Marketing a recruitment agency

Marketing a recruitment agency

Are you looking for ways of marketing a recruitment agency? The days when a mixture of hitting the phones and networking was the only to promote your recruitment company are long gone. But what alternatives are other companies using to win new clients? Alastair Campbell from the Ideal Marketing Company explains the three key areas that every recruitment consultancy should now be looking into.

Some say that selling and marketing is purely a numbers game. It’s a question of getting out there and speaking to as many people as possible, but I’m not so sure. Think of it like this. If you wanted to make a hole in a wall, would you run up and hit it as hard as you could? You’d knock yourself out; then when you regained consciousness you’d walk back 20 feet and run at the wall again. You could do this all day, but would you really make much impression on the wall? I’d suggest that you’d end up in a worse state by the end of the day than you were at the start.

What if there was a better way of knocking a hole in the wall, or perhaps better still, finding a way to walk around it?

I’d suggest that a way of getting around the wall is to focus on three essential areas of marketing:

Attention

Conversion

Retention

The problem is that, if we put all our new business focus on any one of these (and ignore the others), then the results are likely to be patchy at best. So here are a few ideas for some specific marketing in each area – and how to apply them.

Gaining people’s attention

You can’t sell to somebody until you have their attention. You need to interrupt people’s thought pattern with your message before you can explain the service you offer. Few people walk around thinking ‘I need to speak to a recruitment company’. But they might be walking around thinking ‘it’s a nightmare trying to fill this vacancy?’ or ‘how do I find the people with the skills that I need to interview?’ If this is the ‘itch’ that people have then you can come up with ways of helping them to ‘scratch their itch’. One of the best ways to do this is to create an information rich product with a compelling headline / title. Consider some of the following:

A free report on how much time/money it costs companies to hire the wrong person.

A free tips booklet showing job seekers how to improve their CV.

A free e-book with salary survey for particular job roles / industry sectors

A simple 10 step guide on best practice interview questions

A short video which shows the process used to match candidates to job roles.

In each case, you are creating a valuable, but low cost product that is of great interest to a targeted group of people. Most people are not interested in how recruitment companies match candidates to roles, but if they are faced with a large pile of CV’s and are struggling to pick just a handful to interview, then the video you are offering is certainly going to be of interest.

Any of these guides (and hundreds of variations thereof) will get the attention of the people you want to speak to, when you want to speak to them.

Once you’ve prepared the guide(s) you now have a reason to speak to people, call them, write to them and e-mail them. You also have something to post on your blog, tweet about and post on your LinkedIn or Facebook pages. Each time there is something in the news about the subject, you have another reason to repeat the message with a new topical twist.

Converting the curious

Getting people’s attention is the hard part. However, even when you have a prospect in front of you, it’s easy to let them slip away. High pressure sales techniques are almost certain to do more harm than good, so here are a few ideas to gently give confidence in your services if you are meeting clients at your offices.

Make the meeting room comfortable, uncluttered and professional. Messy files piled high, a bulging in-tray or a constantly ringing phone give the impression that their work won’t be given the priority it deserves.

What proof do you have of your previous successes? The evidence doesn’t need to be strong enough to stand up in court, but four areas are particularly helpful.

Awards, accreditations, qualifications – any certificates, awards, photos of prizes being handed over all help to add credibility to your professional status.

Media coverage – have you been featured in the press commenting on unemployment figures, helping community causes or perhaps winning some of the above mentioned awards? If so, why not highlight this press coverage in a cuttings book on the table? A second copy of this book could be used in your reception area.

Case studies – For many companies, hiring a recruitment company may seem like a waste of money. Why should they pay someone else to do something that they believe they could do themselves? What you need to do, is show them why they need you and how you can in fact save them time and money. Show them results that you achieved from other clients. A collection of case studies could include problem such as new factory opens with limited qualified staff or an experienced employee leaves a company. Show them how by using your services those companies were able find a full team for the factory or an ideal replacement who brought a new wealth of experience to the company. You might not always need to go into precise details, or even name names, but 300 – 500 words that explain the results you were able to achieve with past clients can be a significant reassurance to an initially reluctant prospect.

Testimonials – similar to case studies, but usually much shorter and written word for word by happy clients. Testimonials are an endorsement of what you’ve done. The best way to get a client to say something about what you have done is to ask them – either in person, in an individual e-mail or as part of a survey. One client of ours received about 3 letters a year without asking, but over 60 a year when his clients were prompted gently – quite a significant improvement.

In all cases, these subtle messages are there to reassure and reinforce your words and deeds.

Another simple way to help the conversion process is simply to keep your word. If you say that you’ll send a letter the next day, do it. If you say you will call at 3pm, make sure you do so – or if you don’t have the answer, still call and explain why you haven’t got the information and when you will have it.

The better the relationship you can build and the more confidence and trust you create, the more likely you are to leave the meeting with a new client.

Retaining the business

Some clients may be ‘one offs’ such as a smaller company that had expanded their business for the first time or a company that needed a particular specialist and used you as this is an industry you specialise in. In these cases the reason they are not using you is that they do not have a high staff turnover.

A gentle, perhaps annual reminder that you are still there; still thinking about them, is always a good idea to stimulate memories and subtly keep you at the back of their mind. It’s also why regular publicity in the local press is a good idea to remind people that you are doing interesting / helpful things in the community.

For job seekers their need for you in dependent on their own employment situation and your focus here should be on education and support. Providing them with advice such as tips booklets or perhaps CV clinics where you can offer practical assistance to help them get the job they want.

If it’s hard to win new clients in the first place, the good news is that it’s relatively easy to retain them. Your job is really to keep clients updated on the full range of services that you could offer them, and explain how your services rather than cost them money, can in many cases actually save them money – and find them the Ideal candidate at the same time.

Some further thoughts on marketing a recruitment agency

The three stages of marketing hold true for most industries, but they are certainly true for those in the recruitment industry. By splitting your activity into the holy trinity of marketing: attention, conversion and retention; you can be sure that you are making the most of your marketing spend.

However, in 2012, you may need to go a little further. We are living in a world of information overload, where the under 20s are just as likely to learn about the latest news stories on Twitter or Facebook as they are from the TV news. Tomorrow’s newspaper is an age away for many. With hundreds of e-mails pouring in every day, and a hundred demands on our time – where are your communications going to sit with prospects and clients?

Most will be ignored of course (and this has always been the case), but now more than ever we need to create messages that are ‘remarkable’. Standing out from the crowd is the only way to get noticed today and so, even doing all the right things is not always enough. Creating a strong benefit led message, creating a brand around it and presenting it in a way that people will notice and remember should be central to your strategy. If you can’t cut through all the other messages, then you won’t get far.

Ultimately, effective marketing is far more than a firm handshake over a chilled glass of Chardonnay at a Holiday Inn networking event. If you are to succeed and thrive in today’s competitive economic climate, it must be a central and ongoing part of your business growth plans.

Alastair Campbell is MD of The Ideal Marketing Company author of ‘The Marketing Launchpad,’ and is running a 1 day marketing course for recruitment companies through Recruitment Matters in London on May 15th and July 16th see Marketing a Recruitment Agency for more details.