss information; they miss out on the opportunity to learn. They stop choosing the story that the leadership is trying to tell.
And that choice shows up later in culture, referrals, customer experience, morale, and reputation.
Maybe it’s time to widen the language
I’m not trying to rebrand internal communications.
I’m noticing that we already do the work of shaping understanding and action inside organizations. We already care deeply about culture, trust, and engagement. We already know employees influence reputation.
Internal marketing is simply the moment in that process when people decide what they believe about the organization and whether they want to stand behind it.
It’s been part of the work all along.
We just haven’t always felt comfortable saying it out loud.
And maybe that’s the real conversation worth having this year.
References
American Marketing Association. Definition of Marketing
Canadian Marketing Association. What is Marketing
Edelman. Trust Barometer Canada
Government of Canada. Policy on Communications and Federal Identity
IABC Canada. The Power of Communication
IABC. Research on internal communications value and leadership involvement
