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What you are missing in your recruitment agency marketing plan

recruitment agency marketing plan

Having a detailed marketing plan is an essential component for any successful recruitment agency. With the recruitment market becoming ever-more saturated, it’s not enough to simply promote opportunities on jobs boards and hope they reach the right people. There could be multiple vacancies on the same jobs board, and often it’s a case of who can pay the most to be promoted the heaviest that tempts a potential candidate to put their faith in that particular agency.

By changing tack and putting time and energy into a more diverse marketing strategy, it’s possible to get candidates coming direct to your website to find a new role, saving money on jobs board spending, but also creating a database of valuable candidate data, which will attract more clients to use your services.

Here we look at the key areas you need to consider in your recruitment marketing plan for 2018, so you can see what you might be missing and what to implement in the coming year.

Know your market

This might sound obvious, but a good marketing plan comes from a really clear understanding of what you are trying to achieve, who you are trying to attract and what your brand represents. What are your USPs as an agency? What do you do that others in the industry don’t? This could be an industry specialism, a different process of working, a unique database, a specific working location… These particulars will define your keywords, your target audience and the type of marketing strategies that you employ. Potential candidates and clients want to know instantly why they should choose you over any other recruitment agency, which means clearly demonstrating how you can meet their needs from the outset. Get started by creating a customer persona, which helps you describe the people you are marketing to. You will likely have two key personas to consider: a candidate looking for a job role, and a client looking to use a recruitment agency. See our free Customer Persona Template to help you get started. Whenever you are thinking about your marketing plan, keep in mind your target personas to drive your content.

Customer persona template

Provide useful content

On a jobs board, your agency is just another agency in a long list. It’s difficult for a candidate to differentiate one from another. They are driven to you by the nature of the job role, not because they have a particular interest in working with you. However, you can pick up candidates, and business clients, by giving them a reason to come to your website. Content is key; providing useful content that educates, entertains or informs not only gives visitors a reason to come to the website in the first place, but also a reason to return in the future. Don’t neglect your blog. They are not just the creative outlets of photogenic millennials; they are a powerful marketing tool. Make sure you post informed and relevant content on a regular basis. Use your customer personas to help generate this content. For example, a candidate is likely to respond to blog posts that offer things like interview tips, advice on polishing their CV, how to break into a particular industry and so on. Clients want to know how using a recruitment agency could save them time and money, how to craft the perfect job description, or what to look for in a potential new employee. You can present this information in many different ways, from standard blogs, to downloadable PDFs or eBooks, to infographics that are inherently shareable.

Use social media

Now that you have lots of great content on your website, you have got plenty of material for social media. Your Facebook Page should be the social media front of your business, sharing news, content and advice on a regular basis. The content needs to be tailored to your customer personas to increase engagement. Build your followers organically so that you can generate valuable leads. On Twitter and Instagram make sure you are using hashtags properly to target the right people, and have a social media schedule that you stick to. For every bit of content you post on your website, find different ways of promoting it – using extracts, relating it to topical news stories or calling to action by explaining clearly what the benefit of clicking through is to potential candidates or clients. Don’t neglect LinkedIn either; it is the modern networking platform. You can connect with large clients more easily on here than on other social networks, and interact within industry-related groups. Make sure your profile is attractive and outlines your USPs. You can repost all of your unique content on here too to pop up on the newsfeeds of the groups you have joined and the businesses you have connected with.

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Consider your SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is the most subtle marketing you will do, but it is also the most important. There is little point in having wonderful, informative and interesting content if no one can find your website. You will already be generating some inbound leads from your content and social media activity if you have followed our above points, but this is about getting your website to hit near the top of the results on Google and other search engines. This relies on having some knowledge of the kinds of things that people are searching for when they are on the internet and require the services of an agency like yours. Search engines are getting cleverer by the day and their advanced algorithms are analysing not just the wording that a person is using when they type into Google, but the intent behind it. Find out more in our detailed guide: How to ensure your website has high Google rankings in 2018. The way that you write the content you are producing will need to be highly SEO friendly so that it attracts maximum traffic.

Converting curiosity to customers

By now, you could be getting new visitors to your website from many different avenues, such as your social media channels, the generation of new and interesting content, and a perfectly optimised-for-SEO website. When these potential candidates and clients come to your website, the next step is to keep them there and to move them around your site in such a way that they want to engage with your services. All your content should have internal links to help navigate to relevant sections (but don’t overdo it either – each link should serve a purpose). Make sure you have the right content easily available and tailored for your customer personas. A candidate is likely to just be interested in what jobs you have to offer, so make it easy to find your job search from whatever page they land on initially. A client will be more likely to look at the About Us or How We Work pages, so these should be concise and present the USPs you have identified clearly. Case Studies and Testimonials are also important to have, as potential new customers want to know that you can deliver on your promises.

Keeping clients and candidates

You may not consider customer retention too much in your line of work, but you should. Candidates come to you to find a specific job, but if you give them a good service, they are more likely to recommend you to another person, and word of mouth is a valuable marketing tool. There may also come a time, further down the line, when they themselves are looking for the next step in their career path and you want them to be loyal to you and come back again and again. They may even end up in the position of employer and need the services of a recruitment agency from a client’s perspective. However, in all these cases, you need to be sure that they remember you and that you are still relevant to them. You could create an email database from all candidates and send regular (but not too regular) mailshots with advice and information, as well as an update on your services. It may just prompt them at the right time to recommend you to someone else. You could also offer candidate referral offers, so they are encouraged to send other potential candidates your way, for a small incentive. With business clients, you want to build up strong relationships with key companies so they opt to use your agency as their go-to for all their future recruitment needs. Again, this is about regular communication, reminding them of your services, sharing customer case studies and updating on any new products you can offer them to enhance their recruitment success.

As you can see, marketing your recruitment agency takes a little time and effort, but the results are worth it. You may already be implementing some of these strategies, however it is worth reviewing your marketing plan to ensure you have an all-encompassing and connected strategy that will target your Customer Personas perfectly and bring strong, repeat business into your agency.

Download our free Customer Persona Template

 

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