One of the key roles of a B2B Marketing team is to generate leads for the business, recruitment companies are no exception. If your marketing team isn’t generating leads, the good news is that you’ve a huge untapped opportunity to explore. We’ll start with what we mean by a lead, before jumping into the methods.
If you prefer to skip ahead, feel free:
The 10 steps:
- Create a content plan
- Co-create with other brands
- Build a network of internal influencers
- Use SEO and PPC
- Master the art of LinkedIn
- Gate your most valuable content
- Don’t over-complicate lead capture forms
- Make it easy to convert
- Nurture leads with email
- Personalise your CTAs
Lead generation terminology
Let’s start with what we mean by a lead. Not all leads are made equal. Some people are ready to buy whilst others are in information gathering mode. Both are valuable and need to be nurtured in different ways.
That’s why it’s important to categorise them, so let’s agree on the terminology…
- Subscriber – Someone that’s signed up to your newsletter or accessed gated content.
- Lead – Has converted on your website through a chatbot or form and you know a bit more about them.
- MQL (Marketing qualified lead) – An enquiry that’s been checked by the marketing team and meets agreed criteria.
- SQL (Sales qualified lead) – An enquiry that the sales team has confirmed is ready to buy and could become a customer.
Now we’ve got that straight, let’s talk about how you can generate leads at each stage.
Today’s companies are savvy to traditional lead generation methods, and marketers have to think outside the box if they want to stay competitive.
Here are ten tried-and-tested ways to generate more recruitment leads:
1. Create a content plan
Not what you were expecting right? A good content plan is the back bone of your lead generation strategy. Today one of the best ways to show your potential clients that you can help them, is by actually helping them! Find out what they are worried about, what problems they’re trying to solve and then create a content plan around these topics.
You don’t need loads of different pieces of content. In fact it’s more powerful if you take one piece, like this blog for example, and use it as the basis for a Youtube video script, a LinkedIn live script, a blog, a series of social media posts, even a feature in your newsletter to maximise content promotion. Investing in good, helpful pieces of content will continue to benefit your firm for months if not years to come. This is because Google will index your content and (as long as it’s useful), it will show it to potential customers who are searching for solutions to a problem that you can solve. Which brings us to point 2.
2. Co-create with other brands
Partnering with other organisations that solve related problems for your clients is an excellent way to reach new audiences and generate new leads without spending a lot of your budget.
Identify companies with similar target audiences and reach out to them to suggest a mutually beneficial partnership. This could include co-hosting recruitment webinars or regularly sharing each other’s content on social media.
You could also propose guest blogging. Writing guest blogs for other companies in the recruitment space is an effective way to get your company’s name out there. All you have to do is write an interesting and insightful guest blog for your partner’s site that links back to your website. This can generate new leads and it’s great for SEO.
3. Build a network of internal influencers
Internal influencers are key people in your organisation with influence, authority, and reach. Think CEOs, directors, and other executive-level professionals who should have plenty of insight into the sector and enough influence to reach new leads.
Develop content distribution plans for your selected internal influencers to help them build up a following on social media sites like LinkedIn. This puts your company in the spotlight and increases your brand’s influence and visibility within your sector.
Tools like Hootsuite or Buffer would help you connect employee profiles and coordinate centrally, there are other industry specific tools like Paiger that can help you coordinate content distribution.
4. Use SEO and PPC
Both SEO and PPC are essential to your online strategy. SEO is a long-term strategy which will enable you to attract new leads to your website organically, while PPC targets new leads with paid ads.
SEO and PPC need to be used alongside other lead generation techniques; SEO in particular will continue to pay dividends for months and years to come and help you establish a credible web presence and increase trust among consumers.
PPC isn’t cheap, but if you’re trying to generate a high volume of valuable leads quickly, it can be an effective option.
5. Master the art of LinkedIn
Using LinkedIn and other social platforms to get your brand out there is an obvious one. But are you maximising the channels and all their features to the max?
A good place to start is with your company LinkedIn page. Take a look at your followers, what type of audience are you attracting? If you’re trying to grow your followers, a useful tool to check out is Talos Growth. The platform likes posts on your behalf at a rate of about 1000 likes a day, this helps your brand look engaged and supportive of the industry and community.
As your following grows, make sure you’re using features like LinkedIn Live, that notifies your network that you’ve ‘gone live’ (if from your profile). This is where you can repurpose content that you’ve created for your blog.
If you’re struggling with what to share, this is where your content plan comes in.
There is plenty you can do without spending any money on paid social, but if you want to fast track things you can also take advantage of built-in targeting tools to make sure your social media posts and ads reach your target audience.
6. Gate your most valuable content
Gated content is when you ask people to fill in a form before they can see a piece of content. Once you’ve got them on your website through points 1-5, gated content is a tried and tested way to generate more leads, but it’s got to be done right.
Make sure you’re giving plenty of value away for ‘free’, and only lock away your most valuable content – whether this is tutorials, guides, white papers, or survey results. Choose your gated pieces wisely and focus on content that indicates a high intention to convert.
It’s an effective way to get new leads into your sales funnel, but it’s important to get your capture forms right. This leads us to…
7. Don’t overcomplicate lead capture forms
Most businesses use lead capture forms to gather information about potential customers in exchange for offering them access to unique content.
But if you over complicate your lead capture forms, you risk putting potential leads off before they’ve made it through this first step. Keep lead capture forms simple, asking leads only for their name and email address at this stage, to maximise the number of users who actually complete the form.
Where and when you show the forms is also critical. For example you could create a pop up that only shows as a user is about to close the web page, this is great time to show users your best piece of content or promote your newsletter so that you can get them into your funnel as a subscriber.
You can use lead tracking software to gather more information on your leads at a later date. For now, adding them to your mailing list is enough.
8. Make it easy to convert
Create opportunities to engage at different stages of intent.
For example can you see why ‘Buy now’ or ‘Find out more’ would appeal to different user types? Think through the different stages of the purchase decision and create engagement opportunities that cater for each.
You can also add different methods of engagement, like a chatbot. Most of us have interacted with firms through a chatbot, some are monitored by real people, others using AI or are simply interactive forms. Either way their popularity is huge. Whilst it feels less formal than a form, you can capture the same information and through a traditional method. A great place to start with chatbots is Landbot, they have templates you can use to start you off and an intuitive chat builder that you can use to customise the chat flow.
9. Nurture leads with email
Nurturing leads via email isn’t strictly about lead generation, but nurturing existing leads is an effective way to revive cold leads and move subscribers into MQLs and SQLs.
Use the data you have on your customers to create custom outbound email marketing campaigns that re-engage cold leads and encourage leads at every stage to move further down the sales funnel. It’s really important to streamline your lead gen process.
Email nurturing has to offer real value to your audience. Craft targeted emails that offer insights that your audience won’t find anywhere else (here’s the content plan again!) to reduce your bounce rate and maximise conversions.
10. Personalise your CTAs
At the end of each blog or content piece you create – whether it’s for your own website or a partner’s website – include a personalised call-to-action.
Combine personalised CTA buttons with highly targeted blog posts featuring long-tail keywords to maximise the efficacy of your lead generation strategy.
You could even invest in smart CTA technology, which tailors CTA buttons to individuals based on their stored lead data. CTAs might sound like a small detail, but personalised CTAs may convert better than standard CTAs.
Or, let us take care of all this for you. Want to know more about how to generate new leads and maximise conversions in the recruitment industry? Contact us or follow theLEAP and Nicola Gomme on LinkedIn for more marketing advice for recruitment firms.
