The Five Ps of Recruitment Marketing: Day 5 – Promotion
Editor’s Note: This concludes our five week series on the Five Ps of Recruitment Marketing (product, price, people, placement, and promotion). Special thanks to Mike Dwyer for an afternoon conversation that inspired this series of blog posts. For a look at assessments on product, price, people and placement, view my previous posts.
Promotion involves the means by which a product is communicated to, or sold, to customers. Traditionally, these aspects of marketing could include direct mail pieces, television and radio advertisements, press and demonstration events, sponsorships and celebrity endorsements, coupons and rebates, brochures, packaging, and free samples. Today, promotions involve other tactics like websites, guerilla marketing, search engine and display advertising, email, and SMS communications.
There is an unending list of ways product benefits and features can be communicated to a highly defined audience. And what’s better is that recruitment marketers can use all these same tactics to market their product: jobs and culture. Promotions are not free however, so marketers factor cost of promotions into the product’s profitability the same way you factor cost per hire.
How do you decide which are right for your target talent?
Start with the basics – the job posting and title. Is it attention-getting and appealing? Does it excite the reader and prominently feature the attributes you know motivate your target audience? Are the images thoughtfully chosen to resonate with the type of people you seek? Some companies are taking a radical new approach to conveying their employment brand or the details of a hard-to-fill position: infographics. Like a microsite or video, infographics are a popular way to convey complex ideas visually. Since each one is unique to a job, event or brand, they are simple, quick to read, and easy to share.
Beyond your careers site and job boards, where do you distribute your message? Hiring fairs, trade publications, and employment guides are great places to find active job seekers. Reach passive candidates as well on social networks by asking employees to share the job with their friends and families. Recruiters can form one-to-one connections with passive candidate on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Run display ads on social networks and popular websites or send targeted email by defining your ideal candidate in terms of years of experience, fields of study, and current location. Even if an individual isn’t actively looking to make a career change, an aptly placed ad on Facebook where he or she socializes could spark interest.
Try this exercise: Create a mini marketing plan for a new vacancy or a tough to fill position. Profile the attributes of the talent you wish to attract and the logic behind how your plan will deliver your message effectively. Aside from a job posting, be sure to include four additional tactics you can use to reach the candidate – including how it will tie to at least one key characteristic or motivator you listed.
Bottom line: Like marketers, talent strategists must also use a diverse mix of techniques to distribute their hiring message. In a market where top talent will flock to companies with the hottest brand, a creative message sent through the right channels can make a big difference.
