Welcome to my series of posts where I help you LEVEL UP your marketing. Part 6 is here and ready for you!
Need to catch up? Check out these earlier posts:
12 Strategies To Level Up Your Marketing: Part 1 – Differentiating Your Company
12 Strategies To Level Up Your Marketing: Part 2 – Capturing Clients’ Interests
12 Strategies To Level Up Your Marketing: Part 3 – Selling More Staffing
12 Strategies To Level Up Your Marketing: Part 4 – Maximizing Sales Results
12 Strategies To Level Up Your Marketing: Part 5 – Driving More Sales Leads
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:
| 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
SQL (sales qualified lead) sequences
|
| 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:
|
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
Don’t want to wait? Download the entire LEVEL UP eBook here for free!
Need help LEVELING UP your marketing?
Sign up for the Big Ideas Newsletter for our latest marketing insights – or let us create a free list of marketing ideas specifically for your staffing or recruiting firm.
