Your staffing website may look great, offer a great customer experience and contain powerful calls-to-action that drive response.
But if it’s boring or sends the wrong message? You’ll send visitors running for the hills.
In a time when human attention spans have become shorter than a goldfish’s, how can you convince a site visitor to stick around and take a desired action? In this two-part series, I share ways to increase your staffing website’s ROI with great content:
Tip 1: Get to the point. Quickly!
You have only a few moments to capture a reader’s attention. Bore or frustrate them, and they’ll navigate to a competitor’s site. Compelling website copy:
- Is brief
- Is “skimmable” (i.e., headlines and sub-headlines convey your message, so visitors can quickly find what they need)
- Strategically includes bullets to visually organize information (and reduce content length)
- Uses powerful language and active voice to engage, inform, convince and compel action
Tip 2: Improve your messaging
Take your website from “good” to “great” by strengthening your message:
Tell a better story.
Ultimately in sales, as in life, the best story wins.
- Does your website have a story that’s engaging?
- Is it real?
- Does it stand out from the typical “our service is better” story that most other staffing companies are telling?
Give people more reasons to want to work with you.
Does your website present a compelling case for why people should work with you? Make sure your site gives reasons employers and job seekers care about, such as:
- your speed of service
- your expertise
- how your overall service experience for clients and candidates is better or different
- your unique access to talent and job opportunities
- how you can give them greater peace of mind that their job orders are going to be filled correctly
In other words, think about the person visiting your website. They just went to six other staffing company sites and you are number seven. Make sure your copy provides a compelling reason to choose your firm.
Focus on the problems you can solve.
Tempted to write exclusively about the services you deliver? Resist the urge. “What we do” copy is neither compelling nor very interesting to site visitors. Instead, focus on the ways you can add value based on the problems they are facing. Think about the bigger business implications for clients of having unfilled jobs at the organization:
- Are goods not getting shipped?
- Are deadlines being missed?
- Are key projects not being completed?
- Are they losing competitive advantage in the marketplace?
- Are their costs spiraling out of sight because they’re paying so much for overtime?
Then, your team can show employers how you can be a problem-solver and not just an order-filler.
The same approach works well for job seekers, too. With candidate shortages at critical levels in many industries, your staffing firm’s messaging must appeal to passive as well as active job seekers – clearly and succinctly explaining the value you deliver as a resource for great opportunities, career guidance, confidential job search assistance and more.
Include more examples of the results you have delivered.
Results are compelling, interesting and show clients and candidates that you live up to what you claim. Show proof of the value you deliver through things like:
- Client and candidate testimonials
- Case studies
- Performance metrics (e.g., interview-to-hire ratio, client or candidate retention rate, the number of clients or candidates that you work with, etc.)
- Awards and recognition
- High ratings on Indeed or Glassdoor
Increase the impact your results have on readers by using sound design principles to complement the copy or statistics. Graphic elements, charts/graphs, bold colors and animations all can be used to maximize the effectiveness of your results.
Finally, when displaying your proof of value, make sure the statistics and numbers you use make sense to your site visitors. For example, if you participate in Inavero’s Best of Staffing, you may receive a Net Promoter Score value. Anyone familiar with these values knows that a 75 is world class. But an uninformed client or candidate may misinterpret this as 75 out of 100 and equate it to a “C” grade. Make sure to use metrics that show off your credibility and value and also make sense to all website visitors.
Up Next: Driving Applications with More – and Better – Jobs
Don’t want to wait for the post to publish? Get the Idea Club Whitepaper: Staffing Websites: Maximize ROI with Great Content and Promotion here.