The recruitment sector is booming on a global scale, and whilst many businesses are making hay whilst the sun shines, with great success comes great responsibility. If recruitment companies are planning sustainable growth throughout 2022, one of the most important factors to consider is the marketing channels you are investing in.
And marketing is not an overnight job. It takes consistency, patience and analysis.
We’re sure you’ve heard about the likes of TikTok and Reels being the biggest thing in marketing right now, but make no mistake - not all marketing platforms apply to every industry or sector. The key is to know where your audience is spending time online, so you can meet them there for a chat when they’re free - and it can be bloody painful at times.
Is your recruitment company looking to be more strategic with digital marketing channels in 2022? If so, you’re in the right place. Keep reading.
It might sound like an obvious one, but recruitment companies, we beg of you - invest in your website first and foremost. Gone are the days of clients, candidates and potential employees only knowing who you are because of phone or email conversations they have with you. Now, having a presence online is vital, and where is the first place people should land when they Google your company name?
That’s right - not job boards. And not to mention the astronomical price increases already starting - some marketers and recruitment business owners have been landed with 250% price increases from 2021 to this year. You need to invest in your own website to depend less on job boards.
People searching for you also shouldn't be landing on your LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. They shouldn’t see any other site or platform where you are online before your website, which should be at the top of the SERPs when someone types in the name of your company into a search engine. It’s incredible how much money recruitment companies spend on sending traffic to other websites instead of their own. How much of your “marketing budget” goes towards job board spend, instead of actual marketing?
Whether you’re working with potential clients, candidates or employees, you can bet your bottom quid that the first thing they’ll do before making a decision to work with you or not is look at your website. This is also why the information on your website should always be up to date, too - when was the last time you reread the content on your website? Does your messaging sound how you’d like it to? (If not, feel free to get in touch with us about your Tone of Voice.)
Not only do you need to get your EVP on point for your potential employees, but all your services need to be explained in full for potential clients, and every live job you have needs to be advertised. When was the last time YOU applied for one of your vacancies? What did the process feel like? Practice what you preach, be critical and sharpen up. Before you try and do X, Y and Z that your competitors are doing to try and keep up with them, you need to ensure you’ve got the basics right to begin with.
One of the most important recruitment marketing channels for 2022 is most definitely Google for Jobs. With the price of job boards anticipated to take a huge leap in the next few months, investing time in ensuring your jobs are optimised for G4J will have huge benefits in the long run.
We’re sure you’ve seen the blue box at the top of the SERPs when you type in any job-related search on Google, and that’s because they’re prioritising their own job postings over other sites. Understandably.
Employers and recruitment websites can simply edit the HTML of their job postings, and Google will continue to pull new jobs as you add them. Read through their starter guide to find out more, or ask your developer to get the job done as soon as possible!
Here at Marmalade Marketing, we’re well versed in explaining the importance of marketing automation and email journeys to our clients. (Read our recent blog for some in-depth information about marketing automation and what it can do for demand generation.)
The whole premise of email automation is to nurture your contacts to ensure that when they’re “buyer ready” that you and your organisation are front of mind. If you’re wondering how to do this, the first step is to clean your data and ensure the right people are receiving the content most relevant to them.
Secondly, you need to monitor your open rate and click-through rate to ensure your subject lines and the content you are sharing is encouraging your audience to engage with what you’re sending them.
The key to email marketing automation is simply to provide people with information that is both relevant and interesting to them specifically, that will provide solutions to their problems… when the problems arise. That way, when the time comes for organisations to need help with their recruitment or a candidate to apply for jobs, your recruitment company will be the first that comes to mind. You're not selling t-shirts, so it's vital you build the trust and confidence in your market, sector and audience.
No Google search necessary.
Employer brand is something that should have been towards the top of your marketing priority list for a while now, but 2022 will be the year you won’t be able to avoid it.
Future colleagues want to know as much about companies as possible before they consider working with them. You can’t simply say “this is what we believe in” and “this is how we work” on your website - you need to live and breathe it. Ask for input from your current employees on what they love about working at your organisation to get a real feel for what you can promote on your website and in your job adverts.
Your employee value proposition, also known as your EVP, is a building block of your employer brand. If the employer brand is the what and the how, your EVP is the why.
When you are looking to develop your EVP, you need to consider:
Establishing your current offer
Building your Ideal Employee Profile (IEP)
Assessing perception vs. reality
Competitor analysis - who does this well?
Building an EVP tailored to your audience
Communicating it to your target audience
In addition to this, you must consider what it is that stands out about your organisation that will make the top talent want to work for you. For example:
Does your organisation offer flexible working? If so, what does this look like?
How long are fathers entitled to for paternity leave?
Are you currently offering a four-day work week? If not, will you in the future?
Do you have a policy in place to allow time off for fertility treatment?
Are employees able to work from home whenever they want to?
Do you provide your employees with access to mental health support?
What does your organisation do to ensure hiring processes are unbiased?
When you’ve established specifically what you’re offering and your IEP, you’ll be able to communicate clear and consistent messaging to hire the right people for your business.
Similarly to EVP, personal brand is another marketing must-have for recruitment companies in 2022. You can’t like the odd post on LinkedIn and connect with people without contacting them, and hope that this will magically help you build your own brand. It simply won’t work.
Firstly, you need to not only expand your network on LinkedIn with people in relevant industries, but you also need to contact them directly. Don’t bombard them with sales messages as soon as they accept your connection request (unless you want to get ignored or blocked).
Simply introduce yourself, briefly explain what you do, and ask them to contact you if they need help with recruitment if they’re a potential client, or finding a job if they’re a potential candidate.
Secondly, ensure you’re sharing content regularly. This can be:
Company blogs relevant to your audience(s)
Your own blogs if you have time to write them - if not, a brief but useful status update a couple of times a week is still beneficial
External content - a variety of news articles, images and blogs you come across that you think your audience will find interesting
Your own images / videos - one thing we all now know about LinkedIn is that we don’t only have to share work-related or corporate content. Dog photos and team nights out work too!
Thirdly, ensure you engage with your audience. This is arguably the most important part of developing your personal brand. If you have built an extensive network on LinkedIn but you aren’t taking part in conversations, the network is almost completely pointless. Social media marketing channels are there to be utilised.
Ways to engage with your audience include:
Liking, commenting on and sharing other people’s posts, if what someone has posted is relevant to your wider audience and you think you could generate further engagement
Tagging people in your posts who you want to see it - are there any potential clients or candidates that you’ve had conversations with recently that will find what you’re sharing useful?
Messaging people directly - either sending your own content directly to someone’s LinkedIn inbox with a short message about why you’re sharing it, or messaging a connection to compliment them on the recent blog/video/article they posted
All recruiters are well aware of the countless benefits of LinkedIn, but truly utilising it as a tool to boost your personal brand is a skill in itself. (One that we are happy to help you with, if you want us to save you some time!)
If your recruitment company needs guidance on any of the marketing channels mentioned above, feel free to contact Marmalade Marketing to discuss how we can help you generate demand in 2022.