The Olympics are here! People are excited to support their favorite athletes, watching the back stories, and cheering them on from the couch (or the computer or iPad).  It’s also the time for great Olympic marketing and advertising. There are several ways to bring the Olympic spirit into your business, from creating employee morale programs to company branding. Take a cue from some of the major Olympic sponsors and networks to get great results. Here are three ideas to help you do just that. 

Incorporating the Olympics into marketing materials does not always mean paying for the official logo or using images of gold medals. You can use the spirit of the Olympics instead. Take a moment to make a list of words that describe the spirit of the Olympics; words like competition, world-class, perseverance, performance, teamwork, overcoming odds, training, and strength, triumph. Choose several that naturally apply to your business and then celebrate your business by highlighting what makes you a world-class company.

Another thing that makes Olympic coverage so great is that we are brought into the lives of the athletes away from the London games. We get glimpses of what they are like at home, with their families, and how they train to become world class athletes.
Think of your employees as your athletes, and find ways to introduce them to your customers on a more personal level. A simple example of this is the sign at a coffee shop that says, “Amanda is your barista today. Her favorite drink: caramel macchiato. Her favorite Olympic sport: fencing.” It’s a simple and effective way to personalize the woman behind the counter and bring Olympic enthusiasm to the daily grind.  You could incorporate employee predictions of winners or share what sports they play.

You can also incorporate the spirit of the Olympics behind the scenes, holding contests and awards for great employee performance. Beyond awards related to sales and service, use your original list of words to come up with ways to recognize employees that embody the spirit of the games.  Create “countries” of employees and have them compete for prizes in team competitions. You may even want to host your own games as a team building event. Getting creative, like having relay races that include trash removal, restocking, and window cleaning can work well for taking care of daily tasks that lack excitement.

The Olympic games bring people together across the world in the spirit of competition. What better way than to use this milestone event to celebrate with your customers and employees? Using the Olympics as a backdrop for fun promotions and employee incentives can improve sales, customer relationships and employee satisfaction. Enjoying the games while improving your business will earn you a gold medal in management.

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Lets face it — the days of traditional marketing methods are changing fast. Businesses are spending less money on the outgoing marketing strategies and putting their capital toward inbound initiatives and social media — mainly because it’s less expensive. Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than the traditional methods.

The question, however, always comes up from business owners and traditional marketing strategists about whether social media results can be measured. There is no simple answer to this question. But there are ways to examine your social media strategy to see if it’s working. Lets look at four ways you measure your social success. 

1. Assign value to social. It takes time, people and resources to create a presence on social media. Consider measuring the time it takes the employee to complete these tasks and assign an hourly value to that time. If you find your social media presence is generating customers and exposure, then calculate what that sale is worth versus the time spent on developing those prospects. Clearly something is working.

2. Focus on engagement. Social media is different than advertising and public relations. Instead of focusing on ROI, experts suggest instead focusing on the return on engagement. For example, look at your company’s Twitter account and see how many people are following your business. Are you engaging with those individuals on a regular basis? Are they retweeting your tweets? Are you doing the same? Believe it or not, all this tweeting and sharing helps build brand loyalty.

3. Target your specific market. You may have 1,000 likes on Facebook, but are all those people the audience you need to reach? Take the time to develop targeted prospects that will follow you via social media. These are your customers and will yield better click-through rates and sales. In addition, they have the ability to influence other potential clients who are like them.

4. Create incentives for social media followers. One way to track leads and sales coming from social media is to create specific incentives that are only offered to Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and Google+ members. Offer these individuals something different that other traditional customers would not receive (maybe a 10% social discount, or free item with purchase). Make sure the customer mentions this deal or the social site in the transaction. This is a fairly simple way of tracking sales through social networks.

As you interact with customers through social media, remember you cannot look at the engagement in the same way you did with traditional marketing strategies. It’s a different world out there and consumers (especially younger ones) have a very different mindset when it comes to brand loyalty. Realize it may take time to build your brand socially. But once you see engagement in social networks, those individuals may start doing your marketing work for you.

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Most businesses can point to team members who make things happen. Those individuals are the superstars – the rainmakers – the ones you want to clone. While cloning an individual is not possible yet, you can leverage their knowledge, skills and abilities, and promote her to the role of a mentor. Mentors can act as the catalyst to improve the performances of the entire team, develop individuals for future promotions, and enable stronger relationships amongst coworkers. 

Developing a successful mentor program is not as simple as assigning people a mentor and announcing it to the team. You need to carefully plan just how your mentor program will operate, as well as your desired results. Lets look at a few guidelines to help you decide if a mentoring program is right for your business.

Decide on goals for the mentoring program. There are many reasons companies decide to implement a mentoring program, including new employee transition, skills development, and culture development. Figure out exactly what purpose your program will serve so that you can develop relationships and structures that will help you reach the goal. For example, if you want a mentor program to develop interdepartmental relationships, you will need to think carefully about which departments require the most mixing, and what type of mentoring activities are appropriate to reach your goals.

Develop a program. Mentors and proteges need direction from you if they are to be successful. A great mentoring program should include education on the purpose of the program, training on what being a mentor means, and support within the company from the top down. There should be agreement about how much mentoring programs should be included in standard working hours, what activities are appropriate, and what, if any, compensation will be given for mentoring opportunities.

Choose relationships wisely. Determining the goals of the mentoring program should guide your mentoring relationship choices, but individual personalities and skills should also be considered. Getting input from managers and team leaders will help you select the right combinations and give your program a better chance of success.

Check in and revise as needed. Mentoring programs should not be micromanaged, but there should be reviews at regular intervals to make sure the program is having the desired effect. You will want to revise pairings that are not effective and search for other partnering opportunities. Checking with both mentors and proteges about how they feel the program is progressing, and asking for feedback on how to make it more successful, will allow you to continually work on the program to make it better every year.

Mentoring programs can be incredibly powerful tools when managed correctly, and it should be considered a long-term commitment to the future of your company. Developing and retaining talent that you already have is a great way to reduce employee costs and attrition down the road.

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