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Today’s topic is warming up your market. Now, for some of you, that may be candidates, and for others, clients. [As usual, excuse any strange typing errors as this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]
However, if you’re new here, welcome.
If you haven’t downloaded our marketing checklist yet, go to www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl; it’ll take you to a page where you can give us your name and email address, and then we’ll send you a list of questions. There are 30 in total, and it helps you assess exactly where you are on your journey, so I suggest you do that.
Let’s start talking about warming up your market.
We’ve had a lot of conversations about this recently. Last week, we were in the Lake District running our first live event in two years.
It was pretty emotional, and that was because we’ve not been able to run live events. So we had a group of our Superfast Circle members attend, and we did a real deep dive on some different ways of standing out in their sectors, which I think they all appreciate.
As I record this, we have something like five weeks until Christmas, and we have something called a six-week sprint, which we’ve just entered, and it helps people with their implementation. The topic of lead generation and warming up cold prospects has been happening over the last ten days, so I thought it would be good to share some ideas for you guys around warming up your market.
The Right Message at the Right Time
First of all, let’s put some context around the individuals you want to market to and warm-up, for want of a better word, because context is really important for marketing. That is the right message to the right person at the right time.
As I’m recording this, we’re heading towards the end of the year and Christmas. I don’t know about you; I love Christmas. I think I get more pleasure out of actually buying Christmas presents for people than I do receiving them because I love to have that reaction from people, where they say, “Oh, I wasn’t expecting that,” or “Oh, crikey, I didn’t realise you knew that I liked X, Y, Z,” because I like to put a little bit of thought into mine.
It’s the same, with everything; find out what people want and give it to them.
It is key to connect with someone to understand their challenges, what’s going on for them, and where you can best serve them.
That’s the case when it comes to your market, be it a candidate or a client. If you have not identified your ideal target avatar or ideal target candidates, then it’s a great idea to do that. There’s plenty of information on the Superfast Recruitment website around avatar here.
Before you do anything, don’t waste your time trying to warm up an individual that isn’t right for you. Make it contextual so that when you start this process, it will work with the right person.
Provide Value
The first strategy is to provide value to this individual, be that candidate or client. Content is a great way to do that. There’s a reason why content marketing has exploded because we are in a knowledge-seeking society now, and people want to check you out, they want some help, they want some ideas. There are multiple ways that you can do this.
A) Add Value via Your Blog
First of all, you need a blog page on your website so that if people come across you randomly, or they’re searching for, let’s say, a sales recruiter in Birmingham, you will come up on their radar. Then they go on to your website, and they’re going to see lots and lots of valuable content that can help that individual, let’s say it’s a candidate that wants to move roles or wants to accelerate their sales career.
B) Send Them a Report
Now, you can provide value on your blog, and you can provide value on social media. Also, you can send them a report that might be useful. This is something that our Superfast Circle clients do because we write this for them.
You can send a report to a client or candidate that adds value. It’s based on the influencing strategy by Robert Cialdini, and that’s about reciprocity; I give you something, you give me something. Somebody might give their name or email address, but automatically, there’s a connection and a feeling between two individuals, where one person’s providing something of value for the other.
That’s something really easy to be doing. Whilst other people are maybe slowing down towards Christmas, I’m ramping up because I want to be on that person’s radar when they are starting to look around.
If you notice what people tend to do in December, they begin to re-evaluate their life, re-evaluate their career, re-evaluate how they’re going to grow their organisation.
They start researching online, and this is a great time for you to be on their radar. Don’t be taking your foot off the gas, be pressing it down!
Use Video
The other thing I would do, and this works incredibly well, is to use video. Now, the way our brains are wired means we can process visual imagery and media much more easily than we can the written word.
We were having a conversation with our circle of clients about this the other day; the thing about video is, when you are looking into a camera and having a conversation with someone, it’s almost personal.
It’s one of the best ways to have a conversation with someone; if you can’t be with them physically, then have a conversation through video. The easy way to do this is to drop them a video.
Now, the way that our brains process information is that we love visual, we love auditory, and we love the sensation that it gives us. It’s called feeling; the scientific term is kinesthetic. If we can hit all of those different senses, which we are with video, it has an increased impact.
Imagine if you’re a candidate, you’ve been thinking about;
- Should I move or,
- what could I do next year?
- Maybe it’s time for me to move my career on?
…… and you get an email that drops into your inbox with a video.
The person on the video seems to know and understand what you are going through they look professional; what do you think your candidate is now thinking?
I suggest something like; they seem genuine I will call them or drop them an email.
Social Proof
The third thing is to use social proof.
We now live in a review society. I would imagine that when you go on to Amazon – I know I’ve been doing a lot surfing on Amazon in the last few weeks as I’ve been buying Christmas presents and various other things for the business – I will go and check out the reviews.
If I can see that someone’s got quite a lot of 4 or 5-star reviews and there’s more of them, I’m more likely to click purchase when making that value decision.
It’s the same in every walk of life, particularly in a B2B environment, because when you invest a lot of money, you want to make sure what you are doing is ‘right’.
After all, you don’t want to make a mistake. I know it’s crazy, but many of us are very scared about making mistakes. What we need is some validation that our ideas and decisions are correct.
A great way to warm up your market is to share with them a testimonial or a case study of someone like them. If they can see somebody sharing their experience, whatever that might be, if it’s male or female, and they are sharing the results that you got for them as a recruiter, that will make a massive difference.
I’ve started to work with a couple of people from a mentoring point of view myself. The reason that I decided to press go is that I’d seen the type of results they were getting for somebody else, who, surprise surprise, was very like me.
If you are not using case studies, testimonials, or reviews in your marketing, particularly to warm up your market, then put that as an action now.
Here you have the easy ways to start warming up your market; provide value for them on your website, give them something to download, drop them a video.
Then share a case study or a testimonial. You’ll be astounded how easy delivering these three ideas is and what a difference it will make for you and your business.
How We Can Help
We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.
Thanks,
Denise
