Marketing is becoming everyone's job

Founder-led marketing has dominated the creator economy playbook for years.

Build a personal brand, share your journey, turn followers into customers.

It's worked for countless entrepreneurs.

But there's a fundamental problem with this approach: it takes a lot of time to scale.

And when your entire marketing strategy depends on one person, you've created a massive single point of failure.

Some companies are starting to realise that their employees might be their most underutilised marketing asset.

A company I came across on LinkedIn yesterday is running an experiment where they’re paying employees for using their personal LinkedIn accounts to boost company engagement.

Check out the original post here →

The rules were simple:

• 20k views within 28 days = $350

• 100k views within 90 days = $550

The results after 2 weeks:

• Over 30% of the company posted at least once

• Generated 80k+ total views (excluding founder posts)

• Two employees already hit the 20k threshold

• Total investment so far: $700

Patrick Trümpi, the founder, said:

"If you measure marketing initiatives only against lead generation, you are stuck in the old world of marketing."

The tangible benefit is actually social proof at scale.

When prospects see an entire team actively sharing insights, it signals company health and expertise in a way that founder-only content simply can't match - but it can embolden.

Apparently the employees also learned faster by teaching others publicly, makes sense.

Critics immediately jumped on the monetary incentive:

"If you need to pay your employees to post, your product probably sucks. They should do that on their own."

This misses the point entirely.

Even employees who love their jobs have rational reasons not to post:

• "I'm not paid for it, so it's not my responsibility"

• "I don't know what to say"

• "I'm uncomfortable putting myself out there"

• "I don't have time for this"

The same people criticising paid employee advocacy probably pay influencers thousands of dollars to promote their products.

Why is internal incentivisation somehow less legitimate than external

Consider the math:

$350 for 20k views works out to roughly $17.50 per thousand impressions.

That's competitive with many paid advertising channels, but with several advantages:

• Higher trust and authenticity

• Genuine product knowledge

• Diverse perspectives and voices

• Long-term relationship building

• Internal skill development

Most companies spend far more on much less effective marketing tactics.

Marketing is becoming everyone's job, not just the “marketing” department's.

Personal brands are increasingly becoming more and more important for career advancement, and companies that help employees build their professional presence while advancing business goals create a genuine win-win.

The question isn't whether your employees should be part of your marketing strategy.

It's whether you'll be intentional about it or not.

Remember, the creator mindset is all you need to grow 🌱

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