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As I record this, in a few weeks in the UK is one of the biggest trade shows for the recruitment industry, and that is Rec Expo.
It’s happening in Birmingham, where many service providers in the tech field appear so you can look at all their kit, how it works and how they might support you.
There are some great speakers on there as well. We’ve presented there several times at the Expo. I mention that because often, at this time of year, people are starting to think, “Okay, what software do I need?”
I am a bit of a software queen; I like a bit of software.
However, we need to consider what specific software we need to do the job in question.
My focus for today is going to be all around marketing software. I will suggest things you need and others that might be nice to have, but you don’t need them unless you’re very flush with cash. Do you need them? I’m going to suggest some things for you in a second.
However, because it’s happening very soon, we are running recruitment marketing week again the last week in September, from September 25th through to September 29th. 1:00 PM BST every day, 8:00 AM EST.
If you are wondering, “What should I be doing when it comes to marketing? How can I get marketing and digital marketing working in my business?” end the year strong and start 2024 even stronger than, “What do I need to do?” then join us for this five-day training.
What we’re going to do is, over those five days, we will give you all the things that you need to consider.
This content is real gold.
Sign up here-> www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/RMWS, which stands for Recruitment Marketing Week, and the S is September.
We will not be running this again this year.
Marketing Software For Recruiters
Let’s talk about marketing automation, software, and things that you can use for your business that are relatively easy to use, will make a huge difference to your productivity, and will not cost you the earth.
For all of our members of Superfast Circle, whether they have one consultant, whether they’re on their own, or whether they have 20 or 30 consultants, we recommend all of this type of software.
I will share some brands with you; we are not aligned with any brand. We don’t get a kickback. However, we are suggesting different bits of kit for you. There’ll be different prices, and whatever fits your budget, but I can tell you that everything we recommend works well.
Your CRM With Email Functionality
The first thing is your CRM; we have people that use every bit of CRM software on the market. We’ve got people that use ZoHo, Firefish users, Loxo, Vincere, and, of course, Bullhorn as well.
What I would look for, and I would say this is about planning for your future, is planning to have a CRM system that also has email marketing built into it because what you want to be able to do with your email marketing is have automated campaigns.
It will save you so much time and angst and create a lot of revenue for you. Even now, as I record this in 2023, the most profitable marketing strategy that you can use is email marketing. For recruiters, it is critical because you have client and candidate databases, and you are working with people on a long-term process.
Having email marketing automation built into your business will pay for itself several times over.
It’s interesting because I saw a post in one of the other recruitment groups earlier today, and a gentleman was asking about free tools. He wanted to be able to source some candidates, and he wanted some free stuff.
We all like free, don’t we, until it stops being free, of course?
If you want more functionality and things to work for you, it’s rarely going to be free. Remember, software is a business cost and tax allowable; spend it, and it’ll make a big difference for you.
Now, it is likely that when you go and find a CRM with marketing automation software built into it, you’ll have to pay more, but it will pay for itself ten times over.
If you haven’t listened to a podcast we did a few weeks ago with a lady called Karen McCurdy, she was talking about the fact that now they’re using email marketing automation, and it’s helping them to automate several areas of the business.
Now, something just to be aware of. We were talking to one of our clients the other day who was a little bit miffed that he had just found out that his CRM database provider had built an email system into it.
It was MailChimp, but they hadn’t informed him, so check if your provider has email integration.
Nurturing your client and candidate database will provide a huge financial upside to your business.
For instance, everyone’s concerned about their relationship with candidates and clients.
Think about the systems that you are going to use. Ensure you invest in one with automation software aligned to it. There are many; Bullhorn is one of them. I’m not saying these are the CRM systems to use, by the way. Vincere has another, Bullhorn and Loxo; you can also connect, but make sure when you sign up that this is correct.
You need to get one if your software does not have an email system. There are several options. We’ve mentioned MailChimp. There’s Active Campaign and now a great piece of software called Mailerlite.
A Website With A Blog
The next thing I want to say, and I know some people might smile at this, you need a website with a blog. You need a website with a blog because, as a smaller service provider, we work with independents and smaller SMEs; if you want to stand out and compete, you need content as part of that process.
If you’ve never accessed our Lead Generation Triad webinar, check it out because we explain how content works to build leads and your lead system. You can watch a recording of the training here.
Adding a blog with content makes a difference because you need to build out your authority website, which is a key element of your marketing tech stack.
I’m a fan of WordPress; I recommend it to all our clients. I know some people don’t like it, but it’s very easy to work with. If you can work with Microsoft Word, you can work with a WordPress website, which will help you.
You don’t have a fortune getting someone to update things for you on your website because you’ll be able to do it yourself because it’s WordPress. A WordPress website with the functionality that you can build landing pages on your website.
What are landing pages?
You have probably landed on a landing page of ours on multiple occasions. This is how you capture somebody’s contact details and start working with them. Imagine that somebody comes onto your website they’re not quite ready to work with you yet. Still, they like a report that you’ve got on interview skills, or they like a report that you’ve got on building a team in your sector; all they need to do to get this report is give you their name and email address, and then you can send it to them through email automation; That is why you need landing page software.
Most WordPress websites have functionality so people can build a landing page. We’ve just got a few of our Superfast Circle clients working with a particular web designer, and he’s building that all for them in WordPress. It’s really easy, so they can create these pages that connect with their email system.
Writing Software
The first one is Wordhippo. You will have Word and whatever else you type into, but Wordhippo is great because it will give you alternative versions of the comment you are using. Often, what happens if you’re not a professional writer there is a tendency to use the same Word multiple times in a sentence.
It doesn’t make your writing flow.
WordHippo is a free bit of software that you can use that will give you alternative words.
The other thing that I recommend to people is to use Grammarly. Again, there are multiple spell-checking and writing pieces of software. Grammarly, I find particularly good. I use the professional version. It just helps you put commas in the right places, apostrophes.
It will speed up your writing process. Again, for a hundred pounds a year, it’s very inexpensive to use.
Now, AI writing tools and software.
Am I a fan? The jury’s out at the moment, but there is one.
ChatGPT is one that most people are talking about at the moment. It’s worth getting access to it. There’s a free version, which is much slower and not as good, and a paid-for version.
ChatGPT, what could you use that for? If you don’t have somebody like the team at Superfast Circle who knows the market well and wants to come up with different writing ideas and themes for content, ChatGPT will help you with.
It can also reword things for you. If you’ve written a social media post, it might give you some different alternatives.
Now, what I would say is to remember that automation AI software like this needs to learn from you. In my experience with recruiters, they don’t have a lot of patience, so you need to work specifically with ChatGPT so it knows your writing style.
I would say it’s great for ideas. Please don’t use it to write a blog. If you do, you will need to edit it because it’s very repetitive, sometimes it can come across as a bit cheesy, and it does have gaps.
All the data it uses is pre-2021, so it will be three years out of date next year.
Graphics Software
Now that we’ve talked about words let’s talk about graphics. Again, there are multiple software’s that you can use.
You can go old school and use Adobe Photoshop, which is excellent, though harder to use and more expensive; Canva is a great alternative.
It has been around for over ten years. It’s a great bit of software. What I love about Canva for most people is that it provides templates that you can tweak and use, and you can also update them with your own colour schemes, colour palettes, and fonts. You can upload images and make things look pretty cool and professional.
I would say 90% of our visual content you see online is created in Canva Pro, which I recommend.
Now, I say that because you are a professional organization, you are in a competitive market and want to stand out in front of people. That way, when you have professional Canva, you can access different templates and over 5000 images.
You can upload other things. The big benefit of Canva Pro is it provides images for you. I think it has something like 5,000 different images that you can use.
Social Media Marketing Automation
Now, let’s talk about social media marketing automation. We spoke about Canva and creating branded images for social media. Now, let’s discuss what else you need to consider regarding marketing automation.
The next thing I want to talk about is social media marketing automation. I don’t want to get into the bait of whether social media automation is good. I think it’s useful. There are things that I will post on social media, and I will post them straight away, or I will use the functionality that Facebook and LinkedIn have, where you can schedule content ahead of time. However, it is time-consuming.
Here is a marketing hack to consider.
That is, use your marketing content multiple times; this is where automation software can help.
Let me share two that we’ve used, and our clients use; they work well and are inexpensive.
One is called MeetEdgar, and the other is SmarterQueue.
Let me talk about MeetEdgar because they’re both very similar. I think you can start on MeetEdgar for literally $10, $15 a month, and then it goes up depending on how many social channels you have.
What I particularly like about MeetEdgar, apart from the fact that you can upload videos through it as well, is that it has something known as categories. What you can do is you can create multiple categories that will work for your business.
For instance, you might have a client category and a candidate category. You might have four or five different verticals that you’re working on, each of which could be a category. You could have promotional posts, personal branding posts, you could have company posts, you could have job advert posts, and you could have value content posts.
What I love about MeetEdgar is that you can upload content, and it will keep posting that content repeatedly for you, so you’ve always got something going out. Let’s say that you know that on a Monday morning, you want to make sure that a piece of content goes out that talks to candidates about coming to your website and checking out what’s there. You can schedule that so it goes out at eight every Monday morning.
I mentioned multiple pieces of software here.
We have businesses that we are working with that are turning over multiple six and seven-figures and using purely just these pieces of software.
They’re not gone crazy, crazy, crazy. They’re using software that is easy and simple to use.
I think one of the things always to remember with marketing is, who’s going to learn it and use it?
Don’t freak yourself out by having something where it will be a bit more challenging for you to use.
I’ve talked about your need for an email marketing system. If you’ve got one with your CRM database, happy days, make sure your website, which is a marketing machine for you, is a piece of software with a blog and the ability to build landing pages.
That’s quite easy to do on many websites, or your website designer can do that for you. There’s so much they can do for you there, so it makes it easy.
You need an email system. If you don’t have an email system with your current CRM, you need to be able to email people.
As a marketing strategy, it will give you the highest ROI of any strategy you use because people do not convert immediately. Shout-out for the buying cycle. Go and look on the Superfast recruitment website about the buying cycle and how important that is. You need to nurture people because they won’t convert immediately.
When it comes to writing and ideas and things like that, Word Hippo, Grammarly, and ChatGPT can give you lots of ideas.
When it comes to graphics, Canva Pro is our go-to system, and it also has images you can use
Social media automation software is a lifesaver.
So, several things to consider that are not expensive. You could probably get going for less than £1,000/$1300 a year with all these different things, which will make a huge difference for you.
Thanks
Denise
How We Can Help
As part of Superfast Circle, we recommend software and have experienced people who can teach you how to use everything if you want to find out more, book a call with one of us here.
