David Searns | Co-CEO
They said WHAT????? A few days ago, a client sent me an email he received from one of our competitors.
The email outlined everything “wrong” with Haley Marketing (don’t worry, I’ll share those with you in a bit). And, naturally, their outreach concluded with the inevitable call to switch for a better experience.
How do YOU react when your competitors do this to you?
For me, my first reaction was, of course, emotional.
I was mad!
I wanted to scream!
I wanted to retaliate!
The sales email was filled with misrepresentations and outright lies.
But then I stopped being angry.
I recalled a sales trainer years ago telling me that you don’t win business by bashing your competitors. That doesn’t set the right tone. And it doesn’t make you look good.
I also know that competitors make you better.
They force you to look in the mirror…scrutinize your services…evaluate your pricing…and drive your organization to innovate.
Without competitors, we get complacent.
If your competitors are saying bad things about your staffing services, or undercutting you on price, or doing anything else that gets under your skin.
Stop.
Take a breath.
And remind yourself that your emotional response actually helps you to be your best.
So, what’s wrong with Haley Marketing?
I promised to tell you!
Well, according to this competitor, we:
- Sell Career Portal software with poor SEO.
- Provide cookie-cutter solutions.
- Nickel and dime clients.
Yikes, that doesn't sound good!
Let’s take a look…
Career Portal SEO
With our career portal software, we are not a WordPress plugin; we’re a software-as-a-service product that puts the career portal on a subdomain of your website (think jobs.abcstaffing.com rather than abcstaffing.com/jobs).
In the olden days of SEO, this was not a best practice. But according to SEMrush, HubSpot, and even Google, this is no longer true (and has not been true for years).
Subdomains get all the SEO benefits of subpages and are actually ideal for related content (like jobs!).
Plus, if you consider that our software creates a landing page for every job, adds Google for Jobs schema mark-up to the jobs (that’s how we get your jobs on Google), and now includes Recruiter pages, Location pages, and Job Category pages, no Career Portal product offers more to help with SEO.
Cookie-Cutter Marketing
Surprise, this is actually our superpower!
At Haley Marketing, our mission is to make world-class marketing fast, easy, and affordable.
That’s why we offer products and price points for all types of staffing and recruiting firms.
For smaller or very cost-conscious firms, we offer “off-the-shelf” marketing products, like Door Openers and HaleyMail, that provide a huge bang for a very modest investment.
For larger firms, we customize everything from strategy and messaging to digital marketing and branded content for a truly bespoke solution.
Regardless of the company size or the product we sell, everything we do is custom-tailored to each of our clients and their unique brands.
Our superpower is knowing how to package and bundle services to make marketing cost less, require less resources to manage, AND give our clients proven marketing tools and methods.
Besides, who doesn’t like cookies?
Nickel and Diming
I get it.
Some of our products include hourly billing.
And like all marketing companies, we have a defined scope of work, so extras…cost extra.
We understand that no one likes hourly billing or being told about extra fees.
However, we’ve found that our clients HATE BIG BILLS even more.
In marketing and professional services, most companies employ retainers—where you pay a hefty monthly fee for a more all-inclusive experience.
But we’ve never been fans of these “use it or lose it” relationships.
With Haley Marketing, our clients only pay for what they use…and very few of our clients ever spend as much as they would if we had a monthly retainer.
How do you respond when your competitors take you on?
For us, it’s about being true to our mission.
Focusing on the clients we are committed to serving…and the best ways to serve them.
For you, if you stick to your mission and values…and provide a great service experience, you won’t have to worry about what your competition does! |
