The great rehire of 2021 is in full effect, and recruitment businesses are operating at maximum capacity as they navigate a highly candidate-driven market.
While being busy is the quintessential ‘nice problem to have’ (especially after 2020), this is recruitment and the pendulum will swing back to client lead and demand generation before you can say booster jab.
If you had been investing in marketing before the major shift from client attraction to all out “war for talent” (eye roll), how much better equipped would you and your consultants have been to meet some of the current demand?
Short termism and reactivity goes against the grain of strategic marketing, but you can have your cake and eat it.
Building an aware audience of clients, future clients and candidates is something that shouldn’t stop. This should be an ongoing and continual improvement to your brand health. Think of it like an investment.
Overlay short term campaigns on your long term ‘brand health’ investment and you have a strong foundation to execute campaigns. Basically, you have more people who already have some awareness of you, before you really need them to engage with you.
The future client you’ve emailed with valuable articles, news and advice for 12 months suddenly needs 10 new hires? You are front of mind.
The candidates you’ve kept up to date with market rates, details of events and not hammered with job after job after job for a couple of years know they are suddenly worth more than they’re being paid? They are calling you.
The ‘colouring in’ department is dead. Your business has changed over the years, and your opinion of what marketing is needs to catch up - fast.
Marketing, and more appropriately marketers, should be part of your growth plans.
Marketing is still a heavy mix of art and science, but it’s critical to get the balance right and invest in both sides of that equation. The art is about your brand health, your ethos, your values, and how you're perceived. These things need nurturing and curating like all fine art collections. The science is the data and tech that gets you in front of the right people at the right time.
The internet has done a great job of levelling the playing field for today’s businesses. At one point, those with the biggest marketing budgets were most likely to get noticed, whether that was through taking out full-page adverts in the nationals or ensuring their key roles were sponsored on all major job boards.
Now, frequency and consistency of messaging is key to getting noticed. Businesses must be visible across all of the spaces their target audiences are hanging out. In an age of information overload, you need to cut through the noise and give potential clients and candidates a reason to remember your name and engage with your brand.
It requires a fully joined-up, far-reaching approach that takes advantage of your website, blog, social media, email marketing and advertising, with all messaging tied together. Not easy.
Gone are the days when marketing was viewed as a nice-to-have. In an era of fierce competition and evolving technology, marketing is an ongoing investment that businesses must embrace if they want to stand out, sell and grow.
‘Ongoing’ is the keyword here. Value propositions and brand awareness take time to establish and build. While short injections of marketing activity can produce short-term results, the truly successful ones require a longer-term investment and time to pay off.
Of course, word-of-mouth and referrals remain valuable for many recruiters, but it’s almost impossible to raise awareness, generate leads, land customers, attract the best employees and build a winning brand without investing in marketing.
If you are still not investing in marketing, we need to talk.