2004 Marketing Recommendations
Who would disagree with me that our industry is in more of a marketing mode that a recruiting mode, a complete turnaround from just a few years ago. I once wrote a review on a service from the Haley Marketing Group, a company that specialized in offering relationship market programs for the staffing industry. David
Searns, President, has written up his marketing recommendations for 2004 and has graciously permitting me to reprint these, in an abridged form, for the Fordyce subscribers. Although these recommendations are not limited to Internet marketing, I know a large part of the Haley method is to use the Internet and email communication to enhance client communications. Here they are:
Focus on the Fundamentals
Differentiation - If you want to take business from the competition, you need to give people a compelling reason to choose your firm over others. What makes you unique? Why should a prospect pick your firm over the competition?
Before you answer these questions, let me give you one restriction: you can't use the words quality or service to differentiate your services. These words are so overused (and not just by search firms) that no one will believe you if you try to use them. So how can you differentiate? The key is to pick one aspect of your service that is very important to the segment of the market you want to serve, and then make yourself the best at delivering that specific value.
To find a way to differentiate your services, look at two things:
* The problems that cause businesses to need search services.
* The reasons why your clients dislike using search services.
You goal is to identify one problem you can solve better than anyone else or one unique way you can improve the experience of using search services. You might find your answer by focusing on a very specific industry or in a specific type of position. You might find it by looking at new pricing models, or finding ways to streamline your workflow to become more efficient. Or you might create your unique value by changing the service experience to better fit the desires of the kinds of clients you want to serve.
Know Your Customer - Who are your best clients? Why do they use your services? The biggest mistake I see search and staffing firms make to assume that "everyone" is a good prospect. Most businesses are not good prospects for you. They don't want (or aren't willing to pay for) your services. And even among companies that already use search services, most won't want to work with you. Why? Because you're not a one-size fits all professional. If you've done a good job differentiating yourself, you offer a unique value that will only appeal to a select segment of the market. To market successfully, you must clearly identify who your ideal client is and why these people would buy from you. Using this profile, you can compile a highly targeted prospect list.
So how do you find out why people buy from you? Simple, ask them. Sit down with your top three, five or ten clients. Ask them three questions:
* What do we do that's "right" for you? What problems do we help you solve?
* What is it about using search services that you dislike most?
* In the coming year, what could we do to be more of an asset to your business?
These three simple questions will provide great insight into the things your clients value most and like least about using search services. Use these conversations to discover ideas for differentiation. You can also use the conversations to get feedback on changes you may be considering in your service model.
Sound Strategy - We're any industry who's leadership ranks are dominated by former sales professionals and recruiters. On the plus side, we're fearless about selling. We'll pick up the phone and call anyone, anytime. We're ideally suited to the implementation of just about any business development strategy, but therein lies the problem. For most of the industry, there is no business development strategy. Instead, we rely on random calling and networking activities. Most of us don't have a plan or a disciplined process for business development. It's a function we pay attention to when we have down time, and as a result we face constant peaks and valleys in our assignment flow.
To develop a steady stream of business, start with a sound business development strategy. If you've completed the steps above to develop your positioning message and clearly define your ideal client, you've ready to create your strategy. Here's the process we recommend:
* Define your objectives
* Develop your product and pricing strategy
* Define your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
* Develop your creative strategy
* Determine tactics
* Implementation process
Consistent Marketing
How consistently do you market your services? Do you even have a marketing plan? Or are you like most search professionals who rely on a combination of word-of-mouth and occasional selling and networking when time permits? Great marketing doesn't have to cost a fortune. The secret is to get the right message to the right people on a consistent basis. And to do that you need a plan and a process that ensures you are regularly promoting yourself (and your positioning message) to people who will be interested.
Assuming you've created a sound marketing strategy (as outlined above), creating an implementation plan is quite easy. All you need is a calendar and about 30 minutes to plan. On your calendar, you want to plan three types of marketing activities:
* Activities to open doors with new clients
* Activities to expand relationships with existing clients
* Activities to improve your candidate relationships
On you calendar, you should outline one thing you will do each month for each type of activity. For example, you could:
* Send a personal letter to introduce your USP to a new group of prospects
* Share an article or idea you have that relates to the interests of your target audience
* Send a card or personal note to build relationships and keep yourself top-of-mind
* Share a case study or success story about how you helped a client solve a problem
* Provide a financial illustration outlining the economic value of search services
* Market appropriate top candidates via e-mail, direct mail or telephone
* Attend a networking event or better yet create your own networking event
* Host a seminar or webinar on a topic of interest to your target audience
* Conduct a survey
* Follow-up on past placements to verify client satisfaction
* Send postcards as a fun way to stay in-touch or promote your USP
* Create an e-mail newsletter on topics of interest to your clients
* Provide tips on how to make the search process easier
While this is by no means a complete list of possible marketing activities, you may notice at least one trend in this list. Most of the marketing tactics are client focused. At least fifty percent of your communication should be about topics that your clients' find interesting. If your marketing is all about you, it will soon be ignored. But if you offer interesting information that truly helps your clients solve problems in their professional and personal lives, then they will come to value and even anticipate your marketing.
Be an Opportunist
To make a down market "the other guy's problem," you have to be somewhat of an opportunist. You may have to not just identify new opportunities, but you may have to create them. Here are a few ideas to help you capitalize:
* Within existing clients, look to expand the scope of positions you fill. You might do this by broadening your services or partnering with another firm that can supply complimentary recruiting talents.
* Expand your geographic reach. Many search professionals already work nationally or even internationally, how about you? The more specialized your focus, the easier it can be to solicit and complete long-distance work.
* Re-engineer your service model. Sometimes the best way to create new opportunities is to take your business apart and then put it back together again. For example, you might expand your potential market by unbundling your process into distinct activities. Or you could re-engineer your recruiting methods to lower your costs and change your pricing model. The key to re-engineering is not just to improve efficiency, but also to create opportunities to truly differentiate your services from the competition.
* Be more targeted and focus on educational selling. Create new opportunities by teaching your ideal clients when, why and how to use your services.
* Stop being a search consultant and start being a problem solver. The more you are able to solve problems for clients, the greater your value. The challenge is to force yourself to learn more about each of your clients' businesses, and then work with them to find solutions to their problems-even if it doesn't mean more work for you! Over time, being a problem solver will position you as a trusted advisor and ultimately result in more business opportunities and referrals.
* Continue to network and aggressively seek referrals from clients and candidates. Make networking a planned activity on your monthly marketing calendar.
* Get more involved in your clients' industry. Become a speaker. Write for trade magazines. Attend industry events. The more you become an integral part of your clients' industry, the more they will come to trust your advice and value your services.
* Create opportunities to interact with clients. Find excuses to have conversations with clients and prospects about the issues that affect their business. For example, you might send an article in the mail or by e-mail and then place a follow-up call. The goal is to develop open lines of communication so that you can be the first recruiter to be made aware of search opportunities.
Many thanks to David for his thought for this year. Learn more about the Haley Marketing Group at their website,
http://www.haleymarketing.com/. They also have a free newsletter that I get regularly. Great material. You can sign up for free at the site as well..
TalentHook Enhancements
I received an announcement recently about some enhancement the
TalentHook, the excellent passive Internet candidate sourcing tool reviewed in this column before. Anyone looking for a product of this type should certainly check out this product. Here are a few of the enhancements.
Bulk Mail - Exclusions List - Bulk Mail is one of TalentHook's most powerful features. However, occasionally a recipient may inform you that they do not wish to receive additional emails regarding your opportunities. Our new "Bulk Email Exclusion List" enables you to create a list of these do-not-send recipients. After creating the exclusion list, TalentHook will bypass these recipients from all bulk emails.
Bulk Mail - First Name Salutation - When using Bulk Mail, job opportunities have much more appeal if you can address the candidate by their first name. "Dear candidate" or "Hello" is just not as alluring as "Dear Jim", is it? We have enhanced TalentHook to allow you to insert a candidate's first name in your message. This will help give your messages and opportunities a more personal and professional look.
New Candidate "First Name" Column - When using the @firstname tag within your Bulk Mail, you may wonder what name TalentHook will insert in place of the tag. We have included a "First Name" column within the "Recipient's List" section of the Bulk Email Wizard. The "Recipient List" section is the area within the Bulk Email Wizard where the full list of bulk mail recipients is displayed. Quickly running down this column, you will be able to decide whether or not the first name, TalentHook has chosen, is acceptable. In case the first name is not to your liking, you may edit the name.
ComputerJobs.com Awarded Weddle's User's Choice Award
ComputerJobs has announced that it has been awarded the 2004 WEDDLE'S User's Choice Award for the third-consecutive year. From their press release.
Winners of the 2004 WEDDLE's User's Choice Awards are selected through a yearlong survey on the WEDDLE'S Web site, located at
http://www.weddles.com, by recruiters, job seekers and HR practitioners. The winning Web sites represent the pinnacle of service, value and user friendliness among the estimated 40,000 employment Web sites operating on the Internet today.
"We have always prided ourselves on providing 'Raving Fan' customer service and creating the tools necessary to help our clients maximize their return-on-investment," says Jack Williams, COO,
ComputerJobs.com. "This continued commitment to excellence differentiates ComputerJobs.com from the competition. Winning the Weddle's 2004 User's Choice Award highlights our responsiveness to customer feedback and industry trends which are a significant extension of our hard work over the past year."
Recruiters and HR professionals have access to over 1.3 million registered users, 440,000 active pre-screened resumes and tools, which include the recently released Candidate Qualifying Questions that helps eliminate unqualified responses to job ads. The company attributes much of its success though to consistently supplying clients with a high number of quality IT candidates.
Anyone interested in an excellent IT related job posting and resume service should check them out at
http://www.computerjobs.com.
TechJobs Online
Anyone interested in a free trial for a fairly decent resume database for IT, engineering, management and scientific candidates should check out the following link:
https://www.techjobsonline.com/Secure/Registration.asp?r=1
You can post jobs during the trial as well if you wish. For more information on TechJobs Online you can visit their website at
https://www.techjobsonline.com/.
Tip
Since Google.com seems to be such a rage these days (Has anyone Googled you lately?) I thought I would mention an excellent article on the about.websearch.com website that explains the many advance search features available for this search engine. You can read the article at
http://websearch.about.com/library/weekly/bl-google-search.htm, along with many other excellent articles on Internet search related topics. This is the best site I know of that specialized in Internet searching.