Until about 10 years ago, organizations communicated their value in a very one directional way. We broadcasted our value through advertisements & through other channels that interrupted the lives of the consumers, or our future customers – we used TV commercials, pop-up ads on websites… the biggest budget won & consumers lacked the ability to easily compare their options.
With the internet revolution the power is moving into the hands of the consumer. With more data than ever before, we increasingly use this information to make life decisions. It’s led to more educated consumers, one’s that are incredibly efficient at searching Google, scouring social media networks & leveraging the internet to connect with others to talk about their experience.
And it’s greatly affecting how we make decisions – in buying a new car, a new iPhone or learning about a new topic or in talent acquisition’s case deciding on our careers & companies we want to work for.
This increased transparency has necessitated that we change our approach to marketing & selling. The research phase of the buying process is having an increasingly significant impact on how consumers make decisions with much of that decision making process happening before they even talk with a company. This makes your online strategy even more important to tell your story & value.
Marketing is no longer about who has the biggest budget (although that still helps) but how we could most effectively use this budget to become a better part of this conversation that was happening online & better provide value to their target customers. It’s our brand reputation online that attracts consumers.
Inbound Marketing is the solution to these market changes.
Inbound Marketing is about having marketing initiatives that bring visitors to you, rather than marketers going out to get a prospect’s attention. & it’s about 3 main things.
1. First & foremost, it’s about Identifying your Target Audiences & the channels that attract them. This is about finding the best ways to attract candidates.
2. Second, it’s about building better relationships & converting candidates with relevant content at each stage.
3. Third, it’s about having the data & metrics to consistently measure & improve the channels & content we use. & in many cases, it’s about how we leverage technology to do this.
Today we’ll focus on content & the types of content that can help us attract more qualified candidates to our organizations.
The best way to visualize Inbound Marketing is through a funnel like this. Inbound Marketing is a multi-faceted strategy to consistently generate new leads through content, brand & digital channels.
Inbound Marketing is driven by content & delivering the right content at the right time in the buyer’s journey. As a consumer, you more than likely interacted with a company in all these ways when buying a product or service - whether it’s downloading a white paper or reading online reviews.
If there’s one thing to take away today, remember that content drives conversion & helps deliver us to our main goal – getting new customers.
Now let’s take a look at the Talent Acquisition Funnel. It doesn’t look much different. We use content every day to educate & convince qualified candidates to learn more about us as an employer & apply for our jobs. However, in Talent Acquisition, we traditionally have all this content available to us but we don’t deliver it in the most optimal way to drive qualified candidates to apply.
The best way to think about content delivery is to map it to the candidate’s journey to apply. Candidates touch multiple pieces of content & information to educate themselves on the benefits of working for your company before they make the decision to apply. & this content has a positive effect on moving them along their journey instead of dropping off.
Here are the 4 pre-applicant stages of the candidate’s journey.
1. Attract is where we begin the relationship. It’s about understanding the sources that best build initial awareness for our employer brand.
2. Engage is about how we interact with the candidates that we attract. It’s about give a candidate a look at “Who We Are” to pique their interest. It’s with this content that we hopefully convert visitors into contacts in our CRM talent pipelines.
3. Nurture is about how we keep our pipelines warm. It’s using email & SMS to provide content that is valuable to candidates as well as targeted jobs. If done right, this is where we‘ve determined that candidates are qualified & interested.
4. Convert is about the ways to get a candidate to apply via our content. Our CTAs are really what drives candidate to apply.
Ok, let’s look at 5 pieces of recruitment marketing content. The first piece that we can look to optimize is our job descriptions & advertisements. This is the most forward facing piece of content every organization has today. & in most cases, it’s not particularly compelling.
With job ads, there are a few tips that organizations are using to improve conversion of our job ads:
First, we need to understand that every job ad is searched for by a candidate. And search is driven by keywords. Are the job titles you use actually getting found? A Telecom customer of ours realized that application volume declined when they changed the title of a Customer Service job because they took the words Customer Service out of the job title. Of course, they immediately switched it back.
Second, make sure to answer why your company vs. why the job in the description. You need to share information on the job, but also make sure to share your employer value proposition as well.
Third, try different job ad formats. A/B testing can help you improve the job titles you use as well as the format of your job ads that best engage talent.
Blogging has long been synonymous with Inbound Marketing & is used to provide daily or weekly content to followers that are indexed by SEO.
First - The title of your blog is the most important part of any blog post & you want to create posts where you include keywords that you think a candidate will be searching for. It’s a time to talk about & provide helpful content for their careers.
As you get more advanced with blogging, you can begin to set up blog calendars with your teams and ask each team member to contribute to the blog.
Also, if your team doesn’t have time to blog, your marketing team may have a blog you can leverage or contribute to. Reach out & offer them content to promote your employment brand to a captive & engaged audience.
Glassdoor is a channel that we don’t have full control over, but has a significant impact on a candidate’s decision to apply. That being said, we can actively shape it.
First & foremost, everyone here should be asking their employees to provide reviews. Whether as part of the on-boarding process for new employees or to current employees on a yearly basis, asking for reviews can ensure you get more reviews & in most cases, more good reviews. I’d also encourage you to respond to positive & negative comments on Glassdoor as well. CDW actively asks employees for Glassdoor reviews and has increased their rating because of it.
Lastly, if you are doing work to shape your profile on Glassdoor, make sure to use it. Include your rating on your Career Site, use it in emails to candidates or send candidates a comparison to your competitor’s Glassdoor ratings.
Newsletters have been around forever, but it’s a content piece that many candidates are not used to getting from employers. It’s a great way for candidates to keep up to date with your organization.
By combining content around jobs, employer stories, company news, imagery, recruiting blogs & all the other content, you could provide valuable information for every candidate in your pipeline.
Most importantly, it can give you insight into the content that is the most popular so you can produce more of it.
Social Recruiting is more than just posting jobs to social channels. It’s about consistently providing valuable content to your followers in addition to jobs.
We talked about a lot of content types & all of these can be used on social. I’d also encourage you to curate content from various sources including your own marketing team. Use a RSS feed aggregator like Feedly to keep track of new posts on your favorite blogs & sites.
You can also use tools to automatically post new content or tools like Hootsuite to schedule future posts. I’d also encourage your team to share your content on their own social channels. Lars Schmidt, an industry expert (formerly TA of NPR), recommends posting a job to social sites no more than once a day.
Now for the workshop.
We are now going to work within our table groups and want you to share what’s worked & not worked in terms of content within the different stages of the candidate’s journey.
At your tables, chose a stage you want to discuss, if your group has time – chose a 2nd stage to discuss.
We want you to share what content and channels you use to market to candidates at this stage. Please share what’s working for your organization & what hasn’t worked. At the end of your discussion, we will go around the room and hear what each group came up with – some of the best takeaways from your discussion.
If you have questions – feel free to ask!