Ready to take your recruitment company to the next level?
Then it’s time to put together a comprehensive marketing strategy.
Planning out your marketing gives it a much higher chance of converting your leads into clients. It also helps you quantify things like your budget, goals and tactics rather than sticking your finger in the air and praying.
A strategy also keeps you on track, guiding the content you create and helping you avoid wasting time on posts or campaigns that don’t serve your business objectives.
To help you get started, we’ve put together a simple, step-by-step guide to writing your own recruitment marketing strategy. The guide includes handy downloadable Notion and Word Document templates that make it easier to share your strategy with your team.
1 – Objectives
The first thing you need to establish is your business objectives. Are you looking to source more candidates or improve your exclusive retainer rates? Figuring this out will help you build a marketing plan that supports your overall goals.
Here are some handy shortcuts for figuring out which marketing methods support which goals:
- Brand awareness = social media or PPC advertising
- Website leads = lead magnet or downloadable content
- Returning clients = email campaign or retargeting ads
2 – SMART Goals
If your goals aren’t SMART, then they’re not tangible, so how would you know if you hit them? To make the most of your marketing activity and determine which campaigns drive the most conversions, your overall objectives should be broken down into SMART goals. SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Timely
That means setting goals like ‘get 10% more enquiry forms through the website in the next quarter’ is more helpful than vague goals like ‘boost brand awareness’. which can be directly tracked in relation to your marketing activities. Whatever your SMART goals are, make sure they support your overall objectives.
3 – Audience
Once you’ve established what you want to gain from your marketing activities, it’s time to figure out who you’ll be aiming your content at. You need to know who you’re talking to if you want your message to land.
Creating a thorough profile for the people you want to buy your product or services will help you establish what tone and style you should use in your content. That will make it much easier to make content that resonates with your target audience. And, as we all know, content that resonates is content that sells.
4 – Unique Selling Points (USPs)
You’ll struggle to stand out in recruitment if you don’t have a USP.
When you’re marketing your services, it’s important to be specific about what your customers will get from choosing you over your competitors. For example, if you’re selling onboarding support alongside your recruitment services, you might want to create content around the outcomes you can deliver, such as reduced turnover and higher employee satisfaction.
If you can educate your target audience about why they need your solutions, they’re far more likely to recognise how it would benefit their business to work with you. That’s why having distinct USPs, like leadership coaching in the pre-boarding stage, is an essential part of your marketing.
5 – Platforms
People won’t come to you. You have to go to them.
So, once you’ve established what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to, you need to figure out where to reach them. Most professionals will be on LinkedIn, making that a great place to start with any B2B marketing. You should also prioritise putting content on your website, as that will build credibility and boost your ranking on most search engines. Blog content and testimonials will, when done well, contain keywords that help with search engine optimisation (SEO).
It’s also worth testing other social media platforms because clients and candidates often flock there outside work hours. If you can catch their attention there, you’ll significantly increase your reach and exposure.
Finally, emails can be a powerful tool for delivering personalised messages straight to your audience. However, they have to be done well. A spray-and-pray approach won’t fly on email, so it’s important to make sure you’re providing useful insights that people will want to stay subscribed to.
6 – Content
Content is the final part of constructing a marketing strategy. If you don’t include it as part of your strategy, you can waste valuable time and resources making content that doesn’t help you achieve your goals.
Go back to step 1 and look at your overall objectives, then establish what kind of content will drive people to meet those goals. For example, if you want more qualified leads, creating a gated lead magnet, like a salary survey, is a great path for you. If you want to increase brand awareness, posting entertaining content on social media is probably a better strategy. Don’t be afraid to test a few options, but make sure you set up tracking links to see which campaign is driving which actions.
7 – Download the template
Now that you know how to create a marketing strategy, you can download our free template to help you make your own. If you need some help fine-tuning it, just email us, and one of our team would be happy to help.