In our earlier blog, we mentioned that employment marketing is answering the question: “Why should I work here?” In this blog post, we will outline various employment marketing tactics used to help a contract manufacturer better recruit new employees and grow from 70 to over 105 employees in 12 months.

Employment marketing is reliant on many of the same well-crafted digital marketing strategies and tactics used for marketing new products or services. These tactics, referred to as outbound and inbound marketing, are centered on knowing your target audience, increasing the visibility of your employer brand, and creating interest that leads to action (in this case, the action would be attracting new hires).

Outbound employment marketing involves reaching out to candidates directly via job postings, job fairs, paid advertising, and recruiters. Inbound marketing (content employment marketing) involves generating valuable and impressive content that brings candidates to you via blogs, public relations efforts, social media, and website content. A constant stream of information that tells the story of your employer brand, culture, and community involvement will draw in more high-quality applicants.

Company Website

Since most applicants will visit your website before they apply, it is important to keep your website updated with the latest company news, as well as updated on a technical level. Having a mobile-friendly website is essential because most Millennials will use a smart phone or mobile device to access your website and complete an application.

There are 4 major pages you should consider building or adding content to showcase your employer brand online:

1. About Us Page: The About Us page should be easily found on your website, search engines and social channels. Although company history is important, today’s applicants want to work for a company that is forward thinking. The focus should be on identifying your company’s value proposition or what truly differentiates your company from the competition. Showcase your business as an appealing place to work by highlighting information on company stability, growth in revenue and/or employees, investment in new equipment and/or technology that will keep you competitive in the years to come. Feature company anniversaries as well as awards or recognition (Top Work Places, Fastest Growing Firms, Healthiest Work Places, Etc.)

2. Careers/Employment Page: This is the main destination page for job candidates where they should learn more about your company from an employment perspective. This page should reflect your company’s mission, vision, and culture. Prospective hires should be able to view the information on this page and understand what makes your company special. It will be beneficial to include open positions, list of benefits, onboarding and training details, employee testimonials, employee guest blogs, and relevant video content, such as a company culture video. In our earlier blog, we spoke about some of the negative comments made by former employees on various job boards including Glassdoor and Indeed. Employee testimonials on your career page will counteract any negative comments and present a positive narrative about your company.

3. Community Service Page: Many Millennials want to know that they can make a positive difference in the community. Your community service page should discuss the ways that your company contributes to society. Involvement in charitable causes (United Way, Children’s Hospital, local food pantry, etc.) can be communicated through action shots or even videos of your participating employees.

4. News/Blog Page: This page will provide noteworthy updates and news about your company. An effective public relations campaign will create great additional content for this page. If you offer a blog, you can publish an ongoing stream of relevant, meaningful and interesting content that relates to your industry or company. We had a client that wanted to attract more women and Millennials as applicants, so we wrote and posted a related blog and then linked it to their career/employment page. View the blog here. The client received a ton of free press because of this blog. Other content ideas could include targeting mid-career changers or minority groups.

Implementing Other Strategies

Your website is only one piece of the puzzle in terms of getting your message across to potential job candidates. Your employer brand must be visible and consistent in all aspects of your marketing strategy. From social media to blogs, videos, targeted display ads, PR and more, your unique brand must be apparent to prospective employees.

Employment Marketing via Social networks

Since 79% of job seekers depend on social media to find a job, these channels are great tools for promoting and strengthening your employer brand, and boosting visibility for your latest vacancies. Social sites track relevant data such as employment history, geography, and job titles, making it easier to target and attract the talent you want. Digital employment marketing campaigns on Facebook and LinkedIn can be very effective in generating exposure to your employer brand. Such campaigns may also attract passive candidates (those not actively seeking a new job) and former alumni for rehiring purposes. Don’t forget to link social media job listings to your online application form. Lastly, your best employees may promote your company brand by talking about their wonderful experiences as employees within their own social networks.

Public Relations to Boost Your Image as an Employer

A great employer brand cannot be built overnight. When it comes to PR, our experience has been that it takes 3-4 news releases before you get any traction with potential media outlets. To boost your employer brand, you need to consistently promote it via a consistent public relations effort. For one client, a series of news releases on investing in capital equipment, led to an interview which led to an article in a well-known industry magazine. The title of the article; “Employees set the pace for success.” With some effort and some luck, you can get your story told and seen on a local, regional or national level.

Career sites and the application process

In addition to listing open positions on your website, you should also make sure that your job postings are properly displayed on top employment sites, such as Indeed. You should also accept job applications on your website. Ninja Gig is a recruiting software that we’ve used to help with both tactics. It also enables you to customize the application questions for each job opening and better organize the candidates that apply. This software really makes the recruiting and hiring process a little easier for both the applicant and Human Resources. Additionally, put the right information in job advertisements such as necessary job requirements, responsibilities, necessary experience and education, skills, etc.

Employment Marketing Metrics

Developing your brand as an employer is about much more than a concept. You need defined deliverables that will identify your company as a leading employer in your industry. Employment marketing metrics should include: growing traffic to HR related website pages, boosting the number of applicants and new hires, reducing the cost and time needed to fill open positions and ultimately, increasing the total number of employees.

About Marketing Metrics Corp.

We specialize in employment marketing for the manufacturing sector. We use unique and effective employment marketing strategies and tactics to boost your employer brand, meet your hiring challenges, and improve the overall experience for your existing employees. To learn more about employment marketing and tactics used to help a client grow from 70 to over 105 employees and become one of The Fastest Growing Companies in SE Wisconsin, click here.

To learn how to use effective employment marketing strategies and tactics to boost your employer brand and meet your hiring challenges, download our free guide now.

Download the Employment Marketing Strategy Guide now

Of all the marketing tactics that we employ with our clients, one of the most misunderstood and undervalued is content marketing. Many companies initially fail to see the value in adding strong, information-driven content to their site and how this has a broader impact on their search engine optimization and user experience growth. One common remark we hear is “We don’t sell products online – why do we need content?” The answer to this is simple – your company and your brand are the product. A strong content marketing strategy will help supply potential customers on your site with the information they need to make the right decision – to do business with you.

Our clients have had great success with our content marketing programs. One client, a manufacturing consultant and equipment distributor, saw an organic traffic increase of over 150% in the first year since creating and adding strong content to their site. Their information-rich equipment and blog pages are now heavy drivers for organic traffic to their site seeing an average of 90% growth year-over-year. These top organic landing pages also drive conversions to their site, increasing their conversions over 75% in the last year!

What should B2B content look like?

One of the biggest difference between content for B2B websites and more consumer-driven B2C content is the importance of utility over entertainment. B2B content needs to be highly informational and fulfill their user’s information-seeking needs. If users are browsing your site for technical information related to a specific task or process, this information should be readily available and able to fulfill a user’s needs. More than B2C content, strategies employed on B2B sites should be driven by the goal of pushing the user towards a certain goal like completing an RFQ or contacting the business via email or phone. If the user is not interested in the business or the services they offer, they will not take this leap and the site’s content marketing hasn’t done its job.

Content can come in many forms – not just text-based web pages. Image and video content are also important and additional ways for users to interact with your brand. Pairing content like a case study with a related video or image deepens the user’s understanding of your company. By combining text, image and video content on your site, a multimedia content marketing strategy can take your brand and elevate it above other competitors on the web.

Steps to a Successful B2B Content Strategy

Before you hit the ground running and start adding content to your website, it is important you talk with your marketing team or partner agency to come up with a comprehensive strategy. Here are some important factors to keep in mind that will help focus your strategy and maximize its success.

Step 1 – Know your Target Audience

Before you start creating content, you need to determine who you are creating it for. What types of users are coming to your site? Of these users, which ones are most important for your business? Which users are most likely to complete a goal such as an RFQ or contact form? Defining your target user or users will help you define the type of content you should create for your site. Content created for a team of engineers will have different goals than content created for a purchasing manager or someone looking for the next step in their career. Defining your user segments will ensure that your content stays focused and useful for the people you want to do business with.

Step 2 – Tell your Users a Story

There are two broad categories of content we often see on sites. The first is the info-dump – disorganized and rambling lists and long paragraphs of information. While this makes important technical information available to the users, the content isn’t very accessible and certainly isn’t memorable. Parsing through info-dumps is exhausting and that’s not the impression you want your customers to have of your business!

The second category of content is the narrative – information that has been incorporated into a story or journey. For B2B companies, case studies are a great way to add this type of narrative content to a website. By discussing sample projects you’ve actually worked on, you are not only informing users of the types of services you offer but also providing them a detailed example of the quality of your work. Pairing narrative content like this with images and videos makes it more memorable and more likely to leave a positive, lasting impression.

Step 3 – Take Ownership of Your Content

One area B2B content really struggles with is putting a face to the brand. That is – what makes your business relatable and approachable? B2C companies often do this with mascots and spokespeople but these might not fit well into the B2B model of your business. Luckily, there are some simple ways to make your brand resonate and relatable.

When writing content on the site, do not be afraid to take ownership of your strengths. Let your users know you take pride in what you do and what skills you excel in. If you don’t tell them, no one will. Be careful not to toe the line of seeming braggy though. Customers want to work with brands that are passionate about what they do and a content strategy is a great way to communicate that passion.

Consider adding a page to your site talking about your company history or management team. This type of content is like a superhero origin story – it grounds your brand and creates a narrative of long-term growth, challenge and success. It also shows that your company values its employees and work culture which is often an appealing draw for users as well as prospective employees. Putting a face on your company elevates you above competitors that do not try to connect on a human level and leaves a great lasting impression.

Step 4 – Engage with Your Users Long-Term

You might ask – isn’t this what we are doing with content marketing? The answer is yes and no. Content marketing is perfect for creating a strong first impression, but there are many ways to integrate it into other marketing strategies that will extend its life cycle beyond that. There are many ways to create content that engages with the user long-term and not all of them might be right for your brand. Additionally, many of these long-term strategies require an existing content strategy to have been implemented to provide a foundation to build on.

Blogs and news updates are a great way to keep users coming back to your site. Not only does this provide fresh content that will help your SEO program, it also shows your continued expertise and investment in your site as a marketing tool. While setting up a blog and creating a content schedule takes time and requires a long-term investment, this type of content pairs will with other form of engagement like email blasts and social media.

Speaking of email and social media, these tools are great for presenting your brand to new potential users. These tools can be used to put your content in front of your customers in a way that can be easily shared and distributed. Once again, these tools require additional manpower but will help extend the reach of your content marketing program.

Finally, be sure to track your content program with tools like Google Analytics or SEMRush. These programs will monitor traffic to the various types of content on your site and tell you where it’s coming from, how they interacted with the rest of your site, and what type of traffic is most likely to drive your users to convert. These tools will help you shape and refine your strategy to an ever-changing marketplace.

Starting Your Content Marketing Strategy

The questions you might be asking now are “When should I get started with content marketing?” or “My site is really old – is it too late for me to get started?” The answer to these questions are simple – it’s never too late and the time is now! The first step towards a great B2B content strategy is talking with your marketing team or agency partner – so go ahead and take it today!

Month: November 2017

Employment Marketing Tactics for Recruiting New Employees