Below are 6 ways you can do just that. Imagine you’re a client or candidate, and go through your version of the below channels and ask yourself “Have I formed a better opinion of this agency?” or “Has this content been useful?”. You may be surprised and find something you can improve!
Your recruitment website
It’s crazy how much money businesses spend on sending traffic to other websites instead of their own. How much of your marketing budget goes towards job board spend?
Whilst expenditure on job advertisements is always going to form a big part of your marketing budget, it’s important to diversify your approach.
The first thing a prospective client or candidate will do when researching you is a search for your agency on Google. This will likely lead them to your website, so making sure your website is optimised for conversion is another key acquisition channel.
Make it clear what you do, add customer reviews and ratings and provide value adding content.
You can also try capturing their data in multiple ways so you can get them on your email list. A few ideas may be registering to job alerts, job postings, subscribing to your blog and or downloadable ebooks/guides.
Create a referral program
Referrals are often one of the most overlooked ways of generating business, when done right you can shortcut a lengthy sales process and generate a solid stream of new business.
Word of mouth and peer recommendations are a great way to establish trust in your brand which is why referrals offer such high conversion rates. Your customers are essentially vouching on your behalf.
Here’s some simple things to consider to help ensure you’re getting as many referrals as possible, and the right referrals as well.
- Make it simple: The harder it is for someone to do a referral, the less likely they are to do it. So remove any friction from the process. It doesn’t have to be complex either it could be a simple webpage or even managed by a google form.
- Make your rewards meaningful: Your customers need to be incentivised to make referrals, so make sure the reward is attractive. Work out how much a successful referral it’s worth for you, and share the love!
No list of recruitment channels would ever be complete without featuring LinkedIn.
The amount of data you can find and filter with a LinkedIn recruiter license is pretty impressive. And there are a few cool tools out there like Octopus CRM that can help you automate connection requests with your audience. NOTE Don’t just connect with anybody, it will come back and haunt you!
But just connecting with someone and dropping them a message asking to work with them isn’t going to cut the mustard in 2020. LinkedIn is a social network after all, and to get your prospects to trust your brand you have to not only create content, but engage with theirs also.
Comment on their posts, personalise your message and share value adding content and you’ll see your results improve significantly. If you can add social proof like Sourcr reviews, even better to help you stand out above your competitors and prove your value.
Podcasts
Podcasts seem to be popping up everywhere in recruitment at the minute. But it’s with good reason. More and more people are consuming podcast content, and they’re doing it even more regularly.
Like video, the demand for audio content has exploded, but again it has to be value-adding content to your customers to see success. You want it to hold their attention, and you want them to tune in to every episode and tell their friends.
Examples of good podcast content may be interview chats with industry influencers, insights and news updates, or even co-created content with some of your existing customers. Think about who the intended audience is and what they would like to like to. Have a look at other podcasts that you enjoy regularly and take inspiration from what they produce to create your own content.
According to researchers in the neuroscience field, storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and resonate emotionally with them. The human brain is programmed to crave, seek out, and respond to well-crafted narrative — that’ll never change.
And be consistent, one episode will do little for your brand and marketing, it has to be sustained efforts.
Email is still one of the most effective, and used marketing channels by b2b brands globally. It works. Email usage has grown every single year since 2012 and 91% of internet users use email.
A lot of recruitment is about timing so keeping front of mind with your customers and prospects is critical, so when the time is right they go to you instead of a competitor.
Creating nurture campaigns, whether it be monthly newsletters, or research insights are a great way to add value to your customers without being too “pushy”.
In addition, creating a list of subscribers is also a great way to nurture and engage prospects. It takes on average 6-8 touchpoint to generate a lead so making email content one of these touch points goes a long way to bringing the prospective client or candidate further down the funnel.
Growing an engaged, loyal subscriber base also speaks volumes about the quality of your content and its emotional resonance. Even though hoards of content saturate the internet and most people’s inboxes today, people are still actively engaging with your content, which is a clear sign that they actually value it.
The simple fact is the more value you’ve added and the more aware your prospects are the better the results your sales team will achieve.
Other Social Media Channels
Most people are actively using social media everyday, consuming content and connecting with friends or colleagues. Sometimes, though, we forget why most of us are using social media channels like Instagram or Facebook at all.
With market access to billions of people to really cut through the noise, personalisation and key targeting is critical.
Once you’ve defined your target audience, it’s important to spend time understanding who your ideal customer really is.
Understanding what their pains and goals are and focussing your content to deliver value in these areas is a sure fire way to engage your audience so putting thought into this upfront will make a world of difference. And it doesn’t always have to be serious, match your tone to the way your audience engages on the platform your targeting.
