*A special guest post by Oscar Waterworth from Bizzmarkblog
The latest BLS statistics show that up to 24% of workers in the United States alone change jobs on a yearly basis. This means around 41 million of Americans are searching for new jobs every single year.
Companies spend millions of dollars on ads and hiring recruitment agencies annually. As a matter of fact, Forbes estimates that the recruitment industry as a whole is worth somewhere around $200 billion.
It’s no wonder the recruitment industry is so crowded.
And just how crowded is it? Well, according to IBIS World’s “Employment & Recruiting Agencies in the US: Market Research Report” at the moment, there are over 27,000 recruitment agencies in the US.
Making yourself known in this industry requires a ton of work, money and of course, a little bit of luck. However, if you want to stand out, you have to market yourself right.
Developing a brand identity
Just like any other business out there, a recruitment agency can benefit a great deal from branding. This should be one of your main goals because it will help your agency develop a credible reputation online and increase your value in the market.
How to get started? First, if you haven’t updated your brand’s look in a few years, it’s definitely time to freshen it up. In some cases, this simply means doing some work on your aesthetics, in others, developing a whole new marketing strategy from scratch. Take a look at some top-notch business development strategies for recruiters for more insights.
Developing a brand identity also means staying consistent across multiple online channels. A staggering 90% of people expect that their experience with the brands they follow is similar across multiple platforms and devices – this includes color, images and overall quality.
Crafting a mission statement
Before you start working on your mission statement, you have to get familiar with your competition. You have to know how their offer differs from yours. This will allow you to define your true position in the market and determine your real value.
Armed with this information, you’ll be able to start working on a clearly-worded mission statement for your company.
While it may sound complicated at first, writing a short mission statement won’t take more than an afternoon. The statement should explain the goals of your organization and even talk about the company’s values on a social level.
This will help you build a tight relationship with your target demographic, since almost 65% of people maintain a relationship with a certain brand because they share the same values.
Creating relevant content
Content creation is a part of almost every marketing strategy nowadays. But if you want to make an impression on your audience, you have to put in some work and develop your content strategy properly.
According to statistics gathered by CrowdSpring, almost 80% of consumers believe that companies focused on custom content are more trustworthy than the ones who produce generic content.
Your posts have to be relevant to job seekers. For example, most first-time job seekers don’t know how to format their CV. Therefore, you should definitely have some articles on your blog explaining the best ways to format a CV.
Also don’t forget about the power of images – Facebook posts with images, for instance, see 2.3X more shares and likes than those without images. Luckily, you can easily find business free stock images for commercial use online and make your content campaign instantly more effective.
Reaching new people with social media
Today, when people want to find new job opportunities, they turn to social media to seek out new job opportunities. Even before, networking was the best way to land a job and now job seekers have social media to make everything easier for them.
Glassdoor research shows that more than 86% of people in the US use social media to find new job opportunities.
So what network should you focus on? LinkedIn should be your first choice, since it acts as an online resume and helps job seekers get noticed by potential employers. This doesn’t mean you should ignore other networks either. Facebook, for example, is great for displaying your customer service.
Once you manage to attract new people through social media, you have to maintain those relationships to the best of your capabilities. That’s why, you should consider using CRM software such as Vincere that will automate time-consuming tasks like customer services.
In the end, the most important thing is to differentiate yourself from the competition. For instance, crafting a standard content strategy will get you a leg up on some of your competitors. However, if you’re using the same tactics as everyone else, staying ahead will be an almost impossible task.
Basically, you have to think about what no one else is doing at the moment in order to stand out. Knowing how to hustle will only get you so far, so start being creative with your marketing efforts.