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Today we are talking about marketing systems and what you need in your recruitment and
search firm.
We’ve just come off the back of Recruitment Marketing Week at the end of last month and had a lot of positive feedback.
Potentially, we will run it again later on in the year, definitely after the summer, because I think people found a lot of value in it.
One of the things that came out of the five days that we spent with, I think it was just the best part of nearly 100 people, is what systems do I need?
Now, we have done a deep dive into all the different elements. I thought it would be a good idea to record this podcast today and share with you seven marketing systems that you need to have in your business if you want to be successful if you want to maintain the clients and the candidates that you’ve already got and if you’d like to make more placements.
Let me go through all of these each in turn.
A Marketing System to Identify The Right Clients and Candidates
I want to start with what is critical: creating a marketing system to I.D. the right clients and candidates you want to work with.
One of the questions we often have for clients when they start working with us relates to data.
Sometimes people haven’t done the math related to their numbers.
What they’re hoping to achieve from the candidates they want to place is probably not going to happen because; the data does not add up. They want to deliver deals that are not going to happen with the current clients and candidates they are working with 🤷♀️
The first thing you need to do is have some form of a system so that you can identify the best clients for us to work with and the candidates we want to place.
Now, you’ll have heard us talk in the past about your ideal client avatar, your ideal candidate avatar. If you are listening to this on the Superfast Recruitment website, go onto the blog and put in the search bar “avatar.” I know I’ve recorded several podcasts on that, which will help.
That’s the first thing you need to do because if you are marketing, you want to create demand. The important thing is creating demand with the right people. It’s about having a system to identify that, which is number one. You’ve got the right people then, so you’ve got the right type of companies you want to target, the right candidates.
A Process To Establish Authority and Credibility
The second thing is you must have a process for establishing your authority and credibility in the market. This is something where many people miss out on the opportunity building a brand presence, can bring.
This big chunky bit of marketing starts the whole process moving.
Some of the things that we’re talking about are, firstly, your brand and how you stand out in the marketplace, how you capture attention, how you continue to grab attention, and how you become the authority because when you work in the recruitment sector, you are working in a B2B environment.
I know you work with candidates, so it’s slightly different. However, you are working in a space where you have to establish authority and credibility because when it comes to recruitment, and for many B2B services we’re a B2B service as well, you have to build a much higher level of trust with potential clients before they say yes.
Now I can go onto Amazon. I went onto Amazon the other day. We were looking for one of these robot hoovers. Our nephew suggested it might be a good idea for us to get a robot, Hoover.
Off-topic fact, and do you realise you can get robot hoovers that will mop the floor as well? How amazing is that?
We’re probably not going to do a huge amount of research; we will look at a couple of reviews, I’m sure we’ll look at the price point, and then we’ll click purchase.
It’s different when you’re talking about human capital because we don’t do that. We think a lot more before we start working with another service supplier. That is why establishing your authority and your credibility is key.
The good news is that in today’s marketplace, as a small business owner, you can compete online if you are a micro-business or you’re a small S.M.E. The internet, the Googles have made that more than possible for you, whereas maybe in the past, it wasn’t quite as easy to get in front of your clients.
You are listening to a podcast. We do not pay to promote this podcast at all. There isn’t any paid advertising around it currently. Yet you come, and you listen to this every week. Many of our clients listen to this; for many people, that’s the first place they found us.
On top of that, you’ve got every social channel on the planet. You’ve got LinkedIn that doesn’t pay you to be a member. You have Facebook, Instagram, and all of these places you can get your message out in front of your customer.
You can write blog content, our Superfast Circle of clients, and get their content from us. You can write blog content; you can put it onto your website. People can find you; you can demonstrate your expertise. You can upload information to LinkedIn. All of this is going to establish your authority and credibility.
You can write a report, and that report, someone can give you their name and then give you their email address. We’ll come onto that in the next system later on.
You’ve got all these different things that can establish you as an individual who knows and understands hiring and the sector.
That is a system you must have because consistency was one of the challenges many people talked about last week on Recruitment Marketing Week, and they know that sometimes they weren’t as consistent as they could have been. That’s because sometimes they weren’t sure what to do.
Consistency is key. If you actually can nail this around being credible and being out in front of your environment– When I say your environment, your business environment, your candidates, and clients make a massive difference.
Create A Lead Generation System
Next is creating a lead generation system. If you haven’t watched our on-demand training, you can access it here.
How are you going to attract these leads? Where are you going to get them from?
You can mine multiple places, including your own database and every social channel. A task for you go and access this free training where we give away the system our clients use.
Create Your Sales System
Number 4, and I know this sounds probably a bit different, but this is your sales system because you’re thinking, “I thought we were talking about marketing here, Denise.”
Yes, we are, but marketing and sales work together. Remember that when creating leads, what’s the next step in the process? Then you have to convert these leads.
Of course, as we know, unfortunately, people rarely say yes straight away.
That is why you need a sales system. If you haven’t listened to the last podcast, number 387, which is around follow-up, then you need to have a sales system so that your consultant, and maybe you, can follow up with people consistently.
That will create your sales system that uses marketing collateral to help them convert.
Create a Client and Candidate Onboarding System
Now, number 5 is you need a client onboarding and a candidate onboarding process. As recruiters, you all know when onboarding goes awry, often when a candidate doesn’t stay in a job or a client comes back to you and doesn’t like the candidate.
The fact is that onboarding is key to your candidates and clients getting the best results out of your service.
Imagine that you have a candidate that’s uploaded their CV, nothing happens, or their resume. They’ve put the name and email address into your webpage and uploaded the document; they don’t hear anything, crickets, or even get an email.
Maybe they get an email acknowledging, “We will be back to you should your CV or resume fit any opportunity. If you haven’t heard back from us the next month, assume it doesn’t–”
I’m sorry, that is outrageous to be doing that when you have so many other options.
I know we’re all busy, but it doesn’t take much to set up a system so that people get a bit of T.L.C. and feel good about the process.
Even if they don’t get a role with you, they still talk to friends about, “Do you know what? Acme Recruitment was amazing. I didn’t get the job, but oh, the process I went through, and they gave me lots of help and support.”
It’s the same with clients. When a client comes on board– You know what it’s like when you’re a client, and they’ve contacted you, maybe you’re on a contingency basis with them. They’ve given you a job, but then they start thinking, “Do you know what?
I’m not getting much conversation here. Nothing’s happening; nobody’s getting in contact with me. I think I might also give this to another recruiter and see how that works.”
These examples happen consistently when you have not created a system related to working with candidates and clients.
Mining and T.L.C.: The Gold Around Your Feet
Next one number 6. This is all about upselling and outreaching your current clients and candidates because who knew that these individuals might know many other people? It might be that you’ve got, in the nicest possible way, a foot in the door with a particular company.
What if one of the M.D.s or one of the directors happens to know somebody else in another division that you could also help?
Think about what you will do about upselling all the different elements of your service and how you will use this with the people you are with so they continue working with you. I’ve already alluded to it around the client and candidate onboarding, but how will they continue to work with you for the longer term? What marketing, what continual demand experience can they have from you as well?
Measuring Your Marketing Systems
Then the final one is you need a system for measuring your actions. Now, depending on how new you are to marketing or how long you’ve been doing it, I think starting with your input is good.
We were talking with one of our Superfast Circle clients about inputs. She wanted to measure some different things, and we were giving her some input suggestions.
- “How many email campaigns have we got out?
- How many outreaches are we doing?
- How many blogs are we sending out?
- How many times a day are we posting on social media?
- Correspondingly then, what’s our website traffic?
- How many people are opening our emails?
- “How many people are registering on our website and uploading their C.V.s?
- How many client meetings and conversations do we have?”
You need to create a marketing system around that, so you can analyse all your hard work because this isn’t about beating yourself up emotionally; this is about data.
We don’t want drama; we want data.
We want to look at the data and think, “Is this up? Is this down? If it’s down, I wonder why it’s down. I wonder what part of the process we might have dropped the ball on.”
There are no guilty feelings here. It’s about, “What have I done right, or what else could I have done?
I remember we had a landing page earlier this year, and it was like we were getting people to the landing page, but when they got to the landing page, things were going awry. The number of people that normally put their name and email address on the landing page was much lower than normal.
When I checked the landing page, some of the copy was wrong. We changed the copy around. We removed some of the copy and added some slightly different things. I think we added a new colour and a bigger button.
I know, crazy. A bigger button. That made a big difference.
Sometimes it’s asking the uncomfortable question; “Are we doing enough?” I know I was talking to another client about the recent shifting market. If you look at cold outreach, which works incredibly well, you still need to do more than you used to do.
There you have seven marketing systems that will make your marketing work better.
You need to be able to identify who’s your ideal client and candidate; then, you can create your messaging around that. You need to establish your authority and credibility as the go-to person in the market.
Number 3, get your lead generation, and qualification system dialed in.
Then you need your sales system, which will include marketing collateral because, remember, very few people say yes, the first time you talk to them. Client and candidate onboarding make that work, and then we’ve also got upselling, creating more demand and referral, and measurement.
Thanks,
Denise
How We Can Help
As part of Superfast Circle, we help our clients design and develop marketing systems for their businesses and provide all the collateral they need.
If you want to find out how we can help you stand out and deliver more move-ready candidates and job-ready meetings, then book a quick call with us here.
