9 Crucial Recruitment Marketing ROI Questions ~ Answered by Barclay

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Recruitment marketers who want to make a real difference to the sales and recruiting process of their businesses need to read these recruitment marketing insights.

Recruitment leaders who are looking to generate more from their marketing function can use Lisa's insights to help them drive marketing ROI.

Vanity v Sanity

Recruitment marketing can often stray into "vanity" world. It's never been easier to "spray and pray" with marketing due to automation and AI. The sheer volume of platforms you can use for recruitment marketing, and the communities you can access and attract, can keep even the most well-intended marketer too busy to generate ROI.

But with 69% of online content never even being read, and the vast majority of emails never being responded to, it's never been more important to be targeted with your recruitment marketing and focus on the sanity!

Lisa has done a lot of work with recruiters over the years helping them shape their recruitment marketing strategies, so I made her a rare coffee and asked her 9 questions about recruitment marketing ROI.

9 Questions I Asked Lisa About Recruitment Marketing ROI

1. What is the Function of Recruitment Marketing?

Crucially to attract, engage, convert, and retain your 3Cs – candidates, clients, colleagues.
And to help your sales and recruiting teams turn them into the 4th C – cash!

2. What is the Number 1 Benefit of Recruitment Marketing?

Leads (candidate and client) are key...
But often the expectations of what recruitment marketing can do are too low and KPIs are mistakenly around followers, impressions, blogging… The benefits of recruitment marketing need to be SANE not VANE.

3. How Should You Measure ROI on Recruitment Marketing?

Stick to “sanity stats”: Leads generated. Relevant subscribers signed up. Automation click throughs. Don’t not be fooled by people telling you that it’s difficult to measure ROI in recruitment marketing.

4. What is the Difference Between Outbound and Inbound Recruiting?

It is the difference between the more traditional approaches to marketing (email marketing / events) and digital (social / web). Push and pull!
It’s all about whether you’re interrupting someone’s day with your messages or whether they perceive that they initiate the contact.
The key to successful recruitment marketing, whether it be in or out bound, is that the candidate / client feels that they are the initiator... But actually the marketer has stealthily exposed the candidate's / client’s and drove them to click / call you.

5. Is Recruitment Marketing Only for Large Companies?

All recruitment companies need recruitment marketing.
And every recruiter needs to be a recruitment marketer in some way. (Another blog for another day...)
Recruitment HIIT has some cool hacks to help recruitment consultants market themselves, their brand, and their services, too!

6. What’s the Number 1 Pitfall in Recruitment Marketing?

Too much content, not enough marketing! And too much marketing, not enough sales!

7. What's Your Number 1 Hack for Content in Recruitment Marketing?

69% of content is never even seen, so wasting time creating new content, especially in the current market, is nuts!

Repurpose old content. Repurpose other people's content.
Create blogs out of blogs eg. "3 Insights We Found Online That Every Accountant Needs to Read this Week"
And if you really need to create your own content, ask your recruiters to ask the right questions on their screening and sales calls and then craft insightful blogs to attract and engage your community. eg...
What 's the best tech every teacher uses to create lesson plans?
How do you think AI will affect your job in the next 5 years?
How has your legal firm been affected by WFH?
My Recruitment Training platform, Recruitment HIIT has some cool hacks to try, too!

8. What is the Recruitment Marketer’s Essential Tech Stack?

You can get lost in the tech, but as a starter I'd suggest:
Trello for planning.
Google Analytics for website ROI.
Bullhorn Automation (if you have Bullhorn).
An SEO toolkit like SEMRush/AHRefs to turbo boost content – and Keywords Everywhere is flipping awesome!
Speedy video and image software such as Canva to "stretch" content – remember, “less content, more marketing!”
I mentioned other tech in
My Recruitment Training platform, Recruitment HIIT.

9. How Can Focus Your Time and Attention and Not Stray into Vanity Territory?

Plus, I say to my clients who are looking to hire / get more from marketing and need focused revenue-generating outputs.
“Imagine if your recruitment marketer had only 1 hour a day to make a real difference, what should they do? Then times that by 7 and that’s the job spec”.
Often recruitment marketers spend too long doing things that people have asked them to do that offer no real value to recruitment and sales. Stay focussed on the WIIFMB - what's in it for my business?