With the roller coaster ride of a year we’ve been on – being smarter about how you attract, engage and convert candidates and clients is more important than ever! In marketing, staying SMART with your goals, and your marketing keeps you laser-focused.
SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Smart MARKETING is goals-based, measurable, realistic, sustainable, and these keep everything aligned. So what are some SMARTER ways to make sure you’re using your marketing dollars and time well?
3 Ways To Market SMART This Year (and Next)
1. Tighten up your Value Proposition
This starts with knowing WHO you are trying to reach, their pain points, and how you can solve their problems. Are you in an industry where candidates are now looking for remote opportunities? The commute is no longer a pain point. Geographic location may not either. Now its pay, company culture, and ease of application. How about your clients? If they were shut down earlier in the year, they’ve lost much of their workforce and need to ramp up quickly. Are you positioned well to meet their needs? Is your marketing aligned to those needs? If not, now is the time to make the adjustment.
2. Make Time To Add to Your Website
Most websites took a hit this year. The trend was similar across the vast majority of staffing and recruiting sites. Mid-march there was a drop, that kept dropping into April and usually leveled off somewhere in June. The companies that have since recovered their organic search, social media, and other source losses, are the ones who engaged heavily and strategically in email, SEO, and other marketing tactics. Their audiences realized that they had not shut down, and reengaged with the company to find a job after they’d lost one or were still facing furlough, and clients re-engaged to grab up the newly available talent. The result? These websites recovered their organic search losses, and some are even higher than last year for quarters 2 and 3.
What can you add to your website?
- Blogs (long form and short)
- location pages
- Pages that spotlight your different service lines
- Job listings (with a job board that creates a new page for each job)
- Develop an SEO audit to adjust and align your on-page terms and meta information
- eBooks and gated landing pages
3. Embrace Change
The impact of the shutdown will most likely be felt for years, but one of the results that emerged from that time was a deep understanding that we needed to all do better in terms of how we use technology. Here’s a list of items that staffing companies attacked furiously over the last 6 months, in terms of marketing advancements:
- Companies took action to update websites to mobile-friendly (or mobile-first) and also shifted to ADA-Compliant designs.
- Staffing and recruiting companies moved to new ATS’s that they’d had their eyes on for years
- They recognized the need to understand their job board budgets and embraced technology that helps them make smarter spending decisions
- Video interviews and emails became the norm
- The art of email became more important. (how many COVID-19 updates did you receive in the month of March? I lost count) Some stood out to me, and some were deleted immediately.
- Career sites and job boards were used better.
- Smarter pay per click campaigns were launched.
Are you looking for smarter ways to reach your audience moving forward? We can help!
At Haley Marketing, we continue to research and develop the best ways to reach your audience and pivot when uncertainty hits. Not only can we provide specific services but we’d like to show you how a SMART marketing strategy can bring you the results you need. Want more information? Reach out today!
