Month: July 2023

It’s no secret that podcasts are powerful content machines for the recruitment industry. They’re easy to set up, host and promote, but how do you keep that momentum going when you’ve reached 30, 40 or even 50 guests? 

On Episode 18 of The Skill Point Podcast we spoke to Robert Hanna, who is a legal recruiter turned community builder. He is the host of the Legally Speaking Podcast and Managing Director of KC Partners, as well as a popular personality on LinkedIn. 

Together we unpacked the secrets to hosting a podcast that stays valuable into its seventh season and beyond!

Provide Value to Guests

When you’re working with high-profile guests or expensive lawyers like Robert, it’s important to show people the value of coming on your podcast. Robert recommends tailoring your outreach to each guest, backed up with research you’ve done on them. “You know they have a social media profile, you know what other interviews they’ve done, and you know what their practice areas are,” said Robert, “so tailor it to their level of sophistication and interest. Make the benefits sound so good that it would be an absolute no brainer to say yes.” Use your own metrics like “the last three guests who featured on our show actually then landed X client, which generated X for them,” to keep your outreach value-focussed from the get-go. 

Keep Content Fresh & Relevant

Talking to the community you’ve built around the podcast is the best way to make sure your content is relevant to your listeners. “Before we launched season seven we were doing a lot of giveaways,” Robert shared. “Ask them ‘What do you want to see? Where are the gaps in information?’ Because yes, you can use Answer the Public and Google Trends, and I would encourage you to do that, but listening to your fans is how you’re going to turn them into super fans. Make them feel seen and heard.”

Robert’s other top tip for keeping content fresh is getting good quality guests onto the show. If you’re tapping into insights from leading voices in the space, your audience is far more likely to value the advice that you’re sharing. Researching guests helps you to get the most out of your conversations with them, and gives you insights into any areas they might not have talked about elsewhere. Listening to previous interviews also allows you to rephrase some great questions and get better answers out of them, as well as updated takes on the topic that will make you a more valuable source than your competitors. 

Repurpose Evergreen Content

When we were living through the pandemic, talking about how to adapt to our new situation was great content that people wanted to listen to. Now that we’re out of lockdown though, people aren’t going to want to go back to that content. Robert said that “when we’re asking the questions, we always want to make sure that we’re including not only our current listeners, but our future listeners too.” You need to be asking questions that stand the test of time to get evergreen content from your guests. 

‘Five top tips for being a leading corporate lawyer’ is an example of evergreen content. The industry might evolve, but nine times out of ten it’ll still be relevant in several years’ time. When people go back and listen to it they’re still going to get some value from those answers. 

Evergreen content is super important because you can repurpose it. For example, June is Pride Month, so you can share content from episodes where you’ve discussed diversity and inclusion on your show. Creating a database that links up all your content is a great way to keep track of repurposable topics from each episode, and helps you plan your podcast promotion campaigns throughout the year. That also allows you to leverage content from guests who are gaining publicity, which is a great way to get more eyes on your content. 

Combine Value & Storytelling 

The best way to generate valuable content that resonates with your audience is through storytelling. People engage with content on an emotional level, so pulling out your guests’ personal experiences will create moving content. You can do that by researching your guests’ histories, what they talk about on social media and their previous interviews, as well as having a pre-show chat to get to know them on a more personal level. 

“We’ve had guests who are law firm leaders who have been very open about their mental health and their breakdowns. They’re authentic leaders,” Robert said. “We actually get them to talk us through that story, the lessons they learned, how they came through it and what they would do differently.” The key to differentiating your podcast from the others in your sector is to ask deeper questions that dig into the core of important topics. The quality of your content comes directly from the quality of questions that you ask. 

To learn more about creating powerful podcasts in the recruitment industry, tune into The Skill Point Podcast here. 

In the recruitment marketing industry there are plenty of opportunities to take on the role of Marketing Manager. On Episode 17 of The Skill Point Podcast we spoke to Jade Brar-Haase, the Marketing Director of Murray McIntosh & Associates, about her experiences in the sector. Her expertise lies in helping companies with their employer branding, but she has also held multiple marketing manager positions, giving her a wealth of insights into the topic. 

So, how can you become a master Marketing Manager?

Starting a New Role

Whether you’re moving up the ladder or joining a new company, the first thing to do is assess the current state of play. Are there already marketing channels that the company is using? What tools do they have set up? Is the marketing budget being used well? 

Once you have an idea of what’s going on, you can start to make changes. Don’t try to overhaul everything at once, that’ll be jarring for your colleagues and customers. A good place to start is by getting rid of any money drains. Those paid ads on LinkedIn that aren’t converting? Time to turn them off. Those expensive graphic design tools nobody uses? They can go. 

Jade’s next step is to get to know your consultants. What do they think is missing in your marketing? Which questions are they answering all the time? Does the website work for them? They’ll know which touchpoints people are coming through and where conversions are happening, which is invaluable information for marketing. 

Creating a Strategy

Once you’ve got to grips with your new position and you’ve got some ideas of where to go, you need to build a strategy. Work with your consultants to figure out what kind of content would help them generate sales. Maybe a salary survey would be really useful for opening conversations with prospective clients. Maybe a social media campaign about one of your customer’s pain points would help answer their most frequently asked questions. Jade recommends using marketing as a “hybrid firefighting” method, where you put out fires before they spread by addressing your customer’s issues in your content rather than during consultants’ calls. 

Your strategy should have a plan for the next three, six and twelve months, with a clear goal at the end. As you evolve, the details of that plan can change to address new challenges, but your end goal should always stay the same. Take the time to review, monitor and measure your conversion rates and hone your content as a result. 

Managing Multiple Campaigns

Once you’re running multiple campaigns, Jade recommends using lists and spreadsheets to keep track of everything. Organisation is key to running successful campaigns, and allows you to work less reactively. Having structure in your day will help you to provide more value to your stakeholders by providing rapid turn-around times on ad-hoc jobs like creating insight documents. You can then leverage that by going to board meetings with the metrics from that piece of collateral and showing that your input helped generate X amount of revenue. Jade said that ultimately, “being organised and structured allows you to respond to those last minute opportunities that marketing gets all the time.”

Lots of people see sales and marketing as opposing teams within a company. The opposite is true; they’re allies. When marketing and sales work together, the output is exponentially better because everybody’s contributed to creating a meaningful piece of collateral that speaks to your consumers. 

Building Your Own Rewards

She also said that “You need to reward yourself for having that progress, because if you’re waiting for somebody to say, ‘That LinkedIn poll was brilliant! Did you see how many people were engaging with it?’ you’ll be waiting a long time.” Particularly if you’re a solo marketer it’s important to build in your own reward system, such as grabbing a brownie for every five tasks you tick off. Until you get a seat at the table with the leadership team, you could be the only one recognising your milestones. 

Getting Into Leadership

So, how do you get that seat at the table? 

As a marketing manager you’re probably working with at least one other person within the business. However, if you want to start taking part in meetings with the executives and become a valued member of the senior leadership team, you have to be able to present your work as valuable and insightful to everybody. 

Jade’s advice is to keep pushing. “You’ve got to be self propelling and you’ve got to have the dedication to educate others around you as well as yourself.” Make sure you’re informed of the latest developments in your industry, on social media and in the world at large. Prioritise your personal development as much as you can. Beyond that, gather as much data as you can on how your work is improving the business. If you can present your strategies to senior leadership with proof of their effectiveness, you can position yourself as a valuable partner in the business. 

Want to know more about working as Marketing Manager in the recruitment industry?

Tune into The Skill Point Podcast here to hear the rest of Jade’s insights. 

Marketing is a creative industry. But what happens when you’re struggling to find that creative spark? On Episode 16 of The Skill Point Podcast we spoke to Jess Cook, the Head of Content at LASSO and Co-host of That’s Marketing, Baby, about how to keep creativity at the centre of your work. 

Idea Generation 

Jess’s first tip is “Get on the phone with a customer.” Reflect their language back in your copy. Listen to their problems and solve them in your marketing or services. They can tell you exactly what they want from you, which sparks ideas for content, strategy and products. 

Secondly, Jess recommends looking at sales calls. She said “If you can sit in on a sales call,listen to what they say and how they talk. They’re talking to prospects every day who share their problems, so they see trends in the market that could inspire you”. 

The third place to look for ideas is in customer success. “What are our customers saying? What happened on the day they realised they needed you?” Jess asked. Find the straw that broke the camel’s back and build your content around that.  

Jess’s fourth and final source of ideas is the people in your company who have experience of being where your customers are. “Within LASSO,” Jess said, “we have a tonne of folks who used to work in an event production warehouse. I can go to those folks and say, ‘Hey, tell me about what it’s like to work in a warehouse’. They can tell me what it’s like to be our customers, and have practical experience of how our product will change their lives. 

When you put those four sources together you’ll have killer emotional insights that can inform your content and spark a host of ideas for your content.

Find a Creative Centrepiece 

When you’re launching a new product or campaign, it’s helpful to find a creative centrepiece that can tie everything together. Start with a strategy that establishes what you’re announcing, what the message is and who your content is aimed at. 

Jess shared an example from LASSO’s recent inventory product launch, where they made a launch video that was based on an insight from an SME call. “It was a 15-second video that introduced our new inventory product. We used it everywhere. It was on the landing page, in our emails, as a GIF, on our social posts… We created this short, creative piece that felt very impactful that we could repurpose through the entire new product announcement campaign.”

Having one centrepiece makes content creation easier, because you can take one idea and translate it into different forms. That builds consistent messaging and momentum in your marketing. Who doesn’t want that? 

Repurpose Content

Building a content machine is the key to successful marketing. Here at Search Stack we love using podcasts as cornerstone content, because you can stretch it into so many other forms of collateral. It’s an efficient way to reduce brainstorming time and create more content that’s already in-line with your goals. 

To learn more about sparking creativity and reducing your content creation time, tune into The Skill Point Podcast here.