Last week we had the pleasure of attending the Edge Global Media ‘Marketing within the Recruitment Sector’ conference for the second year running. As with last year the day didn’t disappoint and we heard some great insight into recruitment marketing with speakers from Broadbean, Bullhorn, BlueSky PR and more! Here are a few of our favourite takeaway points from the event:
Content is more effective than adverts
Passle defines content marketing as: a strategy that focuses less on adverts and more on creating and curating content tailored to your target audience. This can include blog posts, webinars, infographics, guides, talks at events, social media posts, videos, podcasts, interactive content (like quizzes), newsletters etc. Many recruiters are still guilty of focusing purely on adverts, whether it’s an email campaign advertising your services, or a social media presence just for you to post jobs to. The fact is many companies who focus purely on adverts are spending more money, and getting less ROI than their competitors who are embracing content marketing! And with this many types of content there is no excuse not to try something different!
It pays to get your recruiters creating content
The lines between recruitment and marketing have been blurring for some time, and if you haven’t already got your recruiters involved in your marketing then you may be missing a trick. According to Passle content helps raise the profile of your experts, lets you own your own niche (and cut through the noise of what’s online), PLUS it’s cheaper and often more effective than traditional methods! Chances are you may struggle to get buy-in initially – after all recruiters are already working long hours so giving them ‘another job’ to do might not go down to well!
Showing them results and analytics will help encourage them to get involved (and a little competition always helps!).
GDPR will affect us all in 2018
In May 2018 GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) will become legislation in the EU. When this happens Data Owners (basically everyone) will have the right to know: what data is being held, who is holding this data, and for what purpose. Recruitment agencies will need to gain explicit and continuous consent from data owners to retain this information in their database, meaning the way you conduct marketing campaigns may very well change in the next 14 months. Guy Rubin of Ebsta advises that companies: build active opt-in into everyday engagements, adopt “privacy by design” and implement robust processes to remove data. And if you’ve been meaning to cleanse your CRM data then it’s definitely time to start!
Your employer brand directly impacts customer loyalty
We all know how important your employer brand is for attracting candidates to your organisation, but what is really interesting is how this can seriously impact your consumer brand! Laura Gowthorpe from Broadbean pointed out where there may be some exceptions where people disregard this – e.g. if you’re out drunk at the early hours you’ll probably still call for an UBER even though they have come under scrutiny for poor employment practices – but most companies will see a negative impact if they don’t sort out their employer brand. So if you treat your employees well and they are happy in their jobs then you need to shout about it!
At the end of the day happy employees are on average more productive so it’s a great way to attract both clients and candidates to your recruitment business!
You should embrace Millennials and social media
By the year 2025 75% of the workforce will be Millennials. This means the majority of your candidate pool have grown up with instant gratification, using social media as an integral part of their day. Instead of dismissing this generation, you need to embrace them with open arms (and an employee advocacy program)! Tapping into your employee’s vast social networks can help you increase your content reach enormously, Laura Gowthorpe of Broadbean estimates that a company with 10 thousand employees can reach over 4 million people through adopting an employee advocacy approach! Employees are often driven by the anticipation of a reward (something we all know very well in recruitment), but all you need to do is offer an small reward to make this work – meaning it won’t break the bank to get phenomenal results!
People will judge a headline by it’s cover
Tracey Barrett from BlueSky PR talked about ways to get your content read and shared, whether it’s online or to national press. A headline can be instrumental to your engagement results, and she advised you think ‘ClickBait’ when you write a headline. If it doesn’t prick your interest then you’re probably not going to bother to click on it! Another thing to try is to A/B test your headlines, in other words try releasing the same content with different headlines (something Forbes regularly does) and measure the feedback. Barrett noted that this practice recently helped Blue Sky PR get 277% more engagement on an article they posted, so it’s definitely worth a try!
