Now more than ever, it will become  critical to embrace the old and the new while you build relationships and while you collaborate with other people to make sure that you’re generating the right leads.

And it’s no surprise that large organisations are putting customer care at the forefront of everything they do.

What I want to share with you today are four channels to leverage as you are planning your marketing activities over the next few years.

Lapsed Clients and Candidates

It’s the first thing that we recommend to people who join Superfast Circle is to contact lapsed clients and candidates, and we even give them the emails to send in a campaign.

As well as lapsed contacts the other people to contact are what we call the ‘maybes.

These are people that you didn’t quite pull over the line. And it might be that the time wasn’t quite right for them. Maybe a new manager came in, recruitment was frozen, or the new person didn’t know you well enough.

However, they’d been working with another supplier, and it’s never quite worked.

When it comes to candidates-It could be a candidate that wasn’t quite ready to move. Maybe they were the one that stayed where they were, took a counteroffer probably where it wasn’t right for them and now seeing the error of their ways.

This is a real, real rich vein of both clients and candidates for you. We’ve been talking to a really good client of ours today about this same topic. They were talking about how they have almost exhausted their current client base.

They’ve been mining it for years and done incredibly well, but now they have realised that the well is getting slightly dry!

It’s a similar thing that happens with people when they first start a recruitment business.

All the business comes from referral and then after they’ve mined all that there isn’t an awful lot left and they’ve had the heyday of all those helpful leads that have come into them, but suddenly they have exhausted the supply. Next, let’s talk about referral partners and alliances with other companies that have access to your clients.

Strategic Alliances

The next channel I want to talk about is strategic alliances. People often call them joint ventures. It might be referral partners. This channel is underutilised in today’s business environment.

People are keen to network; they’re eager to collaborate, they’re keen to work together with people. We have several referral partners that we work with, one of whom is another recruitment trainer in a slightly different context to what we do.

It’s thinking about, ‘Okay, so for me as a recruitment business, who might a strategic partner be for me?’

It could be a training company that might be somebody that you connect with; you work with, career development, career coaching etc.

We often work with organisations that are very much aligned with training partners.

So it’s thinking about could this work for me? Would this work for me? Who else has my specific candidates and clients?

Who else could you partner within such a way that you work synergistically together to be able to have a plentiful supply of leads?

Now, it’s a great strategy to use because what happens is these people pop out of nowhere.

It seems like they arrive ‘out of the blue’; They’re not out of the blue. You’ve done the work, and you built the networks for these people to come to you. But often it’s something that, unusually, recruitment business owners don’t always think about. It could be, have you got a particular trade association?

So think about that channel and how that might work for you. Many people say, “Oh no, no, no. There isn’t anybody I could work with.” But I bet there is actually if we started to think about it. That is the other channel to consider because that is where a lot of your ad hoc referrals are going to come from, and it just might surprise you.

Outbound Calling

Let me talk about the one that people want to try and ignore these days. And that is outbound lead generation.

It’s not sexy anymore.

However, it still works like gangbusters.

An amusing story for you.

I was reading an article once about Sara Blakely who was the innovator and developer of Spanx.

Now, for some of the chaps, who listen to this. You may not know what Spanx are.

They help a woman look amazing. They’re basically tight knickers that you put on, and they sort of push everything in!

I love her story and how she built a business. And one of the key accounts that she managed to nail was through a cold call.

So would you believe it? She got through to Nordstrom and quite a few others. Nordstrom is the one that everyone talks about because it’s a large retail organisation in the U.S.

Now the benefit in today’s environment is that cold calling isn’t quite the same anymore because you can create such brand awareness in the marketplace today and often inexpensively that when you do call people, it’s no longer stone cold.

The reaction goes along the lines of; “ Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve seen your stuff on social media. Yeah, yeah. You’ve got a YouTube channel, haven’t you? Or ah, yeah, yeah. I’ve been on your website. I’ve read your blogs; I’ve seen the videos you post on LinkedIn.”

Remember the power of brand awareness. People buy from people they are familiar with and who they know like and trust.

They may not have had a conversation with them, but at least they’ve been seen online. And this is something that most people forget so they’re, oh, I don’t want to do cold call, and I don’t want to pick the phone up and yet in many ways it is easier than ever.

So, you need to have a strategy around your outbound activity be that calls or emails.

The good news is that there are many different software applications that can help with this too.

Inbound Lead Generation

Inbound marketing, very sexy, very trendy. Everybody wants to do it.

With inbound marketing, it’s much easier if you’re pulling someone towards you in a very pleasant and positive manner.

A week or two ago I talked about value-based marketing, and this is a foundational element of inbound marketing.

So one of the things would be that you become a thought leader in your market.

There was a report earlier this year on Social Media Today about how CEOs reference thought leadership pieces online and what a difference that makes to them when they’re choosing a supplier for them and their organisation.

This is one of the reasons our clients find creating content so useful in the way it positions their recruitment company above others.

If you are currently creating your marketing plan for next year make sure you have these four channels in mind. Then build a process around each and watch your results shift.

Thanks,

Denise

P.S. If you want to shift your marketing next year let’s talk. You can schedule a call here.