Podcast Archives - Superfast Recruitment

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.

What’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.

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.

Three types of social proof work well in the recruitment sector. Let me start with an easy one.

The 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.

The 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?

The 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

Our 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.

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?

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.

That 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.

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

As 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.

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.

Let’s put some context around this and what’s happened over the past few years when it comes

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.

Instead, 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.

The 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.

You 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

As 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.

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.

At 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.

Here, 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 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.

Let’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.

Let’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

As 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.

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

If You want to do ‘marketing differently because you want better results. Then, book a quick chat here.

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 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.

Let 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.

Next 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.

Who 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

If 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.

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.

One 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.

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.

The 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.

Something 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

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.

Many 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.

The 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.

I 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

As 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.

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

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

Enjoy!

Thanks,

Denise

If 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.

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.

On day three of our Recruitment Marketing Week free training, we cover creating your content machine, where we share the key elements of your system.

Enjoy!

Thanks

Denise

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

As 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.

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.

Let’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.

The 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.

The 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

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.