Time and time again, I see people making the mistake of thinking that recruitment marketing is just knowing when and where to place job ads. While job boards and PPC ads are an important part of your recruitment marketing strategy, it is not the be-all, end-all. Recruitment marketing is a holistic approach to marketing your open positions and promoting your employer brand through an omnichannel approach that combines PPC, job boards, organic marketing, and nurturing tactics.
Recruitment Marketing takes all the skills, channels, tactics, and tools you would use to market your products and puts them to work building awareness, engaging, and nurturing prospects through a well-developed candidate journey. It combines employer branding with a deep understanding of your candidates' needs, questions, and concerns to bring them the right information at the right time.
It is time to stop thinking about job boards and PPC as the one-stop shop for recruitment marketing and get back to basics.
The Most Overlooked Features of Recruitment Marketing
Your Career Page
The first and most important building block of any recruitment marketing strategy starts with the basics: a website. So often, career pages are an afterthought, at best, on company websites, or companies do not bother with them at all.
No successful digital marketing campaign is effective without a landing page; why would your digital recruitment marketing be different? Like your product landing pages, your career pages should be optimized to sell your company, and it should include all the key features: branding, social proof, clear CTA, and great content, built with Content and Technical SEO in mind (for more information about the types of SEO, please see Making Sense of SEO (https://lionzone.com/blog/making-sense-of-seo-search-engine-optimization), as well as being optimized for Google Jobs.
Social Media
Regardless of whether you are actively hiring for positions or not, you should be building your employer brand through social media.
Your company's social media page should not just be dedicated to engaging potential customers. You should be highlighting your company culture and values, all while developing employee ambassadors to reach those who might be interested in joining your team in the future.
Most people looking for new positions, regardless of generation (if you would like information about how to best to reach each generation, check out Improve your Recruitment numbers with targeted Generational Marketing https://lionzone.com/blog/improve-your-recruitment-numbers-with-targeted-generational-marketing), utilize social media to research companies before applying.
Social is a robust channel for building your talent pipeline, and don't be concerned that a split focus between product marketing and recruitment marketing will impact your sales. Potential customers are just as interested in your culture and values, and employee stories as potential employees.
Don't be afraid to try new social media platforms. Each social media platform offers different audiences and caters to different learning styles. For more information about which platforms may best fit your audience, see Which Social Media Platform is Right for my Company https://lionzone.com/blog/which-social-media-platform-is-right-for-my-company. Finding the right platform for your message will increase your engagement- don't be afraid to have fun and break out of the text and image box; video and audio formats are the preferred content format for engaging people today.
Nurturing
Nurturing is one area most companies do a bit of but fail to think long-term. So often, nurturing stops once a candidate has been found for a position, or if a potential candidate is not the perfect fit for an open position. This is short-sighted thinking.
The most successful companies have a pipeline of people interested in working for a company that they keep warm over time. They are primed for your next opening if they are warmed through nurturing. Whether they are a good fit or not for the open position that caught their attention, there is no need to throw them away. You may have an opening in the future that they would be a great fit for.
Automation and AI are great assets in nurturing, cutting down recruiters' time significantly while offering personalization that will keep potential employees excited about your career opportunities.
Conclusion
Don't get caught in the trap of thinking recruitment marketing is as simple as placing job ads. Gone are the days when people just saw an ad and applied for a position. Today they want details on who you are, your goals, and what you can do for them. Companies that actively manage their employer brand see the greatest return on their recruitment budgets.
YES. YOU GUESSED IT — It's time for the Sales Pitch! (I know you have been expecting it, so we won't disappoint).
I'm sure by now you have discovered that Lionzone Digital Marketing created this blog. Surprise! One of my absolute favorite features of our services is that we don't believe in long-term contracts!
We believe this — If we don't earn your business every day, we don't deserve to keep you!
— Let us earn your business & assist your company with their Recruitment Marketing needs. You won't regret it. —
For more information about our services, please see https://lionzone.com/recruitment-marketing or call 615-235-3200.
