One thing that the pandemic taught us is that depending on word of mouth for your marketing efforts is not going to cut it. Every competitive staffing firm in today’s day and age is actively soliciting new candidates and clients online and off. 

The world has gone digital, and so have YOUR ideal candidates and clients. And regardless of how effective your recruitment team is, you have to invest in your marketing, specifically your digital marketing to outperform your competitors in the market. 

Although there are many factors that impact your staffing firm’s growth, the following marketing mistakes are endemic to the staffing industry and have a negative impact on your top-line growth:

No Strategic Marketing Plan 

A marketing plan is a roadmap of how you will achieve your business goals and objectives. This plan charts and guides your firm’s promotional activities over a set period of time. With this strategic foundation, you are able to look at the big picture and understand how your marketing activities translate into marketing ROI and ultimately, the long-term success of your staffing firm.

How Not Having A Strategy Marketing Plan Impacts Your Firm

Not having a plan is a reactive approach to marketing versus being proactive. Being reactive in marketing causes “shiny object syndrome”, meaning your business haphazardly shifts its focus from initiative to initiative. Not to mention, all of your campaigns produce less than expected results because there was never a clear plan of objectives, important deadlines, and marketing materials required. 

How to Create a Marketing Plan 

Build a document that details your business’s current situation, business objectives, strategy for hitting your objectives, customer journey, and marketing tactics and actions. 

No Unique Selling Proposition 

 Your unique selling proposition is the foundation for your brand’s marketing messages and is what differentiates your staffing firm in the marketplace. Without a USP it is almost impossible to stand out. Your USP is where your ideal prospect’s biggest desires meet the unique manner in which your firm’s service delivery addresses their needs. Therefore, creating a USP requires a deep level understanding of your ideal candidate, clients, and competitive market.

*Note: the nature staffing industry requires you will have to have two USPs – one for candidates and one for clients 

How Not Having a USP Impacts Your Staffing Firm

If you don’t have a USP in a world of homogenous competitors, your business will be commoditized. You will attract a lot of candidates and clients that are not an ideal fit for your business. Prospective clients and candidates will assume that you are just like every other firm. And finally, your promotional campaigns will fail to stick out and fall flat relative to your competitors. Without a USP or luck, your business growth will trend at or below industry averages and you’ll never achieve the growth rates of the top staffing firms in the market. 

How to Develop Your USP 

The first step in creating your USP is to place yourself in the shoes of your prospects and understand what motivates their decisions. After you understand the pain points in their decision criteria, perform a market analysis on your closest competitors to understand what their offering is, how your offering differs, and which marketing messages are working for other brands. 

Creating a USP requires that you first develop an understanding of your ideal candidates and clients on a deeper level. By understanding who they are and want they want most from your firm, you can highlight and position your brand relative to your competitors in a manner that allows you to stand out. 

After you’ve identified your ideal prospects, your next goal is to ten evaluate your strengths and weaknesses compared to the market. For example, you might have a certain specialization or a faster hiring timeline than your main competitors. After that evaluation is completed, you should create a message that ties in what your prospects want most with how your firm’s service delivery addresses their needs in a unique manner. 

Not Knowing Your Marketing Numbers 

What you measure, you can manage. Arguably the #1 problem in marketing with the staffing market is business owner’s either not knowing or not properly tracking their numbers. Your marketing numbers within your business tell a story. They tell you what’s happening within your business and give you insights to boost profits and grow your business. In your staffing business, you should know what’s happening with your marketing investments and how they are impacting firm production levels. Some key metrics are your acquisition costs (by channel), cost per leads (by channel), number of monthly leads, number of monthly sales, and conversion rates. 

How Not Knowing Your Numbers Impacts Your Business 

When you don’t know your marketing numbers, you have no goals, therefore no aim in what you hope to achieve, you can never say definitely if your marketing investments are working or not, and you are lacking the insights to make informed budgetary decisions. This negatively impacts business growth because the numbers are what drive your marketing budget allocation. Poor budget allocation over time will lead to decreased results and ultimately slower business growth. 

How to “Know” Your Marketing Numbers  

The first step to understanding your numbers is to list the most impactful numbers to your production growth. These numbers are centered around the number of candidates/clients you have to enter your pipeline on a monthly basis and how frequently are they being converted into new business opportunities. The next step would be to compare your marketing channels by their production volumes and conversion rates. After establishing a benchmark for these numbers, you should create goals based on your benchmark figures. 

Conclusion

Marketing is the lifeblood of your staffing firm. However, there is a slim line between success and failure for any business. By eliminating these three mistakes on you’ll be able to continually drive new candidates and clients. 

Free Offer 

I’m doing some strategy sessions with our clients on what we believe to be an accelerated approach to attracting your ideal candidates and clients. 

Our goal is to tack on hundreds of thousands of dollars in new opportunities for your staffing firm in a matter of a few months.  

If you want to take advantage of one of these free sessions – reach out to me directly at cbob@staffingattractionsystems.com