As a recruiter, you are scouring LinkedIn, Indeed, talking to your network, and following up with referrals to find your next search. You might spend weeks and months nurturing relationships and finding new conversations just to take on one search. 

Once you get that search, you then shift gears to spend your time sourcing, recruiting, screening, coaching, and negotiating. You worked your tail off to get that placement and have a great success story with your new client as well as all the candidates you now have stashed away in your ATS just in time to start the process all over again.

But what if there was a way that you could have that next search ready for you when you are finishing up your last placement? Sounds too good to be true, right? While I’d be steering you in the wrong direction if I told you it is really that easy, I can tell you, without question, that by investing in your brand through digital marketing you can truly impact your bottom line.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media. For example, advertising mediums that might be used as part of the digital marketing strategy of a business could include promotional efforts made via the Internet, social media, mobile phones, and electronic billboards, as well as via digital and television and radio channels.

You can clearly see that digital marketing is a very broad term, and you don’t have time to determine the ins and outs because you need to focus on the things in your wheelhouse. Because of this, it’s important to surround yourself with people who know how to help you make the right digital marketing strategy for your company, industry, and brand. 

Find a Digital Marketing Partner You Can Trust

As mentioned above, it is imperative to find someone you trust to put together your digital marketing plan. Every recruiting firm is unique, so their digital marketing strategy needs to be unique as well.

Does your brand have great name recognition in your market but your website or your social channels aren’t representing your brand appropriately? It might be time to update your old brochure site to make it more appealing to a modern audience. Your content needs to channel the same voice that you us to speak with clients on the phone. Your website should answer the pain points that your clients have and let them know what your areas of expertise are. 

A good digital marketing partner will show visitors to your website that your brand is fresh and relevant. If someone hears about you, one of the first things they will do from there is look you up online to do their own research. If your online brand is outdated, people may dismiss you even before they leave your site. With a good digital marketing partner, your site will impress visitors and keep them engaged. 

Implement an SEO Strategy

Do you have a brand-new site and are posting new thought-leadership content? Is anyone seeing it? IF your content is lacking eyeballs, you might need to implement an SEO strategy. 

You’ve probably seen it more times than you care to discuss – the fine print within contracts on topics that are out of your area of expertise. Many websites are developed as “SEO Friendly,” which most people believe means that the site has SEO implemented on it. 

While having an SEO Friendly site is the first step to having an optimized site, it doesn’t mean the site has been optimized thoroughly. There are many things that can be hindering any site from being seen or crawled effectively by search engines. You can have the prettiest site in the world with all of the best content, but if a search engine can’t see you, then neither can a potential new client.

Setting up Processes for Measurement

Before starting any type of marketing effort, you need to have an understanding (with metrics) of exactly where and how you are getting your leads and searches today. You need to have a baseline to measure the success of your future efforts against. Digital marketing can only be effective if you have solid goals and objectives laid out and there is a way to measure your initiatives. 

Maybe you’ve never had your phone ring. When it starts, what questions are you going to ask to determine how they found you? What documents and systems do you have setup to track your efforts over time? Measuring the overall results of any type of marketing efforts will help determine what worked well and what should be shifted due to not hitting the mark of the goals and objectives that were laid out at the beginning. 

Is your recruiting firm being found online? Learn more about how optimizing your website with Parqa can increase your visibility online, brining you more clients. 

We have been a woman-owned entrepreneurial business for 35 years!  It is hard to believe that our 35th Anniversary was being celebrated last Fall.  When I started a software development company in the 1980’s, I actually tried to hide the fact that we were woman-owned.  Not only was I barely past 25 but I was a petite girl in a field that was dominated by men.  It still is.  Only 25% of my developers are women.  From that aspect, not much has changed in my field.

I wasn’t supposed to be in the field of software development.  Armed with a business degree which my mother insisted that I get, I was going to continue my education in interior design. By chance, due to a summer job, I ended up as a software developer in the male-dominated industry of manufacturing and distribution.  Try being a 26-year old woman whose mission was to instruct a roomful of factory workers on how to do their job using automation. Oddly, everything went well.

I was invited to “power lunches” which were big in those days and sizeable companies chose to implement my software solutions. Generally, when I felt out of place it was more my own doing than the way I was treated.  What I found is that if you know your stuff and prove that you can do the job, you will win. Yes, you are going to run into the occasional jerk but you have to be confident in what you know and what you offer.

Today, woman-owned businesses are promoted and even “trendy”.  We are celebrating our 35th anniversary as a woman-owned business, yet we did not become a WBENC (Woman Business Enterprise National Council) certified until a couple of years ago. After several of our larger customers asked, we decided that it would be a good move.  It was.  It is a very detailed process but it is another valuable accomplishment.

Very early in the 80’s we entered the staffing industry.  Manufacturing had over 800 competitors and staffing had a handful.  With only about 20,000 staffing organizations in play, the range of competitors is still very small today.  Staffing turned out to be a great niche market for us. Many times, it is about finding an area that you like and pursuing it.

Back in the 80’s, there was a huge need for automation for staffing.  Most of the business were handling orders and candidates completely manually with index cards.  Can you imagine running a business with color-coded index cards?  Tons of paper!  Orders were taken on paper.  I found that all very interesting and had to find out more about what made the staffing industry tick!  Ownership was fairly male dominated but there were many woman business owners in the field.  Some were tough competitors that were very well known on the industry.  Finding jobs for people!  How cool is that?  At the time, little did I know that I would live and breathe staffing for the next 35 years!

That’s how business happens.  When you find something that interests you and you find a way to help, your passion will drive your success.  It’s a matter of never giving up and thinking positive.  Starting any business is painful, especially considering that usually you don’t come into it with a huge amount of money.  

What drives you?  Confidence that you will meet your goal no matter how long it takes.  You have to decide who you are and what you want to be when you grow up and how fast you want to do it.  We chose the slower route.  We add a select number of accounts per year and one of our keys to client retention is that we rewrite our software every few years to stay current.  Even though we are a very dynamic player in the staffing industry, we fly low under the radar.  That’s our profile.  We like to say we are one of the “best kept secrets in the industry”.  That’s not for everyone though.  A more aggressive growth approach is another model that can be successful, just in another way.

How do you sustain a business for 35 years?  You have to change when your industry changes and constantly challenge yourself.  You cannot live in the past or you will not be a part of the future.  You will be a “has been”.  One of our millennial employees commented to me a few years ago and said, “You’re old but you are ‘updated’.”  I was flattered. That’s how I like to think of our company.  We’re old but we offer the latest and slickest technology to a select few.  We have had customers that were startups and now that are at the top of the industry.  That’s gratifying.

Employee retention is very important to us and should be for all businesses.  We have a totally modern and updated office with sit-to-stand desks, high-end work café, huddle areas, games, fresh fruit and healthy snacks and other benefits for our very important employees who work hard to service our clients. Investing in your employees should be a top priority.  Our employees care about our clients as much as I do.  We select employees that have a similar culture philosophy.  If you have an employee that does not share the company philosophy, you have to part ways no matter how good they are.  Even one employee that does not fit in can drag everyone else down.  It is a tough decision to let them go, but owning a business is about making difficult decisions 

Now let’s talk about internal business strategy.  As a CEO of an entrepreneurial type company, you have to master a few key components.  First, remember that you are a company and as CEO you cannot make it personal.  The company is NOT YOU.  The company is everyone who works there and the clients you service. It’s not about building a legacy, it’s about building a successful organization that supports your employees and your clients. You have to be profitable and sometimes that means not taking business that is not a good fit for your organization.  

The second component is that you must have processes for each area of operation.  The processes should be written up in a handbook for each department.  All workflows should be assessed for validity as the business changes and modified accordingly.  Just because you have done something one way for 20 years does not mean it’s the best way for now.  Written guidelines are critical so that teams are on the same page.

Next, know when to let go and know when to step in.  You cannot get involved in everything and you are not always going to get your own way, even though you own the company.  This is good.  Here is where the juggling act starts.  Give enough power to your people so that they can do their jobs but you still have to stay involved at some level.  You may have people at the office that handle things, but you still need to be on top of sales analysis, financials and what’s happening in each department. Get a high-level briefing from all departments at least weekly.  

When you implement automation, make sure you have “buy-in” and commitment from the top down.  Otherwise, no matter how good the software, it will not be successful.  Train your people to use it.  Give them some leeway so that they can put their own spin on it, but implement specific parameters that must be adhered to.  This will improve flow and allow you to produce strong reporting for business analysis and forecasting.

Want to be a woman-owned business?  Just go for it and never look back!  The time will never be “right”, you will probably never have enough money, and there is no way to prepare.  You will work a lot of hours, there will be ups and downs and you will always ask yourself why am I doing this?  The answer will always be, “a relentless passion to succeed at something you know you do well without stops”.