Podcast Archives - Superfast Recruitment: Recent Episodes

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As recruitment business owners, we’re all too familiar with the challenges of attracting, retaining, and developing talent.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Howard Greenwood, a seasoned recruitment expert with over 30 years of experience in the industry.

Howard shared invaluable insights on the current state of recruitment, the evolving landscape of business development, and the role of technology in our sector.

Howard identified three primary challenges that recruitment companies are grappling with:

1. Attracting and retaining recruiters
2. Adapting to changing business development practices
3. Effectively utilising technology

Let’s delve into each of these areas and explore Howard’s advice on tackling them.

1. Attracting And Retaining Talent: A Focus On Behaviours And Team FitRegarding attracting and retaining talent, Howard emphasised the importance of focusing on behaviours and team fit rather than solely on skills. He pointed out a common pitfall in recruitment: “We recruit for a position, and we recruit based on skills. We remove people from those positions because of their behaviours.”

This insight highlights the need to shift our approach when hiring for our own companies. Instead of fixating on finding someone with the perfect skill set, we should prioritise candidates whose behaviours and attributes align with our team’s ethos and values.

Howard suggested a three-pronged approach to hiring:

1. Behaviours: Identify the behaviours that align with your company’s values and culture.
2. Will to do the job: Ensure the candidate is genuinely motivated to perform the role.
3. Skills: Consider the technical abilities required for the position.

By prioritising behaviours and motivation over skills, we’re more likely to build a cohesive team that works well together and stays with the company long-term.

Developing Your Team: The Importance Of Ongoing TrainingOne of the most striking points Howard made was about the need for continuous training and development. He challenged the traditional approach of providing minimal training and expecting immediate results:

“We recruit easy and train hard. And I think we’re going to start to change that around. We’ve got to start to train hard so we can make recruitment easier.”

Howard advocated for a comprehensive training programme that extends well beyond the initial onboarding period. He suggested implementing:

• A 13-week initial training package
• A second 13-week training package
• Ongoing development throughout the first year and beyond

This approach helps new recruits become more effective more quickly and contributes to higher retention rates and increased billings in the long run.

Understanding Individual Strengths And Team Dynamics

Another crucial aspect of developing your team is recognising and nurturing individual strengths. Howard shared an example from his own experience:

“I hated the candidate side of the marketplace but loved opening doors, and I started to really excel. And I got a resourcer because that resourcer took that pressure off me of finding candidates, but opened up, you know, I think I doubled the following year the amount of money I was billing because that person was finding candidates, and I could now concentrate on developing my own clients and developing new business clients.”

This illustrates the importance of understanding each team member’s strengths and allowing them to specialise in areas where they excel. By doing so, we can create more effective teams and increase overall productivity.

2. Adapting To Changing Business Development Practices and Social MediaHoward’s second major challenge was adapting to evolving business development practices. He stressed that buying habits have changed significantly, and recruitment companies need to adjust their approach accordingly.

In today’s digital age, potential clients often research companies online before making any decisions. Howard pointed out:

“The first thing you do is you go on to Google, you know, I want to buy something, I’ll find it on Google, and then you find a plethora of different prices on Google. So, you look at the cheapest, and then the first thing you look at is the reviews.”

This shift in buying behaviour means that recruitment companies must pay close attention to their online presence and reputation.

Howard recommends something we do with our Superfast Circle clients all the time here at Superfast Recruitment!

• Developing a strong social media presence
• Gathering and showcasing client testimonials
• Maintaining an informative and up-to-date website
• Utilising email campaigns effectively

While digital presence is crucial, Howard emphasised that the human element remains vital in business development, with many clients craving personal interaction.

“Now they get 20 to 30 email campaigns every single day. And when we went and talked to the end clients and said, right, what is it that you want? They go, oh, we want someone to ring us up and talk!”

This observation suggests that we shouldn’t rely solely on digital marketing efforts. Instead, we should strive to balance our online presence with personal outreach, such as phone calls and face-to-face meetings.

Building Deeper Client Relationships

Howard stressed the importance of developing deeper, more meaningful relationships with clients. He suggested moving beyond the traditional “build the pain” approach and instead focusing on how we can make our clients look good:

“If we change that conversation so right, what can I do? Sharon, to make you look good. How can I make you look good? Well, I need to do this in this project. I need to get that done on this. I need to get these people in here. Right. If I can help you do that to make you look good, that gives you a very different thought process of how you’re working with me.”

This approach helps to position us as partners rather than just service providers, leading to stronger, longer-lasting client relationships.

Howard introduced the concept of viewing client relationships as a flywheel rather than a traditional sales funnel. This approach involves continually engaging with clients at different stages:

1. Social engagement
2. Human acquisition
3. Hearts and minds
4. Retention

We can maintain and strengthen relationships over time by constantly moving clients through these stages, even when they’re not actively buying from us.

3. Leveraging Technology In RecruitmentThe third challenge Howard identified was the effective use of technology in recruitment. He pointed out that many companies aren’t fully utilising the tools they already have:

“You speak to all the CRMs. Most companies only use 20 to 25% of our CRM capability.”

Howard advises that we make sure we’re getting the most out of our existing systems before investing in new technology.

This might involve:

• Providing thorough training on current CRM systems
• Exploring additional features of existing software
• Ensuring different systems are integrated for seamless data flow

When considering new technology, Howard suggests focusing on tools that can automate repetitive tasks. This will free up time for recruiters to focus on building relationships with clients and candidates.

The Role Of AI In Recruitment

While acknowledging the potential of AI in recruitment, Howard cautioned against over-reliance on these tools:

“AI is, I think, a really good thing, but only if it’s used correctly. And so, if you want to, you know, make all your job specs and, you know, adverts written in AI. Fine. But then you use that element, you use your behaviours, and you lose those behaviours because AI isn’t quite good enough.”

This advice underscores the importance of maintaining a human touch in our processes, even as we embrace new technologies.

Key Takeaways And Action StepsAs I reflect on my conversation with Howard, several key points stand out:

1. Focus on behaviours and team fit when hiring for your company
2. Invest in comprehensive, ongoing training for your team
3. Recognise and nurture individual strengths within your team
4. Develop a strong online presence and gather social proof
5. Balance digital marketing with personal outreach
6. Build deeper client relationships by focusing on their needs
7. View client relationships as a flywheel, continually engaging at different stages
8. Fully utilise existing technology before investing in new tools
9. Use AI and automation judiciously, maintaining a human touch in your processes

Howard left us with crucial advice: prioritising and tackling one improvement at a time. He suggested:

“Write them down in a list, then prioritise that list. Do one thing at once. Otherwise, if you try to do ten things simultaneously, you’ll fail all those ten things.”

This approach ensures steady progress without becoming overwhelmed by the many areas we want to improve.

In conclusion, while our industry faces significant challenges, there are also numerous opportunities for growth and improvement.

By focusing on our people, adapting our business development practices, and effectively leveraging technology, we can build stronger, more resilient recruitment companies that are well-positioned for future success.

Remember, change doesn’t happen overnight. Take Howard’s advice and start with one area of improvement. With consistent effort and a willingness to adapt, we can all elevate our recruitment practices and achieve greater success in this dynamic industry.

Thanks,

Sharon

About Howard GreenwoodHoward Greenwood, co-founder of Jump Advisory Group, is a prominent figure in the UK recruitment industry with over 25 years of experience.

He has a proven track record of driving revenue and profitability growth, notably at Computer People, where he led the North of England to become the most profitable business unit.

Howard’s leadership philosophy emphasizes people first, focusing on motivating, training, and mentoring individuals to exceed their ambitions.

If you want to learn more about Howard and the team at Jump Advisory, go here.

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Hello, everyone. It’s Denise here. Today, I’m excited to share three specific ways to uplevel your marketing, activities, and potentially the type of response you’re getting.

These strategies are straightforward to implement, and I’m confident they’ll make a real difference in your recruitment business.

Before we dive in, if you’re new to our podcast, welcome! We’re thrilled to have you. If you find our content useful, please give us a shout-out on LinkedIn, leave a review, or share it with your network.

We’re available on iTunes and Spotify, and you can find transcriptions and summaries of most of our podcasts on the Superfast Recruitment blog.

Let’s explore these three leveling strategies that can help you stand out from other recruiters:

1. Setting up a podcast
2. Using videos
3. Running training sessions for candidates or clients

Let’s Start With Video.

1. Using Video as a Marketing ToolWhen I first ventured online about 18 years ago, there was a lot of buzz about how video would take over the world. It grew in popularity, then saw a slight dip during the pandemic when everyone was suddenly on video calls. However, it’s now experiencing a significant resurgence.

Recently, I watched a programme about the BBC, which highlighted an interesting trend: many people, especially in certain age groups, are now more likely to watch videos on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok rather than on traditional television.

This shift isn’t surprising when you consider the immersive experience videos offer. You get to see and hear the person and even pick up on their energy.

One reason video works so well is related to how we process information through our senses: visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic (how things make us feel). Video engages all these modalities, creating a powerful communication tool.

You might think creating videos is more challenging than writing, but the opportunities it brings are well worth the effort. And here’s the good news: getting started’s easier than ever.

Video Technology Made Simple

We have some high-end video equipment at Superfast Recruitment, but we often use our iPhones too. The technology you have in your hand is truly amazing. As Gary Vee, a well-known marketer, pointed out, the level of technology we now have in our phones wasn’t even available in Hollywood 20 years ago.

Smartphone audio quality is generally quite good, but you can enhance it with an inexpensive plug-in mic like the Boya (available on Amazon for about £10-15). Add a simple tripod, and you’ve got yourself a mini studio setup.

For optimal results, film in good lighting – standing facing a window works well. It’s that simple to get started.

Video Content Ideas

1. Spotlight Job Opportunities: Discuss current openings you have for candidates. Many platforms now automatically add captions, making your content more accessible.
2. Value-Add Videos: Share quick tips or insights. Aim for under a minute if you want to use them as YouTube shorts or on TikTok. Check out Sharon’s or my LinkedIn profiles for examples of how these can look.
3. Testimonials: Ask candidates or clients to record video testimonials for you to share on LinkedIn.
4. Outreach: Use video in your outreach efforts. Send personalised video messages through LinkedIn to stand out from the crowd.

Remember, no one expects you to be the next Tom Cruise or Meryl Streep. You’re adding value by helping people develop their careers or improve their recruitment processes. Video will help you stand out because, surprisingly, few recruiters are using it consistently.

2. Podcasting: Your Audio PlatformPodcasts are an excellent way to reach a certain demographic that prefers audio content, and they elevate your brand.

Remember, iTunes and Spotify are search engines in their own right, increasing your discoverability.

I recorded our first podcast in September 2013, and while it was quite technical back then, it’s much simpler now. You can even outsource the setup process on platforms like Fiverr!

I use Audacity, a free recording software, but there are many options available. You can record directly or capture audio from Zoom calls for your podcast.

Podcast Content Ideas

1. Career advice for candidates
2. Interviews with successful candidates in your sector
3. Discussions with clients about team building
4. Career or recruitment clinics
5. Reading your blog posts aloud

Offering multiple ways for people to interact with your content significantly affects your reach and impact.

3. Running Training SessionsTraining sessions are an excellent way to showcase your expertise and add value to your network. As a recruiter, you’re an expert in creating CVs/Resumes, interview techniques, offer negotiations, and talent pipelining.

Why not share this knowledge?

You could create a masterclass on interview skills, for example. It’s as simple as sending an email to your database, inviting them to a Zoom meeting where you’ll cover specific topics.

The impact on your brand can be significant. People remember these sessions and the value they received, which can lead to future business opportunities.

Training Session Tips

1. Use platforms like Zoom for live sessions
2. Create PowerPoint slides to structure your presentation
3. Record your sessions to repurpose as content later
4. Host your recorded sessions on platforms like YouTube or Vimeo

Imagine being able to offer candidates a series of helpful videos to boost their confidence before an interview. This level of support sets you apart and encourages word-of-mouth referrals.

Wrapping Up

These are just three ways to uplevel your recruitment marketing, but there are countless others. I encourage you to start with videos – they’re accessible and impactful. When you upload your first video, tag me on LinkedIn if we’re connected. I’d be happy to comment and help boost your visibility.

Remember, upleveling your marketing efforts doesn’t have to be complicated. Start with these strategies, and you’ll soon see the difference in how you’re perceived in the market.

Thanks

Denise

How We Can Help YouAre you looking for ways to improve your lead generation? If the answer is yes, we can help. To find out how book a quick call with one of us here.

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Today’s topic is about a social network, and that is LinkedIn. If you weren’t aware, LinkedIn is the biggest social network for business in the Western world.

It’s approaching 870 million members globally, which will increase before the end of the year.

Most recruiters have a paid membership, but for many people, this is a great free platform to use to get in front of your market.

Now, what’s been happening recently, and to allay anybody’s fears, this happens with every social network. For some reason, our reach on LinkedIn—and I’m saying our reach as members of LinkedIn—our engagement, number of comments, shares, and impressions are down at this point in the year compared to the end of 2023.

Is that disappointing? Yes.

However, it’s not a reason not to use LinkedIn because, for some of us, we’ve got 25- 30% less reach on our posts, and maybe fewer people view from an impression point of view.

It’s not the end of the world, though you would think it, reading some of the posts on LinkedIn

As I mentioned in the intro, you must remember that some of the people talking about this are big LinkedIn “influencers”.

Their business is LinkedIn. They sell programs around LinkedIn and teach people about LinkedIn. They want to be ahead of their market.

They are not small business owners like you and I who want to get in front of our clients and candidates on LinkedIn so people can see we’re there.

Several people have asked us if it’s still worth posting on LinkedIn.

The answer is YES!

Why? Because there are so many advantages to posting on LinkedIn, particularly now, because you’re going to get some people thinking, “Oh, well, it’s not worth marketing on LinkedIn,” and they’ll stop, which means it’s better for you.

So here are eight reasons why posting on LinkedIn is useful and how you can get your mindset around this.

1. Most People Don’t Post On LinkedIn Let’s start with number one: posting on LinkedIn more than once a week. It’s interesting because when we have our demo calls for Superfast Circle and talk to business owners, we have a discovery call with them to see if we can help them understand their goals.

I am fascinated by the number of people who rarely post on LinkedIn. If they do post, it might be a job, or once a week or a couple of times a month.

Data shows that only about 3% or 4% of the LinkedIn population posts more than once a week.

If you look at that as an opportunity, how can you stand out on LinkedIn? Simply posting consistently makes a huge difference because, remember, you want to work with candidates and clients, and people can’t work with you if they don’t know who you are.

Social media is huge, and over 4.6 million people have social media accounts. Social media is key for connecting with people, and with LinkedIn, you’ve got 850 million people plus who have accounts you can get in front of.

2. You Can Be Present In Front of Past ClientsNow, number two, posting will get you back in front of past clients again. Interestingly, one of our Superfast Circle members, the lovely Rachel, got an additional CTO role because she had been posting regularly on LinkedIn.

One of her past clients was one of those out-of-the-blue requests that said to her, “Look, I’ve got a CTO role. Can you help me with it?”

Rachel was delighted about this, and logically, as we teach people, she asked, “What was the reason you reached out to me? How did this happen?” She said, “I can’t miss you. You’re all over LinkedIn, and I’d forgotten about you. I thought, oh, Rachel would be the person to contact about this role.”

This is key to remember. We are human beings who live in a very distracted world. Our brains get full, and we forget about things. We forget about people. Have you ever had that experience where you just thought, “God, I’ve not heard from such a body in ages.”

You’ve gone on to Facebook, and you’ve Googled the name. “God, they’re still there. I don’t see a lot from them anymore. I wonder how they’re doing.”

It’s the same in business.

We forget about suppliers that we used to work with. “Oh, they were really good. I should get back in contact. I wonder if they could help me. I wonder if they know somebody.”

It’s the same on a platform like LinkedIn. You start getting out in front of your market again because, remember, we’ll come on to people you’re not connected to in a second, but if you are connected to these people, your first-degree connections, they will see your content again.

3. You Can Be Present In Front of Past CandidatesThis brings me onto, logically, and I’m sure you know where I’m going with this, number three, and posting gets you back in front of past candidates again. We have another Superfast Circle member, the lovely Steve, who has been with us for several years. One of the first things that he noticed as he was posting more on LinkedIn was that he was getting more connection requests, but also, he was back out in front of his candidates again, who were reaching out to him saying, “Steve, you helped me get a job X number of years ago. I noticed you’re on LinkedIn again. Can we have a conversation?”

How could that work for you?

It’s one of the things that lots of people forget about. For those of you who have attended different webinars, we have one particular webinar called the Lead Generation Triad. We talk about how you can work leads. I think one of the things that a lot of people forget is you have a database, and there are people on your database you are not speaking to, and connecting with and posting on social media helps to get you back in front of these people.

Imagine all the followers and connections. I know that some recruiters have thousands of people to whom they are connected on LinkedIn. Suppose you can start to get your content in front of them, which, because they’re a connection, you will do. Then what a difference that can make because it will raise their awareness level about you. That is just purely posting on LinkedIn.

4. Branding Yourself as an Expert In Front of New ConnectionsNext, let’s discuss how posting gets your content in front of new connections. We always recommend maxing out the number of connection requests you can make on LinkedIn, and I’m sure you’re doing this anyway.

You want to bring new people into your sphere of influence. You want to be connected to new people. Have you ever noticed that people view your profile when you make several connection requests?

Imagine if they go and view your profile, they see that you’ve not posted in months; they don’t see any content on your profile at all. They’re not seeing much of you. That is possibly a reason not to connect with you, but when they accept your connection requests, they will suddenly start seeing your quality content.

They will validate why it’s important to be connected to you. They will experience your knowledge and expertise in the market they’re dealing with, yet another reason why it’s important to post.

5. Short Videos Will Help You Stand OutThe next one I want to talk about is videos. We have noticed that some of our views on posts have dropped. However, there’s one modality: I love my technical words.

One modality it hasn’t done that with is video. Interestingly, we post some of what are known as short-form videos.

Generally, videos are about a minute long. Sometimes, they’re a little bit less. That way, we can upload them to YouTube and other places. Videos engage people because they give you a visual experience. They’re hearing you and listening to what you’re saying.

The way LinkedIn works, you don’t have to hear the sound because you can see the text across their screen. Videos will help you because not many people do them, and they help you stand out and be recognised.

It’s interesting when we talk to people, and they have a conversation with us, many will say, “Oh, yes, I’ve seen your videos on LinkedIn. I find them useful. They’re just little snippets that get me focused. I like them. That’s one of the reasons why I’m having a conversation with you.”

For recruiters, it’s so important to get your brand out there. If you are considering video, and I hope you are, get them out onto LinkedIn and do it consistently because that will help you.

6. Share Value-Based Content That Answers QuestionsThe next one is content. It is not any content but what I like to call value-added content. Some of you may have seen I posted a version of this podcast as a short post on LinkedIn. It adds value. Many people—and I say people, sometimes other marketers—love to bamboozle and confuse people.

We like to keep things simple. That was one of the reasons for writing this post and recording this podcast: to stop people from worrying and think, “Okay, I know things are changing, but what can I do?”

Here, I am giving you eight things you can do that will help. I think the thing about it is you can write really short content snippets that will help your market.

Be that candidates or clients, give them some value bombs.

You have so much value to share; you will not give away the crown jewels. You are giving away information that will support and help people. So, who do you think that person will go to when they’re ready to move roles or when they want to bring on board a new recruiter to help them?

Content makes a huge difference because it profiles you as the expert.

7. Posting on LinkedIn Leverages Your TimeRelating to something I’ve just said, I wrote a short post and posted it on LinkedIn. I appreciate I am a writer. I have many ideas and am very used to doing them, but this post took me less than 10 minutes to write and post using the LinkedIn scheduling tool.

The whole process probably took me 12 minutes. What if it took you 15 minutes? Imagine doing that, even if you did it three times a week, and what a difference that would make.

People consistently use time as an excuse. We all have the same number of hours in a day, but if you focus and plan your activities, you will achieve more.

Here’s a tip.

If you post something like this on LinkedIn, nothing stops you from posting it again in a few months because people ‘ll have seen other posts and forgotten about it.

Potentially, you could connect with over a few hundred new people each month in your LinkedIn feed who haven’t seen your content. If you post it at a different time of day, a different person will see it.

Posting More Leads To Connections and BusinessThere are many reasons to post on LinkedIn. It’s interesting that I decided I’d write the post for LinkedIn when I wrote this very short version of this podcast. I needed to do more on this because many people are concerned about what they do next.

It is not about overcomplicating things; it’s about posting more, and you’ll still get views on your content.

I posted a picture of Gabi Preston-Phypers. Many of you will know her from Tooled Up Raccoons, a good connection of ours. I came across Gabi because of a post that she’d made on LinkedIn. I contacted her and asked if she would come on our podcast.

Gabi then presented at our client event last year and did a great presentation. On the back of it, good for Gabi, she sold several people in our membership her Tooled Up Raccoons process and software. I was very pleased because she made a great offer, and clients used it to help with sourcing.

She added huge value, and that came because I saw her post on LinkedIn. Imagine if that was the same for you. Imagine if someone sees you on LinkedIn and decides to reach out to you, and maybe it’s one of those people.

When we start working with people, we often ask them, “How much contact have you made with your first-degree connections?” Often, there’s a blank look, and the question is, “Not a lot. I could do a lot more.”

I hope that’s been useful. Multiple ways and multiple reasons to post on LinkedIn and the benefits it will give you.

Thanks

Denise

How We Can Help YouAs members of Superfast Circle, Sharon and I are your outsourced marketing directors. We help you plan your marketing and determine what will work for you, and we also provide marketing collateral you can use.

If you want to learn more, book a quick call with us here.

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Today’s topic of conversation is that uncomfortable one we often avoid: procrastination. Be honest with yourself.
How much do you or have you been procrastinating?
How much do you or have you been procrastinating around your marketing?
I find there are a couple of areas that come up, and they are reasons people use not to grab the bull by the horns and get on with marketing; they are:

Reasons to Procrastinate“I wish we had more hours in a day!” We don’t. We have 24. So, we need to think about how we use and invest our time; the second one is the comment: I feel overwhelmed.
Let’s face it: marketing is a massive topic. You can do many things, such as researching what works in recruitment, where to start, and a host of other questions. Let’s start with time.

Time as a Reason To ProcrastinateSo let me take time as the first reason because we can’t escape it. There are just 24 hours in a day. And yet, so many of us spend half our time talking about how busy, busy, busy, busy we are. Having spent thousands over the years, if not tens of thousands, on lots of different mentoring programmes, I know I can no longer get away with using time as an excuse!
For me, it’s about knuckling down and doing the work. When I hear that little voice coming up with the “I haven’t got time” reason, I ask myself, “How important is this to how we are going to move our business forward?”

And if this is important, it’s about making the time.

So, sometimes I hear people say, “Well, I’m not going to start my marketing until I’ve got more time, or I’ve done this, or I’ve done that.” And yet they’re struggling to do those other things because they haven’t got time.

What I would say to you is when you’re sat down, probably at night, and that thing pops up on Facebook that tells you how long every day you are doing some casual surfing, often for many people, certainly in the kind of circle that we’re in, it can be anything from an hour to two hours.

Over a week, even if we take Monday to Friday, that is between 5 and 10 hours. What if you committed to 30 minutes or a maximum of an hour of surfing time?
That gives you five hours potentially a week back to use and invest in moving your marketing forward. So, think about how you are investing time and how you can make different choices around making a good investment. Hint: This was one of the reasons we created Superfast Circle with all its resources to save our clients’ time.

Feeling Overwhelmed as a Reason to ProcrastinateThe second is the big topic of overwhelm, and this applies to people perhaps who’ve never done marketing before. Yet you’ve been doing lots of research about what you could be doing, and you just don’t know, genuinely, where to start, and you are looking for some help to point you in the right direction.
You could be somebody who’s been implementing some different marketing activities. You’re not very happy with it. It’s not been working how you want. You’re not quite sure what to do next.
So again, there’s that overwhelm feeling. And so, what do you do? You procrastinate because you don’t know where to start.

Well, rather than procrastinating, take some action.

Talk to somebody, somebody like us. Have a conversation with us about where should you start.

Thanks

Sharon

How We Can Help You Stop ProcrastinationWe have multiple strategies that work, including making marketing easy for you, which eliminates the time issue and the impact of feeling overwhelmed.
If you want to find out how this could work for you, book a call with us here.

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Let’s discuss using social proof in marketing your recruitment and search company today.

What’s fascinating is many people forget that we live in a review society. When you’re thinking about what marketing strategies you could use, think about your behaviour and how you look at other people’s opinions before you make a purchase.

Several things drive our purchasing behaviour.

• Not wanting to make a mistake.
• What do other people think about the service/product?
• How many people have used this service/product?
• What results have they got?

Why Using Social Proof WorksWhat’s fabulous is if you are particularly good at what you do and a good recruiter. I suspect you are; if you listen to this podcast and want to get better at marketing, you must communicate how you help people and the results they will get when they work with you.

There are many service providers out there, and we want to know we are making the right decision, especially if we are spending a significant amount of money with someone or entrusting them with finding us a new role.

This is where using social proof can improve your conversion process.

There are several benefits aligned to using social proof in your marketing.

• It builds trust
• It validates you and the quality of your work.
• It communicates the results you can achieve

Because of this, sharing social proof influences the decision-making process.

As humans, we are influenced by how other people have got results. It will enhance your brand reputation and help you differentiate yourself, particularly in the recruitment sector.

Last week, we discussed that there are more recruiters than ever. More search companies want the business, and a great convincer for you is demonstrating to people that you can help them using this strategy.

I always notice that whenever we share testimonials or case studies on LinkedIn, or wherever, or in our emails, then the impressions, the direct messages that we get are always higher than you might imagine because people are interested, people want to know, if I work with this individual, am I making the right move or am I making a mistake?

It’s often known as the horse’s mouth strategy because it’s not you shouting about yourself; your actual clients and candidates are doing this for you.

The 3 Types of Social Proof To Use as a RecruiterThree types of social proof work well in the recruitment sector. Let me start with an easy one.

Google ReviewsThe great thing about Google reviews is that you can ask your candidates and clients, “Would you mind jumping onto Google and giving us a quick review?”

So when people go to Google your name, you will appear on the first page of Google and have a much bigger visual presence.

You’ll notice if you go and Google your name or one of your competitors, and you will see on the right-hand side it’s got all your Google reviews if you’ve got Google Places.

TestimonialsThe second one is testimonials or recommendations on LinkedIn.

They’re fundamentally the same. What often happens here is that you do a great service, and people forget to ask for a testimonial. I am sure that, as a recruiter, your business process revolves around how you engage with candidates and clients.

In there somewhere, is there an action that says to ask for a testimonial, ask for a case study, or set that up right at the beginning when I’m first conversing with someone?

If it’s not part of your standard operating procedure when you work with candidates or clients, start doing it now because most people, if they’ve had a good experience, are more than happy to give you a review.

Remember to ask for it. They won’t spontaneously say, “Can I give you a review?” They’re not going to do that. You do need to ask for them. Then, when you ask for them, you have a great piece of marketing collateral you can use.

If you’re not following Sharon and me on LinkedIn, go and do it and look at the testimonials and case studies we share.

It will be an image with text sharing, a benefit a client has experienced from working with us.

We write a short sentence before the image to explain more.

For example, when Paul came to work with us, this was one of his challenges, and through working with us, this is where he is now.

If you want to find out more, drop me a DM or email me.

Simple to create and share.

Here, the client is selling for us.

Imagine if all of the candidates you place and the clients you work with gave you a simple testimonial that you could share. How would this help you and your brand stand out in the market?

Case StudiesThe other useful to create when it comes to social proof is a case study.

If you want to look at a structure for a case study, go to the Superfast Recruitment website here.

Many of our clients will come on video and discuss their case study; They’re brilliant that way. Not every client or candidate is willing to do that. Just be aware of that. Always ask. If you can get somebody on video, that’s fantastic.

Look at the types of questions and how we use a page on our website. Imagine you’ve had a conversation and you’re looking at signing terms with someone. You’re sending a follow-up email with your proposal and links to four case studies of clients like them for whom you have provided outstanding recruitment service.

We notice that one of our most visited pages on the website is our case studies and testimonials because people want to know if I work with this individual.

It’s the same for recruiters; will I get a good experience?

That’s the podcast for today. I wanted to share this particular strategy with you because it is useful and easy to use.

Thanks

Denise

How We Can Help YouOur members in Superfast Circle have a whole section on how to use social proof, including email templates and questions. This is one small part of what we provide. Want to find out more? Then drop us an email or book a call here.

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Marketing funnels in the recruitment and search sector? Let’s discuss why they’re important in recruitment and some of the things that you could be doing differently to get better results.

Let’s start with a definition.

What is a Marketing Funnel?What is a marketing funnel?

A simple top-line overview takes somebody from unawareness about you and your brand to awareness, to a level of engagement, to having a conversation, and to consider working with you.

Finally, hopefully, I will work with you and shout all about you on LinkedIn and everywhere else about how good you are and that you are the recruiter or search pro of choice to work with.

That is fundamentally what a funnel delivers for you.

One of the reasons it’s called a funnel is because we are funnelling potential clients and candidates. We want to work with them from a big area to a smaller one because not everyone who comes across us will want to work with us and vice versa!

Some people will come across you, and they will like you, what you’re about, and your approach, and they will start working with you.

Now, that number will be much smaller than those you first start interacting with.

That’s the reason it’s called a funnel.

The Many Benefits of Marketing Funnels For The Recruiting SectorThat is why it is so important in the current market that you have several marketing funnels where you are conversing with your market. You are funnelling them down to conversing with you and working with you.

It’s pretty straightforward. Let me share with you some of the many benefits of using funnels in your marketing and then explain how they can help you.

Firstly, they help you to avoid sales resistance.

Let me share an example. It has been interesting that we’ve been talking to several people recently who are considering working with us.

We’ve talked about why what they’re currently doing isn’t working.

As recruiters become ‘desperate’ to bring on new clients quickly, they are ‘over pitching.’

Yes, you can overpitch, and that puts people off.

They’re selling to people who are just not ready to buy yet. This is a normal phenomenon in the market because, at any one point in time, only 3 to 7% of people are ready to buy.

This is how we work as human beings. We go from unaware to aware, from thinking about our problems to wanting to solve them, and then to being in a position where we are happy to have that conversation.

This is one of the beauties of using a funnel: You can help move people through the buyer cycle from being unaware to ready to work with you.

I don’t think recruitment and hiring are any different. People have to go through a phase to get to know, like, and trust you before they’re ready to start collaborating with you.

That’s the beauty of a funnel.

Now that we’ve discussed this, 3 to 5% of people are ready to act; however, what about the other 93%?

The benefit of using a marketing funnel is that you can continually be on the radar of the other 93% of people who aren’t acting now and who will be your clients and candidates of the future.

Your particular marketing funnel can take a candidate or client from being unaware of you and your brand to collaborating with you when they are ready to do so.

The upside of having a marketing funnel in recruitment is you have two distinct groups that you need to work with, three if you’re also building your team.

• Clients
• Candidates
• Your own talent

Using marketing funnels in this way means you can nurture these different groups in multiple ways.

You can set your marketing funnels up very easily.

As an example, you might be in one of our marketing funnels.

You may have heard this podcast, encountered us at a networking event, or seen our content on LinkedIn. You might also have entered your name and email address into one of our funnels to receive our marketing checklist.

You are now on our email list, and you receive one or two emails a week from us about marketing, which adds value.

People on our email list will then contact us when they are ready. Of course, we will also reach out and speak to them, helping them make the decisions.

You can see the multiple benefits of having an actual funnel in place that works. Creating a funnel is easy. You can provide something of value. People get into your LinkedIn feed, they become a connection, and they join your email list.

Then, you can start connecting and working as they go through their own buyer cycle funnel about when they are ready to work with you.

Ironically, we were on a call with one of our clients today. Her business model is that she finds really, really good-quality candidates, talks to companies, and represents those candidates.

She has a 12-month funnel, as her market does not jump into action quickly, so she’s nurturing them all the time.

All this is happening in the background for her, and people constantly contact her.

We support her because she’s part of Superfast Circle, and we provide the marketing collateral and consulting she needs.

This is how using a funnel can work in your business, and it has done so for years.

We all know that people do not make snap decisions about career moves. Candidates and clients will work at their own pace, not yours.

A funnel supports this process.

People say, “Ah, but I want to stand out in the market, and funnels aren’t going to do that for me because everyone’s doing them.”

Fact: Let me share that everyone is not using marketing funnels.

Because of my role in our organisation, I will often enter my name and email address on a recruitment company’s website.

And it’s sad that unless I do it with Hays or Adecco or somebody like that, I put my name and email address into forms on several company websites that have significant numbers of recruiters, and I have Zilch.

Nothing!

I’ve not even got an email to say thank you.

I could be somebody that is looking for a job or is looking to hire.

You can see the difference that having a funnel will make and how most people aren’t doing it; they really are not.

They are missing out on so much by not being able to nurture candidates and clients who will get back in contact with you because you are the person who can help them.

Today has been all about funnels, which I encourage you to use.

Thanks

Denise

How We Can Help YouAs a member of Superfast Circle, you can benefit from our support in building your marketing funnels. We provide all the email campaigns and reports you need, and our Tech genius can teach you exactly how to get your first funnel up and running.

If you want to learn more, call us at +44 (01524) 920 700 or book a slot in my diary here.

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Today let’s talk Business Development (BD).

BD takes time; not easy for a recruiter to appreciate, especially when it hasn’t been front of mind in the last few years.

Recruiters can be quite impatient; be honest now; hold your hands up. I’m sure that many of you can relate to that.

Here is the thing.

When it comes to BD, people forget that inputs don’t always result in outputs as fast as we want, even though we try to convince ourselves that they will.

The Impact Of The Last Few Years on BDLet’s put some context around this and what’s happened over the past few years when it comes
to BD in the recruitment and search space.

Let me take you back in the day to 2019. Everything was pretty normal before COVID arrived, and BD was something that people did as required, though not necessarily enthusiastically!

When things were not going as well as people wanted, and there weren’t enough jobs on the board, some BD would happen.

This is particularly for micro businesses and smaller SMEs. Some of the bigger organizations have a BD system dialled in; I will talk to you about a system you can put in for you as well.

When we look back in 2019, people did some BD, but it wasn’t anything they did with any great gusto, with any systems in place, and then COVID-19 appeared.

Then suddenly, everyone had this experience of all those really good clients they had stopped working with.

Candidates were being furloughed and being made redundant and laid off. All of those things were happening. I think it just brought BD up to a level of focus for people.

However, what happened then was that the market started to shift.

As we all know, as we moved toward the end of 2020, people discovered video interviewing, and companies started recruiting. There were talent shortages, and many recruiters didn’t need to do a lot of BD.

People were coming to them because there’d been a pause in recruitment and a backlog of vacancies.

Consequently, Recruiters didn’t have to do much BD.

Of course, because they didn’t have to do it, they didn’t do it!!

Then suddenly, we move into a much tougher time for some people in 2023. Some businesses had over-hired and were shedding staff, laying people off, and making redundancies, and for other people, that assumption that the movement in hiring was going to continue didn’t.

People suddenly thought, “OH, Crickey, I need to start being focused on BD again.”

The thing is, people forget that BD takes time to build and fill a pipeline. Depending on the sector that you’re in, this process can take anywhere from 60 to 180 days or even longer.

Therefore, you must create a system that you implement consistently around it.

Going back to making half a dozen calls here, maybe half a dozen calls next week, and then stopping isn’t going to work for you.

Several famous sayings remind us to do the work.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Do you remember Colonel Sanders? He didn’t get good at what he was doing until he was in his 60s, and we all know about sowing and reaping, but the trouble is we forget that this is how life is and that it does take time to build momentum in anything.

Please do not throw Teddy out of the cot if things don’t work immediately. Instead, keep doing the work.

Build A Two-Part SystemInstead, create a system and expect it to work for you because it will if you give it the time and the energy!

One of the most predictable methodologies you can use to succeed in your business is to create a BD system.

It works like clockwork as long as you work it.

Now, it does take time to build.

You’re going to get results as you build your system consistently.

Remember, initially, this is a volume game until you build momentum.

Getting four or five appointments might take a hundred calls, but you accept that is how it is. It improves over time because, obviously, your skills get better.

Remember that this is what you must consider when thinking about BD.

I won’t get into too many tactical things regarding BD here. I’d like to give you an overview of the system you must implement.

You need two types of systems, and people forget the first one, which is your current connections.

The second one is your cold outreach. If any company wants to grow, it must keep filling its pipeline with new people because people drop in, drop off, and drop out.

Mine Your Current ConnectionsThe first one is your current connections. I imagine most people listening to this have a database of candidates and clients, which should be your first port of call.

You’ve already worked hard to connect with those people. Don’t assume that “Oh, they won’t be interested.” Don’t let that crazy brain of yours, that primitive brain, kick in and say, “Oh no, no, no, they won’t be interested.”

You just might be surprised because things change fast.

As a quick and easy start, ensure you are reaching out to all your tier-one connections.

Some people have 10,000 or 15,000 connections on LinkedIn. Are all of them relevant? Maybe not, but I suspect a remarkably high percentage are.

Reach out to those people; that is one area to start with your BD.

You’ve got a database because most people do not mine the gold around their feet because they get lazy and think people won’t be interested.

The other thing you can do with people like that, of course, is ask for referrals.

You can talk to the candidates that you place. Maybe they know somebody. Maybe they’re working in a new organization.

Ask for referrals. Make it a more active process because the challenge with referrals is making them predictable.

Referrals are great, aren’t they? I always like to say that they are the jam on the bread.

However, if you leave them to chance, you don’t know when they’re going to appear, and you cannot rely on referrals unless you take a more active stance in asking for them with people that you’re working with.

If you do that consistently, you will be able to plot the data, and you can see how that works for you. We’ve talked about current connections. That needs to be in your BD system.

Remember, I’m talking about multiple points of contact here. I’m not just talking about emails.

Emails are great. They’re brilliant for creating demand. They are a must-do marketing activity for anybody.

Remember: At the end of the day, picking up the phone and speaking to somebody will make a massive difference to your results.

Remember, this is not a transactional sale we’re involved in here. This is an expensive item. This is a person. This is a human being. This is a team. This is a chief operating officer being placed somewhere. Think about the conversation you will have with people, people you know, and people on your database.

Remember, don’t just rely on email. Help your email work by picking up the phone and speaking to people. The next thing is cold outreach.

Create New ConnectionsYou have to fill the pond continually. If you are not reaching out to new connections, you will never grow because you will always lose people, whether you like it or not. You cannot hold on to everybody forever.

Plenty of places exist to reach out and find people’s contact details.

There are multiple connection scraping tools out there you can use. I won’t name any because, to be quite honest, they come and go. I think Apollo is one at the moment, but who knows?

Snov.io is another popular tool, but you only need to go online. Google contact scraping tools, and you will be able to find various tools that will go and get you names, email addresses, and telephone numbers of people you want to reach out and connect with.

A BD tool that is especially useful on LinkedIn is Sales Navigator. You can pull lists of ideal people in your market that you want to reach out to. This is something that you should be doing daily.

You’re continually building a pond to fish into. Don’t just do it when you think, “Oh, gosh, I’ve not got enough business.” Do it now. Make sure that you do this as a regular thing.

You can even go on to some of the freelancer sites and find some real ninjas who will go and create a list for you that you can then work on. Then it is all about consistency and it’s about daily activities.

What are you going to do daily?

How many people will you reach out to in your current database daily?

It doesn’t take as long as you think.

Then, how many people are you going to reach out to on LinkedIn? How many messages are you going to send out? How many phone calls are you going to make?

Map it out daily; do it consistently.

Let’s just start with this quarter. Obviously, I know we’re halfway through a quarter, but just do it for 90 days. Measure your activities and look at the difference that will make for you.

Most people just do not build the volume; They give up. They just make 20 calls and 15 calls, but they don’t consistently do this daily because momentum starts to build.

Then, once momentum starts to build, you will see results.

This is about building that muscle back up. Start somewhere.

Thanks

Denise

How We Can Help You This YearAs a Superfast Circle member, we help you build your marketing to align with your sales and BD. If you want to find out how, drop us an email or book a call here.

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Today, I want to talk about using Meta in your recruitment marketing. Meta is the new name for Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg, and all his colleagues’ companies. I wanted to talk about meta-advertising today because it’s not something that people talk about an awful lot regarding marketing strategies for the recruitment sector.

Your Sector Is On SocialAt the end of January, we ran a social media marketing webinar where I shared data that shocked several people about the number of people who have various social media accounts.

You may or may not be aware there are 8 billion people on the planet, and almost half are on some social platform.

To give you an example, let’s talk about Facebook.

In the UK, there are approximately 67 68 million people. Would you believe that over 34 million of them have a Facebook account? Over half of the UK population has a Facebook account.

The percentage data in Australia is similar, so it’s half the population. In Australia and New Zealand, it’s something like your population is 30 million, and over half of the people have a Facebook account.

When you look at the US, the US at the moment has something 333 million. That figure’s changing all the time. Believe it or not, 243.5 million of those, according to the latest data I’ve got, actually have a Facebook account.

That is fascinating.

We think that over half of the population in various countries has an account on social media.

Because of that, you could say, “Yes, well, Facebook’s different to LinkedIn. It’s not a business platform.” However, your market is there. How you message and communicate with them means you can get in front of them. I wanted to share some thoughts and ideas about using Meta as an advertising platform.

Using Meta As an Advertising PlatformHere, we’re talking about Facebook and Instagram regarding advertising. The user data from Instagram is similar to Facebook.

I think we’ve got something like 35 million users on Instagram. The US is probably a bit less, 170 million, but still approaching half of the population has a social media account, which you could utilize to improve your brand awareness and make offers to people.

Let’s talk through how Meta might work for you regarding advertising. Some things to be aware of are the opportunities you probably don’t even realize and how you might want to use them in your recruitment or search business.

Facebook, Meta, Instagram, and various other things have happened over the past few years. You’ll have heard about the iOS update. We are currently going through the process of cookies on browsers, particularly Chrome changing.

This is all to do with privacy policies. However, don’t worry about it because in your copy and how you write and create adverts on Facebook, that will not be an issue because it enables you to speak into your market.

The other thing about Facebook advertising that I know some recruiters have been put off by is that recruitment, because it’s employment, and there are different legislations around employment, you have to highlight that you are a recruiter or work in search.

You click a button. Does it impact you a great deal? Not really.

You might lose access to some targeting options, but not many. Let’s get all those things out and start looking at the opportunity.

The OpportunityThe key opportunity is that half of the population of most countries in the Western world has a Facebook account.

Logically, therefore, there have to be some of your candidates and clients on Facebook.

Don’t assume that people don’t read adverts on Facebook. They certainly do, particularly if they are compelling and you are getting in front of the right person.

Remember that when looking at things like Facebook and Instagram, too. I would suspect that some key decision-makers you want to get in front of could be over 30.

There is a huge population on Facebook that’s over 30. Imagine if you were getting your brand awareness posts and your conversion posts in front of those people. What a difference that could make.

Targeting OptionsLet’s look at targeting options on Meta.

What I love is there are multiple ways to target people. You can target people through their age. You can target them through gender. You can target them through their interests.

Let’s say you’re an engineering recruiter. You could target people within your local geography. Let’s pluck an idea out of the air here. Let’s say you are based in Scotland and service all of Scotland as a recruiter. You could create some Facebook ads and target people between a certain age and an end age.

You could do that around Scotland, and you could do it to people interested in engineering. How easy would that be?

You are sitting somewhere in Scotland, and something flies past you about engineering opportunities, engineering recruitment, etc. You are much more likely to look at that. That is a huge opportunity.

Let’s say that you are a recruiter, and you are recruiting in Europe, and you want to target people in Germany, France, or wherever. You can do exactly that on Facebook. You may be a UK recruiter who has roles in the US. You can target people within different states of the US.

Of course, you can use images, videos, and all those different media to get in front of your market.

Custom AudiencesLet’s say that you have a database of clients or candidates.

You can create what’s known on Meta as a custom audience. You can upload your spreadsheet CSV file to Facebook as a custom audience and create your advert so the advert is only displayed in front of those people.

How cool is that?

Taking that even one step further, what can you do because of Meta’s amazing AI capabilities?

You can tell them, “Look, I’ve got a list of my customers here, all my candidates. Can you go out and find me an audience of people that are exactly like this or are a close match?”

Let’s say you’ve got specific clients or specific candidates; you ask Facebook to create a lookalike audience.

Now, this is quite common. You can do this on LinkedIn as well. You can do it on Google AdWords. Creating a lookalike list of people you can advertise to depends on your account size.

In addition, you can target interests and behaviours.

There are multiple behaviours you can use. When we advertise, it’s to people interested in recruitment. They’re a small business owner. They are interested in marketing so that we can display our adverts in front of these people.

You can see all the different opportunities here now.

The other thing that you can do that is incredibly useful is you can use something called the Meta Pixel. You might be wondering what exactly the Meta Pixel is.

They’ve just renamed it, that’s all.

This is where you can retarget audiences and people that have visited your website.

As a reminder of how retargeting works.

You’ve had that situation where you’re buying something for your significant other, and suddenly either the phone or the doorbell rings, or you’ve got your mum trying to FaceTime you or something, and you stop what you were doing.

However, you visit a website, and then, who knows, life happens, and you forget about that particular company.

This is where advertising to people who have visited your website and not taken action works.

As an advertiser on Meta, you can set up the Meta Pixel on your website, which will recognize the IP addresses of people visiting your website. Then, when it comes to targeting your ads, you can say, “Please show my adverts to anyone who has visited my website.”

That could be a game-changer for you.

Imagine that you are a candidate. You’re considering moving. However, you’re not quite ready yet. Consistently, you are seeing adverts from a particular recruitment company. You’re starting to think, “Hmm, these guys could be the ones that could help me. I like the content they share, and it’s helpful.”

Who do you think that candidate will contact when they first decide to move?

Highly likely you if it’s your adverts that have been appearing in front of them for some time. I won’t get into too much of the detailed tactical things about how you do Facebook adverts.

There’s plenty of content online about that; however, this is a quick overview.

You create something called a campaign; You’ll be used to doing that with marketing campaigns.

Each campaign has different sets of adverts, which also have multiple adverts.

Getting the ad together is not as hard as people make it out to be. It’s just a case of starting them and moving forward.

The other thing I like about Meta adverts is that they are inexpensive to start with. Regarding things like Google Ads, they’re a little bit more expensive. LinkedIn ads are a LOT more expensive.

On Meta, you can say, “Okay, I’m going to do this campaign. I’m just going to have a go at it. I’ve never done it before. I will put $/£100 into this campaign.”

Then Meta will distribute that $/£100 amongst your ads. What it will do is it will see which ad is performing better. Facebook is amazing at things like that; see which ads perform better, and you put more money towards that. You can see how you could start advertising on Facebook and the Meta group of channels for a few pounds or dollars a day if you want to test it.

Imagine you’ve got people that are visiting your website. You could retarget them. You’ve got lists of candidates and clients that you could utilize.

You could let Meta go out and do its thing and find people similar to your current audience. There are so many things that you could do.

For our clients, when we talk about advertising, we would always suggest that you get your basics done first, get a website that is communicating value, have your offer nailed down, know who your audience is, know the messaging that you want to put out there and then start doing advertising like this so that can make a difference, particularly when you’re a micro business.

Thanks

Denise

How We Can Help YouAs a member of Superfast Circle, we can teach you multiple marketing strategies that will work in your sector. We even have a tech expert who can teach you about Facebook advertising; if you want to find out more, book a call with one of us here.

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Lessons from 2023

Every year I sit down and write my observations from the year.

I like to call them ‘lessons’ in the valiant hope that I can do something about them or accept that life throws us the odd curve ball we aren’t always prepared for or expecting. What I have learnt then gives me the option to do things differently.

This is what I am taking into 2024; I do a deeper dive into each one on the podcast

1. Put your health first always.

2. We have life AND business seasons; know when you are moving to the next one.

3. Always do more for your clients than they expect; such an easy win.

4. Stop having expectations of people; otherwise, you will always be disappointed.

5. Always have expectations of yourself.

6. It all starts with your vision.

7. Be a badass at the basics. Foot to the floor and be a huge action taker.

8. Some business years are harder than others; be prepared.

9. The answers are in the data.

10. Keep raising your standards.

11. Take more holidays.

12. Document the journey and update the spreadsheet.

13. People see things differently from you, AND that is OK.

14. Good and bad times never last.

15. Most of the thoughts you have aren’t true

16. Remember the rule of 100 inputs.

17. Put down the device.

18. Get 7 hours of sleep every night.

19. You will get things wrong, and in the words of Dawn French, some days you will be an absolute T!*%!! forgive yourself.

20. Work hard; you know how much you enjoy it.

Thanks

Denise

How We Can HelpIf You want to do ‘marketing differently because you want better results. Then, book a quick chat here.

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In this post and podcast, we are continuing our series where we answer the burning questions we have been asked during the year related to how to create more demand for your recruiting service.

Today’s topic is email marketing.

Why am I a big fan, and why do people in our Superfast Circle Membership get so many email campaigns written by me that they can use?

Because it still delivers the highest ROI of any marketing strategy you can use.

I am sure many of you listening to this podcast will have been bombarded in your email with offers from multiple stores or places where you buy your food, telling you why you must get this particular ham joint or nut roast or whatever, especially over the last few weeks.

This strategy is well-known and well-versed in the B2C environment.

However, many people don’t realize that business-to-business email marketing is vital for B2B marketing.

Why? Because conversion takes more touchpoints.

High-value purchases take a lot longer for people to say yes; of course, a human being is a high-value purchase. Therefore, it can take longer for someone to decide to work with you as their recruiter.

Email marketing works well in the recruitment and search sector because it lets you be at the forefront of your candidates’ and clients’ minds.

I’m sure many of you have seen some of the content Sharon and I posted about the need to nurture and how candidate AND client relationships are important, and email marketing will help you with that.

What Email Campaigns Are The Best To Use?What are the main email campaigns that we would recommend that you use? These are the ones that are going to make the biggest difference for you. There are four that I would suggest you start with and move towards having all of these in place in 2024.

Re-EngagementLet me start with the easiest one, which gives amazing results. That is a re-engagement campaign with people already on your database who may not have heard from you for a while.

People come to us, saying; Oh, yes, I’ve got 4,000 people on my database. We’ll say, How often have you been contacting them? And they will respond with; not very often.

Which is a lost opportunity.

This is a gold mine for you.

Imagine, have you got a group of either clients or candidates you have not been in contact with for some time? They’re on your database, but you’ve not had an email interaction with them. That is your first starting point. It’s called a re-engagement. Clue in the title. It’s a re-engagement campaign. Make sure that you are sending content out to re-engage. When I say re-engage, it’s not like, “Have you got any roles?” or, “Would you like to re-upload your CV?” or, “Are you interested in this job?”

I’m talking here about a campaign that checks in with people and gets them to consider having a call with you in a very different way. It’s not in a promotional way; you start by adding value.

If you were on our list, you would have received an email from me a few days ago saying, “Do you need to audit your marketing? When did you last do it?

It was a short, value-added email suggesting you click a link.

That is the style of email that you can use in a re-engagement campaign. That’s number one.

Two Nurture Campaigns: For Clients and Candidates One EachNext year, you need two other types of campaigns for clients and candidates. These are nurture campaigns. These are where you offer something valuable, such as a report, a checklist, or something of value for your clients and candidates.

They are then on your database, and you nurture them until they are ready to buy.

You consistently send them emails that add value to their journey so that they get to know and understand you as an individual and appreciate that you are the recruiter who can help them.

These nurture campaigns are about sending regular communication out to your list consistently. It’s drip-feeding about you, how you can help them, how they can develop their career, how they can build a talent pipeline, depending on whether it’s a client or candidate.

For those of you who have been on our list for some time, every Friday, you might get one later, earlier on in the week as well, you will receive an email from us, and those emails will have a link, say, to our latest blog, our latest podcast, a snippet of information, something that’s useful for you.

Imagine doing that consistently with your candidates and clients; you would have a completely different relationship with them.

You’ve got the re-engagement campaign, a nurture campaign for clients, and a nurture campaign for candidates. Then there’s the other one that many people forget about a cold outreach campaign.

Cold Outreach Email CampaignWho hasn’t received an email from someone you don’t know well, and you get engaged? Yes, some of you might delete them, depending on how poorly written they are. Cold outreach is the way forward, guys, particularly in 2024, when BD, particularly client BD, will be at the top of your agenda.

You need to create and implement a cold email campaign.

Within GDPR and all the regulations you need to adhere to, you can get a cold email list that you can use. It might be that you have 100 people on it, and you’re emailing them through your Outlook, whatever that might be, depending on the size of your organization.

You can implement your cold outreach strategy in multiple ways, which we cover in Superfast Circle; having a cold email outreach campaign works. You will be amazed at how well it works.

There are four campaigns for you to implement next year, which are not hard to set up.

Good Luck!

Denise

How We Can Help You in 2024If you are a solo, micro or small SME recruitment or search company that wants to create more demand for your service in a cost-effective AND impactful way, we can help.

We have been working with our recruitment and search clients for over sixteen years, providing them with the clarity and direction they need to stand out in their sector.

To find out more, read our Superfast Circle case studies here and testimonials here, and then book a call for a chat.

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How to differentiate yourself in a crowded Recruitment market is an interesting topic to cover in the current competitive market many of us inhabit.

There are several ways that you can do this or minimize the challenge of differentiation and start to stand out to candidates because the truth is differentiation is hard in a market that is so competitive.

The outcome of your service is similar; you match candidates with clients. Some of you are doing it better than others.

So, rather than traditionally differentiating yourself, you can focus on becoming distinctive so that you stand out from your competitors.

You do that by demonstrating you are someone who can help them because you know what you are doing; you are an expert.

Here is the thing: You can stand out as someone who can help people by actually helping them through the value and insights you have.

Communicate The True Value You OfferOne of the things that I want to talk about when it comes to differentiation is that many good, experienced recruiters don’t communicate well when creating demand for their service. Fundamentally, they don’t share how good they are.

They don’t communicate all the things that are part of their service.

• They don’t communicate the difference that they make to their clients and their
  Candidates’ lives.
• They don’t communicate that their average placement stays around with their employer.
  for 8, 9, and 10 years.
• They don’t communicate their expertise.

We feel very blessed here at Superfast Recruitment because we work with some amazing people. We tend to work with experienced recruiters who have an issue standing out in their market when they come to us.

So, what we have designed and developed as part of Superfast Circle, our marketing programme, is a specific process to help people stand out.

It is called the “edge.” I’m not going into all the details because it’s part of being a member of Superfast Circle, where we work with people to help them hone their edge.

What we do there is help people pull out all the unique things about them that they can share with people to put across the experience and results they will have when they work with them.

Be a Niche ExpertThe next area to help with differentiation is specialization and niche because I know that people don’t have a niche in many markets.

For example, if you know that you have all the experience there is to know about the engineering sector, then, logically, a company will come to you rather than to Hays or Adecco where engineering is just part of something they do.

Make sure you highlight your knowledge and understanding by being a niche expert.

The thing is, when you’re a specialist in a market, then you can demonstrate the in-depth knowledge and understanding that your clients and the candidates want.

This leads to something else.

Brand Presence With Messaging That Is Clear and SpecificSomething else is having a strong brand, marketing, and messaging that matches your market. Again, I will say that because there was a lot of alliteration there, you might have missed it.

Develop messaging that matches your market.

I’m talking about messaging that helps connect with your clients and candidates so they know you understand them.

Often, you’ll hear us talk about the fact that we work with very experienced recruiters. They’ve often been around for a long time. They tend to be micro and small.

All our messaging and everything we share on social media shout out that that is who we are. When they come to us, people know the type of individual we work with, which makes us quite distinctive.

I wonder if your messaging is bland and not helping you stand out.

As a recruitment marketer, I visit many recruiting websites, and most of the time, when I visit a site, it takes me quite a while to find out, “What sector are these people working in?”

So many people use that classic line that we provide recruitment solutions

Everyone provides recruitment solutions, but who do you provide them for, and how do you
do it?

Remember, when people first land on your website, they have three unconscious questions. We’ve shared this in other posts as well.

It’s about what you are communicating.

This is who we are, who we help, and how we can help you.

Of course, this is not only for your website. This is to be communicated in your emails. That place that I will be talking about next week is social media and your social media channels because often, remember, many of your prospective candidates and clients will be on social media.

They will be on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and other places. They will see you there, so you need to ensure that your brand communicates your key messages there as well.

What next? The next thing is candidate and client experience.

Candidate and Client ExperienceMany of you will hold your hand and say, “Yes, I know I do, Denise. I do need to work on my candidate experience. It’s not the best. I could get better at that.” That’s good.

However, some of you may not be working particularly well with the client experience you deliver either.

Are you offering additional support and help to your clients? Are you providing different assessment tools and different ways of working that will support their talent acquisition process?

There are so many different things that often recruiters aren’t doing in the way they could.

Remember those dark days a few years ago of COVID, when I suddenly thought it hit people that, “Hey, I’ve got all my eggs in one basket, and I’ve just lost several clients. Maybe I need to start looking at how I work with clients and having a better handle on how we work together and how I support them.”

I think that is one of the key things to help you stand out, and You can do this easily by sharing content.

Here’s a hot tip for you.

Sharing content on social media that people read gives them insights and value, leading to people questioning their actions.

And when they question what they’re doing, they wonder who will help them. The person who’s probably given them that insight is the person they will reach out to.

Make sure that you stand out to candidates because I think one of the key things about candidates, and for many of you as well, is that candidates become clients, and clients become candidates.

If you have a unique experience, people enjoy the experience. They talk to one another. Candidates will speak to one another. They will give you testimonials. They will give you shout-outs about how good you are. Do that, and you will stand out as being distinctive.

I was reading a post this morning on LinkedIn. It was a little bit self-promotable, but that was fine. This particular recruiter was talking about how she was in a car park in south England.

She was walking with this big box near another woman with a big box!

They’re both looking at one another and trying to determine how they will get these boxes in the car.

Then, suddenly, this individual on LinkedIn saw the woman in question that she was looking at and suddenly realized that she knew her.

This other woman came up to her and started talking to her. She thanked her because a recruiter met a candidate she had placed some time ago who lacked confidence.

This particular recruiter had helped her get a new job in a place where she’d always wanted to work.

You can imagine how the story goes on.

Now, I read these stories all the time. That story touched me, thinking, “How good is that?” I’m just wondering, how many stories have you got like this that you could share?

You share that, making you stand out in your market. It will differentiate you as a recruiter who works in a very different way.

Using TechnologyThe other thing I want to discuss is technology and using different technology you have, maybe additional software, but also communicating that you do that.

Many of you have very fancy CRM systems. You’ve got different ways to communicate with people. I know you use some of it for marketing, but do your clients and candidates realize you have access to technology that can help them now?

Everyone’s talking about AI now and matching candidates and everything else. For many of you, you’ve got these advanced CRM systems. You can make a difference for people. Do you communicate that?

You may say, “Well, clients and candidates aren’t interested in that, but hasn’t everyone got that?” No, they haven’t. Because if somebody’s interested in you, they are looking for more ticks.

The more ticks they see, the more they say, “Yes, this is the person we need to talk to.”

Think about investing in technology in the first instance, but also communicating to people that you do that.

Do You Communicate Your Unique Solutions Delivered By YouI remember one of our clients at an event we ran a couple of years ago admitted he hadn’t been sharing a specialist service he provided for his clients.

Sharon was asking him questions, and it came out!

“Hang on a minute. What was that you just said?

Do you use this piece of assessment technology?” “Oh, yes, I do.”

The recruiter, who still works with us, admitted that he wasn’t on his website. He completely forgot to start adding that into what he did.

It was just something he did ordinarily, yet he wasn’t communicating that that’s what he did.

I’m wondering, for you guys, is there anything like that that you are not communicating?

Which leads me to the final one. That is talking about your customized recruitment solutions.

It may be that you can supply contractors. You can provide everything from the CEO to a team leader. You can supply everyone in that value chain for them once you start working with them.

Do you communicate that?

Do you communicate that you offer a retained service?

If they’re working on a very time-sensitive role or a key business-critical hire, do your clients appreciate you have another level of service?

Think about how you communicate that to your market.

Several things to reflect on as you want to stand out next year.

Thanks,

Denise

How We Can Help You Next YearAs a member of Superfast Circle, we help you in multiple ways, from working with you to develop your marketing plan to helping you hone and communicate your edge to the market (and yes, you do have one!), as well as providing the marketing collateral and community to help you create the demand you want.

Want to find out more? Then book a call here.

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Today’s podcast is number 399, and we are heading to the big 400 next week. So, as we start October, it seemed a good idea to interview one of our original podcast listeners, who is now a client.

That individual is Mike Richards, the MD of Treasury Recruitment. Mike has always been a huge advocate of investing in marketing to build a recruitment brand.

After listening to The Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast, he decided to launch his show five years ago, which has gone from strength to strength, which Mike shares in the interview.

I asked him multiple questions about developing his team and handling the challenges of the last few years as he built his company on the global stage, working with Treasury pros in every household name imaginable.

Mike shares several nuggets, including.

• How teaching led him to recruitment
• His ‘why’ honed by his 8-year-old daughter several years ago
• Launching the podcast, which led to multiple speaking ‘gigs’ in Europe and the US
• How letting go of micro-management was the best thing he ever did
• Why marketing systematisation was one of the reasons he joined Superfast Circle
• …. And several life and business lessons he would now share with his younger self

You can find out more about Mike and Treasury Recruitment here.

Enjoy!

Thanks,

Denise

How We Can Help You Market Your Recruitment BrandIf you want clarity and direction on your next marketing steps and would like the support of two marketing directors, consulting, training and the marketing collateral and content you need. Access our case studies here to see how we help clients, and then book a call with us here.

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Creating content and using it consistently is one of the key drivers of generating both client AND candidate leads for your recruitment business in today’s marketplace.

Today, we have a special podcast where we share one of our trainings.

If you are an experienced recruiter and know you can help your candidates and clients, becoming front of mind will be critical for your success.

People can’t work with you if they don’t know who you are.

The days of relying on referrals only are long gone; the pandemic saw to that. In the current up-and-down market, you need multiple ways to access your market and convince them that you are the recruitment or search form to work with.

Content is a critical vehicle to do that, so we are giving you access to this training recording as a podcast.

What This Content Training CoversOn day three of our Recruitment Marketing Week free training, we cover creating your content machine, where we share the key elements of your system.

• We explain how content impacts the buyer’s and customer’s life cycle process to your benefit.
• The four content guidelines to follow.
• The three content themes to base all of your content around with examples of each
• The content options and resources available for every budget on the market

Enjoy!

Thanks

Denise

P.S. If you would like access to the video recording, drop me an email

How We Can HelpAs a member of Superfast Circle, we provide the content resources you need as part of your membership, along with the strategy of where and how to use it from your personal marketing directors. This includes reports, email and messenger campaigns, scripts, blogs, and social media.

To learn more about the results this delivers for our clients, check out our case studies here.

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As we move towards the last quarter of the year and have that goal of ending the year strong, our minds turn to lead generation.

We all want to end one year and start the next with a string pipeline.

I was looking at some data from Neil Carberry at Rec the other day about how jobs and clients have gone up and down phenomenally over the last two or three years. We bounced out of COVID, and then the last few months, and I think particularly in 2023, it’s been more of a challenge for people to bring on board clients.

That’s why ensuring you have a committed and regular outreach strategy on LinkedIn for your clients is always good.

Let’s talk about your daily practice on LinkedIn and what will work for you. I’m not going to talk about sourcing and reaching out to candidates, though this is the same process you can use.

Our focus today is client acquisition.

We have developed our process for this, called the three R process.

The first part of the process is responding, the second is reaching out, and the third is resharing value. I’m going to go into each of these in turn.

We have our KPIs, Sharon and I, for what we do on LinkedIn because we know when we first started in business, we’d forgotten that you need to do a bit more lead generation than you ever thought you would need. We implement several strategies consistently now, and it helps to fill our pipeline.

LinkedIn Lead Generation: RespondingLet’s talk about the first R, which is responding. Now, there’s a clue as to why we’re called Superfast, and it’s been the bane of my life.

I’m just one of these people that I love to respond to people, not necessarily immediately, but as soon as possible thereafter.

It frustrates some of my friends that, “Why is it you are always the first one to respond?” I don’t know what it is, and I have this thing that I love to respond fast.

I think it’s the same for a lot of people. One of the first things I do when I go onto LinkedIn is responding to any messages that I have had in my inbox, even if it’s saying, “No, we’re not interested,” I will always make a response because as business leaders we are all salespeople at heart. I have respect for all salespeople out there.

Then, I comment, like, and reshare posts of the ideal clients we want to work with. We use Sales Navigator, so we know when some of our prospective leads and clients have shared posts, it’s very easy to go in, comment, like, and get on their radar.

I like to always respond to people and keep the conversation going. If I’ve been in a conversation with somebody, so say I’ve reached out to somebody I’m going to talk about next, then I like to ensure that I’m nudging people along because we can all get busy.

If I’ve sent a note to say, “Hey, do you fancy jumping on a call? Can I show you how we’ve helped this particular client of ours or this particular client?” Then, I like to nudge people to have people interested. Are they not interested, or if they’re not, maybe we can schedule a call later in the year.

That’s the big thing about responding and not responding because some people avoid responding, and you lose so much. Now, when I talked about responding, comments, likes, and shares, we have target companies we would love to work with in the recruitment sector.

We have our ideal avatars: companies that are independents, solos, small micro-businesses, or smaller SMEs. That’s where we know what we do can add the most value, so we target those people. Those are the people we have in our line of fire in the nicest possible way. If we’re connected to people, then I’m going to go and like their content, I’m going to share it, I’m going to do all of the things so that I am front of mind. That’s the first thing that I do.

LinkedIn Lead Generation: Reaching OutThe second thing is we reach out.

Fact: You cannot keep fishing in the same pond if you want more clients. You need to continually build your connections so your connections get to know, like, and trust you. Then, when they know, like, and trust you, you stand a sporting chance at some point of money changing hands.

What we do is we have a reach-out process, and we send invitations.

We have a target of how many invites we will send out each day/week and keep within LinkedIn’s remit on that, and we do pretty well in hitting our target.

It’s part of our process. What we also do is reconnect. If you went through your LinkedIn connection, and I know some people have 10,000 connections on LinkedIn, some of whom they haven’t connected with in ages, we reach back out and start a conversation again with that individual.

Maybe we’ve gone off their radar, perhaps they’ve gone off our radar, maybe they’re in a different position now, and they are ready to work with us, and we won’t know that unless we reconnect with them.

We’re reaching out, reconnecting, looking for new clients, and making offers about who we are, what we do, and how we might help them.

This doesn’t take much time; I allocate 60-minute time slots daily.

LinkedIn Lead Generation: Resharing ValueThe next thing we do is reshare value. For potential new clients to have a relationship with you, they need to know, like, and trust you; this is where and why content marketing works.

Now, earlier in September, we ran a webinar for the NPAWorldwide Recruitment Network, and the topic was becoming unstoppable on social media, and we shared some of these concepts.

We shared multiple things that you can do when resharing value. There are three content themes to focus on, but let me give you some ideas about it anyway.

It’s about sharing value to demonstrate your expertise and that you are the recruiter of choice that can help them.

The types of things you can share, blog posts, podcasts, personal branding posts, company branding posts, personal quotes, blog posts, and newsletters, can help position you as a recruiter of choice; you don’t have to overcomplicate things.

When you do this, as you start reaching out to people, you’re going to get back on somebody’s radar. When you’re back on somebody’s radar, they will be searching for you.

Then, if they start searching for you and see that you’re sharing great content on LinkedIn, you’re resharing their content, which will elevate you in their eyes, and you’ll start being front of mind.

These strategies are critical when you’re thinking about BD.

You are responding to people, reaching out to people, and then, of course, resharing content. You’re demonstrating who you are and how you can help them.

It is a straightforward, practical process that you can do every day that works.

Thanks

Denise

How We Can Help You With Your LinkedIn Marketing?As part of your Superfast Circle Membership, we even provide you with messages and content you can use as part of your LinkedIn outreach process. If you want to have a quick demo call on how this can work for you, book a call here.

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As I record this, in a few weeks in the UK is one of the biggest trade shows for the recruitment industry, and that is Rec Expo. It's happening in Birmingham, where many service providers in the tech field appear so you can look at all their kit, how it works and how they might [...]

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Today we are talking about marketing systems and what you need in your recruitment and search firm. We've just come off the back of Recruitment Marketing Week at the end of last month and had a lot of positive feedback. Potentially, we will run it again later on in the year, definitely after the summer, [...]

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This is Denise from The Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast, and today we're talking LinkedIn advertising. This is specifically LinkedIn advertising around promoting you and your brand. However, if you're new here, welcome; great to have you. Depending on when you're listening to this podcast, if you haven't signed up for our Recruitment Marketing Week, [...]

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Today let's talk about marketing communication and emojis and how and why to use them as part of your marketing. First, I think it's good to explore where did they come from, what are they all about, why are they suddenly being used everywhere; AND why you should consider using them in your marketing? The Emoji [...]

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Today, let's talk about your services page. For Recruiters, we're talking about a page for your candidates and clients to visit. Here they can read about you and decide whether they work with you. Regarding your services, you have candidates and clients, so you need a page for each, and they are similar in some [...]

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Many of our clients and potential new Superfast Circle members are updating their websites.

This a good idea because your website is your authority presence and storefront online and should be given the special attention it deserves.

It is the first place where people find you after.

• They have been directed from social media, and they Google a question they have.
• Or if they’re chatting to someone about the best recruitment company to work with, they’re given your name.

This is the first time you can have a real impact with someone in a channel you own.

I want to talk to you about how to hone your website and ensure that your homepage is doing everything possible to promote you and your brand.

What Candidates and Clients Are Looking ForFirst of all, let’s talk about what’s the conversation that’s going on in your candidate or client’s head. We talked a bit about this with your about us page last week. If you haven’t accessed that podcast, you can find it here; accelerating your about us page.

When people land on your website, they’ve got several questions going on in their heads. The first one that might surprise you, because often, they may find you from Google, is– Who are they?

Many recruitment companies have different names; they don’t always have recruitment in their domain name.

They could be called something like Watson Smith, Kennedy and Bowman. We don’t always put who we are and what we do in our domain name.

First, when someone lands on your website, they want to know who you are. Are you a recruitment company? Then they want to see what you do.

What they mean by that is, which particular sector do you serve? Are you the type of recruiter that deals with executive roles? Do you deal with leadership or management roles, or do you deal with apprentices?

Then the conversation moves to, “How can you help me?”

That is something that not everyone communicates on the website.

Then finally, “How good are they?” and “How can I get in contact with them?”

Now, that probably sounds quite logical; you may think that you have all of those areas covered, and my experience of looking at different websites across the web is not everybody ticks all the boxes when it comes to these critical information pieces.

Key Information to Communicate on Your Home PageLet’s go through the homepage and think about some of the things you might want to be thinking about that are visible to people.

If people land on your website, the first thing is to have your telephone number within easy reach and an email where people can email you. I always think having your social media icons is good because people like to check you out online in today’s interconnected world.

It might surprise you when you look at other websites how few people have their telephone numbers visible, on the navigation bar, at the top of their website.

I am sure you have a Contact Us page or your website’s footer where you have contact details. Now, remember that many people do not have a lot of patience, and if you are not hooking somebody in, in that first third of your website pretty quickly, they’re off, and they’ll go and look elsewhere.

Don’t make it hard for people to find the information they want; obviously, most recruiters we work with want people to pick up the phone and speak to them.

Ensure you have a telephone number on your homepage in the header bar where people land. If you are doing international recruitment, ensure you have the relevant codes if someone’s dialling from abroad.

Ensure you have the best email address for them to contact you. I would also ensure you have your social media icons, depending on your location.

As people scroll down your website, you must have your value proposition. This tells people who you are, who you help, and why you and this is important to have very high up on your website.

Also, what you would ideally have, depending on the markets in which you work in exec search or not, is a job search function.

Here, you can have a button, whatever you want to do, or a search bar, but you must have something that says, “Looking to recruit? Looking for a new role?”

Make it simple, so it’s click, click, click for people, and they can go through and find the information they want.

Simplify NavigationDepending on your particular website builder, you will often only have just three lines at the side related to the responsiveness of your website.

However, it has been shown, time and time again, that having a full navigation bar helps people navigate to the area they want to access.

Not everyone is super tech-savvy, and it’s really good to have things highlighted, so people can go exactly where they want.

They can find and go to your services page, blog page, and contact us page, all easily visible on your navigation bar.

Make navigation easy for them.

Content is another thing to consider when people are on your website’s home page.

From a design rather than marketing perspective, it is in ‘vogue’ to have websites led by large designs with minimal content.

Yet people need to read who you are and what you deliver, especially when you are a micro or small SME.

A focused paragraph that speaks into the pain that your clients and candidates are going through and how you can help them.

If you want an idea of how that might look, go to our website, which is superfastrecruitment.co.uk, and scroll down the homepage.

Our text highlights exactly who we are and what we do, and if you look at our header banner, a picture of Sharon and me overlaid across is exactly who we work with.

We say, “We help micro and small SME recruitment search and staffing companies globally market their brand and increase placements by providing all the training, consulting, content, and resources they need.”

In a relatively short sentence, state what we do.

Then as you start to scroll down the page, we have what we call a hero bar.

We’re giving some social proof, which is something I’m going to come onto next. You need to have some social proof about who you are and how you help people, so some testimonials, or whom you’ve worked with, and there, we’ve got the fact that we’ve got content published on recruiting blogs, on UK Recruiter on Recruitment Grapevine, Recruitment Agency Expo.

We’re on iTunes, part of the Life Coach School and a TEAM service provider. If you imagine someone lands on a website, they’re looking for some validation about you.

If you’ve got something like that, then absolutely make sure that that is on your homepage. As you scroll down our homepage, we encourage you to download our marketing checklist.

Then, as you go further down our website, we have a big block of text. It works well. Our website ranks on the first page of Google for multiple search terms, and there’s a reason for that, it’s because we have good content, that’s keyword aligned to our market.

Then, what we talk about is our services. Now, this is where you guys need to ensure that you have your services highlighted here and the sectors you serve that need to be on your home page.

Next, have testimonials; you’ll notice we have a scrolling bar. People are looking for social proof in today’s market because they have many choices regarding which recruitment company to work with.

Adding Value and Capturing NamesNext is value add content from your blog, which I hope you have; we will talk about that next week, then have some blogs at the bottom so that people can see, “Oh, some useful content here that I can access.”

People will land on your homepage, and you want them to go and click through to other site areas, but they won’t always email you or pick up the phone immediately.

That’s why it’s great to use a really useful marketing tactic as part of your strategy to build your database.

This is known as an exit intent popup.

Whether you like popups or not, the fact is they work. In a B2B environment, the type of popup that works well only appears when people leave the website.

We have one that we are changing, so I’ll tell you what it is now, but it might have changed by the time you listen to this podcast.

When you go to leave our website, if you haven’t been there before, or it’s been a while since you’ve visited the page, as you go to close the browser, up will pop an opportunity for you to download one of our popular reports.

At the moment, it’s our automation report so you can download that now; it will be something else in a couple of weeks.

Suppose you had something like that popping up on your website as people go to leave. In that case, you stand a chance of grabbing somebody’s name and email address, who then can go into either your candidate or client marketing funnel, and you can start nurturing them to start working with you.

You could put your latest salary survey or a workplace report. You could put something useful for both candidates and clients, and you could get them to tick whether they’re a candidate or client, and then they can go into a different funnel.

Your homepage needs to look good; of course, it does, and it’s the first time people come across you in a more intimate setting, so it needs to work from a marketing perspective to create more demand for your service.

When people land on your website, they must know, “What’s the next thing I need to do?”

That may be to download a report before they leave the website. It might be to grab your phone number. It might be to click through and look at the different services. It might be to register their CV or Resume, something else you can have on your homepage, or to go and visit your job board.

Make sure you’ve got multiple options on your homepage, which can help create that marketing process and move people through to the next stage of their journey as they consider working with you.

Thank

Denise

How We Can Help You With Your Recruitment WebsiteWith our Superfast Circle members as their virtual marketing directors, we support them in creating their website with marketing in mind; if you want to find out how we can help you book a call with us here.

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Today we are starting a series about making the most of your recruitment website and beginning with your about us page.

Now, this page on your website, believe it or not, is one of the most visited pages. This page stands out when we look at the data from our client’s websites.

From our own perspective, we run four or five different websites for our own brands and businesses. On every single website that we have consistently after the homepage and after our blog, the About Us Page stands out as one that gets a huge amount of traffic.

Now why is that?

Well, that is the case, and it’s the same for everybody because we live in a connected world. People want to know who they are working with.

They want to know more about you and your brand.

They’ve landed on your homepage, and maybe not got all the information that they want, so they’re going to click About Us, and they’re going to go and look at you and check you out.

Because what they’re doing is validating in their mind who these people are and how they can help me.

Some people I know have not even got an About Us Page.

If you haven’t, hopefully, after you have listened to this podcast, you will create one.

Don’t just slap any content on it; add useful content.

I will give you four areas to consider so that you make sure that you accelerate the ability of your About Us Page to help support you and your brand.

As you do that, there’s a theme to utilize because your About Us Page isn’t about you.

You don’t need to talk about your personal life or what football team you support.

What you want to make your About Us Page relate to is about you and your brand and how that can help your ideal client or candidate avatar.

Always remember that every page on your website is there to demonstrate to people how you can help them.

Let’s share these four areas.

How You Started Your Recruitment BrandTalk about who you are, maybe, how long you’ve been in business, why you started the brand, and why you got into recruitment in the first place.

You could use a timeline.

Many of you I know who listen to this particular podcast have been around for a few years, and you’ve just started getting into marketing.

How about talking to people about your journey and story over the last few years?

I know some people that listen to us, and many of our clients have been in business for ten, twenty and one clients that have been in business for over thirty years.

Here you can talk about your passion for recruitment and how you love ensuring people are in the right role with the right company.

What Makes You and Your Brand Unique?Secondly, the second thing you want to cover is what makes you and your brand unique. I’ve alluded that you might have been around a long time. Maybe you have sector expertise in the marketplace that you’re serving. I don’t know; perhaps you used to be an accountant, maybe you used to be an engineer, perhaps you used to be a pharmaceutical sales rep, whatever it was, and you thought, “Hang on a minute here, recruitment isn’t done well. I could do this better.”

This is something that will make you stand out.

How about how many people you’ve placed, the type of service you deliver, and how you consistently support people?

You can discuss many things here about you, your brand, and what makes you unique.

What Are Your Brand Values and Beliefs?Third, let’s talk about your brand values and beliefs. We may have touched on these in a couple of the other sections that I’ve just mentioned, but really, people want to know about you, what you stand for, and what the experience of working with you will be like.

Make sure that people know about your strategy, the processes you will use, how you support candidates and clients, how fast you can work, and the speed you can deliver.

Why Should Customers Choose You?Finally, you want to consider why customers should choose you. Here you can talk about the number of candidates you’ve placed and the number of clients you’ve helped.

You can also put some of your testimonial snippets here, and you can talk about maybe the guarantee you have with your service.

Communicate these important pieces because your candidate and client’s brain is looking for this.

They are looking for unconscious ticks in their mind.

Are they any good?

What experience do they have?

Ah, they’ve got real experience of the role I want to gain next and about my career.

How We Can Help You Build Your Website Into A Marketing MachineWe have been working with our recruitment clients for over fifteen years, helping them develop their marketing and websites to attract the candidates and clients they want. This is part of our role as your outsourced marketing director as a Superfast Circle member; if you want to learn more, book a call with us here.

Thanks,

Denise

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Today, I want to talk about cold outreach and some good facts and some not so-easy to hear.

Cold outreach is a pretty simple process; however, it’s not easy, and getting your mind around it is hard for some people.

I remember back in the day; I cut my teeth on cold outreach because, in the pharmaceutical industry, we used to go and knock on doors.

That could be a doctor’s surgery or a door on a hospital corridor. We used to sit and attempt to see consultants and people like that so we physically could turn up, so they couldn’t just put the phone down on us!

I often share my story of going to a particular doctor’s surgery in Ancoats in Manchester. It’s very trendy now, Ancoats. I assure you, when I went, it wasn’t

I asked the receptionist if I could see the Dr, and she led me down a corridor.

She pointed to the door I went through to find myself in the carpark with the door locked behind me, but there you go, which is what occasionally happens with cold calling.

I’m sure we all have our thoughts and stories we can tell, and I think cold calling is much maligned, and I don’t think people appreciate that.

If you want to scale and grow at some point, you can’t keep fishing in the same pond. You have to do different elements of cold outreach to build your database of people you can start to have a conversation with, and then you can find them a role or help develop their team.

Different Cold Outreach StrategiesThere are multiple ways to do this, but I wanted to give you some ideas and prepare you for the road ahead, as occasionally, parts can be rocky.

One of the things about cold outreach is people give up too soon, and because of that, they don’t get the wins they could if they just persisted with the process.

Now, cold outreach will support your scaling goal, and as I’ve said, it is pretty simple; however, it’s not always easy.

Our minds go crazy when we get rejected, or a call doesn’t go to plan, we don’t get the same response and reaction, we were hoping for, and consequently, people give up.

The Truth About Cold

Let me talk about a few things you need to remember about cold outreach, some of which you need to have in place and be aware of.

The first thing is there are multiple ways to do cold outreach. It’s not just picking up the phone these days. You can connect with people in numerous ways, and we encourage people to do several things.

The first is to get people on your database by offering them something of value.

Now, that could be a report, an invitation to a webinar, or an event, because what happens when you do that is you are highlighting and connecting with those who have an interest in what you do.

Many of you listening to this podcast will probably be on our database. You’ll have downloaded a couple of reports, you might have been to several webinars, and probably you’re even a client listening to this.

Here it works; “I want to get that person on my database. I need to use reciprocity. I’m going to give them something of value.

Here you are. Here’s a great report. Here’s something else.

Come onto my database, and then I can show you how to help.

Because what’s happening then is that person is going from stone cold to lukewarm because they’re becoming more aware of you. That is one thing you must have in place as part of your process, which forms part of your cold outreach strategy.

How can you do that in multiple ways?

Cold PlatformsYou can post on social media and send cold emails to clients.

Cold emailing works, and you can do it because when it comes to GDPR when someone has a work email address, it’s a legitimate interest; you are using this as a marketing practice.

All you need to do is ensure you have an unsubscribed button, and there are many different ways to do cold emailing. Go and have a look at the Superfast website on the blog. I have talked about cold emailing several times before.

I’ve also shared the story that when it comes to cold emailing, that’s how we started our business. I remember I still have it imprinted in my mind, 23 email addresses.

We went out and looked for these particular email addresses of people that would be right for us. Until a couple of years ago, we were still working with one of these individuals, who ironically has just retired.

There are many different platforms that you can use that can do cold outreach. Of course, another way to reach out to people who are cold to you, and, of course, these are people that you want to put into your actual funnel, your sales funnel, is you can use paid advertising.

Now, there’s Google; there is Facebook and Insta; now called Meta, and, of course, you also have LinkedIn advertising; You can use any of those.

Don’t dismiss using advertising like that to build awareness of your brand to get people to engage. You can do it cost-effectively, particularly when using different advertising techniques.

No matter what, when you do reach out to people, I know many of you will have done a lot of cold calling over the years; you do know that a certain percentage of people will be interested. It’s usually around 3% to 7%; usually, we find you get up to 10% of people interested and willing to have a conversation with you, but you can build, and you can scale from this.

You look at any organization that’s done well, any smaller micro to SME organization, they will always have a cold outreach strategy as part of their process.

However, there are some things to make you aware of because it’s not all sunshine, lollipop, and roses.

You will come up against things when you’re doing cold calling and outreach because, unfortunately, our brains get in the way, and when we get a series of nos, we can very easily want to give up.

Please remember this, the only way you will scale and grow is you have to go to newer audiences, and at some point in the process, creating demand with these newer audiences is going to be some level of cold outreach.

When you do that, remember that it’s not somebody being referred to you, it’s not a candidate that’s come to you, and it’s not a referral from one of your favourite clients to one of their friends who’s also in business.

That referral process is great, and conversion is so much easier there. You’re going out to people who don’t know you; your conversion rate will drop much more than you anticipate.

Remember, that won’t be forever. Your conversion rate will be lower, but you are going out to new people, building that opportunity. Remember that cold outreach is a longer-term strategy.

It’s for the long term, and it will build your business.

You need to do cold outreach for at least six months before building momentum. Now, I know that everyone wants quick wins all the time.

I shall get off my soapbox now, talking about cold outreach; it’s something you need to factor into your business if you want to grow, even if you want to maintain where you are because there gets a point where that database you have is going to start running dry.

As many people have experienced over the last few months, we’ve had many tech people laying people off, freezing recruitment.

This is when you probably wish, “I wish we’d done more outreach.” The thing about it is all is not lost; Start now and start to build the process.

How We Can Help?In our Superfast Circle membership, we support you in building your marketing through multiple strategies, including cold outreach, and we have systems for you to use.

We’ve also got email and messenger campaigns that you can use too.

If you want to know more about that, drop us an email or book into our diary here.

See you next week,

Denise

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This week our focus is your marketing review. As many of you know, we’re big fans from our corporate days of the 90-day planning process, which works incredibly well if you want to keep on track and keep things happening in your business.

Today I want to share the questions we use that we’ve been honing over the years and brought with us from our various roles in bigger organisations.

Until you review, you don’t know what’s happening in your business, you’ve not looked at the data, and you don’t know where you’re going as you move forward.

If you don’t review, how do you know; what’s going well and what’s probably not going so well?

We have used and tested several processes to review our marketing and business activities for many years.

It was schooled into us when we were both in our corporate roles, and I thank the organisations for teaching us their system.

Over the years, we have adapted our review process and now use two styles of question.

The 4 Rs and The 5 WhysThe first one, very easy to remember, is the 4 Rs, with r standing for review questions.

Then the next one is the 5 Whys which will make sense in a second.

Let’s start with the 4 Rs.

I will give you the questions, dive into each, and then explain how the 5 Whys fit in.

Now, I’m assuming when you sit down to carry out your 90-day review, you will be looking at data, you won’t just be basing it on emotion, and the 5 Whys questions will help remove.

So here are the questions in the particular order we ask them.

• What did we achieve?
• What worked well?
• What did we miss?
• What are our priorities this quarter?

Now, I ask these questions in this particular order because it’s very easy to get into with a negative frame, for example, “Well, what didn’t work? What did we not do?”

This rarely ends well and wastes time.

Here is the thing; driven business owners and entrepreneurs, we always like to look at the gap rather than the gain.

There’s a great book by Dr Ben Hardy and Sullivan called the Gap and the Gain. I’ve mentioned it before; you can download it here.

It is well worth looking at because Ben and Dan explain how we’re always looking for that horizon moment as entrepreneurs.

We’re moving towards what we want, but just like a horizon, it will always get further away in the distance because we’re always building and building and building. It’s really important to look at, “Well, hang on a minute,” this is the great thing about reviews, “actually, where did we start versus where are we now?”

Two of the ‘r’ questions are important around this. It’s like, “What did we achieve, and what worked well.”

I would always ask you to look at that and don’t do the “Ah, but” or “Ah, but we could have done more.”

Ask yourself, what did we achieve? Then this is where the brilliant questions come in: the 5 Whys.

Sakichi Toyoda’s 5 Why QuestionsThe 5 Whys was developed many years ago, in the 1930s, by Sakichi Toyoda from Toyota, who wanted to improve processes that were not working as well as they could on the shop floor.

Toyota still uses it to this day.

The 5 Whys is a process where we ask why questions.

This particular framework of questions is based on seeing what’s working and asking questions about what and why things are and are not happening.

Why questions challenge us; occasionally, people can get defensive when you ask why questions, but of course, that won’t be you because you understand the logic around why we’re asking them.

For example, let’s take one of our review questions; what did we achieve? We say, “Well, we achieved, let’s just say we achieved 50,000 in sales, 100,000 in sales,” and then we ask some questions.

We ask five why questions because this will dig down deeper into why things happen so that we get to the truth.

It is very easy to ask, “Well, why did we do that?” You get a fairly straightforward, not very detailed answer.

However, when you keep drilling down into why, that makes a huge difference because it reveals more data.

When you’re talking about what we achieved, maybe 50k wasn’t what you wanted, you wanted 100k that month, and it’d be, “Well, why did we achieve that?”

The first answer could be, well, we didn’t implement everything, or because we implemented everything on our plan, and why did we do that?

“Well, we did that because we started planning properly at the end of December last year, so we got our head in the game.”

Why did we do that?

Can you see where this goes, That you start to reveal what’s going on?

What it does for you is reveal what you’re doing well and potentially need to do more of it and where you’ve had those challenging times.

It reveals maybe where you didn’t do as well and what you could have done differently.

We’ve talked about what we achieved and what worked well, and what could be why things worked well.

Let’s look at the other two R questions, and that is around, what didn’t work as well, and what did we miss?

What did we miss? Why did we miss those things? “Well, we haven’t got enough resources. We weren’t doing enough cold outreach,” which, ironically, I will be talking about in next week’s podcast.

Why did that happen? Why did this happen? Then, you really start to drill down and say, “All right, okay,” so it could be, why did we miss certain things?

You could come back to the point that we didn’t send out enough emails, we didn’t nurture the candidate database that we have, or we didn’t get any quick wins because we weren’t emailing our current database to check in with them.

All of these questions will reveal data that will make a difference for you because what you’re doing is you’re revealing the next stage of the journey for you.

Yesterday I was chatting to one of our marketers in Superfast Circle about the 5 Why process. They are carrying out an analysis of their customer satisfaction levels as a company using the NPS process.

Some of the data it throws up is uncomfortable, which is a positive because it can be changed.

Take that emotion out of it, we’re looking at data, and data is always good because we can do something about the data.

Imagine asking yourself these why questions, what a difference that will make. Because when you look at, what didn’t work as well, and you start to challenge yourself, you will notice that as you do this, you get down to more and more detail, and it starts to reveal areas of focus that you missed and need to focus on more now.

The fourth question is, what is critical for the next quarter?

Because you have been asking questions, your next steps will be better informed.

Because sometimes, when we are talking to people, I say, “I want to do x this quarter.” We ask, “Why do you want to do that? Why, and why?”

The questions start to flow.

Several times people have said, “I don’t know why I’m doing it this quarter.”

For example, some people want a new website, and after a few questions, they realise they don’t need a brand-new website now; maybe they could be utilising what they have in a way that will work for them. Then they can get a new website later and spend their resource, both time and money, on something else.

Next Steps For You?I encourage you to take the time as we enter the last few days of March to review the first part of the year this process and questions.

Ask the tough and uncomfortable questions, and the five whys will enable you to do that.

We help our Superfast Circle clients review their process as their virtual marketing directors; that is why they are doing so well. If you would like to explore how this can work for you, book a quick call with one of us here.

See you next time,

Denise

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Last month we ran a live training class on creating a lead generation system for your recruitment company. We shared a process called The Lead Generation Triad which we have developed over the years; when you implement all the parts consistently, leads will arrive in your business

One part of the process is the content machine which enables you to build authority and credibility in the market.

Content is a huge convincer of your expertise and that you are able to do what you say you can for both candidates and clients.

So, what exactly is authority content for recruiters, and why is it important?

What Is Authority Recruitment Content?Authority content is marketing collateral and material that positions a recruitment brand as an expert in their sector to; candidates, clients, AND any new talent they want to attract.

This content provides valuable insights, ideas, and solutions to the problems that both candidates and clients have when it comes to moving jobs and building their careers or attracting engaging, and building a team.

The fact is in the B2B world, where decision-making is often based on trust and credibility, authority content plays a crucial role in attracting, engaging, and converting potential people to your brand.

Authority content will establish you and your brand as a thought leader in your sector. That might be THE construction recruiter in Manchester or THE legal recruiter in Leeds.

It helps you stand out while at the same time differentiating yourself from your competitors.

Examples of Recruitment Authority ContentThis type of content includes reports, guides, whitepapers, case studies, webinars, email campaigns that add value, videos, podcasts, blog posts, research reports, salary, and workplace surveys.

This collateral is longer-form, in-depth, and highly focused on a particular topic or issue that a candidate or client might have.

It provides detailed information that helps your clients and candidates solve their problems or make informed decisions about their next steps.

This post and podcast are an example of authority content.

So is our on-demand email training class and the various reports and videos you will find on our downloads page here.

Fact: Authority Attracts QualityOne of the main benefits of authority content is that it attracts high-quality leads, the best clients, and candidates to YOUR business.

Why?

Because this type of content is focused on providing value and solving problems, it tends to attract people who are actively searching for solutions to their challenges.

By creating content addressing these issues, you can position yourself as the go-to source of information and expertise, leading to increased brand awareness and a more engaged group of candidates and clients.

This content style will help you establish trust and credibility with your target audience; think of ideal client and candidate avatars.

When a recruitment or search company provides valuable insights and solutions to problems, they demonstrate that they understand their sector at every level.

The challenges candidates have to develop their careers and how the biggest issue for clients is attracting skilled people who stay in the current climate.

This logically builds trust and credibility.

Why?

Because when your audience sees you adding value, reciprocity kicks in, and they are more likely to start responding to you. For instance, opening emails and answering your calls.

This then leads to increased placements and more interest in your recruiting brand.

3 Elements of Effective Authority Recruitment ContentTo create effective authority content, recruitment and search brands should focus on three key elements: relevance, quality, and promote it!

RelevanceRelevance means the content should focus highly on your candidate and client’s needs.

If you don’t know what they are, ask them!

Make sure it answers the questions going on in their head.

When you do this, you will stand out head and shoulders above other recruiters in your sector; trust me I see some pretty irrelevant and unhelpful content out there so it isn’t going to be that hard.

When you do this, you will start to create your own tribe of followers because your relevance and value shine through.

QualityQuality refers to the overall quality of the content itself. Authority content should be well-researched, well-written, and useful; and delivered in an easy-to-digest format.

I know this might sound cheesy, so ensure your formatting is easy to read.

I know I am a writer; spell and grammar check your work.

I know even the best of us can have the odd apostrophe missing or weird typo, and when your work is littered with mistakes, your credibility goes down the toilet fast.

Break it up with subheadings, as I have in this post, which leads people logically through the post and sequences your content.

Notice I gave you a definition first, then an example of content and the many benefits using it will give you.

Make sense?

If you have ever read an article and struggled to understand what they were ‘trying’ to communicate this was probably why.

Promote Your Content Every Where Your Candidates and Clients Hang OutI know this saying from a field of dreams is often misquoted, and “build it, and they will come”- isn’t true.

You have to promote your content consistently everywhere your sector hangs out. The good news is that most of the content you can use in the recruitment sector is evergreen. In other words, it won’t date significantly over the years.

So, guess what? You can share your content multiple times over a few years; yes, you read correctly.

Use a variety of channels to promote your content, including social media on all channels, not just LinkedIn. Your website, Youtube, iTunes, and your email list.

Authority content in the recruitment sector is a powerful marketing tool that can help you stand out as you establish yourself as the go-to sector recruiter to be working with.

How We Can Help?Did you know that as a member of Superfast Circle, we provide you with all the authority content you need? It is written for candidates and clients by a trained copy and content expert.

For less than a pretty average placement fee, you can become a member and get an R.O.I. on your investment in a matter of weeks. If you want to have a quick chat, book a call with one of us here.

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As a recruitment business owner, it can be challenging to manage and direct all aspects of your business, especially when it comes to marketing, a skill set that many leaders in the recruitment and staffing space haven’t developed yet.

Yet the truth is marketing is critical to the growth and success of your business, especially in the uncertain and strange times we are now experiencing.
Marketing is about creating demand for your service that your consultants can convert into clients and placed candidates.

• What strategy could work best for you in your sector and where you are currently?
• What should your first step be?
• What are the basics to nail before you move to more advanced strategies?
• What should your short, medium, and long-term goals be?

All logical questions and one a marketing director is best placed to help with.

What are your options? Enter your outsourced virtual marketing director. So let’s talk about their many benefits, where and how they can help, and how you can find someone ideal for you.

Expertise and ExperienceOne of the primary benefits of using an outsourced virtual marketing director is that they bring expertise and experience to the table.

Marketing is complex.

Made more so in the last few years as digital marketing, tech stacks in recruitment, and A.I. have made marketing more powerful yet even more challenging to get your head around.
Marketing in the recruitment and staffing sector requires a deep understanding of the industry, target audience, and current trends.

Even the best marketing exec, manager, or director can occasionally struggle to get their head around creating demand with two separate groups: clients and candidates.
An experienced marketing director will have the knowledge and skills to create and implement effective marketing strategies that will help your recruitment business grow.

A Cost-Effective Investment OptionHiring a full-time or even part-time marketing director can be costly. For micro and small SME recruiters, this type of headcount is expensive. Factor in a salary of around £/$ 50-80k plus benefits depending on where you are in your particular country, where you are in the world, and their experience level.

Common sense says it’s not viable.

It’s a huge salary drain for a company that might only be currently turning over less than £/$500k, and yet the inputs from someone like this will be pivotal in taking you to your first million.
Here is the good part of working with an outsourced virtual marketing director.

First, they are not another employee that needs to be managed by you, yet you can have their input on a call or Zoom/Teams meeting at a fraction of the cost exactly when you need them.

This is one of the reasons we set up Superfast Circle in the first place. We knew our clients wanted more clarity and direction on their next steps, and this was where we could help them when they needed some quick input.

They Keep Ahead Of The GameRecruitment businesses are dynamic, and marketing strategies need to be flexible to keep up with changes in the industry and the market in general. Your outsourced marketing director will keep themselves ahead of the game, always!

They have to that is how they make their living. They know you need their support and advice, so they make sure they take part in additional training and conferences, so you don’t have to factor in the resource to make this happen; that is both time and money. Because they are ahead of the game, you will be too.

They Support You and Your Marketing AssistantMore recruitment and staffing companies are recruiting marketing executives, marketing apprentices and administrative assistants to support their marketing efforts.
Which is a smart strategy for anyone that wants to compete in the market. More hands are helpful as long as they know what they should be doing , which isn’t always the case.

Marketing Executives are often individuals in the early stages of their careers with less knowledge of the complexities of the recruitment industry and what strategies do and don’t translate from mainstream marketing.

Apprenticeships are a great thing. The challenge is they are theory-based rather than practical and simply are not recruitment marketing-focused, making it difficult for junior marketers to learn their craft.

Having worked with many marketers over the past few years, we have seen them struggle with a lack of direction, not understanding the client and candidate marketing dynamic, and not knowing where to prioritise their time to get the best results for their manager, you.

Did you know your outsourced marketing director can help here too?

They can give direction on what strategies to use, usually how to do them, and they act as a mentor to your junior marketer, giving them support, training, and direction.
No more wondering why your marketing apprentice isn’t delivering what you expected anymore.

A Competitive Advantage: Improved ROI And More TimeEffective marketing that creates demand with candidates and clients can help you get a higher return on investment (ROI) for your recruitment business.

Fact: An outsourced virtual marketing director can help you design, plan, and create strategies that work in your sector.

Some might even have template campaigns you can use; they have tested that work. That way, you stand out from the competition; You can read about our tested campaigns and how to access them here.

Marketing is a busy discipline that creates results, and it also takes time, especially for you as a recruitment leader when you aren’t sure you are heading in the right direction.
Your virtual M.D. will save you days of time each month and a lot of salary you won’t have to pay; while at the same time giving you a competitive advantage over other small recruitment companies in your sector.

Fancy A Chat About Working With Us As Your Virtual Marketing Director?What if you could have access to the two of us as your virtual marketing directors like other members of Superfast Circle? We have 15 years of experience delivering marketing services and strategy in the recruitment sector, plus over twenty years before that in our corporate director roles.

Have a look at our case studies and testimonials and then book a quick call here and let’s have a chat about how we can help.

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SEO was ‘THE’ thing companies wanted ten years ago. Then Google went off the wall with multiple updates and challenges to the SEO community and the shift in focus for many moved to social media.

And now more SEO conversations are happening again as companies look for different ways to stand out in their market as we all use Google as our answer to any service or product-related question we have.

So, let’s talk about SEO and what you need to consider in the recruitment space.

According to the most recent data from February this year, there are approaching two billion websites, though they aren’t all active; Surprisingly less than twenty per cent are

Remember websites are full of pages and according to Tilburg University’s research, there are nearly 5 billion active web pages now online.

Of course, they aren’t all recruitment websites though it gives you an idea of the competition to have your page and websites rank above all others.

The argument as to whether recruitment and staffing companies should use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a complex one with valid points on all sides.

On one hand, SEO makes your website more visible and therefore easier for potential clients and candidates to find you online.

Yet SEO isn’t easy.

While it can increase visibility and bring in more leads, it can also be a huge challenge for smaller companies to stand out.

Let me give you an example.

I have just Googled Engineering Jobs and page one is dominated by adverts from Total Jobs, Google Jobs, Indeed, Reed, and CV Library.

There were also another 1,820,000,000 search results displayed with that term

Ummm……. Competitive, isn’t it?

All huge players with a budget much bigger than yours who you just can’t compete with.

Making sure your website is found when people search for your company is step one and that you have content related to recruitment hiring and careers in the sector you serve will help your website appear are key steps.

So, here are several things you can do to improve your chance of getting found online.

SEO and a Well-Structured WebsiteMake sure your website is user-friendly and optimized for search engines. This includes having a clear structure, and well-written content that has relevant keywords added on every page.

Some navigation bars are confusing. Make it very easy for people to find what they want and have a clear value proposition front and centre on your home page; so, when people land on your page they stay; something Google monitors.

Your website should also load quickly and be mobile-friendly, as more people are accessing the web from their mobile devices. User experience is everything.

SEO Can Help Candidates and ClientsFact: Candidates are searching for jobs and content to help them either build their careers or help them get an interview.

Clients are looking for ideas on building teams and searching for specific recruiters who can help them find candidates.

Make sure on your website you have specific words and phrases on pages that will help. This is why it is so useful to have a blog on your website. The more pages you have, the more chances you have of your website and all its pages being found online.

Whoever builds your recruitment website needs to have a way for you to add relevant keywords and phrases because this is how Google can find you in the first place.

Let me clarify.

Imagine having a filing cabinet with multiple folders. To find what you are looking for each folder needs to be labeled correctly. If every folder says ‘folder’ it’s hard to find what you are looking for, logical right?

Yet I still see many websites online and the home page is called ‘home page’ rather than the company name.

For instance.

Acme Recruitment |Engineering Jobs in Carlisle

Is a much more descriptive phrase that says what the page is about and more likely to be ranked by Google and be found by your candidates and clients than, ‘home page’.

Use Local SEO Phrases and WordsIf you run a local recruitment company, it’s essential to optimize your site for local search results. This can be done by creating a Google My Business page, adding your business to local directories, and using location-specific keywords.

I shared an example before about engineering jobs. Be more specific and optimize (add words and phrases) with local words. For example, engineering jobs in Carlisle.

Do You Need to Outsource SEO?Outsourcing SEO? As a micro or small SME recruitment company, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Head over to Google and tap in a few classic keywords into the Google incognito window which gives you a true indication of the competition you will have.

Of course, make sure you leverage Google Jobs so your roles appear and get as many Google reviews as you can.

The truth is you don’t have the budget of Total Jobs or Indeed.

A good SEO company’s fees start in the thousands, and it will take time. There are so many other things you can do with that money.

Plus, so many other ways you can improve SEO on your website yourself.

Thanks

Denise

P.S. Have you checked out Superfast Circle? As part of your membership, we share several strategies that will help you make more placements. To find out more book a call with us here.

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As a recruitment business owner, measuring the impact of your marketing and all the effort you are putting in is critical to ensure that you are getting an R.O.I. on what you are doing; whether that is increasing your brand awareness or the number of candidates and client leads you are attracting into your pipeline.

This podcast will explore the key metrics that recruitment business owners should be tracking and provide actionable tips for measuring your marketing efforts.

First of all, what do you want to achieve?

Establish Clear GoalsEstablishing clear goals is the first step in measuring your marketing efforts. This includes setting clear goals for website traffic, lead generation, inputs, and content.

You can track progress and make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing efforts by setting clear goals.

Marketing And The Multi-Channel ApproachAs we start to talk about measurement, let’s talk about some home truths.

Marketing works: however, not everything you do will work or deliver the results exactly as you expect in the time frame you want

For instance, if you use referral as a lead generation strategy, your conversation might happen fast because the person in question has been referred to you.

All good though measuring referral conversion rates fudge your figures because they will be inflated.

Why?

Because it is so much easier to convert someone who already knows you.

Now if that person comes across you for the first time on LinkedIn, the chances of them taking your call and moving to the next stage aren’t the same as that referral someone gave you.

The moral of the story is don’t look at everything in isolation because marketing builds; I wrote a quick post on LinkedIn about it earlier this week.

That social media post someone reads that you posted or the emails they open every week, the video they watch, or the testimonial they consume all build over time. As you identify your criteria to measure, remember results take time to build. Before you open up your Excel spreadsheet, here is something else to factor in.

Identify Your Key Business DriverEvery business has key drivers that are indicators of conversion. This might be the number of client calls leading to client meetings, candidates registered, or CVs/resumes sent out. Identify your metric, and then you will know if things are working as that figure increases.

So here are several inputs to measure that indicate your marketing is moving you in the right direction.

Website TrafficWebsite traffic is a crucial metric for recruitment business owners. It provides a comprehensive view of the number of people visiting your website and engaging with your content, posts, and job board. Tools such as Google Analytics can help you track website traffic and understand where your visitors are coming from, how they interact with your site, and how they convert into leads.

Lead Generation SourcesLead generation is a key metric for measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. This includes tracking the number of leads you generate through your website, email campaigns, and other marketing initiatives.

Currently, we are running a personal branding challenge with our clients, which is part of the lead generation strategy we teach, and one individual has paused posting because she is getting so many leads. She has been tracking the posts that work, and those that don’t and what other process elements accelerate what is happening.

Tracking your lead sources is vital; where are people coming from and why?

To optimize lead generation, consider tracking lead sources and testing different tactics to see which generates the most leads.

Conversion RatesIn marketing, conversion rates refer to the percentage of visitors to your website, landing page, or LinkedIn connection request who say yes by taking a specific action, such as filling out a form or accepting your request. If you measure what happens when you change the headline or an image and get more page signups, you know what to do next time.

For instance, we are promoting a lead generation training class- you can grab a place here. As part of our marketing measurement process, I can identify where people are coming from so I know if we should post more on LinkedIn, send more emails, or up our ad spend on Facebook or Instagram.

Measuring conversion rates provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and helps you identify areas for improvement.

Final Thoughts…. Always keep a record of what you do and when. This will help you plan your marketing in a way that will make all the difference to the results you achieve.

Don’t overthink it.

A simple excel spreadsheet will do the trick where you measure your web traffic, your job applications, your LinkedIn connections, and the number of posts you make, and then you will be able to correlate where an input leads to an output

Thanks,

Denise

P.S. Wondering what strategies you should be using this year? Then jump on a call with one of us, and let’s have a chat. Book a call direct here.

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The recruitment and staffing sector has gone through a few crazy years from the weird start to this decade: talent shortages, the best years ever, counter offers galore, and a recession impacting certain tech businesses that no one expected.

All of this brings us back to something critical for any business, especially where people are involved; you have to have a marketing and sales system dialled in as a workable process; otherwise, you will continue to be at the mercy of whatever ever is happening.

So what are the biggest challenges you will need to manage this year?

I have listed several to factor into your plans ASAP.

Standing Out In a Competitive MarketStanding out in a competitive market has to be on your agenda whether you like it or not. With many recruitment businesses vying for the attention of both clients and candidates, it can be difficult for owners to differentiate their brands and establish themselves as leaders in the industry.

Especially when they are ‘doing’ minimal marketing and NOT connecting with candidates and clients at all parts of the buying cycle.

• When did you last update your imagery?
• How often are you posting on social media, and I don’t mean just job adverts?
• Do you add any value to candidates and clients with the content you share?
• Are you sharing anything about yourself and your personal brand?

Maintaining a consistent brand image across all marketing channels is vital to gaining the attention you want; remember, attention is THE currency for business growth.

Developing a brand is easier than ever for a small business; you have no excuses. You can get a good website for a few grand and Canva at £100 a year. Our Superfast Circle members even get blog posts, multiple email campaigns, reports and social media for less than a pretty average placement fee each year. Never before has it been as easy for a small recruiting firm to stand out.

Now let’s talk about an issue for everyone.

Attracting High-Quality Candidates ConsistentlyAttracting the right candidates can be challenging for recruitment business owners in every sector, especially in a highly competitive job market.

The golden days are gone, at least for now. Continuing to complain to anyone that will listen isn’t particularly useful. Time to get your creative juices going and implement strategies to increase your reach to potential candidates and build your CRM.

You will need to do more than you have in the past, and candidate nurture will be critical; look at last week’s post and podcast on the need to nurture to give you some ideas on what you need to consider.

Measuring Your Marketing SuccessDo you know if that job board you are using is working? How many people visit your job page? What are your key drivers of success? When it comes to creating demand, marketing can work immediately, and sometimes it takes months to build before you see consistent lead flow. However, business success is all about the long game; as a serious business, that is what you need to plan for.

Next week I will record a podcast on this topic for you, so come back here then.

Keeping Up With Digital Marketing TrendsA few years ago, I heard Greg Savage speak about recruiters being digital dinosaurs and how they need to get digital or die.

The start of this decade saw a digital explosion, and current research suggests the digital environment saw five years’ worth of growth in five months.

You only need to go to Rec Expo in the U.K. to see how the tech stack has changed. When we first entered the market fifteen years ago, email marketing was a bit scary for people, and Facebook was a definite no-no, and LinkedIn was a sourcing tool only; not any more!

Now we have A.I. bots who can help business processes and CRM databases and email systems that actually work.

The rise of digital marketing has led to a constant evolution of marketing strategies, and recruitment business owners must stay on top of the latest trends and technologies to remain competitive.

How are you keeping up with marketing trends? Reading this post is one way, and joining our Recruitment Marketing Mastery free private Facebook group will help you.

Building and Maintaining A Strong Online PresenceThat Creates DemandBuilding and maintaining a strong online presence, including a professional website and social media profiles, updated consistently and developing your company and personal brand voice and message is crucial for recruitment business owners across the globe.

Why?

Because this is the most effective media today to generate awareness that leads to demand for your recruiting service.

Would You Like Access to Marketing Consulting and Campaigns?The recruitment market has several marketing challenges for business owners, including standing out in a competitive market, attracting high-quality candidates, measuring the success of marketing efforts, and maintaining a consistent brand image which generates demand.

The good news is that you can stay on top of industry trends, refine the strategies that work and grow your brand.

If you want a quick call to find out how we can support you and your brand, call us at +44(0)154 920 700 or book into our diary here.

Thanks

Denise

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Lead generation is one critical area for any business. However, once you get those leads, they are not always ready to buy immediately. That is why being able to nurture both candidates and clients in today’s market could be the difference that makes the difference for you and your marketing this year.

What Is Nurturing?Let’s clarify what nurturing is, why you need to do it first, and why particularly now.

Now, what is nurturing?

Nurturing is about getting people to know more about you, your product, and your service before they decide to work with you. These individuals may need multiple touchpoints before they are at a place where they are ready to say yes.

This process is based on research from an amazing guy called Eugene Schwartz. He is one of the godfathers of marketing and advertising, and he identified a process called the Market Awareness model.

The Market Awareness ModelSchwartz teaches that as buyers decide to purchase, we go through different phases of awareness.

There are certain phases of this model I want to share. It makes sense for you that people go from unaware of your offer, product, or service to aware.

Let’s say you work in engineering, and an engineering professional comes across you.

They want a new job, or they’re an engineering company expanding; both groups have a problem to solve.

Now, for some people, I know this sounds crazy; they may not even be aware of how a recruitment company can help them. They may be cynical about the recruiting process, so they’re unaware you can help them in the way you can.

This is particularly true of candidates.

Now, of course, when it comes to B2B marketing, some people are aware that they have a problem, and then they move into this the next phase, which is awareness.

They know that they have an issue, and they want it to be solved.

The problems will be; I need a new job, or I want to develop my career, or I need to build this team. They’ve got a problem, and they are becoming solution aware. That means they go out and look at solutions for their pain but haven’t decided yet what is the best solution.

Now, this is where they can become what’s known as solution aware. They’ve looked at different solutions to the problems but haven’t decided on the best possible solution.

• Do I do it myself?
• Do I write to a company?
• Do I apply directly there?
• Do I go on to one of the job sites,
• or do I go to a recruiter?

They have become more you-aware, so they’re aware that, “Oh, hang on a minute here, there’s a recruitment company that is a specialist in engineering that maybe I could work with them or, oh, hang on a minute here, I’ve seen this recruitment company on LinkedIn a lot.

They say they can help me build the talent pipeline, our talent pipeline; maybe we should contact them.

That’s when they become deal ready

Now, the thing about this is it can take quite a significant amount of time for this to happen. I’ll give you an example.

I have the desire to buy a lodge in Scotland. It’s been one of my bucket list goals for some time. Haven’t quite got around to it. It’s not going to happen in the next 12 or 18 months.

However, I have started, lovely Facebook that it is; I’ve started surfing and looking online, and of course, I’m being retargeted now by Facebook and all these different adverts.

I’m looking at where there are different types of lodges in other places with additional facilities. I am now looking for solutions, but I am not ready to buy yet.

I’ve downloaded a couple of brochures and had a look. I’m not ready to go and look at this yet. However, I’m on several email lists and am being emailed because those individual companies are nurturing me now. After all, I expressed a want, and now I’m on their email list, and they’re keeping in touch with me.

There’s one particular one that’s pretty good, and I like them. They’re around Loch Lomond, and I’m looking at that. They’re building a connection with me now.

People don’t tend to buy lodges overnight; It’s not a rash decision. They may be fully aware that I could be on their email list for two years before I buy something. However, they are nurturing me with pictures and invitations to go and look around one of their sites to have a low-cost weekend maybe there. They are starting to nurture me because they understand that I am going through different parts of the buyer cycle.

This is a high-value purchase and something that I am not going to jump into straight away. Now, when you look at people and recruitment in general, that is a high-value purchase.

Let’s use an example of engineering again: the engineering role in question is £/$ 50k.

Let’s say the fee for this is 20%. You will get a 10K placement fee when you place that role, which is pretty significant. However, that candidate isn’t somebody you’re just going to pull out of thin air. It’s probably going to be somebody that you have come across that’s been on your database for a while that you are starting to nurture rather than you just going to ring somebody up out the blue that they may have uploaded their CV, but they’ve never heard from you.

Using Nurture Will Increase Your Client and Candidate ConversionsUsing nurture will increase your conversion.

When you think about how the market is at the moment, do you think if candidates or clients have not heard anything from you, they’re likely to come and work with you to find them a role, a position, rather than somebody that’s been nurturing them, has been sending them great content, giving them ideas, helping them map their career out?

Who do you think they will work with as time moves on?

It’s human nature.

It’s one of Cialdini’s principles of influence; called reciprocity. You’ve been helping them, and now you are going to be the first person that they contact when it comes to looking for that next role.

It’s the same with everybody; for many recruiters, one reason they get so stressed out is they rely on spot business. They count on picking up the phone and calling the people ready to move now; only.

Those who are ready to buy now are a very small percentage of the overall population that could buy. They don’t spend the time nurturing their candidates and clients because then if they did, trust me, life becomes so much easier because things are popping up in a good way.

People are contacting, picking up the phone and speaking to you. People open those emails that you’re sending because what you’ve done is you’ve built some great rapport with them.

You’ve built some skin in the game with them because you are helping them all the time. Trust me; people want to be nurtured in today’s environment rather than just having somebody pick up the phone they have never really heard of that sends them a connection on LinkedIn straight away, so, “Well, I’ve got a job. Do you want to have a conversation with me?”

That can work for some people, but not everyone, particularly those passive candidates and those you now want to be able to place; That’s the benefit of nurture.

Thanks,

Denise

How We Can Help You Set Up Nurture CampaignsFor our clients, we provide and write campaigns for them around nurture. They find this a complete revelation for them when they start working with us as members of Superfast Circle and how marketing can work when it comes to nurturing people all along the buyer’s cycle; if you want to find out more, drop us an email or book a quick call here.

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Today I want to talk about where you start if you haven’t done much marketing. I know the market has changed significantly in the past couple of years. Many recruiters have had their best year ever as they came out of COVID, yet things are starting to shift now.

Lead generation is on many people’s agendas as a key action item.

Interestingly, last week’s podcast went out to our subscribers– If you’re not subscribed, download one of our reports, and you’ll be able to get on our subscriber list.

I suggested that I might do a webinar on lead generation, and obviously, lead generation is different in our sector because we’re talking about candidates and we’re talking about clients. We’re also talking about talent for those who want to grow your team.

I was taken aback by how many responses I got, so that will happen. It’s probably going to be next month when that happens to get it all set up and everything else, so we’ve got that coming for you.

Our theme over the next few weeks is looking at some of the real pain points that you are going through at the moment and how we can help you from a marketing perspective.

Start With These 3 Key Areas of FocusI want to give you three key focus areas to start your marketing today.

Always remember that marketing and sales are the growth engine of any business, and that’s where your focus should be. Marketing is about creating demand, and that’s demand for people at all parts of the buyer’s cycle.

Then once you’ve created that demand, you have a better chance of converting your contacts into clients who work with you and candidates you place.

The Gold Around Your FeetLet’s start with the first area. I put this as number one because this is an area where you will get results incredibly fast, and that is the gold around your feet. Sometimes it’s referred to as low-hanging fruit. These are people, candidates, and clients, both past and present, that you’ve reached out to work in your organization. These are people that you are already in connection with.

Fact: A lot can happen in six months for many of us, and where an individual was in the past might not be where they are now, and this is a great strategy to use to re-engage with people. You can build a campaign around it and reach back out to them.

Remember last week’s podcast– If this is the first podcast you’ve listened to, go back to last week’s podcast, where I talk about working with those connected individuals.

If you have a database, you can filter people with whom you have not had a conversation within the past six months, and please, don’t let your crazy primitive brain jump in and say, “Oh no, they won’t be interested.”

You do not know whether they wouldn’t be interested. This is the first area I would look at, a list of clients and a list of candidates, and I would get in contact with them.

Now, whether you use an automated email campaign, something we do with our Superfast Circle clients, or you, depending on how many you’ve got, you start to do a ring round, or you go onto LinkedIn and reach out to them.

Whatever it is, do that and start conversing with these individuals. That will throw up many people that you can begin to talk to who are probably interested in what you have now. Be that a candidate or be that a client.

I remember a few years ago, we were working with a particular client, we were looking at this strategy with him, and he pulled up a list of whom he thought his team had been in contact with

He got, I think, a couple of hundred people, and he said, “Next time we meet, I’ll tell you how this goes.” Anyway, he’d started to go through the process with his team, and when we next had a conversation with him, he was very miffed; He used a different word, but we’ll say he was very annoyed.

Why?

Because he had found out several candidates had gone and worked with another recruitment company to get their next role, they hadn’t returned to this particular company’s brand. They’d gone elsewhere because his team hadn’t had regular contact with them.

Remember that doing this is a first start when you haven’t done a lot of marketing, but it’s something really to dial into your marketing campaigns. You should be doing it consistently because with the market the way it is, people are crazily being made redundant, and there might be some amazing candidates now on the market.

Clients are also in a situation where they might lose somebody because somebody has made them a better offer. Then suddenly, they need that role backfilling, so remember that is a great way to start, and this should be a campaign that you always consistently run. Remember, the gold around your feet will make a massive difference.

Identify Who You Want To Work WithThe second thing is, who are you working with currently? Have you identified the ideal candidate and client you want to work with?

This is foundational work regarding marketing and something to spend time on to get it right while leveraging the low-hanging fruit and the gold around your feet.

At the end of last year, we had several conversations with companies who said, “We want to be working with companies on bigger roles because we should be doing that. We’ve got so much experience.” If that’s the case, you might need to shift your focus on what companies you’re working with, so make that identification.

I’m sure that at the end of last year, you reviewed where you’re spending your time, what companies you’re working with, and which candidates work best with you.

Use that information as you build campaigns around who you want to work with as companies, candidates, and clients.

Once you’ve got that sense of who you’re working with, it’s easier to focus on where to direct your energy. For instance, many of you may have Sales Navigator or Recruiter; from here, you can pull a list of those companies and individuals.

Let’s say you now want to work with companies with over 50 employees in a certain geography. You can go into Sales Navigator and pull a list of those people, some of whom you might already be connected to, and then reach out to them.

Getting Out On SocialNow, with that new knowledge, number three is about getting out on social. Social media is a gem, as it is one of the easiest ways to consistently get in front of your market to demonstrate who you are, how you can help people, and your professionalism and expertise as a recruiter.

Depending on which sector you’re in, LinkedIn might be the platform for you; for others, it might be LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, but think about your social channels and start posting consistently on social.

One client, when he first started working with us, when we talked about the gold around your feet, he noticed that he got a lot of business back from his past clients because suddenly they said, “Oh, I’ve seen you again. I wondered what had happened to you. I’ve not seen you for ages,” because he was posting on social.

So, for easy wins, start doing that now.

If you want an experience of the style of content to post on LinkedIn, follow us on LinkedIn

It’s Deniseoyston and Sharon Newey. If you’re a recruitment business owner or marketer, come and connect with us, and I will accept your connection request and then ring the bell on our profiles. You will then be notified when we post so you can experience what to post.

Because you’ll see that once you’re out on social media, you can brand yourself and your organization and share great content demonstrating your expertise.

For many of you I know have thousands of followers. If you get back in front of those followers, they will appreciate you and see you, which will make a difference.

Those are three easy things you can be doing when you’ve not done much marketing,

Yes, there are lots of other things you can do. I’m going to talk about email in the future, and we’ve got a webinar on that website that you can go and sign up for if you look at the downloads bar at the top. Here is a link that will help.

There you have three very straightforward ideas that work and will work for you and your organization.

This is Denise saying bye for now, and I’ll see you next week.

Thanks

Denise.

P.S. We share multiple ways to market your recruitment company, starting from scratch by helping you build your 90-day plan and providing you with all the content resources you need. Book a quick call with one of us here to find out more.

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What are we all expecting to happen to our business in 2023? I know everyone’s talking about the R-word, and maybe you are going into this year with some uncertainty with everything else that’s happening.

That is why I wanted to kick off this year’s podcast with one of the key factors and focus that we all have when it comes to our business, generating leads.

Now, it’s very trendy at the moment, as I mentioned in the intro, for marketers to confuse people!

Demand Versus Lead GenerationAs marketers, we like our jargon words, and some of you, you will have seen the conversation about demand generation versus lead generation and how we always have to start with demand generation first, and then we move into lead generation.

Do you know what?

Certain members of my profession like to confuse people

I want to let you into a secret; It’s all fundamentally the same.

The premise of marketing is to generate demand for our service; that is its role.

To create demand for our recruiting service, we start with creating awareness among people that have a recruiting or career problem and don’t know who we are and how we can help them.

We then build on this as they enter our marketing funnel; you can find out more about marketing funnels for recruiters here in a previous post I wrote and recorded.

Topline: We are taking someone from unaware to aware consideration and then decision to work with us.

Please do not get yourself confused about, oh, well, is it demand generation? Is it lead generation? At the end of the day, you want people engaging with your business, leads you can talk to, and then you can convert.

I was talking to somebody about recording this podcast the other day actually and what I was going to do, and they suggested that you might want to do that as a webinar, Denise. This is one of our clients.

The Recruitment Lead Generation TriadI want to give you some fundamentals of how lead generation works in today’s market; so you can kick off your activities in the right way this year.

I want to share with you the recruitment lead generation triad, which works especially well in today’s market. Now, some of you listen to this when you’re at the gym when you are walking the dog, or your drive to work; please do not write if you are in a car, go back to this and listen to it later!

Grab an A4 sheet of paper and draw a triangle.

At the top of the triangle, where the pointy bit is, I want you to put;

• content marketing machine.
• Then on the left-hand side, at the bottom, I want you to put current connections.
• Then on the right-hand side, I want you to put cold outreach.

I am going to talk about each of these elements.

Connections, Cold Outreach and Your Content MachineNow, when it comes to lead generation, these are the three areas of focus that you need to consider this year because being a visible brand in the market is becoming critical, and that is where your content machine comes in. I’m going to talk about that in a second.

No matter who you are or where you are, I am sure you have some connections.

We were talking to one of our new clients this morning on one of our Superfast Circle calls, and he was talking about the fact that he’s actually got a CRM database with 40,000 plus candidates.

This is a clean database he can leverage, which currently he isn’t!

I suspect you have a database of connections, both candidates and clients; you aren’t leveraging.

Then the other thing that a lot of people I know are not as keen on doing, however, if you want to grow and scale your business, is cold outreach.

This is where the cold outreach, the current connections, and the content machine all work together because as you focus on each of these areas, I’m going to explain a little bit more about each one in turn, that makes a massive difference to you.

Your Content Machine is a Huge ConvincerLet’s start with the top of the triangle, with your content machine and getting attention in your market.

I was chatting with a client of ours the other day, and I was explaining the fact that if people can’t see you, you cannot sell to them. You have to be visible in front of your clients and in front of your candidates consistently.

Over Christmas, I sent a series of videos out on social media. One of them was Sharon. I made her go outside and record this video the week when it was something like -9 in the UK!

She was sharing our marketing audit checklist. She told people, “Look if you want a copy of this, drop a note in the comment box. Somebody did that, who’d been watching our videos. I sent him the checklist, and he became a client less than ten days later.

To be transparent, a conversion doesn’t always happen as fast as this, though you might be surprised how fast content can work for you.

Now, if we hadn’t taken that time to share that content on LinkedIn, on our social channels, in our emails, that person, that individual, that company would not be working with us.

That is the beauty of having a brand that is out online because what it will do is help you with your cold outreach, and it also helps you with those people that are already in your sphere of influence. They’re already on your database, and they’re already a connection on LinkedIn by creating content that is going out there that makes a massive difference to them because, suddenly, you are on their radar again.

With our Superfast Circle clients, one of the first wins they get is because they are posting on social media in the way we suggest, and then their past candidates and clients get in contact with them again. They say, “Oh, I see you’re on social media. I’ve got a role. I’ve got this, or can you help me with this job.” All of those different things around content will help you.

Now your content machine is very easy to set up. This is something that we help people in Superfast Circle implement. This is about the emails that you send. This is about what you post on social media. It might be about videos that you create. It might be about added resources and reports that you provide.

If people aren’t seeing you around, people don’t know who you are, that cold call you make, that cold outreach doesn’t have the same impact.

Fact: That you aren’t around, and people aren’t seeing you, your database will have forgotten about you if you are not using content to leverage your relationships with them, so that is number one, you must commit to building a content machine for your recruitment business.

Your Current ConnectionsNow, the next thing is using the connections that you already have. These may be connections in your database. I suggest that your CRM is always the best place to start because people there are more connected to you.

Then, of course, you’ve got your LinkedIn connections, and then, you’ve got people that may be on different social platforms that you’re connected to, on Instagram or on messenger or whatever that might be.

Mic drop moment

It is easier to sell to someone who already knows you. The marketing jargon for this is low-hanging fruit or gold around your feet.

These people are probably currently on your database and who you are not communicating with consistently. This is where you are really losing out because if you’ve got a database of people, then you can nurture those people; you can start to pull them through the funnel from being originally aware of you to be on your database to thinking, “Hang on a minute here, maybe we should be working with people.”

Of course, these current connections are probably people that you have placed, people that you currently work with, who are also a great vehicle to get referrals from.

The final part of the triad is cold outreach.

Cold OutreachNow, when you are getting referrals from people or talking about you to others about the great experience they’ve had with you, and you’ve got your content machine, cold outreach will impact your business.

I know lots of us don’t like doing it; However, this strategy works.

Sara Blakely is the CEO of Spanx. In 2012 she became the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire.

In a New Your Times article, she shared that one of her biggest clients was Nordstrom, and she got Nordstrom through a cold call that she herself made.

Cold outreach works as recruiters, you know this, and though we all want more inbound leads mastering cold outreach will elevate your reach and the success you rightly deserve.

The good news is there are many ways to use a cold outreach strategy when your content machine supports you.

The first strategy is cold emailing; we share more on this topic in a post I wrote on how to use cold emailing to generate recruitment leads here.

You can send out a cold email; you can still do that in the UK because if you send it to a business-to-business email, particularly for clients, that will work for you.

You can do cold outreach on LinkedIn. There are so many different ways that you can do that. You can do that through direct messaging and paid traffic which is a whole strategy in itself.

Do you know what? You can still do cold calling. Surprisingly, people will still answer their telephone when you ring them, and they will also answer text.

There are so many ways you can do cold outreach that works. Is it harder? Yes, it is.

You need to be consistent and give it longer, but honestly, I don’t know where we would be without doing cold outreach.

Several things for you to consider here. I think almost certainly I’m going to do a webinar on this. Keep tuned because I will let you know when it’s available.

Go back to the triad we shared earlier and review which of the three points you have in place.

You’ve got connections at the bottom left-hand side, right-hand side, cold outreach, and at the top, your content machine.

Start to work consistently on each of those elements; your lead generation and conversion will change completely this year.

Thanks

Denise

How We Can Help Your Lead Generation This YearWith our members of Superfast Circle, we give them a relevant lead generation strategy for their sector, including all the content and campaigns to use in each part of the triad. Book a call with us here if you want to find out how this will work for you.

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Becky Crowther is an experienced marketer and is in the unique situation of being a Superfast Circle member on two occasions. Originally pre the birth of her daughter, working with a recruitment company with over fifty employees and now as a part-time marketer.

In this case study, Becky shares her experience across both companies.

First, let’s discuss the amazing KSB Recruitment Becky’s current employer.

KSB Recruitment BackgroundFrom its humble beginnings in a cramped office in the centre of Birmingham thirty years ago, MD Dawn Bannister and KSB Recruitment have grown to one of the leading hospitality and catering recruitment specialists in the Midlands.

Offering a tailored service to the needs of each client, KSB has a varied and distinguished list of clients, including the West Midlands Police, Barclaycard, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Mercedes AMG and Marriot.

KSB Recruitment is unique, having first supplier status with two major, government-sanctioned catering companies – one in the UK and one in the States.

KSB RecruitmentRebecca Crowther has been working in marketing for eight years. In Becky’s own words:

I started my career in a large global company with a big marketing team. Then in 2017, I entered the world of recruitment marketing when I joined my previous company. Being the only marketing person in a business, when you’ve come from the support of a big team, is quite scary and very challenging.

That’s where I met you guys and found out about Superfast Circle. Earlier this year, I joined KSB Recruitment, wanting to work part-time, having had a baby girl.

What was “it” like as a marketer before you joined Superfast Circle?It was very lonely. As you can imagine, coming from a big team of people with specialist expertise, you could bounce ideas off to suddenly have no one.

You are the person who is in the know; you’re the expert. You’re the person that people go to. Then, you’re in a situation where you’re thinking, “Is what I’m doing okay?”

You start questioning yourself because you’ve no one to bounce off. That’s quite scary and challenging at times.

In my previous company, the business didn’t have much going on in marketing. It was quite fragmented internally, and the external messaging needed work.

The challenge was to get the messaging right before diving straight in and doing the tactical stuff, especially as the company had two distinct brands and over fifty consultants.

What specific marketing problem were you looking to solve?

Then I think the biggest challenge is educating the consultants on marketing because they are the people who deliver the relationship building.

Yes, you can create the brand; you can make that consistent impression that people see and build trust in the brand itself and the company, and we always have to remember that people buy people first.

The consultants are the ones that talk to clients and candidates. Many consultants have always done what they’ve been told to do and held on to the view, ‘Well, it works, so why would I want to try anything different?’

Not realising how much the way people market and how individuals make ‘buying’ decisions has changed.

How did you find Superfast Recruitment?I felt I needed a sounding board. I needed somebody I could get feedback from because I wasn’t sure how to prioritise things, and I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

I needed more clarity.

While I found that there were many things out there to help you with marketing in general, there wasn’t anything specific about recruitment marketing, which is a slightly different beast, I think, compared to the marketing that you deliver in other companies.

Some of the generic marketing advice didn’t always fit with what I was trying to achieve. I wanted somebody who understood the industry, so I came across you guys when I thought, You know what, I wonder if anybody has done a podcast on recruitment marketing.

I thought, “I bet I won’t find anything,” Then I came across you guys and binge-listened to your podcasts and then got in touch.

What made you decide to join Superfast Circle? I think it’s the fact that I would get consistent, ongoing support rather than a one-off training session, a monthly call, or some email support here and there. Instead, it was a constant support in terms of:

Question and Answer calls a couple of times a week.

The Facebook group is an amazing community where you can drop in a file, pop in a question, ask an opinion, and get advice.

Not only will you personally respond to things, but other guys within the group will add their opinion. There are quite a few marketers now, which is great because it’s valuable to hear other marketers’ opinions.

On top of that, there is the Recruitment Marketing Blueprint, full of tutorial videos. You can learn about different elements; I’ve found them useful. If I’m doing something, I’m like, “I wonder if I’ve forgotten something, let me just go over this video again,” and you can keep dropping in and out of them.

I think my previous MD bought into that because it was not only supporting me in building my skill set and my knowledge, which will help the company, but they are also getting something. As I’m sure anybody knows, as a recruitment marketer, time is of the essence, and you don’t always have the time to do everything.

Also, you create monthly templates for us that we can utilise for our clients and candidates. That saves so much time because I have marketing collateral that I can use in multiple ways. I have content and a campaign that’s been created for me rather than to do it myself.

There were so many benefits to joining SFC; I could also pass on whatever I learned to the consultants. It was like double benefits; I suppose it wasn’t just upskilling me; it was also upskilling the consultants and educating them through you, if that makes sense.

What has exceeded your expectations while working with us?I think it’s around constant support and feedback. This sounds bad, but I didn’t expect it to be as good as it is.

I’m in many Facebook groups, and sometimes you can put something up, and nobody bothers answering you at all. It may take days to answer you, but this is almost immediate. It’ll be a couple of minutes most of the time before someone will come back to you if not half an hour. When you’re doing something, you’re getting that sort of support straight away rather than waiting for it. It has exceeded my expectations.

Also, the training you offer is such good training. You and Denise are constantly keeping up to date with what’s happening in the industry regarding marketing trends. If things change, you’ll update us. That’s invaluable because you’re not just sticking to what you know; you’re constantly learning and keeping up to date as change is so fast-paced.

What would you tell someone who is considering joining Superfast CircleI would say, “Yes, go ahead and jump in with two feet and enjoy”.

Don’t struggle on your own. When I started out in this industry, I felt like it was my responsibility to get this done, and I had to do it on my own; I shouldn’t have to help. Asking for help was a bit like failing from my point of view. It felt as though I had been recruited to be a magic bullet. I would think, “I need to prove I can do something here.”

They always say two heads are better than one. I think ten heads are better than one.

Invest in Superfast Circle because you get that team vibe and access to expertise.

Thanks

Denise

P.S. Superfast Circle could be exactly what you are looking for if you are a business owner with a marketer. To find out how book a call with one of us here.

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Before we start, there are a couple of things that will be useful for this whole process.

[First, remember this is a direct transcription for your benefit, so excuse any rogue typos.]

I did mention them last week, but I’m going to mention them again, just in case you haven’t grabbed them. If you’ve not downloaded the latest Recruitment Marketing Checklist, then do that because as you are moving forward towards the end of the year, I’m sure many of you are thinking about your strategy for 2023 already.

You do need to know where you are. If you haven’t got a copy of the checklist, or if you’ve downloaded it before, go back and print it off again and fill out the 30 questions. At least you have a sporting chance of knowing where you are versus where you want to be.

That’s number one. Number two – social media. We’re going to be talking about content in a second, but social media is pivotal for your brand awareness, particularly at this point in time, because of what’s happened over the past couple of years. You can download another of our reports. It’s going to help you, and they’re all complimentary. Just go along to www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/smm. If you’ve not downloaded the audit checklist, that’s, again, www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl.

The Many Benefits of Content Marketing Let’s talk about content marketing and its many benefits for you as a recruitment and staffing company. Today, I’ve highlighted 10 specific ways that utilizing content marketing will help you and your recruitment brand. Let’s start with number one.

1. Content Marketing Improves Brand Awareness Number one is that content marketing is the most cost-effective way to improve your brand awareness. Now, content comes in many forms. It can be distributed in different ways, which we’re going to come on to. As a first premise, always remember that in today’s marketplace, one of the fantastic benefits of using content is that as an SME business or as a micro-business, you can compete in ways that don’t cost you an awful lot of money. You can get your brand out and in front of candidates and clients – your ideal candidates, your ideal clients – in a very easy way.

Now, you can outsource the writing of content. We have provided writing services in the past, and we provide them for our Superfast Circle members. Just imagine that this is something that anyone can teach themselves to do. A lot of people say, “Oh, I can’t write”. You might be surprised how good you could be at writing if you follow a specific process. We train people to write content in such a way that you could position yourself in front of your market and in a way that makes a huge impact on you and your brand.

2. Content Marketing Gives You Greater Exposure The second thing about content marketing is that it gives you more ways for people to find you.

There are multiple ways that you can use content for people to find you.

One is through Social Media, and the other is by optimising content for the search engines.

So, social media – LinkedIn and, depending on what sectors you’re in, on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can post updates and information about developing a career and recruiting. You can write up to 1300 characters on LinkedIn and even more on Facebook and Instagram. Here is an example from a recent LinkedIn post of mine.

Another way is to optimize your website for the search engines, so you appear for the people searching for you. If you are writing a regular piece of content on your website, each time you post, that is another page on your website. Another page where people can find you and a signal to Google you are an authority in the sector.

A couple of years ago, we had an event in the Lake District for our Superfast Circle members. One of the members was lamenting that his website didn’t appear as he wanted it to on Google.

When was the last time you Googled your website? Just look at how many links appear for your website? Are there multiple links? Are you struggling to find it? One of the ways to change that is to have additional pages on your website, so additional content. This particular client of ours at the time hadn’t got any blog content at all. He had what I would class as a very ‘thin website’. It just had a few basic pages, and he had his jobs page.

Google wasn’t seeing him as an authority brand in his particular sector, and that was quite easy to rectify. He started to produce more content, and lo and behold, his website appeared. If you have more content on your website, it will be much easier for people to search and find you.

I don’t know about you, but if I go and Google a supplier by name of any description and I can’t find them on the first page, or I can’t find multiple links for them, I can’t find a Google places a piece of content around them, I’m always a bit sceptical – are they the real deal? That is one thing about content; it will increase traffic to your authority website and will help in your positioning.

3. Content Comes in Many Forms Content can be created in multiple ways. It can be reused, and it’s really easy to do. Some of the technology around recording, videoing, and writing has become available in the last few years, making marketing easier. The next podcast that I will be recording is about my lessons from recording over 300 podcasts over the last eight years and how easy it’s become relative to when I first started recording The Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast.

Think about all the multimedia you can now use, from podcasting to video to live streaming.

The good news is there are so many ways that you can use content. It doesn’t have to be in the written word. You could record something and have it transcribed. There are multiple ways to use content that will also impact how people consume you and your brand. Some people prefer to listen. Listener numbers on all the podcasting platforms are increasing exponentially now. You’ve got all these different ways that you can use content to your advantage.

4. Content Creates Connection Creating content using many different modalities creates a connection with you. Content allows you to connect, and as you connect with people, they get to know you, and people, as we all know, want to work with people they know, like, and trust before they hand over money. People can get a sense of you, who you are and your personality because we all have so much choice in today’s market.

Some people probably won’t work with Sharon and I. We might not be their cup of tea. There are other people where I’m certain we are their cup of tea. They get to know that through the content we write, through the videos we create, and through the podcasts we record. That is available to you. It’s an easy way for you to start attracting your tribe through the things that you do and say.

5. Content Creates Omnipresence One of the advantages of utilising content marketing for you and your brand is that it creates omnipresence. The famous marketeer, Jay Abraham, came up with the original quote around omnipresence related to marketing.

His thoughts are that we can be everywhere because we now have access to multimedia as an SME business. Content that you create can be shared across multiple channels. A lot of people say, “Oh, well, you need to put something different on Twitter. You need to put something different on YouTube, something different on Facebook”. To be honest, you don’t need to do that. You can share your content across multiple channels.

I think one of the things about this — and remember, email as well, we’re not even touching email a lot in this particular podcast, but of course, email is your content for making a connection with people. Just think about it, over the last couple of years, social media has gone through the roof with the number of people present on different channels because people were craving connection. I think there’s now something like 3.4 billion members on Facebook. Something like 2.6 billion people on YouTube.

Even LinkedIn is now up to just shy of 800 million members. You can see the difference that would make – if you are on all of these channels – some of your clients will be on these channels too. You can see how being present in front of people and the opportunity that could bring you; the way you do that is fundamentally through utilising content.

6. Content Builds Authority For Your Brand Number six links to what we were just talking about when it comes to omnipresence. That is around building your authority brand for your market. You don’t need to be the authority on recruitment, but you need to be an authority in recruitment in your specific sector. Of course, that’s easier to do because your tribe is much smaller, but you can do that by using all these multiple channels. If you’ve ever had that experience where you watch an advert on the TV, and then you see it again, and then suddenly you’re opening a magazine, and that advert is there again. Or you go and look up their website, and suddenly you get re-targeted, and that person appears to be everywhere.

Our primitive brains then think, oh, well, if that person’s in all these different places, then maybe they’re okay. You can link to how our human psyche works when you start to build your authority. Of course, you can do this with the content that you create. You could write a blog post that then gets made into multiple images that you share. It’s recorded as a podcast; it’s recorded as a video. There are so many things you could do that help build your authority and opportunity in the market.

7. Content Plays Into The Buyers’ Cycle Coming on to number seven now, we have talked so many times about the buyers’ cycle, about how people move from the awareness that they have a problem, through to wanting that problem solved, to identifying a supplier recruiting partner they can work with.

One of the things that content can do for you ahead of time is answer the questions in your clients’ and your candidates’ minds. I am certain most, if not all, of you will have a client and candidate pathway mapped out. Then, when they start to work with you, what’s the journey they take? There are lots of questions going on in people’s minds.

Now, imagine you are building your authority. One of the ways you build your authority is by answering all those questions going on in people’s minds. You know what it’s like; you have something pop up. The first thing you do, you jump onto Google, and you Google it, or because you are connected to somebody on LinkedIn, you just happen to see that piece of content. Our brains can do really good things for us; it searches out where all these things are, which helps. You can answer questions ahead of time for your people through the content that you create.

8. Content Warms Up Your Contacts Number eight is it warms people up to working with you. We’ve touched on this briefly a little bit earlier on in this podcast. People get to know you as an individual, and then, if you are the type of person they resonate with, your content is warming them up even more as they’re moving down the buyers’ cycle to start working with you. There are lots of different ways that you can do that in the content that you write.

9. Content Can Be Used To Answer Objections The next thing is the elephant in the room – people have objections. People have objections to working with you. It’s not the right time; it’s too time-intensive, you charge too much as a recruitment company, anyone can do it now, all these things that go on. You can create content that answers people’s objections. Imagine somebody is in your funnel. Maybe they’re on your email list; they’re a candidate considering whether they work with your recruiting company or not; you can answer a lot of their objections even before you get on the phone and speak to them.

It’s probably more likely that people, once they’ve read some of the content you’re sharing, will then take a call from you or maybe sit down and have a chat about their future career. All that can happen because you’re answering their objections.

10. Case Studies Can Be Used As Content The final one I want to talk about that people don’t always consider is content can be used in the form of a case study, or it can be used in the form of a testimonial. We share testimonials as memes (visual graphics) on LinkedIn, Facebook, and in all these places that we hang out.

We also have written testimonials all over our website. Would that make a difference because people search for things like that? Think about your content there. It is a great convincer as people are moving down the buyers’ cycle and consider working with you because people don’t want to make a mistake. If they can go and read one of your client case studies or candidate case studies or testimonials, that will make a difference for them.

So there you have just 10 of the many benefits of using content marketing for you and your recruitment organisation. Get to work on these and get some of them moving before the end of the year; you will be amazed at the difference it will make with your connection and the rapport with candidates and clients and how many you can convert.

How We Can Help We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilize the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see if we can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.

Thanks,

Denise

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Today’s podcast gives you a sneak peek of one of the elements of Superfast Circle and the private podcast we provide.

This particular recording is transcribed below for you, and the topic is increasing conversions.

Hi there, everyone; this is Denise, with another marketing quick hit as we cycle through November. Over the next few weeks, I want to share one or two conversations we had at the event around messaging.

Many of you are thinking about what will happen next year; how do we convince more candidates and clients to buy from us?

I want to share some of the key reasons why people buy and align this with some important communication points to get across.

When purchasing a service from a B2B supplier, think about what is important for people as they’re making that buying decision and what are some of the buttons that need to be ticked or pressed for them to say yes.

The first couple of things I want to share with you are around one, having a unique strategy, and the second around structure.

If you think about this as strategy and structure, and then over the coming couple of weeks remaining in November, I’m going to share three other important elements to pull in.

I wish I could say I’ve developed this myself, though I’ve adapted it for the recruitment space. Some of you will have heard of a guy, I’m sure, called Brendon Burchard; he’s a coach trainer. He talks about why people buy, what he calls the atmosphere, and the energy around people buying that you need to ensure you are communicating.

Your Unique StrategyLet’s look at your unique strategy. Some of you probably think, “Yes, but we’re not that unique, Denise.” As you will remember from the conversations we had at the event, you most certainly are unique, particularly when you talk about how you deliver a service and how you have got the experience over many, many years about the way that you work with candidates and the way that you work with clients.

You need to list why you are different, which you all are. Some of you have worked in corporate settings before, you’ve worked for Hays, Michael Page, whatever, and you have a level of experience that others haven’t.

Some of you have been an MD and worked in that particular sector yourself, so you have that element you can add to your strategy. Hence, people know that you understand more about the recruitment space in your specific sector.

The particular strategy that you have may involve video interviewing. Yes, some other people do that, but they might not do it like you do. There might be a particular process around that, that you have honed, that you might have your 10, 15, 20 stage process that you do.

Please don’t assume that everyone does it the same as you. We know that we have spoken to many recruitment companies, staffing organisations, and executive search over the years, and everyone does it a bit differently. Some people focus on one element; other people focus on another.

Depending on your ideal buying persona, your avatar, and different elements that might be important for them, you will find this out as you’re talking to them. Think about your unique strategy. Of course, one of the reasons I’m sharing this on the podcast is to come onto the calls and have a conversation with Sharon and I because some of you have been with us a long time, we know you and your business, and we can shine a light on you that maybe you’re not shining on yourself.

Who hasn’t had that situation where you think you’re not particularly good at something, and one of your friends will turn around and say, “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re amazing at that”?

It’s because sometimes we don’t always hold the mirror up to ourselves to see how good we are at different things and what does make us unique.

Your StructureThe second thing I want to talk about here is structure. People love structure. They want to know how they will be handheld through the process.

Depending on the size of the company they’re working with, some individuals may not know or understand how the whole talent process works.

Yes, you would be surprised that isn’t always the case. When I was recruiting back in the day, I thought I knew everything. When I worked with a few experienced farmer recruiters, I realised I knew “&~! all!

It’s ensuring that you explain the structure to them and make them feel taken care of. Sometimes this is unconscious; they don’t always communicate with you that this is what they need. If you explain to me, “Okay, what’s going to happen first is this, then this is going to happen, then I provide this, then I do X.”

Remember, we’ve talked about this in the past, particularly around candidates that you have a wealth of content that we give you from SFR that you can use throughout the candidate and client journey.

As a member of the circle, what about the fact that, well, as we go through this process, we give you this, we provide this for you in your first 30 days, to how to excel, we provide you with a whole interviewing cheat sheet, we provide you with this? We have so much material that you could use in this situation.

Think about the structure. People do love to be led.

I remember reading something of Seth Godin’s a couple of weekends ago when he was talking about the key thing missing for many people: the need to be led. Even though they don’t ask for it, they want to know the structure.

We’re in uncertain times when we’re in uncertain times, people need direction, and they need to know, what are we doing now?

What do we do next? How’s that going to help me?

Over this week, those are two things to ponder and think about how can we as a team communicate this?

Look at some of our social media and copy, and you will recognise the process. We’ll send various images out, and you’ll notice on an image that it might be someone with their head in their hands or somebody sitting at a desk. There’s one we have with a marketer seated at a desk saying, “I just don’t know where to start.”

Then we talk about structure and how we give people structure, and you’ll see how we link the two. If you imagine, what are some things you could start thinking about as you go through this process?

We talked today about unique strategy, and then obviously, we’re going to talk about structure.

Then over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to share the next three critical things. Listen in next Monday for the next two ideas.

Thanks

Denise

P.S. All the training and coaching that takes plus is distributed via a private podcast feed. Join us before the end of 2023; your price will be locked in forever. To find out more, book a call with one of us here.

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The recruitment market has experienced a crazy few years. Now more than ever, organisations appreciate the value that an experienced recruitment company can bring to their business when recruiting the best talent to move forward.

As the recruitment market becomes more competitive and client acquisition is back on your radar, you will likely be asked to provide a proposal to identify that you are the recruiter of choice they ‘should ‘be working with.

So, if proposal writing is new to you, here are a few suggestions on where to start.

Writing a winning proposal can be the difference between gaining a new client and a recruitment project and losing out to the competition. It will help your prospective client make a more informed decision about the service level you can provide.

It All Starts With Research and PlanningBefore you start writing your proposal, there are a few things to consider, which will involve research and market intelligence.

Researching your client is vital. You need to understand both their business and growth goals.

Plus, critically, what is happening in their current market. Putting the time and effort into writing a client-winning proposal is fine as long as it will bear fruit for you in the long, medium and short term

What specific roles do they want to fill, and what is happening in the market or business that has created this opportunity?

Which recruitment companies do they currently work with or have previously engaged with to deliver placements?

Will the project be exclusive to you and the client, or will multiple recruiters be a part of the project?

Is this proposal one where you have options of different fee structures for levels of service, or is this an Asda Walmart experience where it is all about the volume of roles you will get at a lower fee?

Consider what questions they might ask, such as; your company’s experience working on similar projects, your recruiting process, and the team members who may work on the project. Ensure you are fully prepared on this one.

When you think ahead like this by answering these questions in the body of your proposal, you demonstrate that you understand your prospective client’s needs and challenges and demonstrate your attention to detail.

[ Important: Unless this is potentially a massive opportunity for you, consider the impact of working with multiple recruitment companies on a project; our experience is it rarely ends well.]

Creating Your Proposal 5 Critical AreasAs you put your finger on your keyboard, remember to be concise and to the point when writing your proposal. Don’t use jargon unless it is a well-recognised sector speak that everyone in the process will be familiar with.

Keep everything on point and avoid going off on a tangent, as it can confuse anyone reading the document. Focus on the client and how what you are recommending in the proposal will help them.

Diagrams and flow diagrams will communicate your process and up-level your document and the impact of your pitch more than you appreciate.

Timelines Are Key

When it comes to recruitment, timelines are vital. Picture the scene; you are recruiting for a new sales force build for a product launch that will add significant revenue to your client’s bottom line.

The salespeople they want will also need to be trained on the new product as well as being the best available! So, timelines like; first and second interviews, assessment centres, notice periods and training will all be critical to schedules and deadlines.

Your timeline doesn’t have to be precise, as in down to the day; an overall guideline is essential to clients and reassures them that you know what you are doing and how the process works.

Focus on The BenefitsYou may want to go in-depth about your process; however, the top line is what they are looking for with an understanding of workflows. Remember, the last thing you want is to give away your trade secrets.

Remember to highlight their pain points so that your proposal is the obvious solution.

Include Social ProofA prospective client often wants to know what it’s like to work with a provider they haven’t partnered with before.

Most of them will carry out some due diligence checks like the background research you will have undertaken for your proposal.

Providing several case studies will demonstrate how your recruitment company has assisted other companies in similar situations.

Therefore helping to form a relationship of trust and respect for your company.

Tone of VoiceUsing an active voice and simple wording makes it easier to read and is the preferred choice when writing any business proposal.

Here is a classic example of how this works.

Passive: The candidates will be contacted in the first instance by our senior consultant.

Active: Our senior consultants will contact the candidates in the first instance.

People often use technical language to sound impressive. Unfortunately, it has the opposite effect, resulting in a less engaged reader as it’s more challenging to understand.

Keeping your wording simple, avoiding jargon, and making it relatable to your audience means your proposal will have more impact.

Tell A StoryOne of the reasons many proposals get overlooked or rejected is because they don’t stand out from the crowd. Sharing examples and stories of previous projects can help.

In today’s changing business, world story is both King and Queen!

Here is an example I am sure you can relate to.

Let’s say you had the task of finding senior executives for several C-suite positions. In the project’s early stages, the recruiting deadline was shortened, and you had to identify ideal candidates quickly. By using your in-depth industry knowledge and network in conjunction with your extensive market mapping, you were able to promote the opportunity to targeted candidates.

Sharing examples always helps the sale.

Next Steps? Remember to focus your client on the next steps. Some proposals end without an ending. There is nothing for the client to do, nothing to sign, and no call to action.

Proposals that don’t ask the client to do anything after they have finished reading often get put to one side and forgotten about.

Stating what you want your potential client to do next or even requesting a signature at the end of the proposal to be sent back to you will keep the process moving forward.

In summary, being able to write a winning proposal is your opportunity to demonstrate why your recruitment company is different and is the ideal partner who can meet their needs.

While creating this type of proposal will take time, when done well, it can be one of the keys accelerating your business success.

Want Help Marketing Your Recruitment Company?We decided to re-write and re-record this post as it’s a question we have had more than once from our Superfast Circle clients. If you want to win more business and stand out from the recruiting crowd, our ongoing support through SFC might be exactly what you need.

If you want to lock in the current fee forever, book a demo with us before Dec 14th and say yes and you are good to go.

To find out more, call us on ++44(0)1524 920 700

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Email marketing is one of the original forms of “inbound marketing” in the digital world. It involves connecting with your customers through carefully created emails intended to engage contacts, nurture leads, and unlock new opportunities.

Email marketing is still one of the most successful marketing campaigns a business owner can run.

Around 40% of B2B marketers say email marketing is crucial to their content marketing success. Additionally, 99% of customers check their email daily, which gives you an excellent opportunity to keep your audience engaged.

Email marketing campaigns has a huge “R.O.I.” of any marketing initiative. For every $1 spent on one, companies can expect to make $36 in return.

Of course, before your company can start investing in email marketing, you first need to understand what an email marketing campaign is.

Email Marketing Campaigns: The BasicsEmail marketing campaigns are coordinated set of email messages distributed to candidates and clients with a unique objective. Rather than just sending messages to potential prospects randomly from time to time, you create a content calendar which allows you to engage and pull potential new clients and candidates through your marketing funnel.

Ultimately, customers need to build a relationship with a company through multiple interactions before they’re willing to work with you.

We have discussed the buyer’s cycle before, informing us that people need multiple touchpoints before they say yes.

Through an email marketing campaign, you gradually showcase your brand’s thought leadership, credibility, and values in a natural and conversational way for your customer.

There are various kinds of email marketing campaigns companies can access to achieve different goals, such as:

• Welcome email campaigns: Welcome email campaigns introduce your customer to your company and set expectations for the kind of relationship they can expect. They may start with a basic “welcome” email, followed by messages introducing value add information about building a career or managing a talent pipeline.
• Nurturing campaigns: Nurturing email campaigns aim to build a relationship with your audience. They can include reports, content and ideas on how to build a career in your sector or recruit. They might also share reviews, recommendations, and testimonials from other clients.

What Are the Benefits of Email Marketing Campaigns?Email marketing campaigns make consistent communication with your clients and candidates easier and more effective. More than half of the world’s population already has an email address, meaning companies can easily connect with a huge and diversified audience.

Additionally, 80% of professionals in the marketing world agree email marketing helps drive customer acquisition and retention. In other words, it draws new customers to your company and improves your chances of long-term, lucrative relationships.

With email marketing campaigns, companies can:

• Build customer relationships: With a structured email marketing campaign, you send regular messages designed to help customers trust your brand and understand your value. Emails nurture prospects into leads and long-term customers. They can even help turn V.I.P. customers into advocates for a brand or transform employees into ambassadors who help promote the company.
• Collect valuable data: With email marketing tools, companies can collect valuable data about their target audience. Whether you’re sending emails to potential candidates and clients, you can track open rate, click-through rate, and conversion scores to determine what content your audience prefers. This paves the way for more effective and personalised advertising in the future.
• Provide value to their audience: Email offers a valuable way to deliver relevant content to customers at the right time in their purchasing funnel. Companies can use emails to share announcements and news updates, information about products and services, and more. Email campaigns can even promote blog posts and drive traffic back to a website.
• Drive sales and conversions: Engaging and meaningful email campaigns help contacts see the value in whatever you offer. This can boost your chances of conversions. The more you connect with your audience, the more they trust your brand. This means they’re more likely to engage and act.
• Keep customers engaged: Email marketing campaigns help to keep customers informed about a company and keep brands top-of-mind. 61% of customers say they enjoy weekly emails, and 38% say they’d like to receive emails more often. With an email campaign, companies can ensure their contacts don’t forget about them.

Email Marketing Campaign Best PracticesUsed correctly, email marketing campaigns can generate phenomenal results for business leaders. However, it’s important to have the right strategy to cultivate success. While the exact strategy you use may vary, here are some suggestions to get you on the right track.

1. Personalise email content

Customers and contacts prefer to receive communications specific to their interests and needs. Segmenting your audience into different groups based on their preferences can lead to a 50% higher chance of clients clicking on links within your email messages.

1. Use email marketing software

One of the most important steps in running a successful email campaign is getting the cadence right. Email marketing software makes automating “drip” campaigns easier to ensure messages reach audience members at the right time. Companies can even track their open rates and make changes to their strategy based on consumer preferences.

1. Experiment with email types

Emails can include various types of content designed to drive specific results. Experimenting with your email style can be a good way to boost results. Attaching a video in an email, for instance, can lead to a 200-300% increase in click-through rates. Just make sure any content you include shows up well on mobile devices.

1. Use landing pages and forms

You can encourage more customers to sign up for your campaigns with landing pages and forms. You could even offer a free report to clients in exchange for their email addresses and follow up with a series of relevant emails. Landing pages and forms will also help you to segment your audience by giving you an insight into what kind of content they’re interested in.

1. Leverage analytics

With your email marketing campaign tools, you’ll be able to dive into a range of valuable metrics and insights to optimise future strategies. You can learn which emails get the most click-throughs, which lead to the most unsubscribes, and even which subject lines work best. Using your analytics will boost your email marketing R.O.I.

Getting Started with Email Marketing CampaignsEmail marketing campaigns are a phenomenal way to build relationships with contacts, drive sales, and unlock new opportunities. Companies can even use email marketing campaigns to improve customer lifetime value and turn individuals into advocates.

Though email marketing campaigns might not be the latest tool in the marketing landscape, they remain one of the most valuable ways to engage and nurture your audience.

Thank

Denise

P.S. As part of your Superfast Circle membership, you will receive several email campaigns you can use to generate candidate and client leads, all guaranteed to work. Want to find out more?

Then book a demonstration call with us here.

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Video has emerged as one of the most significant marketing tools in the world in recent years.

Around 78% of companies say video marketing helped them to increase sales. What’s more, around 60% of content marketers said they planned to increase their video budget following fantastic ROI results.

Increasingly, companies are using video for a range of different marketing goals; including.

• Generate new leads
• Increase understanding of their product or service
• Nurture and engage customers
• Elevating brand presence
• Building rapport with clients and candidates

Videos can be used on virtually every marketing channel, whether you’re promoting your brand on social media, email, or via a website. Unfortunately, there are still countless companies and business leaders who fear getting involved with video.

Why Your Company Needs Video MarketingVideo is quickly evolving from a nice-to-have marketing option for business leaders to a mandatory requirement. Around 96% of people now say they use video to learn about products and services. Not to mention, the number of video users is growing all the time.

There are about 1.9 billion monthly users accessing YouTube alone.

Overcoming your fear of video means you can leverage a host of benefits when it comes to nurturing, engaging, and converting customers. At the same time, it ensures you continue to compete alongside other businesses in your industry.

Leveraging video marketing will:

• Enhance your existing marketing strategies: Video can perfectly complement and enhance your other marketing strategies. You can transform how-to blogs into guide videos, or use video as a way to engage more followers on social media. Adding video an email can even increase CTR by 200-300%.
• Improve visibility: If you take the time to create and optimize your videos for search engines, you can use them to strengthen your organic traffic, and generate more brand awareness. All you need to do is create a description for your email that’s SEO optimized, and select the right thumbnails and visuals.
• Enhance trust: Videos offer a behind-the-scenes view of your business to clients and candidates. This makes you more trustworthy, human, and transparent in the eyes of your consumers. Employee interviews and behind-the-scenes footage can even make it easier for people to understand how your business operates.
• Boost conversion rates: Around 50% of customers look for product-related videos before making a purchase. Another 4 out of 5 customers also say demonstrations, showcasing your products and services, help them to make purchasing decisions. Using videos, you’re more likely to convince your audience to act.
• Improve brand reputation: Videos offer companies an excellent opportunity to showcase what makes them unique. You can highlight their personality, values, and mission in a series of videos, which help candidates and clients to decide whether you’re the right solution for their specific needs.

Common Video Marketing Fears (and How to Overcome Them)As beneficial as video marketing can be, it also comes with a number of challenges for business leaders to overcome. Although 71% of B2B companies now use video marketing, there’s still a significant percentage struggling to break into the video market.

Here are some of the common fears preventing brands from using video marketing, and how you can overcome them for your business.

1. Fears of Being Visible on CameraNot everyone feels confident in front of a camera. However, in today’s rapidly-evolving video landscape, you don’t have to be a supermodel or actor to stand out. There are countless people around the world producing videos every day. No matter what you look or sound like, if you’re delivering quality content, your viewers won’t care.

If you’re particularly concerned about being on camera, you could even consider using animations and graphics in your videos, instead of human faces. However, keep in mind that real people generally have a better impact on clients and candidates, because they’re easier to relate to.

1. Budget ConstraintsOne of the biggest fears some companies have about getting started with video marketing, is it’s going to cost them too much. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. Today, companies can create high-quality videos using nothing but their smartphone and some basic online editing software. There’s no need for any professional lights, sound, or camera equipment.

Some videos are even expected to be less “professional” in quality than others. For instance, clients expect to see more raw footage on social media. It’s also worth remembering that the ROI on video is significant. No matter what you spend, around 89% of companies say video gives them an excellent return on their investment.

1. Fears about Content ProductionFor some companies, it can be difficult to figure out what they should talk about in their video marketing campaigns. Nobody wants to be stood in front of a camera with nothing to say. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to overcome this issue, with planning.

Sit down with your team and set goals for the videos you want to create. If you want to educate your clients about your services, you might provide a behind-the-scenes video that walks them through what you do. Alternatively, you could provide insights into a recent case study, with quotes from your customers to generate trust. It’s also worth asking your team members for their ideas on the kind of relevant content you may be able to produce.

Don’t Let Video Marketing Fears Hold You BackAs one of the most intimate and engaging forms of content marketing available, video is a fantastic way to engage clients, and candidates. However, it can also be a worrisome concept for some businesses to approach. Whether you’re afraid of being on camera, concerned about content production, or nervous about your budget, it’s time to overcome your fears.

As demand for video content continues to rise, and statistics show the value this phenomenal strategy can bring, no company can afford to miss out. Start experimenting with video today to discover for yourself why this medium is so essential.

Thanks

Denise.

P.S. As part of your Superfast Circle membership we even provide video scripts you can use as part of your marketing. To find out more book a call with us here.

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Today we are talking about social proof and testimonials, specifically, getting candidates to say yes when you ask for testimonials or recommendations.  Anyway, I'm going to get into that in a second.   If you have not downloaded our marketing checklist, please do that, as planning is always critical at this time of year.  Go along [...]

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Let's talk about marketing mistakes recruitment companies make, especially micro and smaller SMEs in the sector. I've got 10 of them today. These are the mistakes that come up repeatedly with people when we first have a discussion about improving their marketing. From not having an action plan to 'trying' to copy a corporate they [...]

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I hope today's title piques your interest to listen to this short podcast this week around data and drama and diagnosing exactly what is going on when things happen as you market your business. It is one of those things that can often happen to us, that our minds flick into overdrive, and we start [...]

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What could marketing help to achieve for your recruitment company in a matter of months? More than you might imagine. In today's podcast, we are sharing a conversation with Natalie, the MD of BBU recruit. In a few short months, Natalie and her part-time marketer were able to achieve more than either of them expected. [...]

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One of the ups and downs of sales and marketing is that, unfortunately, our customers, as a recruiter, your clients and candidates, may decide not to purchase your services immediately.   The harsh reality is; that they will purchase on their time scale. Unfortunately not yours or mine.  Let's talk about customer buying cycles and people's [...]

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This post and podcast are revisited from an earlier piece I wrote, and I want to bring this back to your attention as we enter that busy end of the year period as we end one year strong and prepare and plan for the next.  Candidates and, in many cases, now clients are in short [...]

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When a candidate or client decides to work with you, they understand exactly what you can do for them as opposed to someone else.  Important at this time of year when we have a major push towards making placements. So in today's podcast, I am resharing a popular post of ours to help. Let's get [...]

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Background Jo Major has a twenty-year+ career in the Recruitment Industry behind her. Her work has helped to grow businesses, schools, charities, and enterprises and has shaped the careers of some outstanding humans. Jo has developed strategic D&I, Social Mobility & C.S.R. programmes that build and improve recruitment agency culture, engage employees, attract [...]

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This is Denise from The Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast; hoping you and yours are well. Today the podcast is about recommendations for software that will help you with your marketing.Some are simple and free, and people don't always recognize the benefit that they give. A few others are a little bit more expensive, and [...]

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Today, we're talking about creating your recruitment marketing strategy because, as we all know, for things to happen in our life, we need a plan, and not only just a plan, but we also need a strategic plan, so we can work out where we are now versus where we want to be and how [...]

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Following our previous blog, we have established that Social Media is very important in marketing activities that help generate leads. Particularly where you are looking for new candidates and clients and want to fill your pipelines full of people to talk to. In today's blog, we discuss two things. The first one is pretty easy, [...]

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As we continue our series of going through some of the fundamentals of Recruitment Marketing, today's topic is about social media.   Back in the day, I used to have a bit of a battle with people trying to persuade them that social media will only get bigger and you must be where your candidates and [...]

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We've talked about business blogging in our previous post, and in this blog I want to talk about reports. What we need to consider here is a little bit of human psychology. If you haven't looked to any of Seth Godin's content or read any of his books, I strongly recommend that you do.  Seth [...]

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Today we are talking about business blogging and why it is relevant for recruiters in 2022, and it will be as we move into next year. I want to explain why, and then I want to share six of the key reasons why business blogging is going to be important for you and your brand. [...]

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Today we are starting a series of podcasts which we have lined up over the next 8-10 weeks; That is across the summer for those of you in the Northern hemisphere and for many of our listeners who are in the Southern hemisphere, this is your winter. Why this series? We have had several conversations [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]  Background  Louise Craig is the Marketing Executive for Paul Card Recruitment. Louise joined Paul and the team on placement as she finished her academic marketing degree and started studying for her master’s in marketing. Louise already had experience working for a [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]  Today, I wanted to talk about four focus strategies that greatly impact how you grow and scale your business. I wanted to share these because we've had a few questions recently about where to focus.  If you are looking at your marketing [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.] Today I want to share seven marketing tasks that you could add to your to-do list over the summer. What would make me think about this apart from the fact that the weather is improving? I wanted to share this idea with [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]  This podcast is from a recent Facebook live we delivered in our Recruitment Marketing Mastery Group and the subject is using content to convert candidate and client leads.  Enjoy!  We wanted to have a chat about content; If you want to attract [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]  Today we're talking about marketing campaigns. But before we do that, I'd like to remind you that we have a marketing checklist here. We also have a video series that will help you generate consistent leads.   And if you want to know [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]  Today we're talking metaphors and stories. I'm using a recent garden project as my example of a metaphor and story that works incredibly well.   If you are looking for recruitment marketing advice, download our latest video masterclass series. Go to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf.   When [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]  Today's topic is branding. While we will talk about logos and imagery, branding is something different. It is even more important for smaller recruitment and staffing companies and exec search firms to think about as you move forward in today's marketplace.  Before [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.] People that inquire about Superfast Circle often ask us, "Do you think I need a marketer? Would a marketer help me? What are your thoughts on it? When should I recruit a marketer?". I wanted to share some questions that we are [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]  This podcast is part of the audio recording from our consistent lead generation video masterclass. If you would like access to the entire video series where we share our framework for making marketing work in your business then go to this page [...]

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Today we share with you an interview with one of our clients. This is with an amazing guy called Scott Williams, who has a recruitment company based in the Midlands. Scott works in a very buoyant, challenging market. He joined Superfast Circle towards the back end of last year and is one massive action taker. [...]

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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]  Today we're talking about five marketing basics to action in your recruitment business.  As a first start, download our recruitment marketing audit checklist on our website, which will be incredibly useful.   Download it from http://www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl. Please put your Name and email address [...]

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We're heading to the end of the first quarter, and, as you know, I'm a big fan of 90-day plans. This particular topic is very relevant today.   If you want to take your marketing to another level, I suggest you download a couple of our guides. The first one is the Marketing Checklist. If you [...]

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Today, we're talking about content assets, what they are and how they might work. I'm going to share seven assets that would be useful for you to create as a recruitment marketer or business owner that wants to take their business forward.   If you're new here, welcome. There are transcriptions for most of our podcasts [...]

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This is Denise from Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast. I hope you and yours are well in this wonderful March that we're all experiencing.   Today we're talking about some really interesting questions that you can ask yourself, which will make you rethink your messaging.  We create a transcription of the majority of our podcasts. If [...]

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This is Denise from Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast. I hope your March is going well.   We were asked a great question by one of the new members of Superfast Circle. They are a new marketer working with a company that's just joined, so I thought I would answer that here because it might give [...]

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Hi, everyone; this is Denise and today we are talking podcasting. Is it something that you and your company want to consider starting? I am going to give you some criteria on where this works well.   Some of the things you want to think about, and some of the many, many benefits of actually going [...]

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It's absolutely pouring down up here in the Lake District, but the nights are getting lighter, and I always love that. Who doesn't love that in the Northern Hemisphere?   Anyway, today, I want to talk about inbound versus outbound lead generation and marketing, what's working currently, some of the recent trends, and how that might [...]

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Today we're talking about loving your customers, which will  lead to more success.   I want to talk about the importance of your relationship with your clients and candidates and what a massive difference that can make.   [Please excuse any rogue typing errors because it's one of these direct AI whizzy things that does it for [...]

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Today, we're talking about visual content ideas to help promote you and your brand. I will give you some rationale, ideas you can use, and where you can go and create all this. Talking about visuals, if you have not downloaded our latest recruitment marketing video masterclass, go over to www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf, where Sharon explains more [...]

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Today, P is very much for planning. I’m a huge planner. It gives me thinking time; I know what I’m doing, I’ve got some structure, a place to head to, and I’ve got some process involved in everything I do.

Sometimes, I don’t plan as well as I could.

The consequence is that I don’t achieve the results that I wanted. Today I will give you a few questions to ask yourself as you sit down and plan.

And I will share some practical tools that you can use that will shock you. They are so simple, but they work.

Before I do that, if you’re new here, welcome; there will be a transcription of this podcast over on www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/blog. You will see it there, along with a range of other content that you can use to take your marketing forward.

If you’re thinking, “What am I going to do with my marketing? I know I need to do more things, where can I start? Have you got a process I can follow?” then I suggest you head to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf.

We have a brand new complimentary video series; you just need to pop your name and email address in, and we’ll send it to you.

In that video series, we share two of our most popular frameworks that we’ve developed for our clients that you can then use. There are four videos, one of which is a bonus video, which I know will blow your mind.

Go along, pop your name and email address in. What we talk about in these videos is basically how to set up a system for consistent lead flow. I think we all know that when we have consistent leads coming into our business, we stand a sporting chance of converting at least some of them, be that candidate or client.

In these videos, we show you how to structure everything, some of the things you need to consider, and why this needs to be a foundation of your plan.

Start With Your Plan Now let’s talk about planning and these questions to ask yourself, first of all. Planning can be a bit of a nemesis for many people. They don’t want to spend the time, and it involves thinking a bit deeper than usual.

I think many recruitment business owners are ‘just do it’ people. They want to jump in, start moving forward fast and don’t always want to do the foundational work, whereas if you take some time to plan and start to map things out, what a massive difference that makes for you.

Look at the likes of Apple, Facebook and various other huge organisations. One of the reasons they are so successful is because they focus on planning what they want to do, when they want to do it, looking at what’s working or not working, and then making the necessary adjustments and steps to make it a different experience.

A classic planning tool that many people use is the stop, start, continue process. What do we need to stop doing? What do we need to start doing? What do we need to consider when it comes to moving forward?

The Questions You Need to Answer I have five different questions I ask.

What’s working? The first one is what’s working? Sometimes this might be something on the surface that is quite boring. That is fine; carry on -boring stuff works. The challenge for many is dropping what works for the bright, shiny object syndrome; don’t do that.

The first thing to do is think: “Okay, if this is working, maybe we should do more of it.”

Let’s say videoing; let’s say I feel a little bit uncomfortable about videoing. Oh, it’s not my favourite thing to do. I might stop doing it, but the fact is, is it working? If it’s working, I recommend you do more of it.

What’s not working? Let’s cover something here that is important. Sometimes, the inputs take time to develop the outputs you want when it comes to marketing.

You have to give things time to know whether they’re working or not. For many marketing activities, this could be 90 days plus. Though there may be some things in your business, you continue to do that you can’t track any ROI from. Maybe a networking group you have been part of for years or sponsoring a local event that no longer connects with your market. What is your version of this?

What can we do differently? You may see something your competitor is doing, and you think, “Do you know what? We could do that, and we could do it better.” Then that might be something you want to think about; what can we do differently?

I always encourage people, particularly when it comes to marketing, to try out new things. If it works, fantastic. If it doesn’t work, then you’ve got information.

It is all about pushing out to the edge of our limits. We don’t know until we try something how well it could work.

I’ve just been looking at something online about Wordle, this new game that people are playing, and how this guy decided he wanted to do this little quiz for him and his partner. He was just trying something different, and it’s gone bonkers. So, think about what you could do differently this year that might help you stand out.

What do we want to do this year? A question to ask yourself is, what do I want to do this year? Is it more revenue in less time? Maybe you want to generate consistent processes that will lead to more revenue in

Q 2 or 3?

So, what are our goals? Some people say, “I want to double my business,” or, “I want to do X, Y, Z,” or, “I’ve got a three-year plan, and by the end of these three years, I want to have turned over a million from a cash flow point of view.”

If you’re going to do that, you need a plan to deliver that. Normally, it will involve taking a lot more action than you realise. To get to that stage, there will be a lot of input. You need to think about that as you plan things out.

What do we need to address? For some of you listening to this, you might have teams, and it may be that you need to address something in your team or need to improve resourcing or headcount.

I suspect that many of you are short of candidates. That would be one thing you need to address: how I’m interacting with candidates, how we’re nurturing them, what are our processes, how do we stand out to candidates above everybody else. It may be that you have all these.

Now, once you’ve looked at all of this information, then you can start planning. There is a lot of content on our website around 90-day planning. I start to map things through the month because it’s very easy to assume that you can do something very fast-which isn’t always the case.

I like to do this on paper, and some of you might want to do it online, entirely up to you. I just like to do it on paper. I use one of these big A3 pads, and I divide it up with a good old-fashioned ruler into 12 months.

Let’s just say that you want to have a new website by the end of this year or implement a new CRM system, which is all part and involved in the marketing process.

Then that will involve time which will take you away from some other things you couldn’t do, so map it out.

As an example, we run two Superfast Circle events in April and September. Our clients are our priority. Starting in February, I need to plan and prepare to make sure that everything is ready, working, and going to be fantastic.

I know that I need to have a campaign that I’ve used before to run in April because I won’t have much time to design something new.

You might have a trade show or decide to recruit some new consultants, so they will need more leads. You might want to have a new report created or a new email campaign that’s ready to go four weeks after your new guys arrive. Maybe you want to do some paid advertising.

We work with a number of partners as well in the recruitment sector. We’re doing something with Louise Triance in a few weeks’ time. I know there’s some content I need to create for that.

We work with another partner program, and we are presenting at their event as we are creating some content for them. I know that all that needs to be mapped in now.

As you do that, you start to see where you have gaps, and you start to see, “Well, actually, we’re not doing anything around April and May.

What are we going to do? What could we put in place here? How can we do X? How can we do Y?”

Our Circle members know in advance the content that we are delivering for them so they can plan that into their marketing campaigns. It helps them manage their time because we’re creating it for them.

If having access to campaigns and planning help like this would be valuable to you and you want to find out more, book a conversation with one of us here.

Planning Helps You See the Gaps Once you start to plan in this way, you can see where your gaps are and what else you could implement.

Top tip, always front-load activity, because no matter who you are, where you are, when you work in the B2B sectors, conversion takes a long time.

When you are thinking about developing relationships with organisations that will probably give you multiple roles as you move into the future, it can take weeks and months.

You will know how long it takes to go from cold to sold. If you have that data, then you can plan accordingly.

Lots of different ideas here for how you can map out that plan, but I like to always do the helicopter view.

Planning will make a massive difference to you. Go on to Amazon, get these A3 pads, and map out what you’re planning to do. Then you can start to put some real timelines and actions on your plan.

Stephen Covey always talks about starting with the end in mind in his 7 habits book. If you know some of the things you want to address this year, put that on your plan because until it’s out and on paper, you don’t know the implications of what you need to do and how you can make it happen.

It’s great because the brain sees, “Oh, they’re really serious about this. Let’s move on then. Let’s just provide some things for them.” The reticular activating system kicks in. I always get very excited about planning because it makes a difference.

If you need help with your marketing, you know where we are. Remember, we provide content, we provide collateral, we provide resources. It is the equivalent of having two outsourced marketing directors working with you on your business.

We’d love for you to join us in the Superfast Circle, and I hope this has given you some reasons why it’s good to invest right now as you start the year.

If you’d like some more support around your marketing, go to our private Facebook group Recruitment Marketing Mastery Facebook group, request to join, and Sharon or I will let you in.

How We Can Help
We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them.

Book your call and demonstration here if you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you.

Thanks

Denise

P.S. If you want to join Superfast Circle and would like to find out more, speak to us here.

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Here we are in the last week of January; I have always liked January.

It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I’m very excited because we are going to Glasgow in Scotland to watch a musical about Dolly Parton, one of my idols.

Amazing woman.

Anyhow, today, we’re going to talk about why you need to prioritise content marketing as a strategy for your particular organisation.

Before we do that, if you’re new here, welcome; great to have you. Of course, for probably 99% of the podcasts we record, there’s a transcription, and there will be one of this particular podcast over on superfastrecruitment.co.uk/blog. In the meantime, I suspect that many of you listening to this want to have more clients and candidates knocking on your door that you can then serve.

If you haven’t downloaded our latest video series, which is new this year, then head over to www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf. That will take you to a page with a video message from Sharon. Pop your name and email address in, and we will share some of the frameworks that we use with our paid clients that are working like crazy.

It’s full of content and actionable things that you can do in a webinar-style but cut into easily consumed videos.

We’re not taking the page down anytime soon, so you can grab all the content that’s there.

Why You Need Content I keep repeating this for a reason: it plain and simply works in your market.

Let me explain. We talked to a client of ours last week about his marketing apprentice and their training.

The challenge for this apprentice was that everything was aligned to the world of e-commerce, and you can understand that because e-commerce has gone crazy over the past few years?

However, e-commerce for a recruiter is not where it’s at! The recruitment and staffing sector is a mixture of B2C and B2B because you’ve got candidates that you’re nurturing, and you’ve got clients.

This makes the recruiting sector ideal for content marketing because you are selling a high-value item, which is a person, into an organisation. It’s no secret that content marketing is incredibly powerful, and it is especially true when you’re working in a business context, selling people.

There are multiple reasons why this is the case. From a B2B perspective, it tends to be a more complex sales process. It takes a long time, and the reason for that is because people need to be convinced about why you and your product or service is ideal for them.

This is where content works because it enables you to position yourself and boost sales conversations through content. One of the things to remember is that the recruitment sector is very saturated, and you need to differentiate yourself to stand out to your market.

Self-Education is on the Rise People are doing more self-education than ever before through the likes of YouTube.

Companies invest in content marketing to reach potential clients and candidates before speaking to a salesperson. Your clients and candidates are pre-sold that you are the recruitment company they need to talk with.

We do it all the time when we’re looking for a supplier, don’t we?

There’s almost zero barrier to entry when it comes to launching your recruitment company. All you need is a phone, the internet and a computer.

However, the market is extremely competitive.

Therefore, you have to stand out, and one of the easiest ways is through using content marketing. I will share some ideas on the specific categories of content you want to consider, and as I mentioned before, go to http://www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf. In one of the videos, Sharon does a deep dive into the types of content to use and what’s working incredibly well at the moment, but let’s think about what you should start using.

Value-Added Content through Reports The first one is reports or white papers. Now, I am sure you have downloaded reports from us in the past. We have a number of them on our website, including a very useful checklist.

With a report, you can capture somebody’s name and email details so that you can contact them again. You can begin to nurture them and brand yourself as an authority in your sector.

We provide this as a content resource for our Superfast Circle clients because it works.

Leading on from that is your email communication with people. No matter what anyone says, we’re all glued to our phones, and we read emails. It’s still the strategy that stands out as giving the best ROI of anything you’re likely to do.

Blogs Demonstrate Knowledge Next is blog content. This blog started as a podcast; it’s been transcribed and uploaded to the blog.

In summary, you have content demonstrating that we know and understand marketing in the recruitment space.

If you’re not putting regular blogs onto your website, that is something that you need to do. You will get found by it. Sharing it helps attract people to your website to look at your services.

Increase Awareness through Social Media Another thing is social media. Social media has gone through the roof recently. LinkedIn had a day where they got an increase of 2500% on the number of hits on their website, and that hasn’t reversed since moving out of the pandemic; it’s still maintained.

There is approaching half of the planet on Facebook.

We often talk about the unawareness phase if you’ve listened to our podcasts before. People need to go from being unaware of you to becoming aware of you. That unaware portion will often come from social media. You share something useful that gets shared by somebody else, who then picks it up and reads it.

The great thing about social media is you can create paid adverts quite inexpensively on Facebook that could get in front of your audience. Once someone has been on your website, by using re-marketing, you can get your advert shown in front of that individual as well.

I post about all different things; I’ve posted about Flo before, and my family, and I get a lot of engagement because people are fascinated. They want to know about you. They want to feel connected to you and your brand, what you do, and what you stand for.

There are many different things you can do. Content, in its many guises, is absolutely king and queen.

We support our clients with content, and the reason we do is because we know it can make a massive difference to how you stand out in your market and how you position yourself.

We’d love for you to join us in the Superfast Circle, and I hope this has given you some reasons why it’s good to invest right now as you start the year.

If you’d like some more support around your marketing, go to our Recruitment Marketing Mastery Facebook group, request to join, and Sharon or I will let you in.

How We Can Help
We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them.

Book your call and demonstration here if you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you.

Thanks

Denise

P.S. If you want to join Superfast Circle our 2021, prices will be held until the end of January. To find out more, speak to us here.

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Today I’m talking about one of my favourite topics, KPIs, because I’m a fan of KPIs. They have served me well over a long period of time. However, before I get into that, welcome if you’re new here.

First, go to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf. That stands for consistent lead flow- something that all business owners want for their organisation.

Sharon and I recently recorded a video series. If you’ve been on any of our webinars or master classes, you’ll know they are always content-rich, with actionable content.

In this video series, we share with you two of our proven roadmaps and frameworks that we use with our clients that work every time, provided you take action on them, of course.

They are our seven pillars and R.M.S framework.

This all might sound jargon, but it’s to pique your interest to go along to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf. There’ll be a video of Sharon there. She explains more.

Pop your name and email address in there, and winging its way to you will be a link to a page, and all the videos are listed out for you on the page. They’re not going away anytime soon, so you can go and watch them and learn some of the ideas you want to action to build lead flow this year.

Now let’s talk about marketing KPIs and how they might work for you and your business.

Why Use KPIs? As many of you know, I have a background in marketing, but I started as a salesperson. Many of you are very used to B.D. and selling, and you will have had KPIs. One of the reasons why we have KPIs is that KPIs work.

It’s very interesting when you look at sales and marketing because when it comes to marketing, sometimes it’s not always easy to know what piece of content made the difference.

• Was it the blog post?
• Was it social media?
• Was it the emails that I’m sending?

Unless you’re making a direct sale, it’s not always easy to know and understand that. However, if you are consistent in your inputs, that can deliver very different results.

From my days as a sales representative, one of the things that we had to do was see so many doctors a day.

The more doctors we saw, the more we could potentially sell, assuming that you can sell, by the way.

Working for a very large pharmaceutical company, they knew their data and contacts equalled business…… Here is a top tip; always know your data.

Know Your Data They knew that if the sales force saw six doctors a day on average, they were likely to make X number of sales. If they saw seven doctors a day, they would make more sales.

They probably wouldn’t make as much if they saw three or four doctors a day.

It’s the same in everything that we do. I’m sure you have data around how many C.V.s /resumes you want to send out for a role. I don’t know your numbers, but let’s say you send out four C.V.s. When you send out four C.V.s, you know that if you do that, it’s likely that they’ll take a minimum of two through to interview. You might know that if two go-to interview, one of them is expected to get the job. You can work back those numbers. Not always the case in marketing; however, the principles are the same.

KPIs Shows You What You Should Focus On One of the marketing challenges, particularly if you don’t have a marketer or you’re trying to juggle multiple tasks, is thinking about what KPIs you should have in place and what you should be doing every day. That’s the reason for this post and podcast to give you some suggestions on your focus.

A great way to think about KPIs, as you will do, I’m sure, with your consultants and your B.D. and resourcing, KPIs (key performance indicators) need to centre around the outcomes you want to achieve.

Identify Your Goals First Your KPIs are aligned with the goals you set for the year.

• What do you want to achieve?
• How many new clients do you want,
• How many more candidates do you want to register and have on your database?
• What do you want your brand awareness to be like?
• How many people do you want to download reports or visit your website?

All of these are goals that you want to achieve.

To hit those goals, it’s quite simple; you need to decide what you can do around these particular areas that will make a difference? Some of it might be being on the phone, but let’s look at marketing as an aspect of what you want to do. That will help you to agree and decide on some specific KPIs.

One of the leverage points, for instance, for us as a business and for many of our clients is the more email subscribers that we have, the more we can interact with people, the more we can have a conversation with people where we have a demonstration.

From that demonstration, we make people an offer if we’re a fit and a match, and we’re not working with somebody else in that sector or that geography. That’s how our business works. Sometimes it’s very easy to overcomplicate businesses.

That’s what we do, and I’m sure you will have your ideas. You might know that the more candidates you register, a percentage of those candidates will be right for the role. If you then send an email to a number of these candidates and get on the phone with them, you will convert a number that wants their CV sent to a client.

Here is an example from our marketing that demonstrates the process.

For instance, we drive people to our website to opt-in to our email list from our podcast. We always record our podcasts. Two or three weeks ago was the first time we missed a podcast in literally over 12 months.

As a general rule, you will get at least 50 podcasts from us a year, and every single Friday morning without fail, we will send you an email alerting you to the podcast. There might be an offer; there might be a suggestion in there. We know that is one of our key lead generation mechanisms. From that, people then book a call. That is one of the things that we have down as something that we want to measure and track.

We also know that people follow us on social media, watch our videos, and download reports. All of these are things that we need are in play.

Even Sharon and I have KPIs for ourselves. I know, every morning, before I do anything else, I will always write a post, and that post will be shared, or it might be that we’ve recorded a video, and I’ll share a video snippet.

I will write a social media update in our private Facebook group. If you’re not a member of Recruitment Marketing Mastery, come and join us because we will be delivering a lot of training in that group this year.

Sharon has KPI’s too, based around her role in the company.

Consistency Is Key If you want to make sure your business delivers the results you want, set consistent goals and KPIs; it makes life much easier!

We have a client doing his own marketing at the moment. On a call with us today, he said that he spends half a day marketing during the month. He’s a member of Superfast Circle; he gets blog posts from us, and he gets templates.

Half a day that month, as he says, bish-bash-bosh, does it all, everything’s done, and it goes out to his market, and he’s doing very well because of it.

That’s his KPI.

KPIs don’t have to be something you need to do every day, but what I’d advocate for you to do this year if you want to move the needle is to be seen online.

You need a brand that people recognise. You have to do things consistently. If people don’t see consistency, they will not trust you because “Oh, they’re here one week and then I never see them for six or seven months. What’s going on?”

Make sure that you come up with some ideal things you want to do—posting on social media, sending email campaigns, picking up the phone and talking to people downloading your reports and seeing if you can help them.

Think about the marketing KPIs you want to have for your business this year, and then start to plan how you will deliver on that. You will be amazed at the results that you’re going to achieve.

How We Can Help We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them.

Book your call and demonstration here if you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you.

Thanks

Denise

P.S. If you want to join Superfast Circle our 2021, prices will be held until January 27th. To find out more, speak to us here.

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Recruitment marketing has changed drastically over the last few years. Digital automation, new tech stacks, and the pandemic have meant more staffing companies than ever are looking at marketing to create their presence in the market.

So, what are your competitors searching for when it comes to marketing ideas and strategies to attract candidates and clients?

As a respected recruitment marketing training provider in the sector, our content has thousands of readers and downloads each month.

Below you will find all our most read and listened to posts below.

Enjoy!

How to Use Direct Mail 10 Lead Generation Strategies for recruiters Why Case Studies Work to Attract Candidates and Clients How to Revamp Your Value Proposition Why Investing in Marketing is More Important Than Staff Social Media Strategies for Staffing Companies Client Winning Proposals Marketing Collateral for Recruiters Why You Need a Marketing Funnel Using Sales Convincers to Attract Candidates and Clients How We Can Help We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them.

Book your call and demonstration here if you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you.

Thanks

Denise

P.S. If you want to join Superfast Circle our 2021, prices will be held until January 27th. To find out more, speak to us here.

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Today, I want to talk about marketing systems; first, I want to tell you about a brand new free video series you can access.

[Excuse any strange errors in this content as it is a direct transcription for your benefit.]

If you want to head over to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf, pop your name and email address in there, and you will gain access to a video series that Sharon and I have created on a specific hot topic all recruiters want to handle.

We know that from questions we get from clients and the number of visits on our website around these particular blog posts keywords, it’s the all-around lead flow for candidates and clients.

What has created a video series? As our American friends say, it will take you through from soup to nuts around what you need to consider when building consistent lead flow because it isn’t just about clients, and it isn’t just about candidates.

A successful business has to be strong in every area. That’s what we’ve done. We’d love your feedback on it too.

Just go along as I say to www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/clf, and I love doing this because, as I said, I’m recording this in November, and I haven’t recorded the videos yet. However, because I have now said that they will be available, Denise will record them all and create them all for you.

I’m sure you guys have plenty of systems around how you bring onboard new candidates, how you bring onboard new team members, how you all work together for the good of your organisation.

I’m sure you have plenty of systems around that.

The question is, how systematised is your marketing?

Because often my experience with recruiters is, it tends to get left to the last minute because if the proverbial hits the fan, then we can always pick up the phone later and build our pipeline.

Again, it may be a bit stressful. We can always do that. However, did you appreciate that it doesn’t have to be this way, that if you get a marketing system together, what a massive difference will make for you?

Before I get into that, something pivotal to the process is that you have to have a goal.

Now I know everyone talks about goal setting this time of year, and there’s lots of flack around the fact that we set a goal, and then nobody ever sticks to it.

However, when you build out your marketing system and your marketing process, you need to know what you aim for.

Systems Start With Maths If you did X last year and want to do Y this year, that’s fine. However, you have to build a system around that to create the revenue you want.

Most people seem to forget that because if you’ve decided, let’s say you want to increase your revenue by 50%. Let’s say your turnover currently is 300K; let’s make it easy to do the math.

You’re currently turning over 300K, and next year you want to be turning over 450K. A significant jump not out to the realms of possibilities.

Some recruiters I know have had the best year ever. You need to be thinking about, “okay, I need to bring in 150K revenue.” I’m not going to get into what profit level; we’re talking about marketing here. Let’s look at it from a big picture perspective.

If that’s 150K, how many new roles do I need to bring in at what fee level and at which parts of the year.

Let’s say again makes it easier for the maths. Let’s say that each placement that you make is worth 10K. Therefore, do the maths; how many 10K placements do you need in addition to what you’re already doing to hit that extra 150?

My rudimentary maths, I have an A level in maths, by the way, my fundamental maths means that you would need to make an extra 15 placements. That’s always a starting point, so you know you have to make that many placements.

On average, what does your normal? I’m just going to use the word normal; the client give you when it comes to placements to make?

What’s your conversion rate with this particular type of role? Do you convert everybody? How many telephone calls do you need to make? How many emails do you need to send? What marketing do you need to have in place? All of these things are part of your system because remember you look at the definition of a system; it’s a set of things working together as part of the whole interconnecting and working to produce a result.

When you think about your marketing system, you have to start with the goal. We need to increase revenue by X. We want to penetrate this market.

Therefore, we need an extra. Let’s say we’ve used this magical number of 15 here, so let’s say you have a 50% conversion, right. You need to ensure that you’ve got 30 hot leads; let’s say that each company gives you one placement.

I know I’m making this simple, but you get what I’m saying here, because that will help you think about what resource I need to put into marketing and what systems I need?

Now, in reality, that’s a conservative goal to have, and you’ll see here as you’re starting to break it down, you realise, “oh gosh, that isn’t quite as challenging as I thought it would be.” Let’s think about the systems around that to have in place. Now I’ve just thought of something else here; to clarify, I’m not necessarily talking about who’s going to do the work. Should you outsource? Should you bring in some admin support? Should you bring in a full-time marketeer?

What Marketing ‘Systems’ Do You Need? My thoughts on this are that it’s always helpful to have somebody helping you with your marketing because there are two key growth areas in a business: marketing and sales. Give some thought to how you might want to do that in 2022, but let’s start talking about systems first of all.

The first thing you need is you need a marketing plan. There’s a lot of data online; go and check it out. Businesses with a marketing plan are 26% more likely to achieve their goals than those that don’t.

This data I read from a guy called David Fray, one of the first online marketers I ever followed, and he was quoting data from the American Marketing Association.

Intuitively, I think we all know that if you have a plan, things are more likely to happen. You can start ticking things off, and then you don’t fall into that scenario of suddenly loads of jobs coming in, marketing gets dropped because you haven’t got a system where you’re monitoring and checking things.

At the same time, when thinking about your marketing plan as you are making your plan, I believe every podcaster talks about the marketing checklist. If you haven’t got it, grab one or just email me, and I’ll send it over to you in the post. Print it off; look at where you’re at. You need to know your starting point because if you have a starting point, you can start to measure and look at how you’re moving forward.

You need a marketing plan and, in that plan, you need to know who’s responsible for what and what campaigns you are going to run? How are you going to monitor and measure things through the year now?

As I say, we’re recording this in November; we’ve just run a session with our Superfast Circle clients, and we went through a whole session on a marketing plan, and we provided the templates for them.

We even provided the spreadsheet they just needed to pop their details into. Get yourself an Excel spreadsheet. It’s really easy. Don’t overcomplicate it. Then in that sheet, you can start to measure, track and add all of the different activities you want.

The next thing I want to talk about is repeatable tasks. One of the things that I came across many years ago because I’d worked in the pharmaceutical industry and worked in a big corporate is the need to have standard operating procedures. To you and I SOPs.

One of the great things about SOPs is that obviously, you can create your own. They make tasks so much easier to implement because anybody in the business can implement them, and the case of, “okay, so we do our social media every month.

The way that we do our social media is we have so many blog posts we share, so many jobs that we share, so many this, so many that.”

Suppose that’s the case; one of the easiest things for you is to create a standard operating procedure for that process to happen. We have some of our circle members because we provide collateral for them.

They have the systems that they’ve mapped out. I’ve shared some of our SOPs with them as well. One of the things to absolutely create next year is an SOP because that will give you so much more time back as you are utilising that process.

Whereas if you have a folder on the computer and there are videos, you can now buy screen capture software inexpensively. I think Zoom and Snagit do free versions, so you can always use something like that. We’ve talked about marketing planning. We’ve also just talked about standard operating procedures.

The next vital thing has a content and collateral system. However, you deliver this in your organisation, whether you have somebody who writes for you, whether our clients use the content we produce, or you’re outsourcing the content.

Whatever you are doing, content is king and queen at the moment. The more content you have, the more ways you can be in front of your market. The more ways you can convince both candidates and clients that you are the company to work with. You need to have that as part of your system. You can create a content plan, what you’re going to share during the year.

We alluded to early, you know how many needs you want, you know which particular market, you know everything about your avatar, that’s key. That way, you can basically map out all the different types of content you want to have that you’re going to create during the year, and it starts to become a system. It becomes a machine, and that really will free you up in time.

If you know that a particular time of year is mega, mega busy for you, it’s one of your best times of the year; what are you doing ahead of that to plan to tee up the market? We know for instance that the last quarter and the first quarter of the following year are really good sales times for us because people are thinking about marketing.

That’s one of the reasons why over the last month or so, I have created a series of podcasts; you’ll have seen lots of videos out online helping you around your marketing.

It’s the same for you to do that. I also systematise that process because once things are mapped out, I always talk to people and say that time is a mental construct. We can always do more than we think we can.

You have those situations where you think it’s going to take you– I saw something from Elon Musk the other day that if you think something’s going to take you 30 days, it’s going to take you 30 days, when actually what if it could only take three days. It’s just a case of systematising things and taking the time to do it. We’ve talked about content and collateral system.

Create a Candidate and a Client Marketing Campaign The next thing is, and I’m going to share here two things: you must have a campaign for candidates and a campaign for clients even if you only have two campaigns that you are running. If you are growing and you want to acquire new recruiters, new resources, new marketeer’s whatever that be, your talent, then you need to have a system for that. Marketing is about creating demand, and it’s also about creating demand as you build your team.

Think about what I should create in my campaign for a client or candidate. If you know your candidates and clients well, the information, the ideas will automatically come to you. You know what your candidates need from you. You know what your clients need from you. Then you need to make sure that you’re communicating that out into the market. Also, you are there for them so that you nurture them.

One of the easiest things to do is offer them some value, whether that be a video, whether that be a case study, whether that be a report and then you can get their name and email address start to nurture them because over time, what is great about having a really good marketing system is this can be chugging away in the background all the time.

If you haven’t got a campaign for candidates campaign standing for clients, do that as a priority as you move into next year.

Only Automate Systems That Work The next thing is automation. Everybody loves a good bit of automation. We do have an automation report as well. If you want to download that, that was based around a masterclass that we ran a while back. If you want a copy of that, I’ll drop a link to that in the transcription of this podcast, so you’ve got that. The more you can automate your marketing system, the better.

However, the caveat around this is that you’ve had to have the process dialled in first of all because there’s no point automating something that you don’t know if it works or not. That’s a question for you, but then, of course, there are so many things you can start to automate. I’m pleased to say this because this wasn’t always the case.

When we first started working in the recruitment sector was 16 years ago now, there was MailChimp, and there were CRM systems, and that was it.

There were no integrated systems.

Many CRM systems now integrate marketing automation and processes; I know Bullhorn does that. Forgive me if I don’t shout out your particular one, and I’ve missed it. I think Tracker does something similar, and I know that Loxo does well. There are all these different systems that you can use. You want to automate your touch campaigns, if you like, with clients and candidates because you always want to be in front of your mind.

One of the challenges people faced this year around candidate shortage is that they haven’t nurtured their candidates.

Candidates were the last thing that they were thinking about.

You need to make sure that you can dial that in whatever system you have because look on the Superfast recruitment website. I’ll make sure we probably link to some of our past posts around automation.

We did a whole section on automation, I think, towards the middle of last year. There’s lots of good ideas and content on there for you about the exact things you should be automating. There is so much you can automate that really will save you oodles and oodles of time provided that you systematise it. We’ve talked about campaigns for candidates and clients; we’ve spoken of automation software.

The other thing that I find invaluable when marketing is using a project management system.

I’ll tell you my personal favourite, entirely up to you what you do. I’m a marketeer, so we use it, and that’s monday.com. There’s a free version that you can get depending on the size of your organisation, but it’s pretty inexpensive.

I love Monday because we have recurring and repetitive tasks and top tips. If you are doing your marketing well, you will have recurring and repetitive tasks. I’m logged into the system. I get consistent emails tagging me and telling me what I need to do by when it keeps me on track, and then we manage the system to time how long it takes me to do things.

Work With a Mentor The final thing that I would say around systems is, work with a mentor, work with somebody around your marketing that can help, somebody like us. Yes, we have competitors in the market. We always think nobody does it like us; I don’t think they do, because of our service but because we work with somebody because marketing is constantly changing.

We’ve just run an event for our Superfast Circle clients, and in that event, it was all brand new content that we were sharing because marketing is consistently changing.

If you work with someone that understands marketing, and I would work with somebody like ourselves or some of our competitors, it’s horses for courses.

Some people connect with some people; other people don’t.

Somebody that has experience of the marketing in the recruitment sector because it is different, because you have candidates, and then you have clients, and you need to think about how you’re going to work with that.

Then also the consultants that you work with, so that’s what I would say to you. When you’re building out your system, think about who your marketing mentor will be.

We cook quite a lot today around marketing systems. You’ve plenty of time to get yourself ready before the new year. Think about your goal and how that goal relates to the number of leads you need.

What’s your conversion rate? Are you going to add a new recruiting product? Are you going to add a new service that will bring extra revenue into your business?

That’s the first thing to start with, but then if we go through number one, always have a marketing plan, number two, consider standard operating procedures, document everything, the more systems and processes you have, the easier business become and the more freedom you get in your business too.

Number three, you need a content and collateral system.

Number four, make sure I’ve got them all written down; I didn’t want to miss them; make sure you have campaigns dialled in for both candidates and clients.

If you’re expanding, you need to consider your talent acquisition as well; remember number five to have automation software.

Number six is a bit of an add on to that, measure what you’re doing and keep a check on what you’re doing. Use a system of some sort. I just recommended monday.com.

Then finally, get help, get some help from a mentor or coach, or be in a community like superfast circle, which will make quite a difference for you.

This is Denise, talking Marketing Systems, what you need to have in place. Our next podcast is slightly different. It’ll be much shorter, but what I always do at this time of year, so you guys can get a handle on what’s important is to share with you the most popular blog posts that we’ve had this year. It gives you an idea of what’s topical, what’s current, and I’m sure you’ll find that useful. This is Denise saying, “Have an outstanding New Year, and we’ll see you in January. Bye for now.”

Thanks,

Denise

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Something different today; who doesn’t love an inspiring story at Christmas? A year ago, two of our clients Lee and Theresa Durrant, moved their life and Salesforce recruiting business to the Lake District from Kent.

They arrived to pick up the keys of their new home 72 hours before the country went into lockdown again! We have been working with them for many years, and we would often get together for a marketing planning meeting when they were up here on a walking holiday.

The conversation at night in the bar over a few glasses of wine would turn to how we ran our business from here, so why couldn’t they?

In this podcast, they share their journey, the ups and the downs, how they manage their current team remotely and their plans for scaling. [As always this is a direct transcription so please excuse any strange typing errors.]

Sharon: Lee, Theresa, welcome back to the Superfast Recruitment podcast and thank you for taking some time today. Can you believe it’s almost two years since we were in a similar situation, having a conversation like this, and who would have known what was about to happen?

Theresa: We were put into a lockdown and came out the other side, and the world has changed. So much is different.

Sharon: It is. Also, what’s different as well, literally in the last 12 months is, where Resource on Demand is now based, where you are living. It’s been an incredible year for the business.

What made you do some of the things you’ve done with the business and for yourself in terms of your own lifestyle and how’s it working. Are you ready to share some of your journey with us, then? Lee: It’s going to be one of those years, when we’re a bit older and we look back over a glass of wine, we’ll probably think, “How did that happen?”. A lot has happened in the two years since we last did one of these, but certainly, the last year has seen a lot of things forced on us that we’ve twisted into a positive. But it’s been a whirlwind, hasn’t it, in the last 12 months?

Theresa: Yes. We’re the kind of people anyway that always try to see opportunity in whatever situation is thrown at you. No one would have anticipated something like COVID coming along, but it has made us change our life completely. It’s changed the way we now run our business, which I’m sure we’re going to come to in a second.

It’s changed our output and philosophy around life because watching people being devastated across the country and losing loved ones makes you think about your values again. Life is so short, you need to grab it with both hands, and you need to make the most of it. Sometimes, being workaholic kind of people, you actually start to realise that there are loved ones out there who are dying, and families have been devastated through COVID. There needs to be more to life than work.

It’s made us think about it a lot differently. The fact that we’ve now gone fully remote means that we’ve been able to realise a dream that we thought was for retirement, which was one day, we’d love to live in the Lake District. We can live that life now. It’s not impacting the business in any way, shape, or form. In fact, it’s had only positive effects on the business: massive move, massive changes.

Was there a particular catalyst that made you make that decision to make it happen now rather than wait for retirement? Was there something that was a real catalyst that you can both think about? Theresa: I think we can pinpoint when the penny dropped for us. Obviously, we were forced into a situation; it was a case of you work remotely, or you don’t work at all, that was forced upon everybody. We were in a way very fortunate that when we set up the business back in 2007, we actually embraced cloud technology. For us to be able to move out of an office at a day’s notice and work without any impact on the business was very fortunate for us.

I think as we started to have conversations with employees, and there was one particular person, Paul, we were saying to him, “Just imagine you can work from anywhere.” He’s got this wonderful little place that he goes to with his wife, and they go and escape there for the weekend; we kept saying, “Well, you can go there and work from there if you want.”

Lee: He was talking about commuting there one day to the office we used to have, and it’s like, “Oh, it’s a nightmare.” This came along, and we were saying to him, “You can move to the moon if you want.” So when we heard ourselves say to other people, we thought, “Hang on a minute, we can go as well.”

Theresa: We do encourage it. One of our ladies recently wanted to go away and see her family in Wales. Of course, because of lockdown, she wanted to go for a period of time. She just decided, “I’m going to go and work there for the week.” There are so many benefits of people being able to go off on holiday but to take extended leave with family and still be productive and work. For us, that was when it hit home, that we could start to live that life that we wanted to have now.

Who knows what is around the corner? We wanted to enjoy the Lakes while we were still young enough to go off and explore. It’s an amazing opportunity. I can’t believe how lucky we’ve been.

When you started having some of those conversations and thought of the move, how did your team initially adapt to remote working?
Theresa: I think first of all it was a novelty. I think it was a novelty for a lot of people at first that they could work from home and just log on. Again, we had the systems in place anyway, so people could just log on straightaway the next morning, but I think it was a novelty at first. Then I think the realisation cut in because people had been at home; they were starting to probably get a bit jaded with the fact that they couldn’t go out and see people.

Then I think after a period of time, people started to realise the benefits they were getting off the back of it. One of our guys had a lockdown baby, and he started to realise, “Actually, I’m there at bath times; I can go off and play with my little son during the day.” He was taking part in changing nappies and stuff like that. He would never have been able to have that in an office.

As people started to have their own experiences, like one of our ladies has run a half marathon, she would never have thought to do that, but her commuting time was spent on going out running and fitness and health. I think people have started to realise, “Actually, we could have this all the time.” In a way, it was a very organic process.

Lee: Our situation was quite unique in that we were in a situation with our lease where we could get out with one day’s notice. I understand that there’ll be some companies that were tied in three or five years or even longer, and those companies may have felt that they had to go back. I think that situation made us think, “Okay, maybe”.

There must have been a time, and I’m trying to remember when it was, where we had that aha moment of, “Let’s never go back to being in an office every single day, and while we’re at it, let’s move to the Lake District.” If I remember correctly, I think we were slightly more nervous to tell our employees about the move to the Lake District than we were our friends and family. It probably meant more for them. Obviously, we see our friends and family, but probably meant more for them in terms, for them, “That means we’re not going to get an office.”

Lee: I think mentally, we went through a process of maybe we’ll do that thing where we’ll get some shell of an office and pop back every now and then. As time went on, I don’t think it’s even on the table anymore. We meet up every now and then, but the rest of the time, we just crack on.

Thinking about clients and candidates, how have they responded to this new, fully remote Resource on Demand team and way of working? Lee: I’ve never asked any of them, so I don’t know for sure, but I don’t see that it would make any difference because we weren’t the sort of recruitment company that met candidates or even clients that often. To them, we’ve always been phone, Zoom, occasional meeting in London, but that’s about it. It’s not like we had an office where people came and saw us. The office is just for the recruiters who are on the phone, and they can now do that anyway.

Theresa: The thing about recruitment is when you’ve been in it as long as we have, after a while, some of those candidates, and also clients, become close friends. We’ve had some positive messages from people via LinkedIn who, when we started to put out on social media that we’ve relocated, just send these amazing messages saying, “Good luck,” and, “We wish you all the best,” and, “This is an amazing journey for you. Just go out and enjoy your life.”

It has just been supportive. We have had some nice messages from people and quite a lot of people saying, “I wish I could do what you’ve done.” People are saying, “If only I could go and move to the Lakes,” or, “I’ve always wanted to live in Wales,” and places like that. It’s people saying, “I would like to be able to go and do what you’ve done.”

Theresa: It’s inspiring for people to see, “Well, actually it is possible. It can be done”. I sometimes think while it gets people thinking everybody has different sets of circumstances, but it also gets people thinking about, “If I have done it like Lee and Theresa, what would have to change?” Just the fact that they start thinking about that begins to move people in a direction towards it as well.

Lee: The clients and candidates may not have been aware that the people that work for ROD now are more willing to ring them out of hours than they would have been in an office. If you’re in an office, it’s 9:00 to 5:30. The candidate or client said, “Can you ring me at 6:00?” There’s no specific example here, but I would imagine some recruiters will think, “No, I want to go home now.”

Whereas we have the flexible working now and they’re more than happy to take a call or make a call at eight o’clock in the morning or 6:30 at night, even later than that. From a client’s point of view, maybe we’re a bit more accessible than we used to be.

Theresa: I think when you work in an office environment, and it’s very much 9:00 to 6:00 o’clock or whatever it is, it’s almost like you fit your personal life in and around work. Whereas this way, it’s almost like work fits in and around your personal life. We realised very early on because it impacts us as well that when you’re asking people to work from home, there are other people in their household they’re interacting with. It’s impossible to hold down a 9:00 to 6:00 job when you’ve got other people coming and going.

We very much realised that if we’re asking people to work from their own homes, we’ve got to be adaptable and make sure that we can offer them the environment that fits in with their hours. That has meant people popping off to watch the little kiddie at a school play or something like that or popping off to the gym, or even putting washing on. It means the weekend is much better quality as well because they do not have to focus on those sorts of stuff.

Lee: That might come around because we moved up to the Lake District, and someone said to us, it might have even been you, “When the weather’s nice, we’ve got to take advantage and get out there.” We’re sitting here looking out the window, thinking, “Oh, it’s quite sunny today; we should be out there.” That train of thought led us to think, “We should do flexitime because if we want to go out and have a two-hour lunch and it’s nice, we should offer that to everybody else.” As long as you make it up later on or whatever.

What did you have to put in place to support the team’s transition to remote and now to flexitime? Theresa: I think it’s important to say that I don’t think we’ve got it perfect yet and probably it may never be perfect, but I think that the small cons are far outweighed by the pros, of the benefits that people get for their health, from work-life balance, just for being more present with their families. The things that we have had to put in place, things like Zoom calls, is more around the logistics of getting the team together, making sure that we can still be sociable. We can still knowledge share and swap ideas, and collaborate.

Little things like having a WhatsApp group for everybody, so it’s a quick point of communication during the day and more regular Zoom meetings. We still make sure that we do monthly team individual review meetings, ensuring that we’ve got more training online for people coming into the business.

From perhaps a hiring point of view, I also think that we’ve had to change our whole recruitment process. We think about that differently, how we market ourselves towards potential employees. There have been some subtle shifts, but I think on the day-to-day, because of the systems that we use and the fact that we’ve got all of the information there, it’s very collaborative, we’ve got tools in place that enable collaboration, that I’d say, hasn’t changed.

Some really good things that have come off the back of it are the time we spend with people is a bit more focused because it’s booked in the diary. We have to; otherwise, when do people know when to join the Zoom calls? Suddenly it’s not conversations taking place in a corridor; it’s a proper, “Let’s sit, let’s work through these changes.”

Lee: You give them more of your attention. In the office people walk in when you’re in your office, they walk in, and they want to ask you a quick question. I was never very good at saying no. You’re half doing what you’re doing and half-listening to them. These morning meetings we have at nine o’clock, they’re much, much better than what we used to do when we walked into an office at nine o’clock, “Morning,” and shuffle off to your office, and off you go.

Whereas now, I think it’s much more pointed a much more, “What’s the plan for the day? Do you need any help with anything?” I don’t think we ever really did that on a day-to-day basis in the office. We had one big meeting a week, but we now have one big meeting every morning.

Theresa: You still need to have some element of chit-chat because that’s what brings a team together. We’re still getting used to the fact that you have to instigate that kind of conversation, whereas before, they were just done a bit more naturally.

Theresa: Having to adapt that way but again, it makes you think about it. The Thursday afternoon chats; usually, we talk about rubbish.

Theresa: We work four day weeks and stuff like that. Thursday afternoon is usually the time that everybody is there for the last time during the week. It just tends to be what’s happening at the weekend, “What are you up to? What’re your plans?” that sort of thing. Then it just descends into an hour of chaos for a little while, but it’s nice because people get to have some of that banter that I think we miss out on.

It has to be a bit more organised. That’s probably one of the biggest challenges we realised early on; we had to be more organised with those sorts of things. Now that we’ve got into the rhythm of it, it feels more natural.

Just building on that, what would you say then are some of the other factors that have contributed towards the success of remote working for ROD and having this incredible year in still quite challenging circumstances? Lee: The marketplace we’re in is really busy, so that helps, I think. It went quiet for a little bit, but within a matter of a few months, the pendulum swung back, not only to the middle but towards the other side again. Not just because of what we’re going through, but Salesforce and the cloud are more relevant than ever with what’s going on. It’s a busy market, which helps in recruitment. That’s helped us have a good year. We switched our recruitment policy from local and inexperienced junior people because of our location; we are now looking for people with experience. It doesn’t matter where they’re based. As long as they’re in the UK and have the right attitude, those kinds of people can come into the business. In recruitment, you tend to find that you can pick up the technology speak quite quickly. It’s quite exciting for the company moving forward that we are in a crazy growth market.

Lee: Technically, the restrictions on growth for us, one of the main ones was the location; we picked it so we can’t moan about it. We didn’t want to go to London every day, so we chose this particular part of Kent, but it hindered our growth in terms of finding people that knew how to do recruitment, and that has gone now. That barrier has been removed. I think those two things.

Theresa: People that we can hire for but even the fact that we offer remote working, we offer flexible working, opens up the spectrum. Like mums returning to work. It’s made it a lot more accessible for them or any parent to be able to juggle childcare and work-life balance

Theresa: Suddenly again, you’re expanding your horizons a little bit further there. It also means that we could potentially look at branching out into other countries in the future. We’re not just limited by a geographical location or just the fact that we’re in the UK. We could start to look further afield anyway. Being a recruitment company that has covered Europe and Dubai and places like that, that’s quite an exciting opportunity.

Theresa: It starts to attract a different calibre of employee because they begin to see the potential there.

There are lots of other things that are starting to generate success. Even just the people that we’ve taken on. I’ve got to give a little shout-out because we’ve recruited three people now since going fully remote. We’ve had to change our recruitment process to make sure we’re finding the right people that are motivated to work from home because they’re equally making it a success because they’re living their best life possible. Those are great success stories because ordinarily, they wouldn’t have had that chance. They would have been forced back into the office or even stuck with travelling expenses; even if you add that up in itself, financially, they’re better off because they don’t have to drive into an office.

Lee: Also, a little shout-out to our marketing team, which is yourselves, because we obviously relied on you a lot. In the early stages of the pandemic, we probably didn’t think about marketing, but after a while, we started to realise that we had to stay, with your help, of course, we have to stay relevant and front of mind, but without talking about jobs. I think that’s really helped position us in the market as a company that wasn’t going anywhere and were there if you wanted to talk to us. With a few of the podcasts, it was your idea for us to get out there. It’s always good to have a marketing company that can talk to you about a quick shift in your message that quickly, which we did.

Theresa: Actually, I want to add a point in because one candidate springs to mind in particular. I won’t say their name. We became almost like an agony aunt during the lockdown, and people were coming to us because the message was, “You’re still working, you’re still trading, you’re still doing business as normal.” That was specifically down to marketing. There were so many companies that just shut up shop. I know that we were in danger of it at the beginning, and thank you for talking us out of that. We made ourselves relevant with some of the roundtables that we’ve done with your help.

Theresa: People saw us as a little beacon of light in the darkness, and they were coming to us. For months and months, we were just taking phone calls from people.

Theresa: “We just want to talk to someone familiar, someone who understands what we’re going through.” There were some people that we’ve had amazing messages from that have said, “We’re so pleased because we don’t know how we would have got through that period without you.” That is a knock-on effect from the marketing that you guys continued to do for us.

Theresa: I think also being able to not make it about yourself, and I think that’s what we tried to do during that period. It wasn’t about us; it was about them. It was about their pain, their journey that they were going through, and just being there for other people. Yes, our business was impacted, but in some respect, what people were going through and the ability to be able to help them helped us because it gave us a bit of a kick up the bum and said, “Right, come on, we’ve got to push on through this.”

At what point did you start to think that this remote working, the flexible working that it’s now evolved into, is the way forward for not just ROD as a business, but for your own lifestyles and what youwant for your future? Lee: We talked to a lot of companies. A lot of our clients have always been remote. Not the big, big boys, but a lot of the companies we recruit for, have always had this remote model. I don’t know why, but I never really thought that was for us.

Lee: I grew up in an office environment, and a sales office should be a buzzy office, deals being done and high fives and all that cheesy nonsense. I don’t suppose we would have ever done it if it wasn’t forced upon us, but having it forced upon us, the ridiculous cost savings from having an office and all that sort of stuff; that helped. I don’t know if there’s a particular moment where I could say, “Yes, that’s the day it was like, ‘We’re never going to go back to an office.'” The lifestyle we’re now leading is flexible.

Theresa: We got a bit more spontaneous as well, which is quite nice. I would add to what Lee was saying that we’ve always been very open and transparent with our employees. We very much care about what they think about the business’s direction and any changes that we’re thinking of introducing.

We’ve made a point of talking to the guys about what they envisage the business to look like moving forward. It has come out of conversations where people are just saying, “Do you know what? I don’t care about whether we go back into the office. I’m quite enjoying my life right now and the flexibility that it gives me.” We’ve gone from saying, “Well, we’ll make sure we’ll meet up once a month.” To suddenly going well, “Do we need to do that? Because we’re on a Zoom call every day.” Even now, people are going, “Well, I think that’s a bit overkill.” It’s actually about listening to what people want within the business. It has been easy for us to get caught up in what we think is right

Lee: I also think, digging deeper, the people that worked for us in the office, there was a few of them that we thought for sure would want to go back to an office, and they said they didn’t. It’s then making sure that it’s for the right reasons. Then for us, recruitment is one of those industries where it’s quite easy to track whether someone’s doing their job or not, by and large, KPIs and placements etc. It was easy to fairly quickly flush out if someone was saying they don’t want to go back to the office because they’re working from home and they’ve kind of not. Not that we had any of that. I know from speaking to these clients that we have how they remote manage people, which did help us.

Lee: Speaking to those companies that you remote manage. In many ways, it’s easier to remote manage than it is when someone’s sat opposite you, in my opinion, because you’re not sitting there every day listening to the reasons and feeling sorry for them. When it’s in black and white, and you’re not there, you can look at the numbers and go, “What is it you’re not doing?”

Theresa: He said to me one time, and this has always stuck in my head, and probably became more relevant when we started to work remotely was, “It’s about data, not drama.” You can very clearly see whether someone is performing or not, and of course, we were still very supportive. Just because we don’t sit near them at a desk, we still offer that same level of support. The beauty of it is you don’t see the excuses that go on. I would say that that has stopped. People realise now; they don’t have the distractions in the office. They can’t blame someone else for distracting them because people are very much self-sufficient now. Yes, it has kind of taken all of that away, which is amazing because it means we’re less stressed. We have a lot more energy. When we’re sitting in our meetings in the morning, we’re more upbeat and energetic because we haven’t got the drain of that.

Theresa: Trying to counterbalance negative energy is draining, but we just don’t have any of that anymore.

Lee: Since not having an office, the sickness record of people has been much improved. I’m not saying we’re pushing people to work when they’re at home and they’re sick. We’d obviously be the first people to say, “You’re ill; go back to bed. Log off.” Maybe in the olden days, if you were feeling a bit groggy, you wouldn’t want to go to work, so that was a day sick. That’s something that, if you’re just looking at the data, has plummeted.

Sharon: It sounds like there’s a healthier physically and mentally team

Theresa: You’re a coach Sharon, so you understand that they go hand in hand. If your life isn’t working very well, it has a knock-on effect.

Theresa: If you can take care of yourself and you put your health first, actually, that means that you can start to look after your family and your relationships and your work and so on. It has a huge impact on your whole life.

As ROD continues to expand, are there any other considerations that you might need to put in place to continue that growth trajectory that you’re on? Or is it just a case of you keep learning and evolving? Lee: I think one of the things we’re going to be doing next year is setting out a bit more of a hierarchy in the business. We used to have, as you know, a sales manager, and then some younger people reporting to that person. It has gone flat in terms of the structure at the moment. When COVID kicked in, Theresa and I jumped straight back in, doing everything.

Lee: Doing everything we do, which for me, isn’t a lot, but for Theresa, it’s most of the things. Paul came back as a non-billing manager to a biller, and everyone else is a biller. We’re going to get to a point where we need to start promoting leaders, and you can’t do a Zoom call in the morning with 20 little faces on there. It’s hard enough. I think we’ve reached a limit of 10. Even doing this now, we’re talking over each other all the time. We’ve got to split it out a little bit. That would be interesting in 2022.

Theresa: You don’t have the luxury of being able to walk through the office and touch base and catch up with people. This way, in smaller teams, it makes it a lot more manageable. We will definitely focus on how to restructure the company properly. We’re fortunate the space we work in is, again, we do coaching, is you find somebody who does it incredibly well, and you model your business around what works well. I think the onboarding as well is something that we’ll have to improve. It’s got better each time we’ve taken someone on, but I feel sorry for Nick because he was the first guinea pig for onboarding remotely. We made sure that it’s a two-way conversation. If we’re not doing something, you need to tell us so that we can adjust it.

Lee: That’s new stress, isn’t it? I think give a shout-out to Natalie here as well because she was the second person we took on remotely. The PC and all of the equipment that was supposed to get to her went on an around-the-world trip before it got to her. Between Theresa and Natalie, they were trying to figure out where it was. It was quite stressful because she was supposed to be starting in a couple of days.

Theresa: It arrived the day before she was due to start.

Theresa: From the trustworthy company that can deliver your equipment to employees, that’s number one on the list. You want them to feel valued. You don’t want people starting on the first day, and they don’t even have an email or can’t get access to anything. You try to get stuff sent out in plenty of time, but that was unbelievable.

Theresa: It’s a little bit out of your control to a certain extent because you give it to this delivery person expecting it to arrive, and it’s like, “Well, where is it?” It was great bonding because we got to know one another really well in the lead up to it.

How about yourselves? What are your favourite bits of this move to live in the Lakes? Theresa: Number one is enjoying something whilst we’re young enough because we always thought it would be a bit of a retirement plan. The fact that we are living here at this stage of our life is just an absolute blessing. I think it has changed our outlook. We’ve gone from being complete and utter workaholics to having a much better work-life balance than we’ve ever had. Being a little bit more hands-off has given us more freedom to actually be more creative because we’re not just driven by a geographical location or an office.

We don’t feel guilty now if we take a couple of hours off in the morning because we know we’re at our most creative when we’re out walking; that’s always been the case for us. I get other people have different outlets for creativity. We come up with our best plans of action when we’re going off for a long stroll. Now we can do it during the working day, and it becomes part of our work rather than the need to separate time out of the office. It’s been an absolute blessing.

Lee: You move so far away from everything you’ve ever known, you’ve got to try and put yourself out there, especially if you work from home because you’re not going to get to meet coworkers. Obviously, you work from home in a place you don’t know anybody. Even though we’re busy and workaholics, one of our plans was to get out there and do some volunteering, whatever it is you can do in the Lake District. I just happened to search for volunteering opportunities and noticed Lake District Radio looking for presenters. I was picturing myself probably doing litter picking or something. I didn’t expect it to be that.

Theresa: You’re the voice of RODcast; it’s a natural progression.

Lee: I think the things like the fell walking; we always liked to do long walks as you know, with all the challenges we’ve done over the years. Now living in the middle of it, it’s nice to go when the weather is nice; we also do a bit of open water swimming now. All these things that I used to think other people did. Other people that I didn’t really like if I’m honest.

Lee: But now that’s what we do. Yes, that’s great. Living in the middle of a tourist area, when the sun is shining, it is so tempting to log off and go outside.

Lee: The minute Lockdown 1 stopped, and people were allowed to come and see you, you’d gone from a year of just the two of us, nice and quiet and, “Isn’t this nice.” The flood gates are open, and everyone’s on holiday when you’re trying to work. That’s a challenge as well.

Where can people find out more about Resource on Demand?

Theresa: There are so many channels. Thanks to our marketing team you guys, they’ve made sure that we’ve got something everywhere. If people want to find out about what we offer as a service, go to the website Resource on Demand or there is; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. We also have our podcast on iTunes, Spotify and Google podcasts.

Lee: JustGiving too; we’re planting trees now for every placement we make. Not literally, but someone is planting trees.

Theresa: We’re offsetting our carbon and with every placement we make, we will now plant trees to help combat climate change. We also do offer careers coaching. Again, all of these things can be found on various social media platforms; we’re all over them. Recruiters thinking about a lifestyle change; we’ve got an amazing Working With Us page on our website so they can find out more.

Lee: Plus the podcast that’s out there from wherever you get your podcasts.

Lee: There are not hundreds of them; they’re people who are in my mind, absolute legends in the Salesforce space. Rather than have a recruiter telling you what you should and shouldn’t do for your next move or whether you should take their counter offer or not, listen to people in the industry that have been around a bit.

Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you think would be great for people to know about what makes remote working a success or how you’ve made it a success, or anything else that you’d like to share as we draw to a close?

Theresa: The only thing I would probably say is to keep an open mind. As a business owner, I know that people are tied into leases, but it’s seeing opportunity and keeping an open mind to that because I think we are all stuck in our habits because we’re just creatures of habit.

Theresa: We just naturally fall into patterns. I think just being able to keep an open mind. Whatever opportunity comes along, just look for the opportunity in it. I think that’s probably the biggest thing because whilst we stupidly had all of the systems in place to be able to work remotely, it was only when push came to shove that it happened. Actually, we fully embraced it. We’ve taken it with both hands and tried to run with it. It’s just having that ability to be a bit open-minded.

Lee: I think also when you’re working from home, there’s a fine line between feeling guilty if you put the washing on or do something that you might consider to be, “Oh wait, this is a chore I should be doing in the evening,” or the weekend or something. Give yourself a break. When planning your day, try and plan something for you, something like that walk at lunchtime or go in that coffee shop. I am a coffee addict, so I make sure we walk out every day to one of the many hundreds of lovely coffee shops we can get to.

I get grumpy if we don’t do it because I have to feel like I’m getting out. Have a little mooch around. Get a coffee, come back. Otherwise, because you’re working from home, it’s data over drama. People might be thinking, “I’ve got to show that I’m working and the only way to show I’m working is output,” but don’t feel guilty for blocking in an hour or maybe even more if you’ve got flexitime to go and have a walk, clear your head at the gym, watch your kids do something at school, whatever it is. That would be my tip.

Theresa: Being able to create a boundary between work and home as well because you are in your home, it’s so important not to let work spillover. Don’t be frightened to switch off the mobile phone when you’ve finished at the end of the day. You don’t have to be reading emails or taking phone calls outside of the hours that you work. Don’t be frightened of switching off those devices; put them aside. We have one mobile phone, but we give a separate mobile phone to our employees purposely so that we know that they can switch it off at the end of the day because you’ve got to create a boundary. You can’t let the two spillover.

Lee: I suppose that’s communication. We’ve had this with some clients where they’re almost expecting their employees because they’re working from home to be accessible all the time. If anyone’s looking to move jobs, ask upfront, “What are the boundaries?” “If you email me, Mr Boss, at 10:30pm, are you expecting a response?” Because you’re looking at 10:30 doesn’t mean that everyone else has to, because bosses probably will be working at 10:30 in some places.

How We Can Help

We have been working with Lee and Theresa for years to enable them to get their brand out and into the market. If you would our help to do the same drop us an email.

We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we provide. If you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.

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Today, we’re talking about multichannel marketing and how it could change your impact next year.

[As usual, this is a direct transcription for your benefit. Please excuse any rogue typing errors.]

This particular podcast is continuing our series on different ideas, techniques, tactics and strategies that you want to deploy next year as you market your recruitment and staffing organisation.

If there’s ever a time to download our checklist, it’s now. If you’ve already got a copy or a recent copy, because we updated it a couple of months ago, then print it off and assess where you are now. That will help to highlight the areas where you’re succeeding and areas where you probably need a little bit more work.

It’ll give you a sense of what you need to do now. You can find that by going to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl. Also, there are various places on the Superfast Recruitment website where you can download this.

Let’s get into talking about multichannel marketing. Whenever I think about this, I always think about a famous Harry Nilsson song. Now, you may not know Harry Nilsson for some of the younger listeners.

He wrote one of the most famous songs of all time, “Without You.” He also wrote another number called “One.” I always have it going around in my head when I’m talking to people or teaching multichannel marketing. One of his songs was “One.” It was, “One is the loneliest number,” and it most certainly is when it comes to marketing.

Why Should I Use Multichannel Marketing? It most certainly is when it comes to marketing your recruitment company. For many of you listening to this podcast, you probably think, “I use LinkedIn, so it’s fine, Denise. I don’t need to do anything else, and we’ve got the phone.” I suppose you could say that’s two channels that you’re using. However, in today’s market, you will need to do more than that to stand out in front of your candidates and your clients.

Why the big push around multichannel? Let me take you back. I’m only going there for a short time. I’m going to take you back to 2020. Suppose you remember that fateful weekend when we all realised that we weren’t going to be able to go anywhere. Many of us jumped on Zoom and did the Zoom quizzes and other things. Also, what happened is people went onto social media in droves.

I think even LinkedIn recorded a phenomenal increase in the volume of people that were registered on the site. It’s now well over 700 million. For the first time, Facebook broke the 3.2 million ceiling of members. Similarly, with Instagram, YouTube had its best months ever. Not surprisingly, people were going on there looking at videos. When you consider all of this, you realise that people were, and are, using multiple channels.

It Gives You Credibility and Authority Because of that, your audience is everywhere. When it comes to making an impact with the leads you have and the people you want to bring in, it makes a huge difference to your credibility and authority when you are seen on multiple channels. Even though you may think, “Nah, my market isn’t on Facebook,” or “Ah, my market isn’t on Instagram.”, it must be.

I know some of my old neighbours are on Instagram. You would not have thought that they would be the sort of individuals to do that. Remember that, when you can be in front of your market consistently, sharing value, being present and demonstrating your authority, you will be streets ahead of people that are just on one channel or just that person that picks up the phone and sends the odd random email, which still happens for some recruiters.

It Allows You To Stand Out If you are in front of more people in more places in different ways, that will make a huge impression on your market, and your brand awareness will start to go through the roof.

Before I share a few strategies, as you’re implementing the strategy, think about the fact that when people see you in multiple places, they feel that you are much bigger and more relevant to them than they ever appreciated in the past.

At the same time, because people are being touched in multiple ways on multiple platforms, this approach accelerates and compounds everything you’re doing.

I don’t know about you, but when I see an advert somewhere and suddenly, I get retargeted, and I see an ad. I realise that this person’s on Instagram, this person’s on Facebook, this person’s on LinkedIn, this person’s on Google, they’re stalking me around every website that I go on.

Once I start to experience that, I don’t consider it a negative. I think, “Hmm, this person’s doing their marketing well.” It wakes me up to go and look at that brand because I think, “Oh, they’re on Instagram, they’re here, they’re wherever, maybe I should just go and check out the website.”

We experience when we have run a campaign on LinkedIn or Facebook a lot more visits to our website because people are starting to see more and more of us, and they go and check us out.

This is available for you in your market too.

The last 12 months have been a challenging time regarding candidate acquisition. Remember, your candidates will be everywhere. They will be on Instagram; they will be on LinkedIn; they’ll be on all these different channels. Depending on which sector you’re working in, they might even be on TikTok. Think about this as you plan your strategy.

How Do I Use Multichannel Marketing? Let’s look at the strategy around multichannel and what you need to think about.

The first thing is, remember, you now have the ability, when you use multiple channels, to always be in front of your client or candidate, at the right time, in the right way for them.

For example, let’s talk about only relying on email for candidates. If you’re sending an email, let’s say it’s a candidate email you’re sending out to a Gmail or Hotmail address. I have an email address that I use for my personal communication, and I don’t go into it every day.

That might be the same for your candidates as well. If you were relying on email alone, there might be an issue. If you are in front of them on Instagram or Facebook, that will make a difference because you are there. You’re interacting; you’re showing that you want their business because you are on different channels.

Remember, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here because multiple channels can also mean the phone. It can also mean a networking event; it could also be a local BNI meeting; it can also be a local IOD meeting because you’re everywhere. It could be PR in your local newspaper, on your local radio station, whatever that might be for you, remember, be everywhere, and it’s so easy to do these days.

It Increases Your Brand Awareness From what we just said, brand awareness is key; no matter what you think, people love a good brand. By being on multiple channels, the more your brand is out there, the more likely people are to find you and remember you because you’re constantly around. As an aside, a little Denise story here for you.

I’ve been fascinated watching the recent launch of Adele’s new CD, download, whatever you want to call it.

Adele didn’t allow her music to be streamed back in the day, but now she does. It’s been fascinating watching the whole launch of her new album and how that is now on multiple channels because I’m even on her email list. Believe it or not, she uses good old Mailchimp to email out, but she’s done something on ITV; she’s done something in the US.

She’s all over Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and I noticed a few people had shared things around the recent audience with Adele that ITV did.

When you look at how somebody launches a huge brand like that and they do it on multiple channels, it shows you the impact it can have. The benefits, I’m sure you’re getting a sense now that they’re going to be there for you.

The more touchpoints you can build into a process with someone, the better because, the more places they see, the more they believe you are the person to work with.

I was reading some research on the Lead Forensics blog, which is useful for some of the benefits and the data people see around multichannel marketing.

They said that businesses that use more than four digital channels will outperform those using a single channel by upwards of 300%. If that doesn’t convince you to be in more places, in multiple ways, nothing will.

In some ways, it’s better to make sure you have a consistent brand image, a consistent message that goes out, so people feel familiar with it. There is no point being super, super quirky on Instagram, and mister or miss conservative on LinkedIn; you need the same approach across all channels.

One of the many benefits now is there are, of course, multiple automation tools that you can use that will help you do this. It’s not going to be mega difficult.

You write your social media, or in the case of our Circle clients, we create social media for them that they can tweak. Still, for you, if you write social media, then you can share it on Instagram, you can share it on LinkedIn, you can share it down your LinkedIn company page.

There are so many opportunities for you to be in front of your market. If there is one thing I would say that could shift your impact next year, it is to get in front of your customers in more places, in more ways.

It works.

We still have our offer for Superfast Circle. We’ve got a new version to support your marketing by providing collateral for you and the consultancy and all the training you need. It is a one-stop-shop with us these days. If you want to know more, there is still time to get in touch. We are not finishing till the middle of next week.

Thanks,

Denise

How We Can Help We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we provide. If you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.

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We’re well into December now, and you’ll be delighted to know that Santa has been already to Ferry Cottage, and there are presents now under the tree.

We started to get into the Christmas spirit, allowing myself to watch Christmas films on Netflix. I know it’s incredibly boring, but I love it.

[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]

We have lots of content on the Superfast Recruitment website. If you head over there, there’s a lot that you can digest, and also, if you haven’t downloaded our marketing checklist, download that too.

It is particularly relevant at this time of year as you’re moving forward and making decisions.

So, thinking about 2022, what content do you need on your recruitment website?

Here are two critical content pieces you need to have to move your marketing forward and get our brand recognised, which will be crucial next year.

Let me share what they are.

Explain Your Recruitment Process and its Value You might say, “Yes, we’ve got those, Denise.” Or, “Well, yes, I did that ages ago.” Maybe it’s time for a refresh, and this topic came up because we were chatting with some members of one of our programs, and the question came up about, should we have content on our website about why people should use us and why people should use a recruitment company?

Absolutely, yes, you should.

Now, some of you may have it in various guises, and some of you may not. This is so important in the market today because we’re in a candidate short market.

Also, not every client understands the recruiting process and how valuable it would be to work with a recruitment company. You must make sure that you have two explanatory pieces on your website with some good keywords in them that people can find.

Now, if you’re unsure about this, head over to Google or your favourite search engine and type in, “Why should I work with a recruitment company? What is the value of working with a recruitment company? How would a recruitment company help me accelerate my career?”.

As you start to type in your question, multiple other similar questions will appear. Now, the reason this happens is Google is going through its database, and it’s looking at all the common searches that people have around your words and phrases around “Is it a good idea to use a recruitment company?”.

As you do this, you will see multiple options that you could then use for content. You could rework some of those titles. Because Google is saying, “Look, this is what people are looking for.”

What I’d also suggest that you do is you tap in that search and go and look at the content that’s available online because although SEO is incredibly useful for a website, remember that when it comes to the recruitment sector, unless you get specific, there are billions of web pages with CVs, resumes, talent pipelines, all of those keywords and phrases, so make it relevant for you.

Let’s use my field of expertise. It might be, let’s say, your recruitment company is in the digital marketing space. Is it useful to use a recruitment company to recruit my next digital marketer? Or whatever that might be thinking about your specific sector.

You will see all the ideas and words and phrases that are there, and if you do that and have your piece of content optimised, you will get search traffic coming to you. There’s a great saying in marketing and sales: Give the customers what they want.

Google is your friend here because you see multiple options appear if you type in different questions and phrases. That is a great way to tell you that people are looking and searching for those terms because a lot has happened in the last couple of years. Candidates are becoming more aware of recruitment companies and how they can help them.

Organisations are now considering their talent pipeline because they’ve struggled, and they’re starting to realise that maybe it’s worthwhile working with a consultancy around this.

Explain Why It’s Important to Use a Recruitment Company The key here is to explain why it’s important to use a recruitment company, maybe some of the things that you do that’s different.

You’ll notice on our website that we mention why it’s important to have marketing. Because that’s one of the things that we do, and sometimes people are like, “Well, I’m not sure whether I need it or not,” because often people think that they can do things themselves.

Some candidates are misguided, and they think that if they contact somebody in an organisation, they’ll get an interview.

Often companies will think they can do their own recruitment. They don’t realise how time-consuming it is and the many mistakes that they can make. People still have these misinformed beliefs going on for themselves all the time.

That’s why it’s important to highlight some of the many benefits of working with a recruitment company from either a candidate’s perspective or a client’s perspective on your website to draw people’s attention to, because people will be surfing around your website.

Have it as a premium piece of content that people can access and use, and you will get traffic to your website. Share it regularly. You could even put it in a Word document or a PDF document and send it out to people when they first start engaging with you, and you’re having conversations.

Two critical collateral pieces you must have on your website. You may have them already, but they probably need a refresh in light of the current market dynamics and what’s going on.

Before I go, remember we’re still in December, and we have a special offer on Superfast Circle.

For those of you that need some support around getting clear on what marketing would work for you, you want some consultancy from ourselves, and you also want some collateral and material, then it’s worth jumping online and booking a conversation with one of us and let’s take it from there.

Thanks,

Denise

How We Can Help

We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.

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Many recruitment companies have used the ‘less is more’ approach when it comes to investing in marketing their business compared to investing in staff.

The perception is that staff can generate a greater ROI than marketing, though is that true?

In today’s podcast, we are delighted to introduce our guest speaker Rhys Jones of Davidson Gray. Following a hugely successful career building recruitment businesses, Rhys is now an investor in recruitment companies and mentors business owners as they look to grow and expand.

Rhys invites listeners to think again as you plan your marketing investment and explains how investing in marketing will enhance the ROI you gain from everyone on your team.

https://www.davidsongray.co.uk/

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Something happened today that I thought would be useful to share. It relates to a couple of conversations we’ve had with potential clients and a conversation with a relatively new client of ours in Superfast circle.

[Excuse any strange typing errors as this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]

The topic is what bait do you need to use to catch a Whale versus a Minnow. I do love a good fishing analogy, don’t I?

It is recognised in the fishing world: if you want to attract bigger fish, you need different bait than the bait you use to attract small fish.

Isn’t it logical, and isn’t it funny how these patterns play out in life across the board?

So here is something to think about; what level of clients and candidates do you want to attract versus the marketing strategies you are using?

Does Your Brand Communicate How Good You Are? Let me give you two scenarios here that we experienced recently. This morning we were on a call with our Superfast Circle clients.

One client has a specific niche, and he is using a strategy that works incredibly well that we share in our membership.

He was telling us about the type of clients that he wanted to attract. Fundamentally, it is the whale type of client, in other words, a bigger SME or corporate client.

We started to discuss with him all the different things that he could do because the reality is that if you want to attract a bigger client, you need to speak into the needs of that bigger client and come across in a certain way.

Here is one of my personal experiences that explains it well.

When I first joined the pharmaceutical industry, I was a bit of a hippie. I know that may seem odd. For those of you that have seen me, I did once have very long hair.

I got a job in a corporate organisation selling pharmaceuticals. Stuart Kearney was my first ever sales manager; he told me how I needed to clean my shoes and that I needed to dress in a slightly different way on my first day on the job.

I thought, “Oh well, fair enough.”

I went out to see consultants and pharmacists in the NHS who were a little bit different back in the day. They were very conservative, so I needed to give myself some form of authority and credibility. At the time, I was a new, inexperienced graduate. I needed to do everything I could to make sure that I stood out to potential clients.

It is the same when it comes to marketing. Stand out to your client.

If you want to stand out in the market and be in front of bigger clients, make sure that your marketing materials, marketing collateral, everything you do and say are at a different level because otherwise, you will not make the impact you want. You’re more likely to switch them off.

Yes, I know we are all connected individuals. We are all human beings on the planet. We are all very green, or we try to be. However, think about the strategies that you use when you are attracting a bigger client.

Now, our client gets this. He has got some great ideas he can use along with the content we provide.

Contrast this with an individual Sharon spoke to a couple of weeks ago who also wants to attract whale clients; however, his website is amateur, which he has no desire to change.

For some reason, he could not see that his brand impression was wrong for the client he wanted to attract.

He shared several things in the conversation that I will not go into now, which indicated he was out of alignment.

Certain business owners fascinate me when they want to charge big fees, and yet their business is limping along on free software.

Yet obviously, we were having a conversation with him. He wanted some advice, and we were giving him advice that he had completely the wrong strategy around attracting the type of client he now wished to attract.

What about you: Is your strategy aligned with who you want to attract?

The Holiday Restaurant Scenario Think about the needs, desires, and wants of your current avatar.

Are you speaking into that? Are you communicating value to them all the time that will help them move from one scenario to the next so that they can either move their talent building or their career forward?

Think about the authority that you are communicating. Think about your personal brand. We have lots of content on the Superfast Recruitment website around personal branding about the content you should be sharing.

All these things will make a massive difference to the impact that you make with your client.

It is human nature.

Have you ever been on holiday and walked past a restaurant because it did not look good enough?

Yes, me too.

Maybe clients and candidates are doing this to you too.

As you plan your approach remember, as a rule, when you are going after that whale client, they will not convert straight away. You need to have a process dialled in; it might take six months to a year to land a big client.

What are some things that you will map out and plan as you connect with these people and start nurturing them through to conversion?

A slightly shorter podcast today, but one that is important for you as you plan moving forward.

Thanks,

Denise

Important: We Have a Time-Sensitive Offer in December Finally, a shout out to those of you who are considering joining Superfast Circle next year. We have a special offer on now, so get in contact with one of us. We have updated all the content that we provide, all the resources. We even have a private podcast. You can have me in your ear every week, giving you ideas and strategies.

Contact one of us if you want to know more. The offer will end as we move into January next year.

Drop a line to Sharon [at] Superfastrecruitment.co.uk, if you want to know more, we will set up a call, and we can have a quick chat to see if this is a fit for you.

How We Can Help

We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.

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Today’s topic is warming up your market. Now, for some of you, that may be candidates, and for others, clients. [As usual, excuse any strange typing errors as this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]

However, if you’re new here, welcome.

If you haven’t downloaded our marketing checklist yet, go to www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl; it’ll take you to a page where you can give us your name and email address, and then we’ll send you a list of questions. There are 30 in total, and it helps you assess exactly where you are on your journey, so I suggest you do that.

Let’s start talking about warming up your market.

We’ve had a lot of conversations about this recently. Last week, we were in the Lake District running our first live event in two years.

It was pretty emotional, and that was because we’ve not been able to run live events. So we had a group of our Superfast Circle members attend, and we did a real deep dive on some different ways of standing out in their sectors, which I think they all appreciate.

As I record this, we have something like five weeks until Christmas, and we have something called a six-week sprint, which we’ve just entered, and it helps people with their implementation. The topic of lead generation and warming up cold prospects has been happening over the last ten days, so I thought it would be good to share some ideas for you guys around warming up your market.

The Right Message at the Right Time First of all, let’s put some context around the individuals you want to market to and warm-up, for want of a better word, because context is really important for marketing. That is the right message to the right person at the right time.

As I’m recording this, we’re heading towards the end of the year and Christmas. I don’t know about you; I love Christmas. I think I get more pleasure out of actually buying Christmas presents for people than I do receiving them because I love to have that reaction from people, where they say, “Oh, I wasn’t expecting that,” or “Oh, crikey, I didn’t realise you knew that I liked X, Y, Z,” because I like to put a little bit of thought into mine.

It’s the same, with everything; find out what people want and give it to them.

It is key to connect with someone to understand their challenges, what’s going on for them, and where you can best serve them.

That’s the case when it comes to your market, be it a candidate or a client. If you have not identified your ideal target avatar or ideal target candidates, then it’s a great idea to do that. There’s plenty of information on the Superfast Recruitment website around avatar here.

Before you do anything, don’t waste your time trying to warm up an individual that isn’t right for you. Make it contextual so that when you start this process, it will work with the right person.

Provide Value The first strategy is to provide value to this individual, be that candidate or client. Content is a great way to do that. There’s a reason why content marketing has exploded because we are in a knowledge-seeking society now, and people want to check you out, they want some help, they want some ideas. There are multiple ways that you can do this.

A) Add Value via Your Blog First of all, you need a blog page on your website so that if people come across you randomly, or they’re searching for, let’s say, a sales recruiter in Birmingham, you will come up on their radar. Then they go on to your website, and they’re going to see lots and lots of valuable content that can help that individual, let’s say it’s a candidate that wants to move roles or wants to accelerate their sales career.

B) Send Them a Report Now, you can provide value on your blog, and you can provide value on social media. Also, you can send them a report that might be useful. This is something that our Superfast Circle clients do because we write this for them.

You can send a report to a client or candidate that adds value. It’s based on the influencing strategy by Robert Cialdini, and that’s about reciprocity; I give you something, you give me something. Somebody might give their name or email address, but automatically, there’s a connection and a feeling between two individuals, where one person’s providing something of value for the other.

That’s something really easy to be doing. Whilst other people are maybe slowing down towards Christmas, I’m ramping up because I want to be on that person’s radar when they are starting to look around.

If you notice what people tend to do in December, they begin to re-evaluate their life, re-evaluate their career, re-evaluate how they’re going to grow their organisation.

They start researching online, and this is a great time for you to be on their radar. Don’t be taking your foot off the gas, be pressing it down!

Use Video The other thing I would do, and this works incredibly well, is to use video. Now, the way our brains are wired means we can process visual imagery and media much more easily than we can the written word.

We were having a conversation with our circle of clients about this the other day; the thing about video is, when you are looking into a camera and having a conversation with someone, it’s almost personal.

It’s one of the best ways to have a conversation with someone; if you can’t be with them physically, then have a conversation through video. The easy way to do this is to drop them a video.

Now, the way that our brains process information is that we love visual, we love auditory, and we love the sensation that it gives us. It’s called feeling; the scientific term is kinesthetic. If we can hit all of those different senses, which we are with video, it has an increased impact.

Imagine if you’re a candidate, you’ve been thinking about;

• Should I move or,
• what could I do next year?
• Maybe it’s time for me to move my career on?

…… and you get an email that drops into your inbox with a video.

The person on the video seems to know and understand what you are going through they look professional; what do you think your candidate is now thinking?

I suggest something like; they seem genuine I will call them or drop them an email.

Social Proof The third thing is to use social proof.

We now live in a review society. I would imagine that when you go on to Amazon – I know I’ve been doing a lot surfing on Amazon in the last few weeks as I’ve been buying Christmas presents and various other things for the business – I will go and check out the reviews.

If I can see that someone’s got quite a lot of 4 or 5-star reviews and there’s more of them, I’m more likely to click purchase when making that value decision.

It’s the same in every walk of life, particularly in a B2B environment, because when you invest a lot of money, you want to make sure what you are doing is ‘right’.

After all, you don’t want to make a mistake. I know it’s crazy, but many of us are very scared about making mistakes. What we need is some validation that our ideas and decisions are correct.

A great way to warm up your market is to share with them a testimonial or a case study of someone like them. If they can see somebody sharing their experience, whatever that might be, if it’s male or female, and they are sharing the results that you got for them as a recruiter, that will make a massive difference.

I’ve started to work with a couple of people from a mentoring point of view myself. The reason that I decided to press go is that I’d seen the type of results they were getting for somebody else, who, surprise surprise, was very like me.

If you are not using case studies, testimonials, or reviews in your marketing, particularly to warm up your market, then put that as an action now.

Here you have the easy ways to start warming up your market; provide value for them on your website, give them something to download, drop them a video.

Then share a case study or a testimonial. You’ll be astounded how easy delivering these three ideas is and what a difference it will make for you and your business.

How We Can Help We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.

Thanks,

Denise

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Today I want to talk about cold emailing and the catastrophic mistakes you might be making, which might surprise you. I’m going to get into that in a second. If you are new here, welcome. For probably 95% of all the podcasts we have recorded, there is a transcription over on the Superfast Recruitment website.

If you go to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/blog, you will find a transcription of this specific podcast. [Excuse any rogue typing errors as this is a direct transcription for your use.]

It’s important to look at these specific mistakes because I suspect you are doing some of them, and they’re quite easy to rectify, and you will be amazed at the difference it will make to you. Also, while you’re over there on the website, download a copy of our marketing checklist. For this, go to www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl. It will help you from an audit perspective.

This is a time to be thinking about your marketing, and it’s always good to start with an audit; where am I now versus where I want to be? Make sure you download our report. You can also get it by going to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl.

Let’s talk about cold emailing. For those of you that are a bit cynical about emailing or have never implemented this strategy before, let me remind you that email marketing is still THE marketing strategy that will deliver the highest ROI of anything that you do when it comes to marketing.

Obviously, you need to have that list of people to email in the first place, and there are many ways to do that, which we’ve shared in different posts and podcasts.

Today I want to talk a little bit more about cold emailing. The concept of cold emailing is, you send an email to someone you may not have engaged with before, you may have seen them on LinkedIn, or you may know their company.

However, you haven’t entered into a dialogue with them, and you haven’t sent an email to them. That’s the context of cold emailing. From a GDPR perspective, you can still send a cold email out to an individual you haven’t been in connection with before, provided it’s a company email and provided you give them the option to unsubscribe.

Because the whole context of this is that it is a marketing email, this is about increasing your business, increasing your revenues, and it is something known as legitimate interest. Let’s just get that one off the table for anyone thinking, “Oh, I don’t feel 100% about doing it”.

So let me share a number of emailing mistakes we see happening.

1. You’re Not Using Cold Emailing in The First Place The first mistake is not using cold emailing in the first place. As many of you know, we run a specific marketing training and coaching program where we do a number of different things with our clients, one of which is that we support them around implementing their marketing. One strategy we always suggest that they do is look at cold emailing. Many of these individuals purchase email databases; they use these emails. We have a specific member in our circle membership who purchased a database, and literally within the first one or two emails (that we’ve written for them) that they send, they get business.

What if you could do that next year? You can find a list of people. There’s plenty of ways to do that. You could then just email, get some engagement going, and get into a dialogue with these people. That’s the first thing.

1. You Only Send One Email The second mistake that people make is they just send one email. It’s no wonder that emailing gets a bad rap sometimes, and people refer to the fact that they’ve been ‘spammed’.

On numerous occasions, I’ve had writers email me about work. They’ll send me an email, and then I never, ever get a follow-up. Sometimes I look and I think, “That CV looks okay, actually”. Yet they never bother sending me a second or third email asking me if I received the first email, and what did I think?

Is there an opportunity to have a conversation? There have been many of these individuals I probably would have given a job to, but anyway, there you go!

I think it just shows you what some people are like. They do not have a campaign. This is why it’s really important. On the Superfast Recruitment website, you’ll see various podcasts that I’ve recorded about how important it is to have a campaign.

When it comes to cold emailing, write a campaign, have at least three emails. You’ve heard me talk about the power of three before. Send at least three emails to people with who you want to engage with.

Then there’s a fair chance they will have opened that email, and they will have read it, and they might have even followed the call to action that you’ve suggested to them, which we’re going to come on to later. Of course, you can pick the phone up and speak to them because really, this person is not totally cold now. They’ve had some level of connection with you and contact with you.

1. Sending Long Emails Mistake number three is sending an email that is war and peace. By that we mean, a long, long email that is just pitching you and your service.

That person you are emailing doesn’t even know who you are yet, let alone what you do. There’s been no engagement; there’s been no rapport built. Instead, it’s much better to send a shorter email with more context. I’ll come on to that in a second. To someone that’s a busy business owner or HR director, send an enticing, shorter email. You are guaranteed to get a much better result by doing that.

If someone sees a long, long email that they’ve got to read through, it straight away goes into trash. Remember that. Don’t try and pitch somebody everything about you and your recruiting service in the first email.

1. Your Email is Too Personal The next mistake might sound a bit counterintuitive.

That is, you send an email and say, “I hope you and yours are well”. It’s nice traditional rapport building, but used in the wrong way can switch people right off. It also really shouts out:

“This person is sending me a cold email. I want them to get to the point; they’ve gone a step too far”.

In the current environment in which we’re living, just remember what’s going on.

I have a really good friend who has lost both parents in the last 12 months. She’s had a terrible, terrible time. The thing about that is if you were emailing her, “How are you? Hope you and yours are well,” straight away, that’s going to switch her off and probably throw her into emotions, which you don’t want to do.

This is a first touch point business email; you don’t know this individual.

Once you’ve established some connection with somebody, then, of course, do that; have rapport-building conversations in your email, but you don’t know this individual, so please don’t do that—hot tip.

1. You’re Not Providing a Context For Your Email Number five is not giving context as to why you sent the email. Obviously, in your map of the world, you are sending the email because you want to get a new client on board. They know that deep down, but you’re not exactly offering them much value.

I was chatting to one of our clients the other day, and he was talking about the fact that their team is a husband and wife management team.

One of the things that people love about having a conversation with his wife is that she knows everybody and everything going on in the city where they work.

She is seen as the font of all knowledge.

If you can construct an email where you want to share some of the things going on in the market, some of the things around recruitment, people see you as a consultancy service.

1. You’re Not Providing Relevant Features and Benefits In Your Communication Now, the next thing, which is number six, goes back to our original training that we’ve all had as salespeople, and that is talking about features versus benefits. Talk about the features of your service or the features of something that happened with a client that you’re trying to pique their interest about, rather than talking about the results that your client got.

Remember, make things benefit-focused rather than feature-focused; that makes a massive difference because that person receiving the email gets that it’s about the benefits for them, rather than the features of your service.

1. You’re Not Specific Enough Now, we’re on number seven here, and this is where it’s important to sometimes just think about ‘less is more’; make your emails specifically targeted. It may be that you only have a small list.

We’ve worked with some clients, and they’ve had a list of 20 or 30 connections that they want to reach out to, and being specific has made a massive difference because they can hone and target the specific needs of that particular group of people. I’ve shared this story before; I’ll share it again because it continues to work. When we first started in the recruitment sector, we found 23 email addresses for recruitment business owners based in the UK.

I think we looked at more around the North and the Midlands, constructed a great cold email campaign, and from that campaign, we ended up with our first three recruitment clients. Exactly the same can work for you.

Think about your targeted list. We have one particular client who purchased a list of 200 emails from particular companies in her sector, and she has used that consistently over a couple of years.

This has brought in a regular stream of high-value clients.

I think she just sends them out in groups of 25, and it still works for her. Think about sending out targeted communications.

1. You’re Not Using Calls To Action The next thing, number eight, is no call to action. There’s no point sending the email without saying should we jump on a call? Would you like to do X? Would you like to do Y? Here’s some information that you might find useful, let me know, hit reply; all of these very, very simple calls to actions that people forget to do.

Seth Godin, the well-known marketer talks about the fact that people need to be led, and especially so when you’re looking at marketing, what is the ideal next step for them.

Remember always to have some form of a call to action.

1. You’re Not Using a PS Leading on from no call to action being present is not using a PS. You will be aware of this fact if any of you have studied copywriting.

You’ll know that people tend to read the start, the middle, and the end, and people always read the PS because they think there might be something of value for them, so always make sure you use your PS.

You can use two or three if you want to, you want to really go gung ho, but in your PS, one thing that we would always recommend is that you think about using a link to social proof.

Social proof on your website could be testimonials, or it could be case studies. A couple of months ago, I recorded a lot of podcasts around this because it is so vital in today’s market when you want to attract more candidates and clients is to have a good volume of social proof. Go back and listen to some of those episodes, probably around episode 289.

1. You Do Not Follow Up Finally, number 10 might seem a little bit different. One of the big things about cold emailing that lets people down is that they send out a number of emails, and they never follow up with a telephone conversation. This is fascinating when you consider the recruitment and staffing sector has historically had a real focus on sales, sales, sales, pick up the phone, pick up the phone, pick up the phone. Yet, many recruiters avoid following through with a phone conversation.

Which is a lost opportunity.

However, when you’ve had a number of cold emails that have been sent out, written well, and you might even know that people are opening it, depending on your email platform. Then you can pick the phone up and get in contact with them because your connection is no longer super cold.

This is a warmish lead that is on the other end of that phone. You put the hard work in with emailing. Why not now pick up the phone and see if you can have a conversation with them?

We have a number of clients that have joined Superfast Circle because we’ve sent out cold emails, picked up the phone, spoke to them, got engaged with them, and finally came to work with us.

Cold emailing mistakes do happen, and hopefully, now there’s no need for them to occur in your organisation.

Finally, if you haven’t used cold emailing as a strategy, then absolutely do it next year. You will find a massive return on investment from sending out cold communication like this and following up; you’ll be amazed at what might happen for you.

Remember, there are clients out there that need candidates. You are a good recruiter, and you can help them, so make sure you put this one in your plan for next year.

How We Can Help

We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.

Thanks,

Denise