Digital Marketing for Recruitment Agencies: Ultimate Guide

Digital Marketing for Recruitment Agencies

Recruitment today is not as ‘easy’ as it used to be.

Candidates no longer work just for salaries; they expect greater employee benefits, good company culture, and a friendly and productive work environment.

Clients not only want a recruiter who can fill a vacancy but instead, one who will help them address and overcome specific and unique challenges their business is facing in terms of talent.

Recruitment firms must position themselves as a reliable, trustworthy authority - one that places as much emphasis on attracting and hiring the right talent as it does in solving complex business challenges.

This can be tricky - a balancing act between meeting client objectives and finding a candidate who will not only fulfil the role - but thrive in it.

As a means to attract the best talent (and the best clients), creating and optimising recruitment content is an excellent way to shape your digital marketing strategy. Great content is key to establishing your brand authority online - and in terms of brand reputation. We also understand that great content is only one facet of a great digital marketing strategy - especially in the fiercely competitive recruitment industry.

To this end, we’ve created this guide to help you navigate the nuances of digital marketing for recruitment agencies.

You can expect to discover these aspects when reading our guide:

Lead generation for recruitment agencies

The goal of almost every digital marketing strategy is to increase the number of leads from a website.

Recruitment agencies must understand the value of a qualified lead. After all, your website should be working with you, generating leads that will enhance your talent pool, as well as your client portfolio.

An inbound marketing strategy is one of the most trusted and effective ways to generate leads. What’s more, creating content that supports your inbound marketing strategy further allows you to build out your brand authority and online presence, and if correctly crafted- will continue to bring those leads in for years to come.

There is an immeasurable amount of content that you can experiment with to reach your goal of increased lead generation. Formats for your content can include web-logs (more commonly known as blogs), guest posts, slideshares, social media content, quizzes, surveys - you name it.

What matters is how you approach these recruitment content ideas. See more on this in further detail in our section “Getting Started on Your Inbound Content Marketing Strategy”.

Choosing a content format is the easy part - so let’s not waste any time, and rather delve straight into the essentials of lead generation within the recruitment industry:

What is a lead?

A lead is a person or a company who is interested in your service or product. A lead will show interest by sharing their contact information - for one of two reasons: to download an asset or resource from your website, or to request a callback. Leads may choose to share an email address, telephone number, or sometimes even a social media handle.

Now that we have a better understanding of what exactly a lead is, let’s discuss the notion of targeted leads. As a recruitment agency, you may wish to target a specific type of person (or company) and nurture them to become a lead.

This poses the question: who should recruitment agencies be targeting?

Who to target?

Inbound marketing for recruitment focuses on clients and candidates.

Experienced recruiters will have their primary focus on placing their candidates in appropriate roles. There are two sides to this proverbial coin, however: a recruiter must also prioritise their clients' need to fill vacancies and address unique business challenges. It can be difficult to satisfy both requirements on an ongoing basis, however, it is not impossible.

Using organic website content as a tool to generate leads also allows recruiters to demonstrate their commitment to both their clients and candidates through thought-leadership.

The entire concept of inbound content marketing revolves around your customers - making them feel a bond of trust between themselves and your agency.

“The adoption of inbound marketing in a recruitment setting sees you build a relationship with your engaged database of clients and candidates. When you’re providing them with content that they find valuable, and placing an emphasis on their needs rather than your own, you become an organisation they want to interact with and one that aligns itself with a solution to their problems.”

Clients and candidates will soon see you as a go-to agency to solve their placement or application issues. That same content you designed to help them will come back around to help you.

A good recruiter will place a focus on their clients and candidates - and this is why inbound is so well-suited to the recruitment industry as an effective lead generation methodology.

Optimising your recruitment firm’s website for better SEO

Now that we’ve familiarised ourselves with the importance of strategic inbound content to help generate more leads, let’s take a closer look at the technicalities of implementing it, and optimising it to do what you created it to do.

There are hundreds of ways you can optimise your recruitment firm’s website to enhance its SEO, but when this task is secondary (after all, you’re paid to recruit, not optimise your website), the task can seem overwhelming and perhaps not worth the effort.

Many recruitment agencies have acknowledged the need to outsource their digital marketing strategies and outputs to specialists in the know. At Digital Media Stream, our team of experts know exactly what it takes to create effective, impactful digital marketing strategies, as well as how to optimise your website in a way that allows the rewards to keep trickling in for years after the fact. If you’re looking for a partner to lead the way on your digital marketing strategy, it is best to seek the guidance of professionals.

That being said, there are two major aspects of search engine optimisation that cannot be overlooked by anyone in the recruitment industry.

First and foremost, to ensure a smooth and memorable user experience, your website must be highly responsive. This means optimising your website to display and perform optimally on mobile devices, on desktops, and across an array of search engines. This can be daunting if you don’t have the technical know-how. A good way to assess your site's overall SEO ‘health score’ if you will is to run an SEO Audit. This will help you uncover technical issues that could be hampering the user experience of your recruitment agency website, and causing potential leads to leaving your site without taking any action.

Secondly, but just as important, is ensuring your website copy is up to date, optimised to include keywords, and is legible. It can be time-consuming to traipse your website for outdated content and to formulate a strategy that allows you to keep your existing content in check.

We pride ourselves on our expertise in creating strategic content marketing plans, analysing and removing content that no longer serves you or your recruitment marketing goals, and working collaboratively to ensure that all content on your website aligns with your visions, values, and voice.

We recommend regularly checking in on your analytics and webmaster tools to identify content that is working for you, and ensuring that content is kept up to date. Using tools like Google Analytics as Google Search Console will help you identify the keywords your visitors are using to reach your website in the first place, and provide insights that will help shape your digital marketing strategy in the future.

Troubleshooting common digital marketing problems that recruitment agencies face

So far, we’ve discussed the importance of lead generation, and how an optimised website works hand-in-hand to enhance effective lead generation tactics. Digital marketing is changing at a rapid pace - and the need to keep up with industry trends and developments is what keeps us digital marketers on our toes. Your priority as a recruiter is to find, attract, and hire top talent for your client base - not to keep pace with evolving digital trends.

Many recruitment agencies entrust their digital marketing to established agencies, and for good reason. Rather than placing more pressure on themselves to figure out their entire digital strategy, they allow professionals with decades of experience to handle it on their behalf - freeing up their time to allow them to do what they do best: recruit.

As a starting point, it is worthwhile to allocate some time and energy to tackling the common digital marketing problems that recruitment agencies face daily.

Let’s take a quick look at the three most common issues within the digital landscape for recruitment agencies:

Promote your content where your prospects are spending their time

Find out where your audience spends time online and target your ads accordingly. It’s all fair and well that you have amazing content on your website, but if your prospects are not specifically searching for it, it may become lost in the gap between being present on your website and finding its way to your prospect’s screen.

Promote your content (organic, and paid) through channels where your ideal target audience is spending their time. The best way to find out where your leads ‘hang out’ is to conduct a persona development exercise. Research and compile information about your ideal target persona, from their educational history and personal background, all the way through to the challenges they face in their everyday lives. Then - most importantly - create and promote content that resonates with them, and reaches them “on their turf”.

Persona creation exercises can be tedious and time-consuming - but for our team of experts, it’s part and parcel of their daily activity. Outsourcing your persona creation to an agency can save you time, and provide critical insights into the psyche and behaviour of your target audience.

Maintain data records in line with regulations

Another major aspect recruitment agencies must bear in mind is the upkeep and maintenance of data and records in line with GDPR legislation.

The recruitment sector is reliant on data—both business and consumer—so all recruitment agencies must be GDPR compliant. Companies who are non-compliant can be charged 4% of their global turnover or €20 million—whichever is higher - placing an even greater emphasis on the need to keep these records accurate and up-to-date.

Because this aspect of digital marketing is so important, we would like to share some further information surrounding GDPR in the recruitment industry.

All personal data that you collect and process from your candidates and companies are covered by the GDPR.

Personal data is defined by the European Commission as “any information relating to an individual, whether it relates to his or her private, public or professional information. It can be anything from a name, a home address, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, or a computer’s IP address”.

Individuals, companies and organisations who are ‘data controllers’ or ‘data processors’ for ‘data subjects’ are all bound by the GDPR. This covers most business but to put it in recruitment terms, this means:

Candidates and businesses are ‘data subjects’—candidates are data subjects because they can be identified through the personal data they give to recruiters and companies. For example, their resumes may include their names, addresses and date of birth, which can all be used to identify them. Under GDPR, companies are also treated as individuals, so any personal data relating to them is also covered under the new data protection laws.

Recruitment agencies are ‘data controllers’—this refers to a person who determines the purpose of how any personal data is processed. This applies to recruiters who serve as their company’s main representative to candidates. They are data controllers because they are fully responsible for collecting and protecting candidate data and using it lawfully.

Recruitment software/services are ‘data processors’—this refers to a person who processes the data on behalf of the data controller. This could refer to recruitment software, such as applicant tracking systems (ATS), as they process candidate data on behalf of your business and follow your company’s instructions. Alternatively, your recruitment company could be both the data controller and data processor.

The GDPR is full of terminology similar to the phrases above. Confusing, we know! That’s why we’ve put GDPR in clear, concise terms in the GDPR Guide we’ve written as part of our GDPR Toolkit for Businesses.

So far, we’ve covered how you can enhance your digital marketing efforts by promoting your content where your prospects are spending their time online, as well as the importance of maintaining your data records in line with regulations. The third insight we’d like to share with you is the importance of nurturing candidate relationships while keeping new ones flowing in.

Nurturing candidate relationships while keeping new ones flowing in

This is similar to the age-old mantra that tells recruiters to be good salespeople. Being a good ‘salesperson’ is somewhat obvious, as you’re selling opportunities, new ventures, and challenges.

However, you can go one further than this and say that a good recruiter is an excellent storyteller. This lends well to your ability to nurture existing candidate relationships while attracting and nurturing new candidates.

Stories have been woven into the fabric of our existence for some time, and our lives are firmly wrapped around the tales we’ve lived. Your job is to foretell your candidates' stories ahead of time.

It will be a story built on the information and research you’ve gathered - about the candidate, and the industry relevant to the job you’re advertising.

To attract and nurture new candidate relationships, you must be able to create a vivid description of what your candidate’s working life may look like in their new role will help:

Capture the candidate’s attention
Give the candidate an idea of living in their new role
Help the candidate understand and remember a great deal of information (in a short period of time)
Allow the candidate to invest emotionally in the opportunity, which will help them engage more
A good storyteller will also be able to portray life at a new company, giving candidates an evocative picture of where the company is going in the future, and whether or not they will be happy.

Nurturing existing candidate relationships builds a solid foundation of trust, and keeps the lines of communication open for future opportunities. Connecting with candidates that you have successfully placed is a great way to nurture an ongoing relationship with them - and with social media tools at your disposal - there’s never been a more opportune time to make use of the possibilities an ongoing relationship holds.

You should think of your recruitment agency as not just an agency, but much more. Think of it as a brand, a lifestyle that you wear on your sleeve throughout your working week.

This extends from your candidate-to-candidate conversations to how your agency conducts itself online.

If your recruitment agency has an identifiable way of talking online, providing relevant and consistent content, then it is immediately recognisable to your audience and, by that rationale, singles itself out in terms of competition.

Being a brand ambassador strengthens that. To candidates, you want to be one of a few. Don’t forget that recruitment is such a busy, almost saturated industry. Your agency needs to cut through the noise.

Connect on social platforms - like LinkedIn - and take proactive steps to share your content, insights and ideas with existing candidates. By showing your support after you have placed your candidates, you’ll be setting yourself up for success, and ensuring a positive brand experience long after your official obligations have passed.

How social media can deliver results for recruitment agencies

We briefly alluded to the power that social platforms hold in nurturing existing and new candidate relationships, but there is a myriad of benefits associated with using social media to leverage your recruitment agency as a brand.

Social media has rapidly changed the dynamics of the recruitment game and disrupted the industry.

Social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook have fast proven themselves the Holy Grail for recruitment consultants. They have changed the way recruiters search for candidates, attract clients and brand their agencies. Inbound marketing for recruitment companies is a must.

Of course, by no means is this a new trend. Recruiters have already hoisted their sails to the social media wind. But in today’s ultra-competitive environment, where job seekers now rank social media and professional networks as their most useful job search source, embracing a range of social media means you're sailing to talented candidates or left dead in the water.

With that in mind, here are the best social media recruitment strategies that recruiters are utilising right now:

Social Media Recruitment Strategies

Consider LinkedIn as the go-to social channel for recruiters. After all, LinkedIn is an immensely powerful sourcing tool and a way of networking, building strong connections, managing talent as well as forming candidate relationships. But not everyone uses the social media platform to its full potential.

LinkedIn’s range of quality features suits the recruiter. It is one of the best social media platforms for digital advertising opportunities. It has interest-based filtering where users can join and participate in groups based on their field of study, skills they self-identify with, and career interests.

It also has the largest global community of business professionals (more than half a billion) meaning the social platform is brimming with precisely the people you want to target.

LinkedIn is rated the top social network for recruitment lead generation and makes it one of the best tools at a recruiter's disposal.

Twitter

Twitter’s 280-character limit may seem limiting at first, but that’s just half the challenge. The limit allows users to boil their message down to the absolute essentials, resulting in clear and direct social messaging.

This works in recruitment’s favour. You can create concise pitches to potential candidates and companies, and be receptive to feedback. This is not a platform where you can splurge content and fritter away valuable character space with overlong messaging.

It’s direct and great for connecting with your desired demographic. As opposed to LinkedIn, which is broad in the sense that it’s a platform for entry-level and above, Twitter allows you to hone in on target audiences and thus streamline your search.

Something that sets Twitter apart is its hashtags. They’re incredibly useful for recruiters and digital marketing in general. With hashtags, you can start a debate and engage targeted members of your demographic.

Furthermore, you can make it local. By hash-tagging your location, you can target a certain area of the UK and make it specific.

Exposure is the name of Twitter’s game, and if played right it can mean exponential growth for recruitment agencies in the UK.

Facebook

A household name in the social media world, and the first-ever platform for many, Facebook shouldn’t be underestimated - it holds lots of influence for the recruitment industry. This social platform is one of the best for recruitment agencies to reach their target market and audience.

When you consider that 84% of job seekers have a Facebook profile, the platform begins to be a must-have for recruiters. It spans a whole age range, across multiple sectors and skillsets and allows us to share content to relevant audiences.

Recruitment agencies can also use Facebook to learn more about candidates, and gain insight into the kinds of content they share, ‘like’ and appreciate.

Using this insight, agencies can then get inspiration from that content, creating similar pieces to attract their target audience.

This kind of intel can mean the difference between a successful social marketing campaign and...well, a flop.

YouTube

If you are not using YouTube to search for job candidates, you may be overlooking a wealth of resources on the world’s second most popular website.

With one billion unique users every month, you’d place a fair bet that some of them are on a job search. With video content creating such a storm in digital marketing, you’ll want to ensure your recruitment agency cuts itself a slice of the pie.

You can create engaging content with varying purposes. To create brand awareness for your agency, you could do a ‘meet the team’ video, or perhaps some ‘day in the life' content.

To attract candidates? The options are endless - from tutorial videos to Q&As. Job postings on YouTube can offer exciting content that’s a little different from the written stuff.

It has been proven that a year after downloading WhatsApp 62% of users are still active on the platform. If that’s not brand loyalty, we don’t know what is. The WhatsApp community continues to thrive.

By far, it’s one of the most popular direct messaging apps around today.

What recruiters can do with WhatsApp is create WhatsApp groups where they can market out relevant jobs to members of that group...and wait for their response.

It’s direct and allows you to organise and segment candidates by profession, location and seniority.

WhatsApp also lets you see whether or not your message has been read. This means you have an instant indication as to whether or not your prospects are interested. If you’ve been left on ‘Read’, you’ll know you can move on.

Instagram

For recruitment agencies looking to target a somewhat younger, perhaps the millennial audience, Instagram is perfect. With 90% of Instagram users under 35, it poses a great opportunity to reach out to a younger demographic.

Image-based content holds the similar potential to that of video - you can use it for a wide range of insights, from staff images to inspirational quotes.

The app can also be used to give users a taste of the agency as a whole, exposing themselves further to a waiting audience.

Since images don’t have to necessarily be linked to the content of a particular post, there are no limits to the kinds of things you can post. Think about; promotions, job vacancies and industry developments. All are a fair game where Instagram is concerned.

If you’re looking to engage a younger audience then Instagram is your answer.

Snapchat

Recruitment and Snapchat, a match made in heaven? If your agency is not on Snapchat then we recommend including this as part of your social media recruitment strategy.

The smartphone application is used by 187 million people each day and worldwide these so-called ‘snappers’ watch 10 billion videos a day - meaning there is a highly engaged group of potential candidates ready for recruiters to attract.

Unlike other social media channels, Snapchat users are overwhelmingly young people (45% are aged 18-24), so for recruiters looking to fill graduate posts and apprenticeships, this millennial demographic is your new best friend.

Snapchat is very much built for storytelling. By telling stories, recruiting agencies can focus on things potential candidates desire - like the company values of their future employer.

Once your agency builds a steady following, you can post vacancies in innovative ways to grab your candidates attention. Exclusive content, filtered lenses, and employer takeovers are a few guidelines for creating great marketed job postings.

Don't forget, social media is just one element of a successful marketing strategy for recruiters.

If you’re keen to learn more about social media recruiting, book a free online marketing assessment below, where we can review which social channels work best for your social recruiting strategy.

How blogging (inbound content marketing) can deliver results for recruitment agencies

Through our experience working with recruitment agencies, we’ve amassed knowledge and expertise of how recruitment industries are run and the key success factors that come with that kind of enterprise.

As the recruitment landscape changes, and as a marketing agency for recruitment, we need to have our finger on the pulse of the recruitment industry. If you Google “recruitment industry trends”, you’ll find that Digital Media Stream’s blog post on that very topic is ranking at the top of Google.

Through this specialisation, we’ve found that there are several compatible factors between inbound (content) marketing and recruitment.

Below, we discuss exactly what inbound is and how it relates to the recruitment industry.

What Is Inbound Marketing in Recruitment?

Rather than trying to first describe what inbound is, it can sometimes be easier to look at what inbound isn’t. Let’s take a look at how we might define outbound marketing…

Outbound, when compared with inbound, is exactly what it sounds like. It’s generally considered to be the more traditional method of marketing that looks to obstruct potential customers. Outbound marketing includes activities such as trade shows, seminar series and cold calling. It is costly and the ROI is much lower than inbound marketing.

In comparison, inbound marketing is everything that outbound isn’t. It involves presenting yourself as a company that clients and candidates want to interact with, but only when the time is right for them.

HubSpot is the world’s leading inbound marketing and sales platform. They explain inbound marketing as:

“a method of attracting, engaging, and delighting people to grow a business that provides value and builds trust. As technology shifts, inbound guides an approach to doing business in a human and helpful way. Inbound is a better way to market, a better way to sell, and a better way to serve your customers. Because when good-for-the-customer means good-for-the-business, your company can grow better over the long term”.

HubSpot categorises inbound marketing in three stages; Attract, Engage & Delight. How does this work for recruitment, specifically?

Attract: It’s all about showing potential clients and candidates they can trust you to help them solve their problems. If you can’t demonstrate that, you’ll never attract them to become valuable leads. As a recruiter, if you don’t get this stage right, you’ll have no one to engage with.

Engage: Keep in touch with those you’re most focused on and track how much time people are spending with your content. Nurture your leads into becoming clients and candidates with more valuable content. Now, you’ve attracted potential candidates and clients, how are you moving them on to becoming more than just ‘potential’?

Delight: Make your sales process as pleasant as possible for your clients and candidates so they become evangelists for your agency and recommend you to their network. Once you’ve sealed the deal with your candidates and clients, is that the end of your relationship? No! You want to keep that relationship alive and well through the delight stage of inbound marketing.

What Are the Benefits of Inbound Content Marketing in Recruitment?

Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy that will slowly give your business more authority when it comes to organically take over the digital recruitment landscape. This does not mean that you can’t expect to see results in lead generation in the short term.

One of the main reasons for the rise in the use of inbound marketing tactics is their proven effectiveness in growing businesses.

How Does Inbound (Content) Marketing Apply to Recruitment?

Recruitment has historically been seen as an outbound industry. If you were to ask a layman to think about what a recruiter looks like, they might think of someone sitting in an office, cold-calling candidates whether they are active or passive. Today, as we all know, this couldn’t be further from the truth - especially considering the privacy and data regulations enshrined in GDPR.

One of the main principles of inbound marketing is that your team doesn’t engage with a candidate or a client until they are ready to be approached. This is one of the reasons that inbound marketing works so well with the recruitment industry. A passive candidate is identified by this very definition - they aren’t ready to be approached over a career move or a new role at this present moment. They need to be nurtured until they come around.

With inbound marketing, recruiters can do this very thing. You can entice a passive candidate with creative and dynamic content that relates to their current circumstance and move them along in their journey to the point at which they are looking to move careers or roles.

Inbound is the perfect marketing strategy for a recruitment agency that have something to offer their candidates and clients. If this sounds like you, you need to consider going inbound.

Getting Started on Your Inbound Content Marketing Strategy

Here are some practical tips for getting your content strategy off the ground:

Reuse Existing Content

Reusing existing content will save you time, cost, and effort. You can hire a professional to remould the content to make it consumable. You can also ask your employees for workplace content, such as photos and videos from office events and trips, and use them for recruitment marketing.

Hire a Dedicated Marketing Team

Almost all companies have marketing professionals that help with mission-critical projects. But recruitment marketing requires a consistent effort throughout the year so that you can build a talent pipeline and hire the top talent. Therefore, you may have to hire a professional or a team of professionals whose single focus will be to come up with recruitment marketing ideas and promote marketing content on various platforms.

Outsource Projects

If you have reliable people in your organisation that you can trust with content marketing ideas, then you can get the content created through external sources, such as freelancers and contract-based professionals. However, you will have to share clear content guidelines and document your expectations, for example, the tone of voice.

Content Curation

If you do not have a budget for hiring people or paying freelancers, you can look up content sources online that are perfect for your target audience – for example, free content templates, stock photos and videos, readymade quizzes and newsletters, etc.

What types of content can recruitment agencies look to create on-site?

Description of Your Company’s Culture

Content for recruitment websites or career pages is incomplete without a description of your company’s culture. So, if you have some values or initiatives that you are proud of, feel free to flaunt them on your website. It’s one of the most prominent ways to show your culture.

Infographics

Job seekers who are actively looking for opportunities may be going through hundreds of websites every day. They are very likely to not read chunks of content. So, present your recruitment content using infographics – visually appealing and easily consumable.

Podcasts

Embed short 5-minute podcasts with job descriptions to give candidates an understanding of what the job would require them to do. You can also provide an insight into the work culture in your organisation through this podcast.

Photos and Videos of Team Events

Glimpses of office and team events are a great way to give candidates a peek into life at your organisation. So, make sure to not only add them to your career page but also your social media platforms.

Employee Testimonials

Content for recruitment website pages should always have employee testimonials. Ask your present and past employees to rate your organisation and share their experience working with you, and post them on your career page or website. This is also sometimes referred to as ‘social proof’.

Chats with Team Members

The candidates would want to know what it’s like working in your organisation. So, let your employees tell it to them. You can post videos of your employees with chats and discussions. You can ask them questions such as “how long have you been working here?” or “what’s the best part of working in this organisation”?

Promoting Recruitment Content Online

Once you are through with content creation or at least have the first few sets, focus on promoting it online to reach your target audience. Here are a few recruitment marketing tips to help you.

Begin with populating your career website or career page by uploading weblogs (blogs) and reaching out to relevant websites, asking them if you can submit a guest post.
Leverage social media platforms by engaging actively with your audience, answering questions, running paid advertisements, etc.
Request your employees to re-share the company’s social media posts and recruitment content.
Start online forums for discussions and engage with the participants.
Create a LinkedIn group to share helpful content for your future candidates.
Market openings in your company on job posting sites.

Expectations of posting a job opening and receiving hundreds and thousands of great applications are pretty unreal. You must put in the effort to build your employer brand, and you will see that all the efforts were worth it.

Social Media in Recruitment

Let’s be frank - if you aren’t utilising social media in your recruitment agency, you’re severely falling behind the competition. As a recruiter, you need to place yourself in the same vicinity as your potential candidates. Platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter are your battlegrounds where you can grab the attention of millions of candidates and clients alike.

SEO in Recruitment

Inbound is built around content (we might have mentioned that?) - and one of the main reasons you might create content for your website is so it can be found on search engines.

When you optimise your website’s pages so they can be more easily found on these platforms, this is called SEO (search engine optimisation), and it’s an integral aspect of inbound marketing.

As opposed to the more outbound method of PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, which sees you renting space on the top of Google's search results pages, generating content the inbound way (through blogs and pillar/landing pages) is a brilliant way to get your site seen organically.

You can target your content at certain keywords that you want to rank highly for and find yourself ‘owning’ the top spot on Google’s results page, rather than forking out a monthly fee to ‘rent’ space there.

Lead Nurturing in Recruitment

As mentioned before, if you set your inbound processes up correctly, you can nurture your new leads along the ‘buyer’s journey’ to becoming a candidate or a client.

Those who aren’t ready to engage with you right now might otherwise slip through the net when you focus on ‘hot leads’ initially.

With inbound marketing, your agency can automatically keep leads engaged and alert to what you have to offer them right up until they are ready to interact fully with you as a recruiter.

Thought leadership for recruitment agencies

“Inbound Marketing Thrives with Thought Leadership Content”

We so often hear the term “thought leader” thrown around, but what exactly is thought leadership in the context of digital marketing, specifically in the recruitment industry?

A thought leader is a person or company which is recognised by their prospects, candidates, and clients as a trusted authority in their industry. A thought leader builds trust, establishes rapport, and ultimately becomes the go-to name for their area of expertise.

For inbound marketing to work at its best, you need to have something to offer people - which is why inbound marketing works hand-in-hand with thought-leadership content. Good recruiters are constantly generating thought-leadership content to inspire and engage their candidates, their clients, and draw in the attention of prospects.

Through well-utilised tools, such as LinkedIn articles, that help to demonstrate expertise and value, recruiters can collate a wealth of content to offer to potential clients and candidates. This is the key to inbound marketing. This is what you have to offer your customers and it’s why recruitment works so well in an inbound marketing setting.

Your recruitment agency should be producing blog content on your website. Did you know that this is a form of inbound marketing? By creating content that organically ranks online, you generate traffic to your site and display your expertise to an even wider, more captive and intent audience.

If you aren’t currently creating content, be it video or written, no need to worry. Content creation can be as easy as writing a few short paragraphs or speaking for a few minutes a day. As long as you can prove to people that what you say or write is worth something, they’ll consume it. And this is where you have the chance to ‘hook’ them.

“If you’re good at something, never do it for free” is an often-quoted phrase. This is exactly the mindset of inbound marketing. However, it doesn’t mean you should charge a premium for the content you create. For a recruitment agency, leads are worth their weight in gold and this is the fortune you are looking to amass with thought leadership content. By ‘gating’ your content - perhaps an eBook or a video - behind a form, you essentially demand your website visitors fork over their contact information as payment for consuming your content.

If you’ve gone about inbound in the right way, you’ll have provided them with content in the past for free and they’ll be able to trust that this piece of information is worth providing their details for. Once they decide to opt-in, guess what… you’ve generated a lead to whom you can begin to build a trusting relationship and flex your recruitment muscles, too.

Do this a thousand times over and you’ll have an engaged database of candidates and clients whom you can call upon to generate business for your agency.

Creating thought leadership content for recruitment marketing

The beauty of thought leadership content is its flexible nature. With a little bit of strategic thinking, and a well-thought-out answer that both demonstrates your knowledge and provides the reader with useful insight or action - you can create a thought leadership piece on just about any topic you fancy.

For example: as a recruiter, you understand a specific challenge your clients are facing - such as a shortage of appropriate candidates with the skills their company needs. You’ve helped numerous clients to overcome this challenge before, providing them with a selection of the right calibre of candidates and successfully helping them to fill this role.

Now think about your unique approach to helping your client overcome this challenge; what did you do, and why did you do it? Put those thoughts onto paper (or more likely - your website), and share those insights with your audience. You will start to build trust by sharing this information for free, showcasing your exceptional talents to an audience that is seeking guidance on that specific challenge they face.

Sharing useful snippets of information will help you address multiple challenges and become that trusted authority - before you even get to speak to your candidates and clients.

And while your competitors are only going about their BAU functions of posting job listings, you have the opportunity to take huge strides towards generating invaluable inbound leads through your thought leadership content marketing approach.

Recruitment Marketing: Digital Marketing Has Never Been More Important

If you’re a recruiter and you’re thinking of growing your agency in a world where you need to prove yourself to your potential clients and candidates, as well as attract inbound leads through an effective digital marketing strategy - you’ve come to the right place.

Digital marketing - with a focus on inbound content marketing and a deep understanding of your audiences unique needs and challenges - sets you up as an organisation that puts your clients and candidates first. Your thought leadership and tactical approach to digital marketing will allow your candidates and clients to feel valued every time they interact with you (or simply see your name!)

When they feel valued, they’re more likely to come back to your business when they have a problem they need solving.

Clients and candidates have so much choice these days, as I’m sure you’ve already realised by the increased competition in recruitment recently. You need to narrow their choice down to you. The way you do that is by creating content that makes them loyal consumers of your brand. When they’re ready to be closed, you’re in a prime position to capitalise on that as you’ve already built up a relationship with them.

So, recruiters, are you convinced? We’re ready to help you shape and implement your digital marketing strategy when you are.

Digital Marketing for Recruitment Agencies: Ultimate Guide

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Discover how digital marketing can help attract top candidates, retain clients, and build your brand reputation in a competitive industry.