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Marketing has evolved from "nice to have" to "business essential."

Over the past several years, marketing in the staffing industry has progressed from a cost-center supporting sales and recruiting (think: pretty websites and collateral) to an indispensable demand-gen function that:

  • drives orders
  • generates qualified applications
  • builds your brand and visibility
  • enhances the candidate and client experience through content and automation

Stated simply? Marketing is now a critical function for your staffing business.

Digital marketing is at the forefront of this evolution, and digital tools and strategies have become every bit as essential to your success as sales and recruiting.

So...

What should your staffing firm be doing with digital marketing in 2022?
What are the biggest trends and challenges impacting staffing sales and recruiting?
Where should you focus your resources in 2022 to maximize your marketing ROI?

We tackled these issues and more in our last Lunch with Haley webinar. The ideas our team shared in this presentation were so impactful that we decided to turn them into this month's Big Idea!

For more detailed insights, watch the full webinar on demand here:
Top Trends in Digital Marketing for 2022

Biggest digital marketing challenges your firm will face this year:

Attention/Visibility

  • More competitive noise. Blogs, ads, webinars, emails, social posts. Each year, more and more firms compete for employers' and job seekers' attention - and search engine rankings. Your challenge? Using the right tools to stand out - and ensure your message is received.
  • Loss of Facebook jobs. As of February 22, 2022, Jobs on Facebook (as we know it) will no longer exist. This change will have a dramatic impact on the visibility of your job postings. Read this post to learn more about this change and what you can do to adapt.
  • Loss of Google 3rd party cookies. While Google is planning to phase out cookies in 2023, this will impact paid advertising, and you'll want to start working on strategies to build first party data in 2022.

Cost/ROI

  • Increasing costs of paid advertising. Both PPC advertising and sponsoring/promoting jobs are becoming more expensive. How will your firm ensure you're getting the highest ROI?
  • Measuring success. "Doing" digital marketing is one thing, but how do you know if it's working? Smart staffing firms close the loop and measure results.
  • Measuring the value of your marketing tech stack. There are a lot of marketing tech tools available to the staffing industry today. How do you know you are using the right ones? Are you improving your candidate's and client's experiences? Are you increasing revenue through their adoption, and is it resulting in true ROI?

Strategy/Execution

  • Making the best choices for your business. There is a LOT you can do in digital, but there is no "silver bullet." The challenge is choosing the right strategies and tools for your firm. Start by asking:
    • What are your goals?
    • Who is your target audience?
    • What's working well in terms of messaging, reach, engagement, ease of conversion?
    • What's only producing marginal results - and what might work better in 2022?
  • Bandwidth. Planning and executing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy takes considerable expertise and resources. Many firms face the challenge of trying to get everything done internally and access the specialized expertise required for different areas of digital marketing such as SEO, PPC, analytics, etc.
  • Implementing technology in the correct way. For digital marketing to enhance - and not impede - your business, you need the right tool for the job, and it must be used correctly. Organizational leaders should be involved in the decision-making process to ensure the technology makes day-to-day functions more efficient and provides results.

2022 MUST DO digital marketing strategies, tactics, tips and trends:

Want to leverage the best of what 2022 has to offer - and stay ahead of the competition? Implement these ideas, crowdsourced from our team of experts:

Staffing Websites

  • Remember that less is more. People have no patience to read or hunt for what they want. Navigating your site must be simple. Design must be streamlined. Content must be skimmable.
  • Deliver an amazing experience. Amazon taught us to want instant gratification, and people expect ecommerce-like capabilities from your staffing website.
  • Focus on local SEO. Tools like location pages, Google My Business optimization, blogging, technical SEO and more can help you rank well in the searches your ideal candidates and clients conduct.
  • Pay attention to core vitals. Google rewards sites that load fast, allow people to act quickly, and provide a great mobile (and desktop) experience. Use Google's core vitals to identify ways to optimize your site's performance and increase rankings.
  • Conversational systems integrated with website (chatbots). Your website visitors want immediate answers to their questions. To stay at the forefront of the industry (and avoid losing clients and candidates), your website needs a chatbot to respond to basic inquiries and drive people to take action.
  • Keep it focused and simple. Are you overwhelming your visitors with too much? Make sure the ONE action visitors should take on each page (whether it's your home page, job board or a landing page or form) is abundantly clear...and that it can easily be taken on mobile and desktop.
  • Continually optimize, adjust and update your site. Static stinks! If you want your website to convert, you can't just launch it and leave it be. Create a plan to regularly tweak your site and add fresh content.
  • Monitor performance. Review the data in Google Analytics. Look at the pages and content that are getting traffic/results and adjust those that aren't. Look at entry and exit pages. And find new ways to make your site perform better.

For more 2022 website best practices, read "25 Ideas for Your Staffing Website."

Social Media

  • Prioritize relevancy. As competition for attention becomes fiercer, it's even more important to choose the right topics and message - and send on the ideal channel at the right time. What's "right" for each audience might vary; be sure your social content is useful, relevant and delivered properly.
  • Become more strategic. Posting jobs 3x a week isn't a strategy - and won't prove effective in 2022. Organic reach is nearly dead, so you need to rethink your strategy in 2022 to win on social:
    • A successful strategy takes a mix of organic and paid elements shared with an engaged audience.
    • Get the team involved in creating and sharing content to increase reach and impact. Learn why and how in this 8-minute video: Team Social Sharing.
    • Segment your audiences further. Micro-targeted content is more specific and relevant - and will yield higher engagement and conversion.
  • Encourage recruiters to build personal brands. Your company's value and reputation will only be as strong as the brands of the people on your team. Learn more in this on-demand webinar: Personal Branding for Salespeople and Recruiters.
  • Design content for short attention spans. Test new ways to grab attention, including video, on platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
  • Be authentic. Your audience wants to know what it's really like to work with and for you. While professionalism is important, stay true to your brand on social media.
  • Be unique - and don't be afraid to be bold. Push the envelope with design and social copy. Think: How can you captivate your audience to entertain AND educate them? How can you stand out? Do you look like every other staffing firm, with the same messaging and same posts? Or is your employer brand and voice unique and showing through your posts?
  • Understand the algorithms. Pay attention to what Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are pushing on their platforms. Follow your competitors and see what types of their posts show up in your feed. Look at your own insights on each platform to see how your own posts perform, paying attention to patterns. Then, use the algorithms to your advantage by applying what you learn to content that really adds value for your audience.

To truly tap social media's superpowers, download our social media eBook.

SEO

  • Understand user intent. Answer the questions your clients and candidates are asking. Think like a job seeker or employer, not a staffing company: What do your ideal candidates and clients want to know? Learn more in this 9-minute video: SEO for Staffing.
  • Leverage long-form content. Google loves original, relevant, in-depth content that answers a specific question. In 2022, an effective SEO strategy includes long-form (1,500+ word) content that answers searchers' questions and incorporates both primary and semantically related keywords.
  • Use technology to identify opportunities. Tools like Google Search Console and Ahrefs can help you perform competitive analyses, targeting relevant search terms to include in your SEO strategy.
  • Shoot for "position zero." Also known as a Google answer box, a featured snippet appears above organic listings, offering no-click search results to users. Be the Google answer to top questions your audience has on:
    • Product and service info
    • Pricing
    • Frequently asked questions
  • Win the local war. As mentioned above, SEO in 2022 is all about ranking well for employers' and job seekers' searches in the geographic areas you serve. Tools like location pages, Google My Business optimization, blogging, technical SEO and more can help you rank well in the searches your ideal candidates and clients conduct.

Ready to learn more about today's smart SEO strategies? Download our SEO eBook.

PPC

  • Think of your ads as virtual billboards. People are driving down the metaphorical social media highway at 100 mph. Think through how you will use your ads to act as billboards to:
    • Catch their attention
    • Immediately convey your message (you have just a second or two to communicate)
    • Make them want to take action
    • Build your employment brand
  • Treat remarketing as table-stakes. These ads target audiences that have previously engaged with your brand and follow them around online - putting your brand's name, image and message in front of the same users over and over again. Remarketing is essential for building visibility and trust, and every staffing website should be equipped with it.
  • 1+ 1 = 3. Your PPC and SEO strategies should work hand in hand. Identify all the search strings that are relevant, buy your way to the top with PPC, and then systematically build organic reach.
  • Consider local map ads. If your office is outside a major metropolis, launching a new office, or not happy with your existing map position, PPC local map ads could help improve your results.
  • Learn more about how to harness the power of PPC on our blog.

Automation

  • Communication automation is essential—but watch out for the commoditization trap. As every company implements automation systems, be sure to design communications that fit your company brand and voice. Your content will differentiate your process, not your technology.
  • Use automation to improve consistency and efficiency. Service experience is your #1 differentiator, so use automation to ensure consistency in your process and free your team members to focus on human connection with clients and candidates.
  • Start with the end in mind. Visualize what success looks like for your candidate experience first, then determine where automation fits in.
  • Prioritize candidate engagement. The best candidates are gone in 7 days...how can you stay in touch and engaged with top talent? Develop automations to accelerate the intake process, deliver relevant jobs and keep your firm top of mind.
  • Automation + recruitment marketing = a perfect match. In today's tight talent market, AI and automation are more essential than ever for candidate acquisition.

Learn more about marketing automation on our blog.

Recruitment Marketing

  • Employment brand is your greatest differentiator. In 2022, your brand must be clearly defined and then actively promoted on your website, social, paid ads, job ads, etc.
  • Build your online reviews. Reviews on sites like Facebook and Glassdoor are the key to your employment brand and visibility.
  • Take the blinders off. Temporary employees make up just 2.1% of the U.S. workforce. Instead of just battling with competitors for the 2%, look for ways to reach the other 98% with the right message.
  • Show that you understand - and can deliver on - what your ideal candidates want. Find out what is most important to employees in your market. What message really resonates? For example, are job seekers looking for remote work, a shorter commute, flexible hours, a hybrid workplace, a solid career path, or something else?
  • Don't take bad jobs. Your clients' employment brands can have a big impact on yours (positive or negative). Make sure you work with clients that align with your values.
  • Use data to your advantage. In your job advertising, systematically A/B test job titles to see which ones perform better. Experiment to determine what salary needs to be paid to get candidates' attention.

Learn the 4 pillars of a modern recruitment marketing strategy in this 5-minute video: What Is Recruitment Marketing?

Reputation Management

  • Be proactive and strategic. Your staffing firm's reputation cannot be an afterthought. Work reputation management into your sales and recruiting processes after you have a positive experience with a client or candidate. Don't sit back and wait for the reviews to come pouring in; be proactive and ask for them.
  • Identify key trigger points. Timing is everything! Scrutinize your intake and service processes, looking for critical points at which to ask for reviews.
  • Leverage your stellar reviews and testimonials. Don't let them just sit on Google or Glassdoor. Use them throughout your website, create graphics to share on social, etc.
  • Think video. Bring your brand and reputation to life, and make an emotional connection with your audience, with video testimonials. Create 30- to 60-second videos that highlight employees in whose life you made a difference, or highlight employees who have moved onto a career because of the start your staffing agency gave them. If you are looking for an easy way to create branded testimonial videos, check out Video NOW.

This 6-minute video explains the 4 critical steps in Controlling Your Online Reputation.

Miscellaneous

These pieces of advice don't fall neatly into any of the categories above, but they're important nonetheless:

  • Technology and digital marketing may be changing, but human psychology isn't. Take advantage of emotional drivers like excitement and FOMO (fear of missing out) to create interest in your message, spread optimism and happiness - people need these now more than ever!
  • Be intentional with everything you do. There is no time (or money!) for clutter and waste. With everything you do in your marketing mix, be intentional and be sure it aligns with your business goals.

Get ready for the metaverse. We may be a few years out, but Facebook's newest project is bound to impact how we hire and manage talent.

Need help creating or executing a world-class digital marketing strategy?

Partner with Haley Marketing. With a full complement of digital marketing solutions for sales and recruiting, our team of experts is here to help you:

  • Increase visibility
  • Gain authority
  • Build trust
  • Drive more orders and applications

Partner with Haley Marketing.

Whether you need to improve candidate and customer experience,
generate more qualified applications and orders,
or build your brand and visibility, we can help.

Contact a marketing educator today to get started or call us at 888.696.2900.