In an online world, the digital marketing tactics staffing agencies choose to deploy can help attract top candidates and new clients alike.
Staffing Agency Marketers Should Consider These 8 Proven Digital Marketing Tactics
Identifying proven digital marketing tactics that can help you grow your staffing agency may be as easy as ensuring that your marketing activities align with what people are actually doing online. Forbes.com lists five goals of online marketing:
1 – Brand Awareness
2 – Brand Loyalty
3 – Customer Education
4 – Customer Engagement
5 – Talent Recruitment
If you feel like your staffing or temporary employment agency’s internet marketing approach isn’t helping you connect with the best candidates or isn’t helping to generate new business, these eight digital marketing tactics might may help you instantly improve your results, especially if you have a good idea of “who” your ideal candidate and client types should be, because they are the exact goals that your prospects have when they go online.
“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” Zig Ziglar
As Zig Ziglar once said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” This isn’t about setting out on a random expedition of doing good; it’s about realizing that the secret to your agency’s success lies in helping your clients and prospects solve their problems.
By bringing your digital marketing tactics into alignment with the goals of your clients, prospects, and the type of candidates you would love to place, you may be better positioned than if you focus your marketing solely on your agency’s goals.
8 Ways to Set Your Staffing Agency’s Digital Marketing Tactics to High Engagement
1. Inspire
20 percent of people who go online engage with content that inspires them to do – be – have – become – or obtain something they want or need, more than any other type of content. Examples of content your staffing agency could share to inspire clients, prospects and potential candidates for placements might be:
- Creative ideas for conducting better interviews or performing better during interviews
- New ways to source job openings or high performing candidates
- Motivational quotes
- Inspirational success stories
- Ideas to make resumes or position postings stand out from the rest
2. Spread Happiness
A close second only to inspiration, 19 percent of people engage with online content that makes them feel good. Yes, we’re talking about puppies, kittens and laughing baby videos here, but that’s not all. At its best, the content you share on your website, social media and email marketing won’t just make your audience feel good, it will make them feel better about themselves and even make them feel good about doing business with you. Photos and videos with customer testimonials are a great example of this type of content. Posting a congratulatory update and tagging your client or candidate when they achieve success is another – who doesn’t feel good when they get a compliment or a pat on the back in public?
3. Dish
In third place on this list of digital content that sparks engagement is content that gives them the scoop, gossip or an insider’s view of social influencers like national or local celebrities, sports figures and so on. As a Seattle factoring company it’s easy for us to relate; you can think of this as the 12th man mentality.
We may not know the Seattle Seahawks players we appreciate personally, but we can feel connected to them by taking in their social updates or reading up on their personal as well as professional lives. For staffing agencies, this could also include giving your audience members the scoop on local employers and top business leaders, so they feel like they’re in the know.
4. Entertain
Comedy and animals top the list of leading topics for the 15 percent of people who engage with entertaining content online. One particularly entertaining blog post we found shared a list of 10 ways to ruin the new guy’s first day at work, which included a list of funny, sad-but-true – things that the author had experienced or observed first-hand that can take an excited newbie’s first day from amazing to awful.
Your agency probably has plenty of first-hand experiences to draw on in order to write blog content or create short videos that not only entertain but help candidates and clients feel more connected to your brand online.
5. Educate
Does your digital marketing make help prospective clients find out what to expect when they work with your staffing agency or temporary employment firm? How about candidates? Do you share digital marketing content that answers your clients frequently asked questions, so that they can easily obtain information they need when they need it?
Content marketing that educates, providing answers to questions your ideal client and candidate types might ask in advance can help them discover your brand and view your agency as the expert resource, making it more likely that they turn to you when the time is right.
Examples of educational digital marketing content that can help your agency get found online and convert people who are ready to “buy” include FAQ (frequently asked questions) as well as pricing, features, benefits, industries served, and so on.
6. Impart Information
Educational online content is there to help people discover your brand and give them reasons to choose yours staffing agency. Imparting information is about connecting your audience members to news (current events, politics, etc.) and information (laws, regulations, trends, etc.) that are relevant to their businesses or industry. This can be content that you cover in blog articles as well as updates you share on social networks. Whether you create the content or simply share it, being the conduit sets you up as an expert and helpful resource.
7. Empathize
To illustrate this point, let’s take a look at a snippet of conversation from the iconic movie “You’ve Got Mail” where Meg Ryan’s character, Kathleen Kelly, gives Joe Fox (played by Tom Hanks) a reason to rethink the phrase: “It’s not personal, it’s business.”
Joe Fox: It wasn’t… personal.
Kathleen Kelly: What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn’t personal to you. But it was personal to me. It’s *personal* to a lot of people. And what’s so wrong with being personal, anyway?
Joe Fox: Uh, nothing.
Kathleen Kelly: Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.
In marketing we often recommend that you give clients, prospects and candidates reasons to feel personally connected to you as the representative as well as the brand of your staffing or temporary employment agency. This is because people want to feel good about the companies they choose to do business with, and it’s because when they do feel good about your brand and doing business with you, they’re more likely to keep doing business with you and tell others to do business with you, too.
These are the factors that make people feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, or bigger than a business transaction. Try creating and sharing more online content that includes stories, videos and photos that help people see themselves in your client or candidate base.
8. Comfort
It should come as no surprise that when someone’s in a moment of need, discovering online content that brings them comfort can be highly engaging and persuasive. Top examples for people in general include relationships – such as when someone has experienced a break up or their relationship is in trouble – as well as medical issues – such as when someone is facing a serious condition.
Candidates and employers have relationship problems – and breakups, too! Online content that helps to comfort them and gives them a way forward can help you attract new clients (or top candidates) and quickly turn them into loyal brand advocates. Likewise, helping to diagnose and resolve problems your clients are facing (or candidates need to resolve) can instantly strengthen and take relationships to the next level.
Business buyers and candidates are people too. Make sure your staffing agency’s digital marketing tactics are in tune with the type of content that people want to engage with in order to improve results in the short term and over time.
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