In part one of our livestream, we covered aligning with company goals/marketing objectives, and in part two we took a deep dive into personas. In fact, all this talk of personas has led to us creating our own persona builder. Developer, Charles, is currently fine tuning it, so check look out for that coming soon!
Ready for part three of our livestream? It’s time for Nici (Director at theLEAP), Glenn (VP if Insights, Success & Marketing at Meet) and Chelcie (Marketing Director at Levin) to talk marketing channels – a super important topic because it’s vital to choose the best channels for your business.
Chelcie explains, “Marketing channels are how you’re reaching your audience. If you get it wrong, then you’re just not going to be heard by your audience. It’s as simple as that.”
How to choose your marketing channels
In recruitment, do we over-complicate things? Isn’t LinkedIn the obvious place to be posting?
Well, yes and no. You see, it goes back to our previous livestream episodes and your marketing plan and personas. It’s common for companies to saturate every channel without knowing their audiences (even TikTok – after all, their competitors are doing it!). But as Glenn confirms, there’s a danger you’ll waste a lot of time and effort for minimal results. “Less is more,” he says. “Choose four channels and dedicate 80% of your time to them, rather than 10 channels and only maximise 20% across them.”
But it also depends on your team size. If you choose a channel without resources to put behind it, it’s unlikely to bring results. It becomes a task rather than anything strategic. Chelcie warns, “If you think about brands that resonate with you, that’s not how they do it.”
Also think about your business type. If you’re in volume recruitment (as opposed to a niche sector), you may need to cover more channels because your pool is expansive and diverse.
But remember, you don’t need to be absolutely everywhere. Do your research and identify the channels that work best for your kinds of roles and sectors.
Ask the experts: the best channels for recruitment
Time for a quick-fire game (think a cross between MAFS and Strictly Come Dancing – except with a marketing twist!).
Nici asks Glenn and Chelcie to hold up a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in response to whether they value the following channels for client activity.
To reiterate, Glenn’s target audience is a mix of disruptive tech-led biotech start-ups and big pharma companies. For Chelcie, she’s targeting FinTech, HealthTech, GreenTech, RetailTech and EdTech start-ups and scale-ups, normally hiring managers at C-Suite/VP level.
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Organic LinkedIn
Glenn Yes, Chelcie Yes.
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Sponsored LinkedIn
Glenn No, Chelcie No.
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SEO
Glenn Yes, Chelcie Yes.
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Paid search
Glenn Yes, Chelcie No.
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PR
Glenn No, Chelcie Yes.
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Email marketing
Glenn Yes, Chelcie Yes.
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Events
Glenn No, Chelcie Yes.
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Instagram
Glenn No, Chelcie No.
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TikTok
Glenn No, Chelcie No.
Differences of opinion? We want to know more! First up, paid search…
Although he doesn’t currently use it, Glenn said ‘yes’ to paid search. “My mind’s been changed on this over recent years,” he says, “Perhaps not for the reasons people think though. So much of Google’s first page is dominated by paid, so I wouldn’t use it for lead gen. But it does have a role – paid searches can be good for raising brand awareness.”
As marketers, we know how hard it is to measure brand awareness though. Glenn agrees that it’s a tricky one to analyse. He admits “Other than asking the classic ‘where did you hear about us’ question, it’s hard. It’s just something I’d probably explore.”
Chelcie on the other hand sees paid search as a “money pit.” “I’ve used it in every other business I’ve worked in, but I think it can be a bit of a lazy way to get quick wins. I know there’s a lot of work that goes into the actual act of paid, but in terms of results, I think it’s a short-term win that’s not focussed on building trust, relationships, and your brand. I’m pretty tech savvy and tend to scroll past the sponsored stuff to see what’s ranking highly because of SEO, the organic, and the effort put in.”
Next, Nici asked about PR, to which Chelcie had said ‘yes’, and Glenn, ‘no.’
At Levin, Chelcie really embraces PR from a thought leadership perspective. “We want to be known as an arm of HealthTech or FinTech. We want people to understand not only do we know recruitment, but we know if specifically in terms of your needs.” Levin’s producing press releases, guest articles, expert quotes, and interviews.
Looking at PR from a slightly different perspective, Glenn adds “I’m against spending £3000 to pay an agency. We do internally identify publications and websites you can hook-up with – 100% that’s a great way to do PR.”
The panel all agree that outsourcing your PR works best if you have a specific campaign in mind. For instance, I want my CFO to be featured in X and known for Y. Have a specific end goal in mind, rather than a generic objective of wanting to be well known, everywhere.
And the final channel that brought mixed opinions…events.
For Glenn, the effort versus reward is a problem when it comes to events. For him, the amount of organisation required and the uncertainty of people not turning up outweigh the benefits. If you also agree with Glenn, why not think about sponsoring someone else’s event or company publication? Less time, less effort, yet access to attendees.
On the flip side, consider the value you can get from either side of an event. Registrations, sign ups, promotion beforehand, and content, reviews, and follow-ups afterwards.
Chelcie, who’s in favour of running events, admits having used events as an excuse to engage with clients to be speakers. “It’s a great way of building commercial relationships and providing a add-on with prospects as well as existing customers.”
So, don’t overlook other opportunities events can offer. It’s not all about the event itself.
The #1 recruitment marketing channel?
To conclude, we’re interested to know which channel our panel would concentrate on if they were a one-person team and could choose just one.
For Chelcie, it’s SEO. She explains, “When I first started with the business, we didn’t have the CRM to help, so barely had any contacts. The only thing I could control in terms of lead gen was the website – traffic, content, etc. Plus, we had commercial and sales teams to action the leads.”
For Glenn, it’s email marketing. He adds, “When I say email, it depends what stage you’re at.” At Meet, they recently got 1200 people respond to a survey which not only provided them with content, but lots of updated details for recruiters’ calls. A great option for more established organisations.
If like Chelcie, you’re starting with no database, email’s not going to be right. And SEO isn’t going to be the best route for all businesses either. Which brings us back to our key message from our previous livestreams – different approaches will work for different businesses. Make sure you know your company’s goals and objectives before putting together your marketing plan. When identifying marketing channels to suit your marketing plan, and personas, there’s no one size fits all.
Join us in a few weeks for our next episode which follows on nicely from channels. We’ll be delving into content creation and the debate of demand generation vs lead generation, because once you’ve chosen your channels the next step is resonating with and engaging your target audience, check it out!
