Client lead generation is the focus for staffing website design now, as well as targeting passive job seekers; that hard to reach talent pool you usually can’t access or engage with unless you’ve done your homework and a lot of outreach or cold calling. The time and effort needed to attract, engage and convert passive candidates naturally makes them more challenging prospects than active job seekers who’ve just landed in your inbox or ATS. To win over and convert your lead generation activity into HOT candidates and clients, your recruiters need to overcome objections, offer real value and insights and build their own credibility so that the relationship grows into a mutually beneficial connection.
Content marketing and writing blogs for SEO is one way to get your brand and message out to passive candidates and clients without being pushy and in their face. there are three ways that content marketing for staffing firms can increase your lead generation and drive revenue.
1. Update Your Staffing Website Design
Jack Copeland, CEO of Staffing Future comments “Your website is your digital footprint, your opportunity to showcase, your digital front door. You should view your website as a lead generation machine, not a validation of what your staffing agency does. The impression your website makes on candidates and clients will either attract and engage or repel and turn your prospects away from your team of recruiters.”
Copeland continues “No matter how experienced and strong your consultants are, how robust your recruitment process is, no matter how seamless and automated your staffing technology is, or how many candidates you have on your database, 53% of mobile users say a frustrating experience on your website hurts their opinion of your overall brand. Your credibility is on the line if your website does not render cleanly, is slow to load, isn’t responsive or doesn’t work on mobile where 60% of traffic is.”
If your site is stale, isn’t responsive, isn’t SEO friendly, or hasn’t been updated for a while (if your site is 2 years old or older, that’s probably the case) – passive candidates are more likely to brush you off before they even get to know what you do or how you do it. That’s why staffing agencies that do best with their lead generation are sourcing hard to reach passive candidates and high value, fresh new business leads are those that are willing to update their staffing website design before too much of their credibility evaporates in less than 2.6 seconds. Browse our website design portfolio for some inspiration.
2. Create Blogs For SEO
Not every candidate touch point can or should be a conversation with one of your recruiters. For active candidates, job boards or job aggregators like Google for Jobs, Adzuna or Indeed, have been an effective way to generate candidate flow, establish credibility and funnel applications back to your website. (All our sites are integrated with around 20 job aggregators) Seeing as passive candidates, better quality or more appropriate candidates aren’t looking on job boards, staffing agencies need to rely on different traffic sources to drive high quality applications and engagement. Creating your own blogs for SEO, video, webinar content, infographics and landing pages helps you generate high quality traffic with intent, meaning your team can convert valuable leads they are trying to engage with everyday on the phone, online, at meetings and at events, (remember those?) Blogs are one of the best ways to generate high quality, passive candidate traffic and tangible, inbound new business leads.
Staffing agencies can also create original content or “curate” content. “Curated content” is when you post blogs from other sources. Like the blog you’ve borrowed, you’re borrowing your credibility and authority. You’re not leveraging your own content and creating your own value. You’re missing out on opportunity. When you create your own original content, you’re highlighting your own expertise, showcasing your point of view. Your authenticity and authority on your topic or issue will shine through, often leading to higher website conversion. Staffing agencies demonstrating their expertise that matters to their clients and candidates build trust and credibility with their audience. Even better, when recruiters share your content with their social networks and connections, they include links to your blogs in their email outreach and in your automation. Your brand gets the credibility for the advice you’re giving. That’s powerful.
Better still, your original content should increase your lead generation and your site conversions. Blogs, eBooks, and white papers draw traffic (prospects) to your website. If your blogs are well optimized for search engines, you’ll create conversion pathways to raise passive candidates’ curiosity, satisfy their need for information and prompt them to engage by including links to other pages designed to convert them into a lead. For example, including links in this article to pages optimized for different search terms like “content marketing” or “blogs for SEO” I’m not only telling search engines the pages I want to rank and for which search terms, I’m also helping you navigate through our website, increasing pages per visit, time on site and search engines understand which audience I’m trying to reach with my content. Search engines take the digital footprint of your users and those that convert and are more likely to rank your blog pages higher for similar users who they think will like your convert too. For instance, if you want to browse our website design portfolio, you can. Your blogs combine to act as signals to users and robots to tell them which content they should rank and for which search terms. Search engines are trying to improve their user’s experience, you should too. Not only does this help with your website ranking on search engines, it helps improve the quality of your traffic and creates a halo effect across your website for your target audience.
3. Generate Traffic With Intent, Not Branded Traffic
Jobs are usually the most commonly updated element of any staffing website (certainly pre-covid). Read how Staffing Agencies Do Content Marketing to create visibility on search terms you want to be generating traffic for but probably have not been in the past. To develop insightful blogs as a way to reach and engage with a wider audience, (who don’t know your brand and aren’t aware of your service) you need to be discovered for terms that aren’t related to your brand. You’re much more likely to reach your ideal clients and a higher quality of candidate over time by targeting the issue they have and offering a solution to their problem they are searching for a solution for online.
They might learn and discover you’re the solution to their problem and the perfect partner to help them solve their issues / hire the staff they’re looking for. Effective content strategies target prospects in ways that maximize your opportunities to convert prospects and engage with those on your database already. Blogs for SEO are best used in your everyday sales process and included in automation, emails and phone calls to convert passive candidates into active candidates and prospects into clients. Use your content to nudge leads and prospects along your sales process. Best of all, by creating several blogs over time, you can start to combine these into a “lead magnet” or a book, as an incentive to download for your ideal prospects.
Social media marketing is a reliable, go-to method. Pareto’s law of 80/20 applies here. Most job seekers use social media in their search. Not necessarily for jobs, but for validation, discovery, advice, tips, hints, tricks and knowledge that will help them put an end to their job search. Passive candidates aren’t looking for jobs, they are looking for trends, insights, expertise, and data they can use on how to improve, how to develop technical skills and further their careers. Being authentic, showing off your culture, sharing what makes you different increases authenticity, attracts passive candidates’ interest, engages clients and brings your ideal prospects further along your sales process.
Keep in mind, all of the blogs you’ve generated, along with other content you have such as jobs, videos, info-graphics, research reports etc can be used in automation. You can then start to do your outreach at scale. Technology such as Bullhorn Autmation, Sense and Recii are all great pieces of staffing technology to reduce time to hire significantly. There are different strategies regarding social media posting and posting effectively. On social media, on different social channels the way LinkedIn works, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram is completely different. Each has different audiences. Know your audience. Know which channels they graze for information on. Know how to use each channel effectively. When to post. Each platform has its own optimal time and post type to generate the most clicks, likes and engagement. Sponsoring posts also helps boost your brand awareness (and awareness of the problem you can help solve for them) with your target audience. This is a really powerful way to funnel more clients to your website that are more likely to convert into a sale for you.
Lead Generation For Staffing Agencies
As with any strategy, writing blogs for SEO or content marketing, its effectiveness depends on its ROI and what metrics you’re putting in place to measure your success. It’s widely accepted that blogs or content marketing costs around 62% less than traditional outbound marketing activity. Even better news for your Finance Director and teams of recruiters, your own content usually generates around 300% more leads.
It’s important to cut your cloth to suit your business metrics and ensure your metrics reflect your goals and business priorities. (Hint: It’s not about the number of page views) That way, you’re confident your content marketing is focused on helping you and your business overcome obstacles and nudge clients along your sales process.
You can even measure your ROI of content marketing to justify and expand further activity. Knowing the value of your traffic, the number of visitors and tracking conversions, you can easily work out your ROI on your blogs for SEO. Get used to being a publisher of awesome content that adds value to your audience, distinguishes your staffing agency from the crowd and adds to your bottom line.
Get in touch to generate inbound leads, higher traffic, better quality visitors and a higher ROI from your staffing website.