As the recruitment industry gets increasingly marketing savvy, it’s important to keep exploring new ways to stand out from your competitors. Your prospects are inundated every single day with online content, calls and emails from recruiters – could video be the way to cut through the noise?
Adding video to your recruitment agency’s business development strategy will help you cut through the inbox clutter – using video in your prospecting emails can increase your open-to-reply rates by as much as 25%! So, how exactly do we go about bringing video into our business development strategy in recruitment?
Video voicemails
Prospects not returning your calls? Struggling to reconnect with leads over email? If you’ve been waiting on a prospect to get back to you and you’re worried the opportunity is slipping through your fingers, why not send them a short personal video to push you to the forefront of their mind?
To do this, simply record a quick video (around 30-60 seconds) of yourself touching on the same points that you would do in a telephone voicemail and embed it into an email. Using video to put a face to your name will help you build stronger, more personal connections with prospects and clients and improve your response rates.
Extra tip: Using the word ‘video’ in your email subject lines can boost open rates by 20%!
Here’s an example of what a business development video voicemail in recruitment could look like:
Testimonials and case studies
If you know you have great relationships with your clients, and they often tell you how much they love your service – why wouldn’t you leverage this by getting it out there for prospects to see?
Sharing videos of happy clients through the medium of testimonials and case studies on social media, or even emailing these videos directly to prospects, can massively increase your chances of landing new business – particularly if the testimonials are coming from businesses they know and respect.
Extra tip: The opening frames (first 5 seconds) of a video are key – you need a great hook to pull people in. If you’re sharing the video for social media, remember that a large proportion of social media activity involves scrolling through a lot of content, so make those first few seconds count.
Company story videos
If you’re entirely new to a potential client, chances are they’ll want to know more about you and your company before they commit to doing business with you. And this is where short company story videos can be an excellent touch!
For this, you’d be looking to roll out a short trailer-style video of around one or two minutes highlighting a timeline with key moments in your company’s history, the problems that your business is addressing with its service. Include your most impressive stats and growth figures to show your audience they’ll be in capable hands.
Extra tip: It’s not a good idea to go DIY with this one – skimping on production can do the company more damage than good as you’ll look a bit amateur to prospects. Invest in a professional job and you should be able to get a good return on it (before you need to record a new one since you’ve brought in so much new business the stats are all underselling you!).
Candidate market infographic videos
If you’re able to work with an animator, creating video infographics can do great things for attracting new business. Do you have an excellent up-to-date database that gives you insights about the candidate market in your prospect’s sector? Turn it into an engaging, visual story that clearly demonstrates that you’re the experts in your sector.
You can then send this on to prospects by email when you’re in negotiations, use it as material for a pitch or distribute it on social as a super effective inbound method of brewing new interest.
Extra Tip: Remember your main aim is to convert those who view your video into potential clients, so make sure you make it easy for them to take the next step. If you’re distributing your video as a social media promotion, include a call-to-action button so prospects can get in touch with a click of a button.
Start thinking now about how you can introduce video into your prospecting and you’ll quickly start to see positive results. Your video efforts won’t only help bolster recruitment sales for your agency, but can provide a lasting return for the company more broadly too.
