Inbound Marketing for Staffing Is Almost Half the Battle

I just read a very good introduction to inbound marketing for the staffing industry on The Staffing Stream.

The author made some great points about the value of inbound and the opportunities for the staffing industry to more fully adopt inbound as a lead generation strategy.

Why inbound (and content) marketing is such a good idea

For an average staffing firm (if there is such a thing), a well-run inbound and content marketing initiative can generate 30% to 40% of new sales leads — and it’s even more valuable these days for recruiting.

In the staffing industry, inbound and content marketing is ideal for:

  • Improving SEO
  • Creating a stronger social presence
  • Strengthening your positioning as a thought leader
  • Building trust
  • Educating employers to use staffing more strategically
  • Attracting more employers and job seekers to your website

I was recently speaking with one of our clients in Seattle, and I learned that their content and inbound strategy has virtually eliminated their recruiting challenges. They are consistently generating 30% to 40% of their new sales leads from inbound. This is literally translating into faster fills, higher fill percentages and millions of dollars a year in new business.

PREMIUM CONTENT: U.S. Staffing industry Pulse report

However, there are some limitations to inbound

Content and inbound marketing typically work best for attracting smaller clients and those that are not being as aggressively pursued. For larger staffing prospects, inbound tends to be less effective because these companies are being so heavily sold to by other staffing firms, as well as lots of other vendors outside the staffing industry.

Inbound is also a more passive way to sell, since you are waiting for people to find and engage with your content. You have less control over the sales opportunities your organization wants to pursue.

Take your content further

While inbound may not be ideal for larger accounts, the content produced as part of an inbound campaign can make a tremendous difference in improving the effectiveness of direct sales and marketing efforts to “A-level” prospects.

When great content is leveraged as part of an integrated direct sales and marketing campaign, you can virtually eliminate cold calling, since calls become warmer, and improve the efficiency of your sales process. In fact, we’ve seen call-to-appointment ratios increase by 100% when educational content is incorporated into a multi-step prospecting process.

The concept behind this process is really simple:

  • Strategically target your ideal prospects.
  • Create a multi-step direct marketing campaign to:
    • Capture the attention of key decision makers in each organization
    • Educate prospect about a problem you can solve or unique value deliver
    • Give people a reason to want to meet with your sales person or learn from your firm
    • Use multiple channels of communication to follow-up (email, phone, direct messaging on social)
    • Provide multiple ways to respond (phone, email, social, landing pages on your website)
  • Systematically implement the direct marketing in a phased approach the ensures 100% follow up

Want to learn more about lead generation strategies for staffing?

Download these freebies:

MORE: Does Inbound Marketing Make Sense for Your Staffing Agency or Recruiting Firm?

David Searns

David Searns
David Searns is president and CEO of Haley Marketing, a company focused on marketing for staffing and recruiting firms. He can be reached at dsearns (at) haleymarketing (dot) com.

David Searns

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