In 2021 recruitment marketers had to embrace change and adapt their strategy at every turn. It was the only way to survive the turbulent market! Luckily as we ease into 2022, the market is much more stable.
Over 85% of UK recruitment leaders surveyed said they're optimistic about the year ahead. 90% of which are hopeful that sales will increase anywhere between 1-50% this year.As a recruitment marketer, you have the power to make this happen – but only if you focus on the right tactics. Here are five ways your marketing strategy needs to change in 2022…
1. Build your strategy around data
Last year was all about adapting your strategy every time the industry threw a challenge your way. With an optimistic outlook on the year ahead, the next 12-months should be less about surviving and more about thriving in today’s recruitment landscape.
Monitoring the right marketing metrics is exactly how you’ll take your strategy from good to great this year. Use Google Analytics, job ad conversion rates and third-party reports to analyse everything you do - what's working? What's not?
Home in on your strengths and brush up (or better yet eliminate) your weaknesses – this will give your annual strategy focus, and stop you from wasting time on marketing activities that bring no returns.
2. Innovate candidate attraction methods
It's great to see signs of optimism in the industry, but one thing that's showing no signs of change this year is the ongoing talent shortage. Job vacancies hit a new record high at the start of the year, and the competition for candidates is fierce!
To find candidates for your recruiters, relying on generic job ads posted on the same old job boards won’t cut it this year. Instead, you need to dedicate a chunk of your marketing strategy to reassessing and innovating your candidate attraction tactics. Get out of your comfort zone and focus on inbound marketing tactics that pull candidates directly to you.
For example, improving and optimising your recruitment website and jobs ads can bring in a pool of talent nobody else is talking to. Similarly, setting up a candidate referral scheme which incentivises happily placed candidates to refer friends will get you an influx of committed candidates that are ready to be placed.
3. Get to know personas all over again
It’s no secret that the market is very much in the candidate’s favour right now.
Candidates now search, engage and connect with job ads in a totally different way. To pull them in and convert them into database, you need to align yourself with exactly what they’re looking for in today’s market as well as where and how they’re searching for roles.
When did you last build out your candidate personas? If it’s years, or even months ago these personas may no longer be relevant. Fine-tune them early in the year and they’ll positively influence everything you do, from how you write your job ads, to which channels you market them on.
Download: Recruitment Marketing Persona Toolkit
4. Go against the crowd
Firefish’s 2022 industry report revealed that 49% of agencies intend to use social media for candidate attraction in 2022. In contrast, only 11% will focus on SEO and 5% on blogging – it's fair to say that competition on social media will be fierce this year.
While your competitors battle it out for clicks and likes, they won't be making noise on other key channels. Start chipping away at your SEO strategy, implementing video into your campaigns or finally kickstart your content marketing plan. Embrace channels your competitors aren't and you'll reap the benefits whilst your competitors are busy spending their budget on social media.
5. Focus on database marketing
We have a habit in recruitment of focusing all our efforts on attracting new clients and candidates to generate business. But right now, we have too much of one (jobs) and not enough of the other (candidates).
This year is all about finding the balance and working out how to establish a steady stream of both high-value clients and candidates. But how? Through database marketing, that's how.
Instead of pulling in new clients, focus on using customer marketing tactics to retain existing clients. Similarly, buried within your database is a host of potential candidates, focusing your strategy on re-engagment tactics, using recruitment marketing automation can help bring your database back to life, and find you those all-important candidates that now other recruiters is talking to right now.
