Your goal for any marketing is to win business, so let’s start with some strategies that allow you to generate leads without going down the ‘scroll hole’ on social. You can always try to justify why spending so much time on Facebook and Instagram is necessary but is that time spent justified on your bottom line? After all, social media should serve your business, you should not be serving it – and on that note, not all social media is equal; LinkedIn has a whole different set of rules. 

Instead of wasting all that time on tactics that aren’t getting you results, let me share some practical marketing strategies that will get you the best bang for your marketing buck. You’ll find more here, too! 

These simple tactics are very effective and don’t involve working out any algorithm hacks. Are you ready?

The collaboration effect

Collaborations are a hugely untapped marketing resource. Finding one to two collaborative partners that have a similar audience and are complementary to your service means you get in front of a lot of your potential customers at once. Eg: A recruiter and a resume writer  

The leads generated through these collaborations will be better quality leads as you are being recommended by a trusted source. There are also many ways in which you can collaborate, such as events, webinars, blogs, shared content, and so on. If you get creative and align strategically, this can become a great source of referrals and new business.

The often misused email marketing 

Email marketing is far from dead, but you need to do it right – this means not blasting your entire list with an email about jobs, which many recruiters are guilty of.

Your list is gold if you work it. Email is the first thing most people check when they wake up (and often the last thing at night). To stand out from the crowd, you should have a clearly defined content strategy and point of view – personalise your content to your audience and segment your lists so each contact only receives what’s relevant to them. 

Be polarising and establish yourself as a source of information so that both clients and candidates look forward to reading your emails. There is no point in having a big database if you are not going to capture any of your audience.

Build your list through your blog

Starting a blog with SEO-friendly content shows your expertise, and is a great way to move fans from social media pages to your email list – remember you don’t own your followers, you only rent them. 

Once you have your blog, share your content to your existing network first; and if you want to share on social, include a CTA for your audience to follow you directly so they don’t miss out on future juicy content. Be sure to highlight the benefits of your content and direct readers to where they can find your most high-value content, as this incentivises people to join your list and follow you long-term.

Make your website work for you, not against you

For most businesses, your top online priority should be your website. Can people easily find you? Are you capturing your visitors’ data for future marketing? Does it convert into paying clients?

Unless you can say yes to those questions, then you need to spend some time refining your website and making it work for you. I guarantee your website usually generates far more customers than your Facebook or Instagram posts. So, make sure you’ve got that nailed down first before you turn your attention to social media, running ads, or spending money on SEO.

It’s essential that your website has a point of difference, too – vanilla recruitment websites that look the same as everyone else’s do nothing to make you stand out (sorry, not sorry).

Engage in real-life conversations

If you want to engage with people, the best place to do it is not on social media – it’s in real life. In this digital world it may sound old-fashioned, but the most effective way to connect is still to strategically meet with potential clients and spend time getting to know them.

And here’s the kicker – the time you put into real-life conversations actually translates to results, unlike the time you can waste on social media trying to generate engagement. The key is to just start conversations – it might require you making some effort, but it’s where you build a relationship. A call, a coffee catch-up, a conversation at an event – all get you in front of potential clients and collaborators in a genuine way.

Create your own regular events

Events are coming back big time and more people are craving the human interaction that no Zoom can compete with. Yes, it takes effort – but nothing good happens overnight.

Your event doesn’t need to be big – in fact, smaller is better. Invite some clients, potential clients or candidates to a breakfast (your shout) and get to know them. This is a foundation you can build on easily with a little bit of effort. Just don’t make it a pitch fest or you’ll struggle to get anyone to attend.

Guesting

Similar to collaboration, guesting is focused on borrowing an audience. Using a guesting strategy, you can put yourself in front of people who don’t know you already but likely need your service. This is not an overnight tactic and there is a process to it, which involves building a relationship and some visibility with the host where you want to guest. I have used this successfully to guest on podcasts, webinars and blogs. 

While these might seem like simple ideas, when it comes to marketing, simple works better every time. These tactics will outperform Facebook ads, Instagram reels and TikToks to drive new, high-quality leads every day of the week – and twice on Sunday!

Tanya Williams works with recruiters to master a reliable, consistent and repeatable way to new clients & fill candidate lists (without posting on socials 5 days a week) so they can stop chasing algorithms and start effortlessly landing dream clients on repeat.

Her tradigital approach extends much further than time-sucking social media tactics (that generate little in return) and focuses on simple marketing that is practical and proven.

She hates tech talk, fluffy words designed to bamboozle you & slow walkers. She can easily get consumed for hours coming up with clever creative and loves working with businesses that aren’t afraid of having some personality in their marketing. She will not only help you to clarify your offer to market; she’ll help you stand out in a sea of vanilla. Ask her about an Exploration Session to get started.

The post Seven ways to market without social media appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Remember the days when we didn’t have social media to find candidates and clients? Recruiters survived pretty well without it. I’m not saying that it is useless technology that we should ignore. I am saying that it is just one piece of the marketing puzzle. 

And it is a piece that you do not own. You rent it (you’ve heard me say that at least a hundred times, if you read my posts).

I have been spending some time talking to recruitment business owners and when I asked them about social media, these were the common responses:

“It’s a necessary evil.”

“I feel like I need to be on it because everyone else is.”

“It’s a resource sap.”

“I feel like I get sucked into the social media vortex and end up scrolling and losing track of time, instead of posting to promote my business.”

“I feel like I am just feeding the social media beast.”

And here’s the big one: “It’s such a TIME SUCK.”

Social media has its place in the recruitment marketing mix but I’m dismayed when I see so many recruiters advertising for social media experts (another term I hate) and have a majority of their focus on it—especially when more obvious tactics are right in front of them and won’t cost them anything.

Also consider that different social channels are more relevant or better than others for recruitment. For example, LinkedIn has its own rules and is beneficial for most recruiters if used strategically and not just for the sake of sharing job posts. Compare that to Facebook or Instagram, and it’s another story.

So, what is the solution?

What you actually need is more client and candidate communication. And there are better ways to achieve this than with social media. 

Tip: You will never win against the algorithm! 

Oblige me for a minute and try this quick exercise. Check how much time you spend on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and co every day. Then multiple this by your hourly rate, and again by the number of days per week. Be sure to include the time you take to create content, post and comment. Just five hours per week could equate to hundreds of dollars—time that could be better spent on more effective recruitment marketing.

Since the pandemic, we have been craving simplicity. 

We are tired. We are overwhelmed with global and local events. We are sick of complicated stuff. It’s time to revert to simpler marketing that doesn’t include a constantly changing algorithm, a pay-to-play system or time-suck that doesn’t always yield results. 

Social media should serve your recruiting process—you should not be serving it.

So, as a recruiter, how do you focus on client and candidate communication off social media?

There are a bunch of ways. And I am going to share them in the next article in the series—I don’t mean to tease you, but this first step is about making a mindset shift. In step two, we are going to get practical.

So, don’t miss the next article in the series. I promise you will get so much value from it.

Tanya Williams works with recruiters to help them simplify their marketing, create foundations that build visibility & credibility and that work with their existing marketing assets. She hates tech talk and fluffy words designed to bamboozle you. She helps you clarify your offering and brand, connect with the right audience, converse and create conversations that matter and convert the right clients.

The post It’s time to get off the social media hamster wheel appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Clients and candidates need to sit at the heart of your marketing communication. That should’ve always been the case, however a focus on external job seekers is now more important than ever.  In a pandemic environment, what should you be focusing your recruitment marketing energy on? These seven strategies are a good place to start.

Strategy #1: Have the right conversations in the right place

Messaging and platform choice should not be siloed. Your messaging needs to be clear and optimised to ensure you’re having the right digital conversations with the right audiences. It’s important that your brand and your content clearly define why a potential client would want to work with you, or why a candidate would want to engage in a conversation with you.

You need to critically assess whether your messaging does in fact resonate with your ideal clients or candidate. Vague industry talk and content that blends with every other recruiter doesn’t cut through the noise. Targeted messaging is important to show candidates that you’re someone they should pay attention to.

Your new audience might feel anxious or uncertain about the future. They want to work with people that can lead them with confidence and help them get the results they need. Your online conversation needs to align with your ideal audience.

(E.g. I worked with a boutique recruiter that told me their target audience was mostly female; however, their messaging and conversation wasn’t aligned with the audience. The data showed an obvious disconnect, but they were too close to their content to see it). 

Strategy #2: Show your existing clients more love

In a competitive market, it can be hard to win business and attract candidates. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be looking for new ones, but you should be showing more love to the people you already have in your talent pool. Your database is an asset you own, and often recruiters are not nurturing the people in it. Instead of spamming your network with un-targeted jobs, take the time to interact with them and foster a sense of two-way communication. Ask them what they need from you, communicate with them regularly, and don’t be afraid to get personal.

Content that shares personal stories and real-life challenges sees much more engagement that content that is too corporate, lacking emotion, and hard to differentiate from everyone else.

(E.g. A recruitment firm in Sydney shared with me that they had over 80,000 people in their database, but they did very little to engage them. They were focusing most of their time and energy on new business and forgetting the people who were right in front of them. When they did communicate with their database contacts, it was all about their organisation and job roles. Stories and content weren’t personalised, and thus didn’t engage the audience and entice them to stick around). 

Strategy #3: Improve your online portals

As a result of the pandemic-influenced lockdowns and travel restrictions, corporate business has largely shifted online. Put yourself in your candidates’ shoes, and consider the experience they have on your website, social channels, and the journey it takes them on. Will they be satisfied with what they see? Are you giving them the resources they need in a timely manner? Is it easy to source information and make a purchase? 

Some of the simplest things get missed, especially if money is spent on fancy software and web development without considering the people behind the screen. Writing engaging web copy is great, but if you can’t deliver on what you promise, it can be hard to convert web visitors to applicants.

The age old adage of “show, don’t tell” applies to recruitment marketing strategies as well. Don’t tell me you are the best at what you do – show me! Candidates make up their minds very quickly about a company, and the first impression can be tainted if your website or social media presence is sub-par.  

You cannot continue to do the same things in a rapidly changing, uncertain world, and that includes your marketing. If you want an unbiased assessment, please get in touch! I can show you the missing gaps that are costing you money.

Stay tuned for the Part 2 to explore the next four pandemic-proof recruitment marketing strategies. 

Tanya Williams is the pink-loving, sparkly Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations. She wears many hats; entrepreneur, best-selling author, digital trainer, outsourced digital manager with over 20 years’ marketing experience. She works with recruiters to provide simple marketing solutions, uncover the hidden gold in their existing assets and find ways to leverage every moment of your digital marketing without increasing your marketing budget. Her goal is to make you the hero in your industry sector.  She has a simple, no-tech-talk approach and thrives working with established recruitment companies to tap into the opportunities they might miss, using practical & relevant tactics to drive business outcomes.

The post Seven pandemic-proof recruitment marketing strategies (Part 1) appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Regardless of whether you see LinkedIn’s importance as a positive or a negative, one thing is certain. You are being judged on your profile – both as a person, and as a part of your business. Many people use LinkedIn to act as a digital voyeur – checking out people’s profiles, researching potential suppliers, looking for candidates for roles, or searching for business partners or keynote speakers.

So, the question is:

Does your LinkedIn profile make you unhireable?

The answer might yes!

A quick search shows me the number of profiles that are incomplete, are lacking in real details, tell me nothing about the person or company in question, aren’t search engine optimised, or do nothing to make me want to interact with you, let alone hire you.

Ask yourself these questions?

• Is my profile picture current (not a flattering photo from when you were younger)?
• Is your profile picture professional (photos of your wedding, you at a party, or playing footy are not suited to LinkedIn. Keep them on Facebook)?
• Do you have a branded header image, and does it tell me about the problems you solve?
• Do you have details about your current role, how you help your current clients, and ways future clients can connect with you?
• Can I see quickly what services you offer and what your area of expertise is?
• Do you have a summary section that shares your years of experience, how you work with others, and the results you’ve achieved?
• Do you have recommendations from people you have worked with?
• Does it look like every other unfinished profile or do you look like a leader in your field?
• Does it tell me how to work with you?
• If you were a potential employer, recruiter, or client, would you hire you?

Your LinkedIn profile is like another website for your business. Whilst you don’t own your LinkedIn profile (LinkedIn does), you are renting this valuable piece of real estate which you should be making the most of. Just like a house, you want to get the best sale price and return on investment for it. This is what your LinkedIn profile can do for you personally and for your business.

Score yourself

Take an objective look at your profile and give yourself a score out of 10 based on the above questions. Anything below an 8 means there is room for improvement and you are missing an opportunity to grow your brand.

It always amazing how many professionals neglect their profile then expect to gain work from it. The first place I go after a website is a person’s LinkedIn profile. It tells me straight away if I want to work with you. It doesn’t matter if you are a lawyer, account, recruiter, IT person, CEO, or tradesperson. If your profile looks neglected, I won’t be lining up to hire or work with you.

Tanya Williams is the pink-loving, sparkly Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations. She wears many hats; entrepreneur, best-selling author, digital trainer, outsourced digital manager with over 20 years’ marketing experience. She works with recruiters to provide simple marketing solutions, uncover the hidden gold in their existing assets and find ways to leverage every moment of your digital marketing without increasing your marketing budget. Her goal is to make you the hero in your industry sector.  She has a simple, no-tech-talk approach and thrives working with established recruitment companies to tap into the opportunities they might miss, using practical & relevant tactics to drive business outcomes.

The post Is your LinkedIn profile making you unhireable (as a person or a business)? appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

But, not so fast! Before you leave your desk and turn off your phone, consider how a little bit of planning can set you up to nail your talent strategy in 2021.

December is a key decision-making time, even for businesses who close down over the Christmas holiday break. This is time for you to relax but to also contemplate what the year ahead will look like. As an employer, planning for 2021 means understanding what you want your employer brand strategy to look like and how this is a key time for potential candidates to consider career or role changes. (I know I get my best ideas after a glass of wine by the pool, especially when I’ve had a good break!)

Having a strategy for the Christmas period is not just for retailers and other industries that need to hire Christmas casuals. This is prime time for recruiters, because as January rolls around, many people have a new job on their New Year’s resolutions list. So, it is up to you to capitalise on it.

What should you be considering?

Don’t turn off fully

If you’ve set up ad campaigns prior to going on leave, then ensure you have automations to respond to applications. Include information about in the advertisements itself. If someone is available to monitor and respond to enquiries over the break, even better.

Candidates can lose track of applications they submit, only to get crickets in response. It’s not a great experience of your brand and it certainly doesn’t inspire candidates to want to work in your organisation.

You’ve just spent a small fortune on ads to get me to submit an application? What The Facebook! Talk about wasting money…

Build that list

Use the break and take advantage of the fact that “change of year” means “change of jobs” for many (yes even in the year of COVID).

Focus on building your talent pool. Prioritise your owned, not rented channels. Consider what you need to put in place to make this work. This could be something as simple as a candidate video series. Your lead magnet should be all about your candidates, NOT YOU!

Schedule content

While you’re sipping pina coladas and getting caught in the rain (or perhaps just binging on Netflix), your content can be working for you. Remember the other important C word – CONSISTENCY. With the many free tools available you have no excuse to not stay visible. Use a scheduler look Publer, Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule social content. Automate your email marketing in whatever cloud-based platform or ATS you’re using. Schedule blogs to be shared on your website. Many things can be automated, which means they’re working while you’re not.

Where to start with your Christmas employer branding content?

Before-Christmas planning

• Get in early to create your Christmas expression of interest forms, employer branding content and campaigns. (That means you should’ve probably started a month ago, but better late than never.) Get creative and think about how you can tie in your employer brand with the festive season.
• Schedule your content using scheduling tools like Buffer as mentioned above. Potential candidates are online even more over a holiday period so put your employer brand in front of them.
• Segment your database – try not to blast your entire talent pool with the same content. Break it into smaller relevant segments so you can share highly relevant content with him. That is what will convert higher. The more relevant, the more likely they are to open and engage with your content.
• Plan your marketing campaigns across all channels – take a holistic approach and consider what traditional and digital channels you need to include in it your marketing.
• Context of content is so important. Make the content seasonal and highly relevant. Think about what people are doing during December and January and create content to suit. Provide value by offering seasonal advice based on your industry.
• Do it now!!! Don’t leave it until 24^th December and do half a job.

During your break

• Determine who or how to respond to candidate applications during the holiday period – this is a period when people are relaxing, applying for jobs and planning for the year ahead. Don’t miss opportunities by not responding to DMs.
• If you’re running social media or other ads, RESPOND to candidates’ direct messages and enquiries in a timely manner (for the record, 3 weeks later when you are back from holidays is NOT OK)
• Respond to candidates, even if it is with an autoresponder. Common courtesy doesn’t have a Christmas holiday. Provide candidates with a timeline to establish expectations about when they might get a response from you.

After your holiday

• Candidate enquiries should be responded to quickly – make it a priority
• Review your campaigns and assess metrics so you can analyse the results
• Consider what you can change to make your efforts even more successful next year.

Other Considerations

• Use Christmas hashtags
• Use relevant keywords to be found
• Use humour in your employer branding to stand out
• Use an expression of interest form to capture candidate details if they don’t see an opportunity they’re interested in
• Share your love of your employees and promote them in your employer branding content. A bit of gratitude can go a long way.

Christmas and New Year is the best time of the year for you to capitalise on the emotional changes that bring a surge in new candidates to the market.  Consider how you can leverage this festive season to boost your employer branding and recruitment marketing efforts.

Tanya Williams is the pink-loving, sparkly Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations. She wears many hats; entrepreneur, best-selling author, digital trainer, and she is a Social Amplification Specialist with over 20 years’ marketing experience. She works with recruiters to uncover the hidden gold in their existing assets, find ways to leverage every moment of your digital marketing without increasing your marketing budget and amplify your internal champions to increase your visibility. Her goal is to make the hero in your industry sector.  She has a simple, no-tech-talk approach and thrives working with established recruitment companies to tap into the opportunities they might miss, using practical & relevant tactics to drive business outcomes.

The post The holidays are not the time to go silent with your employer branding appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Look at most companies with sales, HR or recruitment and marketing teams and you’ll see that departments are often siloed and have their own distinct area to play. Post-Covid this is going to require re-imagining by companies, especially larger ones that don’t actively encourage teams to collaborate.

The departments that should all be playing in the same sandpit together …. Sales, Marketing and Talent Managers (HR & recruitment) are all marketing channels. (That is, they’re marketing to people internally and externally and shouldn’t be siloed!)

They all have the same goals in mind:

• Communicate marketing messages to attract the right clients and employees
• Showcase brand culture to attract the right clients and employees
• Hire & look after the right people who can attract the right clients and employees. 

They’re all focused on people!

So how do they intersect?

Talent Managers market your organisation’s message to the right people. They should be liaising with your marketing team and hiring managers to define the culture you want to build (or maintain), the type of people you want to attract and the types of people you want working for your organisation. Marketing content should be included in onboarding and employee inductions

Talent managers also have a vested interest in the marketing game.

Marketing can generate prospect leads based on information from the sales team (more sales, more money for everyone). They can provide highly relevant content to educate prospects and help support the sales team during the sales process.

Sales can assist marketing to understand clients’ pain points, aspirations, and help them build client personas. They can work with marketing teams to better understand the client. One cannot work effectively without the other. Marketing without sales is like flying blind and hoping you get to your destination.

Based on what salespeople provide to marketing, they can personalise and customise content that talks directly to a certain client or segment, meaning it will cut through and get seen instead of being ignored.

The intersection of these three departments largely untapped by many organisations. It what I call Social Amplification – the collision of people, brand culture and communication! The focus is on leveraging every piece of your digital marketing – via sales, talent, and marketing teams. Then extending this further to include those people in your company that play in the social media bubble.

They all have influence in the process and therefore should all have input. They should all be playing in the same sandpit.

Tanya Williams is the pink-loving, sparkly Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations. She wears many hats; entrepreneur, best-selling author, digital trainer, and she is a Social Amplification Specialist with over 20 years’ marketing experience. She works with recruiters to uncover the hidden gold in their existing assets, find ways to leverage every moment of your digital marketing without increasing your marketing budget and amplify your internal champions to increase your visibility. Her goal is to make the hero in your industry sector.  She has a simple, no-tech-talk approach and thrives working with established recruitment companies to tap into the opportunities they might miss, using practical & relevant tactics to drive business outcomes.

The post Why marketing, sales and talent managers need to play in the same sandpit appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Change is something that everyone had to get used to overnight with the COVID-19 outbreak. It wasn’t something that even the most OCD organisers could plan for (I put myself in that category!).

The market very quickly become ‘candidate strong’ when many people found themselves unexpectedly out of work. This equalled overnight changes to many recruitment strategies. So, when there are many great candidates available, how can you deliver appropriate candidate care and bolster your recruitment strategy for the long term?

Here are 3 ways to take advantage of a strong candidate market, while giving candidates the support they need and deserve.

Honestly showcase of your culture through employer branding

You might think “why would I worry about employer branding now? I have too many candidates and don’t need to market to them”. But that is the wrong attitude to take. When you have so many candidates, you want to make sure you are attracting the RIGHT ones, even just from a pure efficiency of operation perspective.

Attracting the right people means that authentically showcasing your culture is now a must-do. I’m not talking about smoke and mirrors and trying to make out you are the perfect company. I am talking warts and all stuff. The good, the bad and the downright messy. The right candidates appreciate honesty and by knowing what they can expect when working for you, they will decide if you are a right for them also. This is a two-way relationship and should be focused on selecting the right people for your roles. After all, why hire a top candidate who leaves in a few months when they find out that the culture is not a right for them and that you deceived them throughout the hiring process? That doesn’t end well for you or them. I have been on the receiving end of this before and I can tell you the end was not pretty to the point, with me never acknowledging I ever worked for this company.

You have to be honest and keep it real. It’s in your best interests to be talking to the right people and promoting what your culture is really like through your employer branding will save you money in the long term.

Nurture unsuccessful applicants for future roles

The fastest way to lose unsuccessful candidates, who might have been a good fit but weren’t successful on this occasion, is through lack of communication. Too often recruiters use the “I am too busy to reply” excuse, which is not only rude but impacts your personal and business brand. I have refused to work with people who didn’t have the courtesy to respond to me previously (and I’m not alone).

Put a system in place to not only thank them and let them know the status of their application but to also add them to a nurture list for future roles. Nurturing potential clients is as basic in marketing as it should be in recruitment.

It doesn’t need to be a complicated process. A simple process is:

• Add them to targeted or niche list or database (don’t dump them all on one giant list)
• Set up a simple email marketing template to make it easy to share content regularly
• Send them regular emails about your organisation, changes, showcasing company culture and award wins (not just about current roles)
• Stay in touch – this might be every 2 or 3 months but make it regular.

This doesn’t require a lot of time but has huge benefits and means those candidates will talk positively about you and your company. This is about building relationships with people and being human. Anyone can do that with a little effort.

Add personality to your job ads

So many job ads follow a script or template and are quite honestly, boring as hell. Apply the marketing rules to your job ads and make them more engaging to attract top-quality candidates. Don’t be afraid to add personality to your job ads.

Now more than ever, standing out and being authentically you is so important. Remember that old adage of ‘people do business with people they like’? it is very true so why do you want to blend in and follow what everyone else is doing? Blah and boring!!!!

Anyone that has met me knows that I’m not backward in coming forward and I like to sparkle and stand out. I’m certainly not the shy type. For years I’ve refused to have a boring voicemail or out of office message and this is reflected in everything I do.

There are no rules that say you have to follow the same boring script as anyone else. Put some brand personality into them and give me a glimpse of who your organisation really is.

So take advantage of a strong candidate market and deliver appropriate care to your candidates. Now is the time to really be protecting your personal and employer brand. Ensuring you give candidates a great experience with your company will be the difference of not only winning the best talent but keeping them and having them become raving fans of your brand.

Tanya Williams is the pink-loving, sparkly Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations. She wears many hats; entrepreneur, best-selling author, digital trainer, and she is a Social Amplification Specialist with over 20 years’ marketing experience. She works with recruiters to uncover the hidden gold in their existing assets, find ways to leverage every moment of your digital marketing without increasing your marketing budget and amplify your internal champions to increase your visibility. Her goal is to make the hero in your industry sector.  She has a simple, no-tech-talk approach and thrives working with established recruitment companies to tap into the opportunities they might miss, using practical & relevant tactics to drive business outcomes.

The post 3 ways to take advantage of a strong candidate market appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Now is not the time to neglect your employer brand. You need to stay highly visible, use more communication (not less) and maintain your talent market share through visibility and communication.

It’s a tough time for many organisations and individuals right now, with many people entering the talent market. For organisations with a number of competing priorities, we’ve shared a number of articles about why it’s important not to lose sight of your employer brand during this time. Employer branding, now more than ever, is about ruthless authenticity – if you are recruiting now, or when you recruit in the future when stability returns, this will help candidates make the best use of their time and energy.

Employee retention

Invest in creating a great retention and engagement strategy to give your existing talent the support they need with changing work situations. Keep communication lines open; this will be the key to retaining your A-players.

Start by figuring out a way to delight your employees now and do it in a way that’s sympathetic to their needs.  Understand their needs, how they’re feeling and how they’re accustoming to new changes in their work environment and digital communication methods.  

Acquisition

Certain industries such as healthcare, customer telesupport, cleaning and driving are experiencing great demands and need to bring on new team members, fast. If you are recruiting, ensure your recruitment advertisements are sensitive to the current situation, and you’re upfront about your current processes.

Your approach to acquisition should be adapted to the current situation. Ultimately, it goes back to re-evaluating your ideal candidate profile and identifying the skillsets you need.  

Be mindful of your messaging

People are sensitive to the messages they are receiving now. So, making sure you are very mindful of the current emotions, state of mind and environment is vital.

It blows my mind the number of social media ads still running that seem so out of context and oblivious to our world right now. It seems these organisations have not taken the time to review what they are sending out into the world. 

Why you should pivot not pause

• The “noise level” in your industry can drop when talent competitors cut back on their recruitment marketing. It also allows you to re-position your brand or introduce new employee benefits. 
• You can use your brand to project stability for candidates during challenging times.
• The cost of marketing & advertising drops during recessions. The switch from a candidate-driven market to an employer-driven market means you can obtain high-quality talent and support people who are looking for opportunities. 
• When you reduce your recruitment marketing spend, you can lose your “share of mind” with candidates. Don’t let your employer brand fall by the wayside.

What will happen if you pause? 

• You’ll be left behind when the market gets back to normal
• It will feel like starting over but behind the starting line
• You will likely lose market share
• It will take you longer to recover
• You’ll lose current online opportunities to promote your employer brand. 

Let’s summarise:

• Review your current recruitment strategy
• Re-evaluate your ideal candidate profile – are your ideal candidates from last month still your ideal candidates today?
• Re-assess your content and messaging – how will you fulfil your changing candidate needs? Do your marketing messages have tact?
• Be mindful of current emotions and use a considered and respectful tone in your advertising
• Find the right balance between employee retention and acquisition. 

There is no doubt that the virus has and will continue to impact individuals and businesses. But we will get through this! Knowledge will be key to making informed business decisions. Stay abreast of industry trends and news and be adaptable.

Tanya Williams is the pink-loving, sparkly Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations. She wears many hats; entrepreneur, best-selling author, digital trainer, and she is a Social Amplification Specialist with over 20 years’ marketing experience. She works with recruiters to uncover the hidden gold in their existing assets, find ways to leverage every moment of your digital marketing without increasing your marketing budget and amplify your internal champions to increase your visibility. Her goal is to make the hero in your industry sector.  She has a simple, no-tech-talk approach and thrives working with established recruitment companies to tap into the opportunities they might miss, using practical & relevant tactics to drive business outcomes.

The post It’s time to pivot not pause your marketing – Part 2 appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

The big question is – should you pause or pivot your recruitment marketing?

What do I mean by pivot? Pivoting means keeping one foot in contact with the ground and using your other foot to move around to find a new angle or gain an advantage over your defender. 

While you might have seen good examples of recruitment advertising and marketing messages, you will no doubt have seen some bad ones from brands that have ignored the current situation completely.

There have also been brands putting a stop to recruitment, marketing and sales altogether because they don’t want to be seen as opportunistic. But, your messaging should be about selling responsibly. Don’t risk putting your brand reputation in jeopardy by being tone-deaf to internal and external factors. Equally, don’t pause on your activities at the risk of losing out on significant opportunities.

There have been a number of studies going back to the Great Depression that prove the advantages of maintaining or increasing advertising and marketing budgets during a weaker economy. Employers and advertisers that maintained or grew their marketing increased their sales and market share during the recession and afterwards.

Review your recruitment marketing strategy

If you are recruiting, are you using the same templates, or have you added tailored messaging specific to the current situation? What’s changed in your organisation? (Are you onboarding people virtually, do you have delayed start dates?) What is still relevant and what needs to change?

Review your existing plan and take time to consider what needs to change. Do you need to look at new channels? Do you need to amp up your social media marketing to stay visible and communicate updates to your current and future talent? How do your current recruitment marketing messages need to be adjusted to suit the new online environment?

Has your ideal candidate changed?

With a number of new candidates entering the talent market with a variety of skillsets, have you thought about who you’re targeting? Do you need to look at targeting candidates from other industries? Is your core industry struggling, meaning you may face heavy competition in the future when stability returns? And if so, what is the balance between reaching out to candidates in your industry specifically and other industries generally?

For the benefit of our world economy, we need businesses to survive and people to have opportunity. Don’t feel guilty about continuing growing your talent pipeline, especially if you have the potential to support candidates looking for employment. There’s no reason why you can’t reach out to talent in your industry and expand your search to the industries too.  

Also, considering the short-term situation is changing so quickly, being able to pivot is essential. 

Messaging and content

When tailoring your messaging, consider the current “normal”. People are working from home, homeschooling their kids, unable to visit family members. Offices are working remotely, normal socialising is out, and people are bored and looking for entertainment. Combine that with current stressors, there’s a lot of uncertainty. 

So take this into consideration and understand your messaging needs to reflect that. Reassess your content, tone, and positioning. 

Are there any opportunities for you to become a thought leader in your niche or distinguish yourself as an employer of choice when everyone else is pausing? 

Your homework is to action the above points and I’ll return next week to share Part 2 with you. I’ll share more information about deciding if you need to take an acquisition vs retention strategy with your marketing. 

Tanya Williams is the pink-loving, sparkly Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations. She wears many hats; entrepreneur, best-selling author, digital trainer, and she is a Social Amplification Specialist with over 20 years’ marketing experience. She works with recruiters to uncover the hidden gold in their existing assets, find ways to leverage every moment of your digital marketing without increasing your marketing budget and amplify your internal champions to increase your visibility. Her goal is to make the hero in your industry sector.  She has a simple, no-tech-talk approach and thrives working with established recruitment companies to tap into the opportunities they might miss, using practical & relevant tactics to drive business outcomes.

The post It’s time to pivot not pause your recruitment marketing appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

For many of us, this might just mean a different way of working and communicating. We have the technology to still be able to work, communicate and stay connected and most of it is free (or low cost).

This provides an opportunity to get creative, find new ways of working and communicating, and to think beyond what we know as we broaden our horizons. If you have teams working remotely, these tools and apps will help you maintain business as usual.

Download the free guide here. 

Tanya Williams is the pink-loving, sparkly Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations. She wears many hats; entrepreneur, best-selling author, digital trainer, and she is a Social Amplification Specialist with over 20 years’ marketing experience. She works with recruiters to uncover the hidden gold in their existing assets, find ways to leverage every moment of your digital marketing without increasing your marketing budget and amplify your internal champions to increase your visibility. Her goal is to make the hero in your industry sector.  She has a simple, no-tech-talk approach and thrives working with established recruitment companies to tap into the opportunities they might miss, using practical & relevant tactics to drive business outcomes.

The post Digital tools to stay connected, productive and sane appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.