The way we recruit has changed.
It’s no secret that today’s market is more competitive than ever before. We’re living in a candidate-led world where tired and traditional techniques just don’t cut it anymore. In fact, it’s disruptive techniques such as cold calling that give recruitment such a bad rep.
So, how do you win business without cold calling, power hours, or other dated tactics? Well, there is another way.
Forward-thinking agencies are working smarter, not harder, by embracing the power of inbound marketing to attract the best talent, increase ROI, and ultimately boost business success.
But what is inbound marketing, how does it work, and how can it help your recruitment agency to attract more clients and boost ROI? We’re glad you asked…
What is inbound marketing?
According to HubSpot, “inbound marketing is about marketing with a magnet, not a sledgehammer”. In a nutshell, it’s when a business attracts the attention of potential clients by drawing them into their website through the use of blogs, social media, eBooks, emails, and more.
Rather than wasting your time (and money) using traditional marketing methods to engage with potential clients, inbound marketing enables you to attract the best quality clients and candidates to your website by creating and sharing clever, informative content.
Basically, inbound marketing for recruitment agencies enables you to stop doing all the chasing - and when it comes to the recruitment industry today, it’s a super effective strategy.
How does it work?
The inbound methodology is based the around four key principles of attract, convert, close, and delight. As clients move through these stages and progress along the sales funnel, inbound marketing converts them from potential customers to trust promoters:
Attract
Attract potential clients and earn their attention through content marketing, social media, and SEO.
Convert
Convert website visitors into leads with compelling calls to action, landing pages, and forms.
Close
Close leads into clients via lead nurturing through emails, workflows, lead scoring, and CRM integration.
Delight
Delight clients and turn them into promoters of your brand.
Inbound marketing and recruitment - a match made in heaven
That’s all very well and good, but how does it relate to recruitment? Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that inbound marketing and recruitment go together like gin and tonic. It just works.
So much so, in fact, that HubSpot have even coined a new term for the use of inbound marketing and recruitment, “inbound recruitment”.
Basically, inbound recruitment enables you to naturally and transparently attract the best candidates and clients on the market. The four stages of the inbound journey remain the same, but you use the process to attract clients and candidates so you can grow your business in a natural, organic way.
There are tons of benefits, such as improved credibility, building a high-quality talent pipeline, increased engagement, authentic relationships, and ultimately, the ability to reach your goals and hit your KPIs.
Yep, if you want to win the war on talent and skyrocket your recruitment company to success, it’s time to start thinking like a marketeer.
6 ways inbound marketing can help your recruitment agency
1. You can get to know your target audience
One of the first stages of inbound marketing is the creation of personas so that you can understand your target audience.
By gaining a deeper understanding of your audience, you can create right content that keeps them coming back for more - and this is especially true in the recruitment industry.
In fact, the secret to successful recruiting is being timely, relevant, and informative - so it makes sense that if you’re going to deliver a next-level recruiting experience, you need to get to know your clients and candidates.
How well do you really know your clients and candidates? You probably think you know them pretty well - but do you have a true understanding of their likes, dislikes, challenges, pain points, ambitions, and goals?
If you’re going to build real, lasting relationships, you need to create personas and dig deep into your market - especially if you are a specialist agency focusing on specific fields.
2. You can create content that they want to read
Once you’ve created your client and candidate personas, you can then use these personas to create hyper-targeted content that answers their questions, addresses their pain points, and solves their problems.
Plus, as you learn more about your audience over time, you can personalise your messaging and ensure you are meeting your clients’ specific needs.
What’s more, by sharing valuable and engaging content across multiple channels, you can engage with your prospects and build your profile as a thought leader and industry specialist in your market.
Basically, creating killer content brings the top talent to you, enabling you to tap into the passive talent market and solve your clients’ challenges by finding them the very best in the industry.
3. You can make sure your agency is found
Now, here’s the clever bit. Of course, there’s no point in creating banging content if no one is going to see it - which is why you need to analytically pick keywords so you can make sure your content is found.
Keyword research allows you to find out how your clients and candidates are searching for you, so you can implement SEO techniques such as optimising your pages, creating pillar pages, crafting SEO-friendly content, and building links around the terms your clients and candidates are searching for.
The result? You can make sure your recruitment agency gets found in the search results, and ensure you are attracting the right people to your website.
4. You can build relationships with email and social
Once you’ve attracted clients and candidates to your website, you need to nurture your relationships with them over time.
One of the best ways to do this is by sending targeted communications and automated emails to inspire, delight, and convert your audience.
In addition, sharing content on social media also allows you to reach your audience on multiple channels, so you can entertain, educate, and inform them, and ultimately continue to strengthen your relationships.
In doing so, you can ensure that you begin to build a talent pipeline, whilst also continuing to promote yourself as an industry specialist.
5. You can use tools and strategies to boost ROI
Now that you’re attracting clients and candidates to your website, you need to turn them into leads so you can boost ROI. There are a number of ways to do this, such as:
Premium content production
By creating premium content such as eBooks, webinars, whitepapers, and case studies with unique value, you can convert visitors to leads on your website.
Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
Generate leads with buttons or links that encourage visitors to take action, like ‘Download our eBook’ or ‘Attend our webinar’.
Landing pages
After clicking on a CTA, your website visitors will be sent to a landing page where the offer is fulfilled, and they submit their information so you can begin a conversation with them.
Forms
For visitors to become leads, they must fill out a form and submit their contact information directly to your CRM. You should also optimise your forms to make the conversion process as easy as possible.
6. You can measure success and make improvements
Finally, inbound marketing enables you to track your success so you can see which methods are the most effective, identify ways to improve, and tweak your strategy as you go.
By analysing the results of your activities, you can get a clear picture of how your clients and candidates arrived at your site, what content they interacted with, and what actions they took - and then use that information to inform your future campaigns.
One of the best ways to measure success is by monitoring your click-through-rate (CTR) so you can identify the number of people that clicked on your links, see how compelling your messages are, and attribute any outcomes.
How Angelfish can help you to revolutionise your recruitment
If you want to attract the best clients and candidates to your recruitment business, you need to embrace the power of inbound marketing for recruitment agencies - and as HubSpot Diamond Partners, there’s no one better to help than the Angelfish team!
Here at Angelfish, we are experts in the inbound methodology and have been preaching about the power of inbound since before it was cool, which means we are perfectly positioned to help you utilise inbound to deliver tangible recruitment results and become an inbound marketing expert.
Ready to implement inbound and reap the rewards? Contact us today to get started with a free report and consultation - or alternatively, why not check out this case study to find out how we helped a recruitment agency achieve a 4000% increase in lead generation (yes, really!).
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