Month: April 2023

Relationships are an essential part of marketing. As we’ve said before, people want to buy from people, so presenting your company as a human presence will create a far more engaged audience than stale, corporate branding. But how does that apply to the recruitment industry? On Episode 7 of the Skill Point Podcast we spoke to Clair Bush about how she’s translated the psychology of sales into recruitment. 

What is Relationship marketing?

The term ‘relationship marketing’ existed before the onset of social media and the digitalization of relationships. It’s the psychology behind human connections, and the reason that reaching out to someone through a letter that explains your offer and the opportunity, then enables them to come back and say, ‘Yes, I’m interested’ on their own terms is more effective than cold calling. 

What does this look like in a modern day setting in the market?

In order to successfully use relationship marketing, you need a total end to end knowledge and understanding of your ideal client profile. It’s about being able to create impactful outbound marketing for a group of people that have the same characteristics and needs, and enabling them to come to you. 

When it comes to relational marketing in recruitment, these relationships have slightly different dynamics. You can get to know your clients by asking questions like:

• How’s your company structured? 
• Who are your hiring managers? 
• What’s your projected growth? 
• When’s your year-end? 

Having that kind of information will allow you to create groups of similar people and communicate with them around related topics. If you take an agency with 50 recruiters, there’s bound to be commonalities between their conversations. If all of those people reach out to around 20-30% of their contacts and say ‘We’ve got this topic, we’re going to tell you what we know about it’, that will put them top of mind for those clients, which means they can pick up open roles. It’s all about giving value to your audience so that they immediately think of you as the expert to go to when they need something. 

From a marketing perspective, you can use that information to reverse engineer a campaign. Clair said that these campaigns allow you to “collect insights and data, then also funnel it back into the greater content machine within the business.” The heart of marketing is understanding what industry conversations are being had. Relationships allow you to see where that information is coming from and where it’s going.

How can employer brands tap into the psychology of relationship marketing?

Clair’s view on employer branding is that it’s similar to ‘conscious parenting’. She said that “as a parent, I know what worked for me, and I know what really didn’t work for me. I don’t want to make those same mistakes for my child.” Employer branding is a similar space, because a fundamental part of any organisation is having an employee value proposition that is aligned with your business strategy. You’re paving the way for the people below you to have a better experience than you did. Having an understanding of what drives people to turn up for you every day (beyond their pay packet) is essential to building a successful employer brand. It’s more than letting people work from home three days a week. 

For anybody who hasn’t figured out their employee value proposition, think about this: 

• What are you doing that would be an exciting project to work on? 
• What are the pillars that you want to be able to talk about in a job advert? 
• What are the real reasons why someone would love and thrive in your environment? 

Marketing in recruitment needs to be less of a “spray and pray mentality” and more of a targeted, demand generated mentality. We should be moving towards a world where the people who apply are right for the role. The personalization makes filtering easier, which then makes shortlisting quicker, which then makes the decision faster. Using relationships and understanding your target demographic’s psychology to underpin your marketing strategy will level-up your workflow and bring incredible results.

To find out more about recruitment marketing, tune into The Skill Point Podcast or reach out to us on hello@searchstack.co.uk. 

You’ve probably heard of the term ‘candidate experience’ bouncing around the recruitment industry. 

Have you ever thought about your customer journey though? 

On Episode 6 of the Skill Point Podcast we spoke to Rich Evans about how we can utilise the customer journey to our advantage across recruitment. 

The customer journey is where branding and marketing meet sales, and work together to give clients and candidates the smoothest experience possible. We can look at both a client and candidate journey, and use their experience to streamline our process. 

Wherever you’re looking to get more candidates into your market and interview for your business, every step between not knowing who you are to saying, ‘I want to come and speak to you about potential opportunities at your firm’ is part of their customer journey. It’s our job to break down that journey and support them through it. 

Here’s how to do that:  

Eliminating Friction

Friction occurs in the customer journey when people have to overcome obstacles to access your solution. 

Rich put it this way: “The more mental calories a buyer needs to burn during the process, the less likely they are to buy something. They’ll be looking for the next solution. It’s about clarity and digestible information.”

If you want to create an enjoyable customer journey, you have to anticipate their questions and have the information ready to go. 

Using Branding

The aim of branding is to make sales easier, whether that’s by creating brand loyalty so that new products are sought-after by loyal customers or by positioning yourself as an exceptional employer, where candidates are eager to apply for your roles. 

Successful branding communicates your purpose to your customers. Rich recommends building your brand around the questions “Who are we selling to? What are their pain points? What are their needs?” and “How are we going to position our business around that?” 

This will translate into purposeful content that directly addresses your clients’ pain points. Your sales team (or consultants in the recruitment industry) will have resources that are ready to share with prospects, removing that friction that we talked about earlier. 

Combining Marketing & Sales

Marketing and sales departments have to work together to create a successful customer journey. Rich’s advice was that ultimately, “your job during that journey, whether you’re marketer or a salesperson, is to help them buy.” 

The aim of marketing is to help consultants build a relationship with customers. You can do that by building trust in the marketplace and changing people’s perception of your business. 

Mindsets are one of the biggest obstacles in a customer journey. It’s the role of marketing and sales to change that, convincing customers that your solution will benefit them. It’s essentially education. 

Sales and marketing can also work together to use feedback. The consultants are the ones in the field, speaking to customers. They’re often receiving feedback about what your customers’ pain points are, and they know the points that are turning customers away. If that’s fed back to marketing, the two teams can work together to build those points into your solution to make sure it doesn’t happen again. 

Both teams are helping people decide to buy your product or service. 

Creating Conversations

The most important step of the customer journey is getting customers to talk to you. “From a marketing perspective, we’re not really selling the full solution,” Rich said. “We’re selling an initial conversation.” That’s the culmination of outbound sales, marketing and branding; one conversation. 

If you’ve got those areas of your business to work together, your customer will already have gone through most of the buying journey. They should already know what you offer, your price points, your turn-around time and how your product can help them. This conversation is just about giving them the opportunity to ask any really specific questions about their bespoke requirements. 

Customers should never have to work things out themselves during that conversation. It’s down to you to move them through to the next step of their journey. 

To learn more about the customer journey in recruitment, tune into the full episode of The Skill Point Podcast here. 

We all love a good podcast. 

They’re entertaining, educational, and easy to consume. They’re also surprisingly easy to produce. 

On Episode 5 of the Skill Point Podcast we spoke to Hishem Azzouz, the founder and host of Recruitment Mentors, about his dos and don’ts for recording a great podcast. 

If you’re thinking of starting up your own podcast, read on to find out our top tips for new podcast hosts. 

What’s the point of your podcast? 

From a business perspective, a podcast should be in some way benefiting your company. Whether it’s creating brand awareness, generating leads from guests or used as a cornerstone piece of content, you should have a strategy behind your podcast. 

From an audience’s point of view, you need to be providing value with your content. If you’re just using it as a sales tool, or you don’t have a clear mission behind it, your audience won’t resonate with it. You need to be offering them something they want to consume. 

Who makes great guests?

Hishem recommends a 30-guest strategy for your first episodes. 

The first 10 people you have on should be existing clients – the people that you do a bunch of business with. That enables you to hone your interview skills on people that you have a relationship with. It will also give you a unique digital asset that your team can use to recruit for your clients. 

The second 10 should be your prospects or dream clients. If you can get them on board for your podcast, that gives you an opportunity to tell them about what you do and create a relationship with them. At least 50% of people will say yes if you approach it in the right way.  

The third 10 guests should be influencers or subject matter experts. These are the people in your industry that people want to listen to. Have a look at your industry and see who has the biggest brands in your niche. Get them on the podcast and piggyback off their brand to rapidly build traction. 

Another way to gain traction from your guests is to hijack industry events. If you can find the guest list it happens, get them on your show and release the episodes during the event build up. Other people will be looking at their activity then, so aligning yourself with the relevant experts will build your credibility and act as free promotion. Add a hashtag to get more involved in the event, and that’ll get you in the conversation. 

Taking your content further by creating a white paper of insights from your guests’ input. You can share it with the people you meet at events, email it to your mailing list or post it for your network. That helps to position you as an industry expert and a go-to for insights and advice. 

If you’re producing a high-quality podcast, you’ll naturally generate interest. People will start reaching out and asking if they can come on the podcast. The best way to attract guests is to put in the effort to make it a great listen. Spend time building meaningful relationships with people, and take the time to reach out to inspiring people on LinkedIn. 

How do you manage conversation topics?

Once you’ve found an interesting guest, look at their profile and journey and figure out what people would be interested in hearing from them. Always have a prep call and write up a document of topics that you want to talk to them about or any audience requests for the episode. This doesn’t have to be written out as a script, it’s just a helpful jumping-off point that lets you and your guest set clear expectations. 

Spend time building relationships with the guests beforehand. That can be on a call or over messages, but it’s best to build a rapport before you start recording. In your prep call, always ask your guest ‘Is there anything that you want to talk about? Do you want to sell anything?’ Give them a set time to talk about it so you’re not wrestling the conversation with them. They’ll feel more comfortable and you’ll have a better conversation. The purpose of the prep call is also to make sure that you’re on the same page about your priorities. 

While you’re recording, it’s best to let the conversation flow naturally. Have a rough starting point or first question to begin with, and then let things unfold. You can experiment with a quick-fire round to end the episode or have a high-impact question that drives home the point of your conversation. A great conversation is just that – a conversation. 

Top Tips for New Podcasters:

Over-prepare. Don’t feel like you can just wing it because you’re good at speaking, because hosting a podcast is a whole new skill. 

When you ask a question, stay silent afterwards. It’s a lot harder than you think. Letting the other person speak without ‘active listening’ will make a real difference to the audience’s experience. 

Listen to your own episodes. This will help you pick up on things that you might not even realise that you do. You have to be willing to learn and improve. 

Learn to keep control of the conversation. If you feel the person is really going off on a tangent, then you have to reel them back in. It’s like peeling back an onion. You’ve got to be good at listening, being present, and being aware of what your audience wants you to ask. You also need to draw out the high-level answers that actually add quality to your audience’s experience by saying ‘can you unpack that a bit more’ or ‘tell me more about this’.  

Always thank your audience for supporting the podcast. Whenever someone tells you they’ve listened or enjoyed it, ask what topics they want you to cover or which guests they’d like to hear from. Take the time to understand your audience and show your appreciation for them. Keep notes of your feedback and learn from it. 

To learn more about hosting a great podcast, listen to the full episode of the Skill Point Podcast, or download our eBook here.