The top five PR and marketing tips your recruitment business shouldn’t ignore
Whilst the recession certainly reduced the size of the UK staffing sector, today’s market is crowded and full of agencies vying to compete with and overtake their competition. Despite this, however, too few look at PR and marketing as a tool to not only differentiate themselves from their competitors, but to also position themselves as the ‘go to agency’ for clients seeking staff and for candidates looking for their next role. There is perhaps a tendency to view marketing and PR as a time consuming and often costly exercise they can do without. Wrong. If done effectively, it can help a staffing company reach its objectives and facilitate growth. Here are my top five tips:
Create original, engaging content
Perhaps an obvious statement, but any material you create – whether this is a newsletter, mailer, brochure, or media article – needs to not only be compelling, but it also needs to grab the reader’s attention. Like me, most of you will be inundated with content from third parties and, if they fail to draw me in, they not only don’t get read but the brand in question doesn’t strike me as an authoritative voice in their market. Your content needs to be engaging and offer the audience added value.
Target your content correctly
Once you have original and compelling content you need to ensure you are positioning it in the right place. Ask yourself what platforms your stakeholders are using to source information and target these. Take for instance an engineering recruiter – its clients and candidates will almost certainly be reading the trade publications in this area regularly. This agency should be looking to get most of its content on these sites, and not what in my experience many do, and purely look at the broadsheets as the Holy Grail. Now don’t get me wrong getting your content in the Financial Times or City AM is fantastic, however it is not only harder to do, but it may also not be what your next clients or candidates look to for information.
Extend your reach
Disseminating your content online is key – not only does it mean it will remain available forever, but it also allows engagement with your target audience. Ensure that any PR and marketing plans include a blog and the use of social media channels. Too many agencies make the mistake of creating great content but only posting it on their website, or worse still, leaving it in the reception area. Use a blog to repackage your content and then seed this into LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, for example. Not only will your brand’s reach extend exponentially, but you will also invite engagement from your target audience. After all these could be potential leads for you and your sales team.
Include the whole business
Your team should be the driving force behind any communications activity and the results should help them in their daily roles. Speak to them about what you have planned, what it means to them, what ideas they have, and get their buy in. If your activities are successful they should get more business, but it will require a level of dedication and understanding from all involved.
Don’t adopt the ‘stop start’ approach
Last but by no means least, keep your efforts going. Too many businesses get off to a good start but, often due to other commitments, fail to keep on top of their comms plan. Effective PR and marketing only truly work via a sustained ‘drip feed’ approach so it’s vital to either set some time aside each week to work on it, or use another internal or external resource.