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Now lots of people when we meet them for the first time or we have a telephone conversation, they ask us how we know so much about recruitment and how we actually got into it in the first place with regards to offering marketing services. And often it surprises people because it was a marketing strategy that lots of people actually don’t utilise that actually got us into working with recruiters in the way that we do. And that’s the subject of today’s podcast – a new, well it’s not a new strategy, it’s quite an old fashioned strategy that lots of people forget about and they don’t implement in their marketing and make a huge difference. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
So what’s this forgotten tactic, this forgotten marketing strategy then, the classic one – well it’s referral marketing because that’s how we got into working with recruiters in the way that we do. It came through a referral. In fact it’s a long story. I’ll tell you a little bit of it anyway. But an old mentor that we used to work with knew somebody else that referred us and this particular person then referred us to some of her clients and she worked in the recruitment sector and some of you would probably have seen her on our website.
So that’s how we got into working specifically with recruitment companies. We were marketeers. We worked with lots of people and we’d actually worked with a few recruitment companies as well. We‘d always actually enjoyed it but you know, something happened around the referral that went on that then we decided “Well, hang in a minute here, this is a really good market. We enjoy working with them. We can add a lot of value. We do understand the market and that’s how it all kicked off.”
Now referral marketing then – It’s an old-fashioned technique that many people have forgotten about. And if you are creating your marketing plan, this is something we do with our clients, we always look at some of the different pillars of marketing in essence of where they generate new clients and candidates from. And we always suggest different ways of doing referral marketing as well but what we always suggest to people – it should be a pillar that you have.
Now there’s a great guy called Michael McLaughlin. He’s a well-known consultant. He’s written a couple of New York Times bestsellers one of which is “Guerilla Marketing For Consultants”. Some of the web stuff is a little bit out of date. However, he talks about the holy grail of referral marketing and that ideally, you want to be aiming for a minimum of 50% of your business coming through referral.
And you know, ideally if you are offering an absolute stellar recruitment service both for your clients and your candidates, then you would hope that referral marketing would kick in and that one department in an organisation will refer you to another department and another department or the MD of that company may be at a networking event with somebody else and they mention you. Obviously from a candidate perspective that’s where referral marketing can really work because you know, one candidate might tell somebody else “Well, actually I went to Smith and Nephew Recruitment and they got me all sorted out so why don’t you.” So that’s when referral marketing can really really work.
So how can you go about it? Well first of all, you need a strategy around it. You need to think about how am I going to ask for referrals and when am I going to ask for them, what can I do when there’s lot of strategies around that as well. And then of course you do need to make sure that all your ducks are in a row. Because even though referral marketing is great and it’s great for business, you still need to make sure that when people go and check you out and they will, it doesn’t matter that you’ve been referred, but we’ll talk about, you know, the advantages of that in a minute or two, you still need to make sure that your website is communicating your value proposition to potential clients and candidates, that your LinkedIn profiles, that you’ve got your Facebook sorted out, your Twitter… various other things, so that you are giving a consistent branded message that aligns with whoever is referring you so that they are validated in the sense of why they would be suggesting you as a recruitment company that someone should work with.
And you know what’s interesting for us as well, sometimes this happens that people say “Ah Yes, such and such a buddy referred me to you. You know, I googled you and found you online and I checked you up on LinkedIn, I’ve been watching what you do and various other things and I like what you do so I decided now to pick up the phone and speak to you.
So you know, you need to make sure that all your other marketing channels are also working. However, referral marketing will actually produce some great hot leads for you. And of course you know when it comes to conversion stats, conversion ratios, you are much more likely to covert somebody that is coming from a referral than somebody that comes in cold because you know that 7 points of contact? Ideally somebody needs to have 7 points of contact with you before they convert.
Well, when it comes to referral marketing you’ve gone in pre-sold. Particularly if somebody is singing your praises and saying “Well, you need to work with XYZed. They got me a job.”; or “They managed a campaign where I had to fill 6 or 7 vacancies within a really tight timeframe.”; “The consultants in this particular recruit- Acme Recruitment were amazing.” Then you pre-sold already so you go in a very very different level.
And if you actually monitor your stats which we would always suggest that you do. So even if you keep things on a spreadsheet or whatever and you can say “Well okay, where did this business come from?” In fact we were talking to a business the other day that we just started working with, and they can actually identify that 40% of their business is coming through referral. So that means if it is for them then it can for you too.
So start thinking about it. Is it in your marketing plan? Is it something that you can leverage? Where could you start? You know, what great clients have you delivered a service for? You know, pick up the phone and speak to them or send them an email and specifically ask for some time to have a chat with them and ask them about your service. You know, go and ask them about your service. What do they like about it? What could you have done better? Would they be willing to recommend you to other people? Could they give you a couple of names to speak to? And you will be amazed because I know.
I’m the sort of person that if I’ve had a great service from someone, then I will tell everybody about it because I’m really pleased. Human nature was set up that way and we want to help generally. We want to help one another and therefore if we found somebody that is great service provider we want to pass that message on to somebody so that means that can work for you too.
So that’s today’s top tip – it’s referral marketing. Get it in place in your marketing plan and action it. And look at what you need to do around it. How can you set it up and you’ll be amazed at how that will bring in probably business at a rapid rate. So this is Denise from superfastrecruitment.co.uk and it’s bye for now.
Tweetables:
Click To Tweet: [inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”null” suffix=”null”]Why referral works in recruitment[/inlinetweet]
Click To Tweet: [inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”null” suffix=”null”]Referral marketing increases conversion rates[/inlinetweet]
Click To Tweet: [inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”null” suffix=”null”]How referral marketing generates clients[/inlinetweet]
This podcast was hosted by Denise Oyston. Follow us on Google+
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