Are you a marketer? Or an internal communicator? Or…both?

What do you do when you’ve become a marketer turned accidental internal communicator? Whether you gravitated toward internal communications or your organization lumped the roles together, it’s not uncommon to be a marketer who also owns internal comms tasks, such as running all-hands meetings, drafting emails for leaders, or publishing and producing the company newsletter.

The problem is that leaders and organizations often misunderstand the role and value of internal communications when they treat it as an add-on to a marketing team’s work. This is even more pronounced (and problematic) in companies that underestimate the importance of keeping frontline employees as informed as desk-based ones. 

If you find yourself in this position, don’t sweat! In this post, we share survival tips for succeeding in this dual role.

Internal comms vs. marketing: similarities and differences

Why do some organizations combine internal comms and marketing? Well, they share quite a few similarities, including:

1. Storytelling: Both rely on narratives to inspire, connect, and convey key messages.
2. Audience segmentation: Just like marketers tailor messages to different customer groups, internal comms adapts messaging for diverse employee audiences (e.g., frontline workers vs. desk-based employees).
3. Data and metrics: Both use data to track the effectiveness of their efforts - whether it’s open rates for emails, survey results, or feedback on engagement.
4. Creative content: Visuals, videos, and engaging copy are staples for grabbing attention in both fields.

And yet, ‌many internal comms experts agree internal comms should never become internal marketing because:

1. Employees aren’t customers.
2. Building trust is more important than tactics.
3. Frontline employees need clarity, not flashy campaigns. 
4. Authenticity is more impactful than persuasion. 

The lines between internal communications and marketing are blurry, but overall, they are distinct areas of expertise with different objectives. While the two specialties can (and should) borrow from each other, success in both lives in two different lanes. 

Challenges of combining internal comms and marketing

But it’s not just a matter of blurring the lines; some significant challenges can arise when combining internal comms and marketing, including:

• Constant context switching between audiences: Marketers target an external audience (leads that ideally become customers), while internal communicators target internal staff. Running both often means managing multiple platforms and channels (email marketing campaigns versus frontline employee communication apps) with different engagement styles (brand awareness versus informing employees). When not careful, this can lead to duplicate efforts or inconsistent messaging. 
• Intentional or unintentional marketing metrics adoption: When you’re supporting internal comms and marketing, you might adopt traditional marketing metrics (like open and click-through rates) as your sole measure of internal comms success. These rarely provide a complete picture of whether internal comms are actually successful in driving behavior change or engaging employees. Not to mention that boosting one metric (e.g., external perception) could inadvertently reduce another (e.g., internal trust) when marketing and internal comms stories don’t align. 
• The budget battle: When leaders assume internal comms is part of marketing, you might only have one budget to work with, and not enough budget for tools and headcount for both internal and external communications. Take, for example, marketing wanting a tool for flashy customer testimonial videos, and internal comms wanting a separate video tool to help reach frontline employees. Which one gets priority?
• Balancing confidentiality with transparency: Suppose marketing wants to tease a new service offering on social media, but employees haven’t heard about it yet. Balancing business demands with keeping employees informed when the role is tied together can create bottlenecks. 
• An incomplete view of the value you bring to the table: If your leadership team views you as just a marketer or just a comms person, and you’re managing both, they’re undermining the value you offer to internal and external audiences alike. (And you deserve to be recognized for your efforts!) 

4 survival strategies for success

So, how do you strike the balance? Sometimes, you have to do both (it’s just part of the job description!). With the right approach, you can excel in your dual role. Here’s how.

1. Clarify roles and responsibilities (and share them with leadership)

First things first, you need to get crystal clear about what makes up marketing and what makes up internal communications. Not only do you need this clarity for yourself, but it’s also essential to share it with leadership to ensure you’re on the same page. 

The easiest way to do this is to create a task list of everything you own and designate each task as either a marketing or internal comms responsibility. It can also be helpful to determine how much time you can dedicate to each task (or category) to help you effectively prioritize your tasks. 

Here are some examples of what might fall under each category:

Marketing (external-facing work):

• Develop and execute marketing campaigns to drive brand awareness and lead generation 
• Manage the company website and social media accounts 
• Oversee content creation, including blog posts, case studies, external newsletters, and press releases 
• Measure the ROI of marketing campaigns 
• Manage the marketing budget 
• Report on market trends, competitor activity, and customer insights 

Internal comms (employee-facing work):

• Draft company-wide communications, including all-staff announcements, leadership updates, organizational changes, and frontline-specific messages
• Manage internal comms channels, including the intranet, employee newsletter, town halls, chat apps, SMS, and other frontline-accessible platforms
• Partner with HR to communicate policy changes, benefits-related updates, employee recognition programs, and compliance requirements for both office-based and frontline staff
• Support senior leadership in preparing presentations and talking points for internal meetings 
• Plan, coordinate, and execute internal events, including culture-building activities 
• Track and monitor employee feedback and sentiment across all employee segments to tailor strategies accordingly

With this separation in mind, you’ll also want to show leadership how each role contributes differently to business goals. 

For example, for marketing-specific tasks, you might focus on how your work supports revenue generation, increases brand awareness, and builds trust with customers to help keep them. For internal communications-specific tasks, explain how these tasks support alignment with business strategy, strengthen company culture, and keep desk-based and frontline employees informed.

2. Develop a system for prioritizing your task list

You’ll need internal frameworks to help you decide what tasks receive higher priority than others. And since your organization depends on effective internal comms, you might bump internal comms tasks to the top of your to-do list. 

Define your internal comms channels from the start

Clearly defined communication channels and processes for your internal communications can make all the difference. When you define and know which channels your team uses and how you use them, you won’t waste time figuring out the details every time a message pops up. 

Here’s a good place to start:

Use email when…

• Sharing formal communications, like company policies and legal updates 
• You’re sending long-form content, like lengthy explanations or FAQs that may include additional attachments 
• You need a written trail of the communication

Use an employee comms app like Speakap when…

• Your message is urgent
• You need to reach frontline employees 
• Your team is mobile-first 
• You need to send hyper-targeted comms by department, location, or role to ensure the right people get the right message 
• You want to collect employee feedback through polls and surveys 

And whatever you do, don’t use WhatsApp! If WhatsApp is still one of your communication channels, we need to talk. 

Build a template library 

Another way to save time is to create templates and toolkits that make your workload more sustainable. Never start from scratch if you don’t have to! 

Here are some templates to help you build your library: 

• Internal Communications Editorial Calendar 2025
• Employee Journey Mapping Template
• Social Media Strategy Template for Your Internal Social Network

Hire external help when you need it

And finally, when your list of priorities becomes too much to handle, consider bringing on additional help. If your budget doesn’t allow for full-time hires, source contractors and freelancers to fill content creation and development gaps. 

3. Get clear on metrics for marketing vs. internal comms 

One of the biggest traps for those managing marketing and internal comms is trying to measure them the same way. On the surface, they both involve campaigns and content, but the intended outcomes differ. 

In marketing, success metrics are more readily quantifiable, including open rates, click-throughs, webinar attendees, lead generation, and conversion rates, among others. Some of these metrics, like open rates and click-throughs, easily translate to internal communications, so it’s not uncommon to adopt them to measure success. 

The issue, though, is that these metrics alone don’t tell us whether internal communications are successful or driving the behavioral changes we want to see. To measure the impact of internal communications, we need to consider employee feedback, engagement rates, cultural alignment, and behavioral changes. 

The right tools can help you measure the metrics that matter, especially when your audience includes office-based and frontline employees. Some internal comms tools help teams measure marketing metrics (like open and click-through rates), and others enable teams to measure the success of comms campaigns, including adoption, activation, retention, engagement, and behavioral trends. For frontline teams, this could also include metrics like completion of mandatory training and adoption of new operational procedures.

The key is to separate these metrics clearly and communicate them effectively to your leaders. Marketing leaders might instinctively look for leads or clicks, while executives may only care that “the message went out.” By explaining up front which metrics apply to marketing and which apply to internal comms, you set expectations and show that internal comms isn’t just “internal marketing.”

And one last piece of advice — be mindful of vanity metrics. Sometimes, the numbers that look best on paper or in fancy reports don’t actually mean behavior is changing. For frontline-focused internal comms, this means paying attention to whether employees are acting on messages: Did they attend a briefing? Apply a new process correctly? Follow the new operational process? The more you focus on behavioral outcomes, the more you’ll show that internal comms drives real business impact.

4. Lean into your marketing skills (but translate them)

With a marketing background, you already possess a toolkit of valuable skills that you can use to support internal communications. You have what it takes to inform, engage, and influence employee behavior with a few subtle shifts.

Storytelling remains relevant, but the hero is now the employee. In marketing, stories often center on the customer journey. For internal comms, you’re telling stories about how employees contribute to the organization’s mission, how teams succeed, or how change affects them personally. Employees want to see themselves in the story.

From a design perspective, you don’t need to wow employees with sleek graphics every time, but your design instincts help ensure communications are accessible, on-brand, and easy to scan.

And just as marketers map a customer journey, internal communicators can (and should) map the employee experience. Organizing communications around key employee moments and direct impact allows you to build narratives that people can latch onto. This also means being mindful of the fact that the employee experience differs between office-based and frontline staff, and mapping these differing experiences properly.

Turning survival into strength

If you feel stretched between marketing deadlines and internal comms demands, know that you’re not alone. By setting clear expectations, defining the right metrics, and using your marketing strengths to drive employee behavior, you can move from survival mode into a role where your impact is visible and valued. You’ve got this. 

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