12 Strategies To Level Up Your Marketing: Part 6 – Building Trust With Your Prospects

Need to catch up? Check out these earlier posts:

In today’s post, I will discuss the importance of building a good reputation and establishing trust with your clients.

LEVEL UP YOUR REPUTATION

In staffing, trust doesn’t come from what you say, it comes from what others say about you.

And in our industry, the people who talk the loudest tend to be unplaceable candidates.

Undoubtedly, you’ve felt this. The first people to leave a bad review on Google, Glassdoor, or Indeed are the people you could not place—or the people you had to terminate. It doesn’t matter that they couldn’t hold a job. It doesn’t matter if they lacked essential skills. It doesn’t matter that they walked off their assignment.

What matters is that these people can go to review sites and say whatever they want about your company, and you have no recourse.

This is why EVERY staffing company needs a proactive approach to reputation management.

Survey your clients and candidates immediately after every service experience.
When people are happy, collect a testimonial then ask them to leave an online review.
When people are unhappy, collect feedback…and then get back to those people with some form of response.
If you have any review site with less than 3.5 stars, get more aggressive about building positive reviews on that site.
When you get negative reviews, address the issues publicly if there are valid concerns…then take the conversation offline.
Bury bad reviews with an abundance of positive ones.
Leverage your automation platform to make this a consistent program.

Whether you use tools from Clearly Rated, Great Recruiters, Haley Marketing’s reputation management services, or do it all on your own, getting timely feedback is essential to increasing positive reviews and minimizing the damage from negative ones.

Don’t forget awards

Online reviews are not the only way to build your reputation. Strive to become an award-winning staffing company. Examples of awards:

Best places to work in your local market or industry
Clearly Rated Best of Staffing
SIAs Best Staffing Company to Work for
Inc 5000
Fastest-growing awards in your local market
SIA’s largest or fastest-growing staffing companies in your niche
Forbes awards for best staffing and recruiting firms
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year
Stevie awards for sales and customer service

Please note that winning an award won’t generate more sales for your company. Awards are merely credibility builders designed to build trust and help differentiate your company. They are most effective when leveraged as part of other marketing initiatives—as proof of your quality and reliability.

LEVEL UP NURTURING

Staffing is rarely a one-call close.

To win business, you need to build trust. You need to stay top-of-mind. And you need to nurture relationships with your prospects.

Historically, lead nurturing was something salespeople did as part of their sales process. Every call would end with a scheduled next action (ideally, the next meeting).

Today, you can help your salespeople (and boost sales productivity) by integrating many tools to support your sales team, automate follow-up, and ensure every prospect receives the right follow-up at the right time.

Here are a few examples of lead nurturing tools and uses:

Email	1:1 follow-up after a sales call Monthly email newsletter or other publication Invitations to webinars and other events Skill marketing top candidates Seasonal greetings and eCards Promotional offers Ad-hoc news or industry information Autoresponder after a form is completed on your website
SMS (texting)	Confirmation of an appointment 1:1 follow-up question or invitation to meet (with a warm lead) Offer for content (again, only with a warm lead) Request for service feedback
Marketing automation	MQL (marketing qualified lead) sequences Follow up after downloaded content Personalized offers Progressive profiling SQL (sales qualified lead) sequences Follow-up sequence after a sales call Product/service education Credibility building (sharing performance metrics, testimonials) Onboarding a new client Service feedback Assignment extension Cross-selling
Retargeting PPC ads	Have your ads “follow” people who have visited your website. You can do retargeting on Google (through their network of millions of websites), Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media. Use retargeting to: Reinforce your positioning Promote specific services Offer educational content Invite past website visitors to events Encourage candidates to apply Remind employers of the value of your staffing services

With lead nurturing, your goal is to find ways to stay in touch that demonstrate your value, strengthen your positioning, build trust, and increase demand for your services—without being pushy. Nurturing will build irresistible relationships with your ideal clients by integrating the right content, messaging, delivery tools, and timing.

Up Next: 12 Strategies To Level Up Your Marketing: Part 7 – Mastering Recruitment Marketing

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