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To stand out from the competition, effective marketing is more important than ever for recruitment agencies. Without it, your business growth can quickly hit a brick wall and force your consultants to fish in the same pool of prospects. That’s hardly enjoyable or productive (even if your consultants won’t admit to it!) In a highly competitive market, the good news is that you can optimise your costs with outsourced recruitment marketing and access capabilities that can take years to build in-house. We’ll explain why and how. The Real Costs of In-House Marketing The average marketing budget sits somewhere between 7-10% of company revenue, as surveys by Deloitte and Gartner suggest. (If you’re in start-up or high growth mode, that percentage will be higher.) Plans to increase marketing budgets over the coming years will, of course, vary by industry and business needs, but it’s clear that internal marketing teams don’t come cheap. For businesses based in the UK, the average marketing coordinator salary is in the vicinity of £24,000. With the recent increase in the employer National Insurance Contributions rate (from 13.8% to 15%), recruitment agencies are now facing significant payroll costs – and that’s before any marketing is being done to speak of! Breaking it down, an in-house marketing coordinator on a minimum salary of £22k will cost an additional £770 annually from 2025, whilst a midweight marketer on £45k will cost at least another £1,000. Add that up over a team of two to four people (or more), along with leave entitlements and other employee costs, and those pounds sure add up. Not to mention the cost of replacing and onboarding marketing employees. Recruitment agencies in Australia don’t get off lightly, either. To employ a full-time marketing coordinator, you’re looking at an average salary range of $70,000-$80,000 AUD. Add in superannuation, payroll tax, minimum leave entitlements, along with onboarding and training, the actual annual cost of that coordinator will be 1.25 to 1.4 times higher than their base salary. That’s up to $122,000 annually for one employee with a limited skillset. Here’s the catch: a junior or midweight marketing coordinator can handle the basics, but when your business needs specialised marketing skills to grow, you’ll need to hire more specialists – and that’s when your costs will skyrocket. Access to Marketing Expertise Without Hiring With outsourced marketing, you can skip the fixed, ongoing expenses of an in-house marketing team. Outsourcing gives you access to specialised skills like graphic design, paid advertising and copywriting when you need them, without the ongoing overhead of salaries and taxes. After all, your business might not need the same set of marketing skills all year. Certain expertise is more important for some campaigns and marketing plans and not others. When using an outsourced marketing agency like us, you get access to an embedded marketing team where you only pay for work you need during a given project or timeframe. We act as an extension of your business to manage your marketing, giving you a range of established skills and strategic knowledge at your fingertips. All without making a single hire. Scalability Based on Business Needs An outsourced marketing solution gives you precious scalability. As all recruitment business leaders are aware, business conditions fluctuate. Your goals will inevitably be adjusted to meet changing market conditions. Based on our experience in working with recruiters, here are common scenarios where marketing scalability is a survival issue: 1. Crowded Markets In crowded industries and sectors, recruiters face stiff competition from rivals with big marketing budgets. To stay ahead, they need smart and adaptable strategies that pack a punch without overspending. 2. Start-Up Challenges For new recruiters with limited revenue and an unproven offering, the focus is on generating interest and building momentum quickly. Outsourced marketing will provide that essential lift-off without the risk of hiring an untested marketing coordinator. 3. New Ventures and Expansions Recruitment agencies launching a new service or breaking into a new market will need a surge in marketing resources to ensure their efforts pay off. Scalable marketing means recruiters can dial their efforts up or down as needed. No overcommitting, nor missing out on opportunities! How do you achieve this sweet scalability? With an outsourced marketing solution, one that gives you flexible pricing options and a solid range of capabilities. If you want to pay on a project basis or have a marketing team on retainer, a good marketing agency will give you those options, too. This helps you forecast and manage costs over any length of time. Reduced Hidden Overheads On top of staffing costs, there are a few other cost gremlins lurking under the floorboards that most companies aren’t aware of until it’s too late. Infrastructure expenses like marketing software and tools quickly add up, especially when you need a group subscription or must pay a premium for basic functionality. An outsourced marketing provider has all these necessary tools, so you don’t need to duplicate them. Even the office space you need for an in-house team can sometimes get overlooked – an often astronomical cost that is becoming harder to justify for many businesses! Engaging a marketing agency gives you access to a marketing team at your fingertips, without the expense of bums on seats. The Final Word Of course, there are many situations where it makes good business sense to maintain or grow an in-house marketing team. The key, however, is to understand the big picture: your balance sheet, the ROI you can reasonably expect from an in-house team, and which options will best enable you to stay agile in a challenging market or business phase. Understanding these factors will guide you to the right marketing solution and avoid expensive mistakes. Outsourced Marketing for Recruiters, Done Your Way We’ve sung the praises of outsourced marketing here, but we’re also experts at helping our clients get the best out of their internal marketing teams. Whether you’re seeking marketing specialists that can dovetail with your internal team, or a standalone solution, or something else, we can do it for you. Let’s talk! Get in touch with Prominence today – we’d love to hear from you.

We can’t think of a single instance of a recruiter saying they love admin. And yet, administrative tasks eat up increasingly large chunks of a recruiter’s workday. It’s a given that job application volumes will keep rising, leaving recruiters with shrinking resources to carry out other vital functions – like nurturing passive candidates, engaging clients, or building a social media following. Marketing automation can solve many of the resource problems recruiters face. Trying to juggle activities like generating leads for new clients and candidates alongside the day-to-day practicalities of sourcing, interviewing and client consultation gets painful fast – unless you have the right tools to automate the process. We’ll explain how marketing automation for recruiters works in the wild, and how you can use it to connect with your target audiences. How Marketing Automation Helps You Target Clients Marketing automation for recruiters can be applied to every stage of the sales funnel, from raising awareness of your brand to building relationships with your long-term clients. Its potential for generation BD leads is second to none. Generating leads is one of the most effective uses of marketing automation and is generally an ‘always on’ feature, as long as you’re in business! Email Marketing

In an era where it feels like everyone, including the neighbour’s dog, has a podcast, it’s tempting to dismiss the idea as just another marketing trend. That, however, would overlook the immense potential podcasts hold for BD in recruitment. We love podcasts for their versatility, their ability to be consumed anywhere and as a vehicle for demonstrating your subject matter and industry expertise. As a recruitment marketing tool, podcasts aren’t just about the number of listeners per episode, the size of your subscriber base or the number of clicks. Podcast marketing gives recruiters that essential foot in the door in BD campaigns and gain plenty of other hot leads besides. We’ll explain how. Give Recruiters a Reason to Pick up the Phone Think about the typical recruiter approach to a business development call. It often starts with something along the lines of, “Do you have any vacancies you need filling?” Now, while that question might get straight to the point, it’s hardly the kind of opener that’s going to blow their socks off. But imagine flipping the script entirely. Instead of the usual pitch, what if you reached out to a potential client with a question like this: “We host a podcast focused on the (insert your recruitment specialisation here) industry, and we’d love to have you as a guest to discuss the challenges in developing the future workforce.” Suddenly, you’re looking at buy-in. What would usually be a cold call can quickly become a warm one – and make for a faster connection with your prospect. You’re not just another recruiter trying to win placements, you’re a thought leader offering them a platform to share their insights – a flattering proposition! This approach is far more engaging and offers potential clients something of real value. They get an opportunity to raise their brand awareness among candidates and demonstrate their expertise. Before trying this approach, you will of course do solid research on your prospect and be ready to explain why they would make a good guest on your podcast. Spice Up Your Lead Generation With well-crafted podcast content, you’re creating a goldmine of recruitment marketing material that can be repurposed across multiple channels, expanding your lead generation potential. Key moments from a compelling podcast episode can be turned into snippets and used virtually anywhere. Highlighting a thought-provoking quote, a surprising statistic, or a powerful insight is perfect for bite-sized content. By transcribing your episodes, you can easily identify these highlights and transform them into punchy graphics with quotes, video clips, or text posts to drive engagement on social channels – and attract more clicks to your website. Podcast episode highlights are also excellent material for your blog posts, newsletters, and email marketing. When launching an email campaign centred around a specific theme, you could highlight snippets from a podcast where the same issue is discussed. Used in this way, podcasts can really add depth to your messaging and reinforce your authority as a subject matter expert. Direct Listeners to Purpose-Built Resources Landing pages pair with podcast marketing like wine does with cheese. Throughout your podcast episodes, make it a habit to guide listeners to a dedicated landing page where they can access free and valuable guides. Think salary reports, whitepapers, how-to guides for hiring managers or candidates – the sky’s the limit! These resources are just a quick form away – listeners simply enter their name and email address to download the content. This simple step turns casual listeners into potential leads. Once they’re on your list, you can nurture these connections through targeted email marketing, using newsletters to engage and convert them. Use Follow-Ups and Collect Feedback Following up podcast episodes with surveys is another way to produce solid leads. After each episode, you could send out a brief survey that includes a question like “Are you planning to hire in the next three months?”. Those clicks are currency! (Even if they’re not hiring immediately, you’ve planted a seed.) Invite listeners to complete polls and give feedback on each episode – e.g. “Who should we bring on as a guest next?” This can also draw in guests who become your clients. Tools to Get Started with Podcast Marketing The cost of producing a podcast will vary, but there is no need for overkill, especially for your first few episodes. When you’re just starting out, aim for clean audio and tight editing without extra frills. Investing in a couple of professional-quality microphones is easier than ever – your typical tech retailer will have a range of affordable options to choose from. Make sure you buy two, so you can record your host and guest properly! There are plenty of affordable editing software tools out there for turning out polished recordings. If you’re willing to engage a freelance editor , you can save time and get a truly professional-sounding result. Finally, you’ll need a reliable hosting platform that gives your listeners easy access through a range of devices. Get Tailored Advice on Creating Your Podcast Podcasts for recruiters are an excellent channel for demonstrating all that valuable expertise you’ve built up over years in the industry, whilst developing a connection with your audience – and warm leads! At Prominence, we’ve helped dozens of clients successfully launch podcasts that have helped them smash their marketing goals. Contact us today to get help with developing your podcast marketing strategy.

Resources like salary reports, industry surveys and how-to guides are like bread and butter in marketing for recruiters – staples that appeal to a broad audience.

Recruitment marketing can mean the difference between a boom and a bust for agencies.

If digital marketing is the art of getting your business noticed online, it follows that you’ll have to sweat blood and tears just to get your brand in front of people… Or do you?

Lights, camera… action? Whether you’re creating short-form videos for social media, or producing a series for your website, video offers endless opportunities to engage your audience in creative ways.

With so many recruiters around the world, it can be a little difficult to stand out. You may be adept at cold calling and emailing, but this skill isn’t always enough to cut through in a time of high noise and low signal. A personal brand is that unique combination of skills, knowledge and values that define how you present yourself and are perceived by others professionally. For recruitment marketing purposes, knowing how to build and improve your personal brand is key to building trust among clients and candidates, helping you achieve that cut through – and generate leads. Personal Brand for Recruiters: Why it Matters We can think of dozens of reasons why recruiters benefit from a positive personal brand, but here are the highlights: Stay Top of Mind By staying visible, you’re the first person clients think of when they need to recruit and candidates think of when they’re job hunting. It’s a long-term strategy, not just about quick wins. Build Trust In Your Expertise Your personal brand enables you to establish trust before ever speaking to someone, turning that cold call into a warm conversation. Clients and candidates will research you just as you do with them, so a strong personal brand can make all the difference. Be Searchable and Easily Found When you build an effective personal brand, good clients and candidates will reach out to you directly, resulting in more warm calls and fewer cold ones! Boost Your InMail Success You’re four times more likely to have your LinkedIn InMails accepted when recipients have already interacted with your brand. Improving your personal brand presence on LinkedIn will elevate the probability of these interactions. First, Optimise Your Social Media Profiles Before you unleash a barrage of social media posts to ‘boost your profile’, hold up for a moment – have you optimised your profiles? Although this sounds basic, you would be shocked to know how many recruiters forget to maintain their LinkedIn profiles! Ensure you have a current, professional-quality profile photo and have included your industry and location details in the relevant fields, and don’t forget to update your contact details if you move roles. On your LinkedIn profile, remember to include the details of your most current work experience and employer, along with a tidy headline and summary in your About section. Also be sure to include at least five top skills, as these will be the first bits of information someone will read on your profile. Finally, edit your LinkedIn URL to show your first and last name – this makes your profile look professional and memorable! Create Original Content Personal branding is ultimately part of a digital marketing strategy which means creating original content is key. If the thought of generating content ideas stresses you out though, don’t worry. Recruitment is a goldmine of material for original marketing content. To create original content that resonates with the audience of your clients, all you need to do is focus on sharing specific examples that are relevant to their industry. Think of things like anecdotes, case studies and quick tips that address common questions from clients and candidates. To get the creative juices flowing, here are questions you can ask yourself to brainstorm new content ideas for your personal branding goals: What have I been talking with my clients and candidates about recently? What’s been going on in the market? What was the topic of a recent industry event I can comment on? What are my clients posting about on LinkedIn that I can join in the conversation on? What are the common pain points clients and candidates often experience? Think of some examples for each of these and what that would mean from a recruitment perspective. For instance, if you’ve noticed a rise in candidates receiving counter-offers that surprise your clients, what quick advice would you give to both clients and candidates? (Remember to keep your ultimate goal in mind – advising candidates to accept a counter-offer wouldn’t align with your objectives!) Armed with a few bullet points, et voilà! You now have material for original content you can share on LinkedIn. (For more advice on the nuts and bolts of posting on LinkedIn as a recruiter, read these tips ). More Inspiration for Personal Branding Content There’s no such thing as too many content ideas, so here are other ways you can drum up inspiration for posts on LinkedIn. Explore LinkedIn Hashtags: Regularly check relevant hashtags on LinkedIn and engage with content from thought leaders in your industry. Joining conversations will help you expand your network and you’ll be more informed about what’s happening. Set Up Google Alerts: We love this because it’s low-effort yet still effective. Set up alerts for specific keywords and topics – anything newsworthy related to recruitment and your clients’ industries makes for interesting content to share with your audience. Check Your Camera Roll: Scroll through your recent photos. Have you attended any events, met with clients, or visited interesting places for work? These moments can also make for great content. Your Company’s LinkedIn Page : Don’t overlook your company’s LinkedIn page! When your company posts updates, achievements or industry insights, there’s plenty to share and build upon. Competitors: Don’t be afraid to check out what your competitors are doing, either. Use that insight to identify five key topics that you’re uniquely qualified to discuss – these can form the basis for posts including images and short videos. Remember to Comment, Share and Like Engaging with other people’s content is another key aspect of building a personal brand for recruiters. Commenting, sharing and liking posts on LinkedIn helps position you as knowledgeable and supportive, which are two excellent traits to display as a recruiter! Not all engagement is created equal, however, so it helps to understand there is a hierarchy of sorts for these activities. LinkedIn’s algorithm favours commenting more than any other type of engagement, so comments will get you the most visibility, followed by sharing and liking. Be strategic with your comments. You’ll have to say something more substantial than ‘great work’, ‘love this’ or just emoji. Think of any additional insight you could add to the original post, or summarise its key takeaways in your own words. Another approach is to ask questions and start a conversation. Plus, don’t forget to connect with people who add value to the discussion – you never know where a simple question might lead! Bonus tip: Sharing your clients’ and colleagues’ posts is beneficial, but keep in mind that if you don’t add a comment to your share, it will barely reach anyone! Be Authentic We’re in a time when authenticity reigns supreme, for both content and how it’s delivered. People have managed to gain huge social media followings just by expressing themselves with sincerity in short videos they’ve recorded with a smartphone while sitting in their car. We’re not saying you should turn your LinkedIn into a TikTok feed, but audiences do appreciate content that doesn’t sound overly formal or staged. Be ready for inspiration to strike at unexpected moments. When you have a fascinating interaction with a client or candidate that you learned from, don’t be afraid to record a quick video with your insights. A 30-second video can be just enough to get your audience thinking and engaging with you. Strive for a balance between professionalism and authenticity, and your audience will keep coming back for more! Just be sure to stay true to yourself – there’s no need to pretend to be someone you’re not. Consistency and Patience is Key If there is one foundational rule of personal brand for recruiters, it’s consistency. Making time each week (or day) to post on social media, even when you don’t see immediate engagement, is the key to lasting results. Keep experimenting with different types of content to see what sticks. Many people give up quickly because they’re not seeing dozens of likes on their posts. We’re here to tell you that is missing the point! Regular posting sends the right signals to social media algorithms and shows your audience you love what you do. By consistently creating and sharing valuable content, you’ll gradually build a following and position yourself as an authority in your domain. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, so keep at ! Recruitment Marketing That Works For more advice on how to build and improve your personal brand, or how to incorporate your personal brand efforts into a broader recruitment marketing strategy, the team at Prominence is here to help! As specialists in digital marketing for recruiters, we love helping agencies smash their growth goals with effective marketing. Contact us today to find out more!

Don’t listen to the haters who say email is dead. As a marketing channel, email marketing remains unbeatable for its ability to help you grow and connect with your audience. In a time when digital marketers expend considerable energy trying to capture attention before the next swipe, a savvy email marketing strategy puts you in front of an audience that is engaged, open to new opportunities and eager to be informed. Proven Email Marketing Strategies that Deliver Results for Recruiters Our customers regularly win new business and have candidates reach out to them through targeted email marketing campaigns. Here are a few tried-and-tested use cases for email marketing that produce meaningful results in the form of leads and conversions. Showcasing Available Candidates to Your Clients This campaign entails a weekly email highlighting candidates from your talent pool who are available to start new roles next week, distributed to your clients according to segmentation by industry, company type or other relevant categories. It works particularly well for freelancers or contractors. We track activity and set you up with alerts for clients who click, providing a fast connection for placement opportunities. It’s an informed and precise way of doing business development. Broadcasting New Roles In a similar vein to the ‘available candidates’ campaign, this one involves a weekly or monthly round-up of ‘hot jobs’, inviting candidates from your database to apply. We provide you with leads on which candidates have clicked, and your consultants can take care of the rest. Monthly Newsletters Newsletters are the ideal vehicle for recruitment agencies aiming to cement their brand with thought leadership. Think plenty of sector-specific content including videos, podcasts, news and market insights. Consider a well-crafted newsletter a touchpoint that places your business front of mind for those looking to hire or move jobs. How to Optimise Email Campaigns for Best Results Here are eight essential tips to optimise your email campaigns and engage both candidates and clients at the right time, every time. 1. Build and Segment Your List Ensure you start with a mailing list that is up to date and compliant with privacy and communication regulations (e.g. GDPR, anti-spam laws). Segment your email audience by job type, industry, and engagement level to send targeted, relevant content. 2. Personalise and Add Value Add a personal touch by using recipients’ names and customising emails based on their preferences. Offer valuable content such as industry insights and career advice, not just job listings. 3. Create Compelling Subject Lines and Calls-To-Action Writing short, intriguing subject lines is the key to having a high open rate for emails. To stand out in recipients’ inboxes, keep subject headers punchy, direct and to the point. Use clear, action-oriented calls to action to guide recipients toward applying for jobs or visiting your website. 4. Optimise Emails for Mobile and Use Clean Design At this point in history, not making your marketing content mobile-friendly is a big no-no! Ensure your emails are instantly readable on mobile devices, with a responsive and tidy design. Clean and professional layouts are key – think effective use of white space, easily readable fonts and appealing images. 5. Automate and Test Make use of automation tools like Roi-Ai to create a smooth and painless campaign workflow, including follow-ups and onboarding. It’s also wise to conduct A/B testing on subject lines, content, and send times, to understand what works best and target your audience with laser-like accuracy. 6. Track and Analyse Key Metrics Tracking performance is the bedrock of digital marketing for recruiters, especially email marketing. Monitoring key metrics such as open rates and click-through rates allows you to measure engagement. Use analytics to refine your strategy and enhance future campaigns. 7. Enable Social Sharing and Easy Unsubscribe Adding social sharing buttons in emails is a simple way to extend your reach. To maintain a healthy email list and minimise spam complaints, provide a straightforward way to unsubscribe with as few clicks as possible. 8. Simplify Email Content with Personalisation Assume that most (or everyone) in your audience will be skim-reading your emails, so it’s important to break up content with headings and subheadings. When it comes to personalisation, you can do more than just address recipients by their name. You can tailor content based on their previous interactions with your business, their location, role type, demographics, or interests. Getting granular can produce surprisingly good results. Get Email Marketing Expertise and Results with Prominence At Prominence, we apply cutting-edge technology through our partnerships ensuring seamless integration and superior email marketing performance. Implementing these strategies is just the starting point. To supercharge your email marketing efforts, the Prominence team can create killer campaigns that drive engagement and win you new business. Ready to have an expert go over it with you? Contact us today for a free chat and tailored support for transforming your recruitment marketing. For more expert insights, check out our blog here .

The death of SEO has been greatly exaggerated. Type into Google ‘Is SEO…’ and Autocomplete immediately suggests, ‘Is SEO Dead?’. With frequent search engine algorithm changes, the rise of AI-generated content, and more people using social media to search for products and services, some people are led to believe SEO is becoming obsolete. The reality is that search engine optimisation hasn’t died, it’s simply evolving. Your future candidates and clients will continue to search for recruitment agencies in Google, Bing and other search engines, so having a well-optimised website is essential for ranking highly in these search results. Many recruitment companies prioritise SEO for this reason, but many more barely give SEO the attention it deserves. With so many other marketing activities to invest time and money in, such as social media and paid advertising, it’s understandable that SEO might get overlooked. SEO, however, is one of the best long-term marketing tools that can generate new business and grow your database years after you’ve created content. So, here’s the lowdown on why you should care about SEO, regardless of which year you’re reading this blog! A Quick Definition of SEO For Recruitment Agencies Before we dive into the ins and outs of search engine optimisation, here’s a quick overview of what SEO is and does: SEO encompasses the practices of creating and refining a website’s content, structure and links, to make it easily discoverable in search engines. Whenever you use Google to search for something, there’s a sophisticated algorithm quietly at work in the background, ensuring you receive the most relevant results for your query. While the specifics of Google’s algorithm remain a mystery, continually evolving over time, one thing is certain: it prioritises relevance above all else. Recruitment SEO Best Practices Use Effective SEO Keywords for Recruitment SEO allows recruiters to set up their websites with specific keywords and phrases that are relevant to their industry, niche, or job openings. This targeted approach ensures that the traffic driven to your website or job postings is composed of individuals who are actively seeking what your business offers. We recommend agencies review their websites periodically to ensure the text on each page includes relevant keywords related to their service offering and the types of jobs they recruit for. The same principle applies to new content you add to a website, in the form of blog articles. Using a free keyword research tool, such as Moz, SEMRush, or Google Keyword Planner, will give you suggestions for SEO keywords for recruitment topics, and how many people are searching for them. Plus, a quick search on any search engine will allow you to see what your competitors are trying to rank for! Focus on Location Jobseekers and potential clients tend to search for recruiters and jobs by location, so it’s sensible to include location-related keywords throughout your website. For example, if a website has a page listing temporary jobs and these are all located in Melbourne or London, the main title or subheadings on that page could include a phrase like ‘Find temporary jobs in Melbourne’ or ‘London’. Make Your Site as User Friendly as Possible With so many people using search engines from their mobile devices today, you’d be crazy not to optimise your website for mobile. Many website builder tools have mobile optimisation features built in, but it does help to understand why a site should be mobile-friendly: because it helps elevate your SEO rankings. In practice, mobile-friendly sites don’t require zooming in to read them on mobile. Regularly Update Your Website with New Content Regularly publishing fresh and engaging blog content on your website does wonders for SEO. With regular blogging, you can mine new SEO-relevant keywords and themes, establish your agency as a thought leader and articulate your expertise in an industry niche – all key for creating a recognisable voice for your brand. It’s worthwhile developing a strategy for just for blogs alone, as this type of content can strike many of your marketing targets at once. Blogs often bring passive clients and candidates to your site – they may not be looking for your recruitment services just yet, but they do need information on “How to Interview a DevOps Engineer” or “How to Write a CV for a Project Manager” which in turn helps you build your brand awareness and build trust with your audience – so hopefully they reach out when they’re ready! By working with a recruitment marketing specialist, you can develop a content strategy that uses regular content to elevate SEO and build solid brand awareness. Why SEO is Cost-Effective Compared to traditional recruitment methods such as advertising on job boards or cold calling, investing in SEO can be more cost-effective in the long run. Once optimised, your website can continue to attract organic traffic without the need for ongoing payments or manual outreach efforts. For example, let’s say an exasperated hiring manager in Sydney or London finally starts searching for a recruitment agency online after a bad hire or two. She may start searching for ‘data science recruiters Australia’ in Google, Bing or perhaps DuckDuckGo, for help with finding candidates. That’s where your SEO efforts will come in handy. As a recruitment business specialising in data science roles, you’ll have several pages on your website mentioning the words ‘data science recruiter and ‘Australia’, along with easy-to-follow links for contacting your team. That’s how this hiring manager may find your website and begin a long and fruitful relationship with your recruitment agency. In short, SEO is how people will find you when they’re exploring their options or about to make a decision – like signing up to work with a recruiter. Stay Ahead of the Recruitment SEO Curve While some marketing practices yield more immediate results, SEO offers the advantage of long-term sustainability. Once established, a strong SEO presence can continue to generate leads and attract candidates over time, with minimal intervention. The SEO landscape is constantly changing, however, so it’s advantageous to work with SEO experts who can keep you up-to-date with the latest trends in SEO for recruitment agencies. At Prominence, our digital marketing specialists will work with you to create an SEO strategy tailored to your business needs. To tap into the power of search engine marketing and optimisation, contact us today for an expert chat.

In the fast-paced world of recruitment marketing, in-house marketing teams often find themselves stretched thin, juggling multiple tasks and trying to keep up with the latest trends.

In today’s competitive market, recruiters face significant challenges. With economic fluctuations and shifting job market dynamics, generating new business has become tougher than ever. However, amidst these challenges lies an opportunity.

Whether you like it, loathe it, or are merely indifferent to it at this point, LinkedIn remains a key part of a well-thought-through marketing strategy for recruiters.

Recruitment agencies across the globe have felt the squeeze of job board advertising prices with in recent years.

The Australian recruitment marketing sector is continuously changing, and never more so than now. If you are wondering what marketing your recruitment agency should be doing, take a read of these six marketing tips specifically for recruitment agencies.

Building a marketing strategy for your recruitment agency is an essential step in aligning your sales and marketing teams, but it isn’t always a straightforward task.

There are many business benefits associated with winning industry awards, probably the most underrated is the positive impact that it can have on your recruitment team.

What would happen if you stopped posting content to your social channels for a week or even a month? My guess is that in most cases it would make no difference to your recruitment or careers business. This is because the majority of recruitment firms or internal talent teams are only playing lip service to social media. Posting occasional blogs and semi-regular mainstream media articles to small audiences is enough to show a social media presence, but only requires minimal investment. As you can probably guess this lack of investment results in limited returns. This creates a vicious cycle, which is where most businesses remain. The only way to generate results from social media is to invest in strategy and content and the only way to be sure this investment is working is to know how to measure your returns. This article provides an overview on how to measure the success (or failure) of your online marketing strategy. Good News The good news is that when compared to traditional marketing mediums social and digital media make it easier to measure results. That said there are always going to be some results that remain qualitative, but these techniques and tools will help you to spot positive or negative trends. Don’t Rely on Platform Statistics There are lots of unscrupulous companies out there selling Twitter followers or Facebook likes. This is one of the main reasons that platform specific social media audience numbers are a poor indicator of online success. I accept that if a company has 40,000 Twitter followers compared with 100 the larger audience is going to provide significantly increased post visibility. However just because a business page has a large audience it isn’t a guarantee of user engagement or that the audience will see the content. This is because of post visibility algorithms that are in place to restrict the visibility of organic posts. These restrictions are designed to maintain the quality of the user experience (by preventing spam) and to encourage businesses to undertake paid advertising. Therefore once your online presence is social proofed (enough likes or followers to give your business credibility) the value of additional likes and followers is minimal and often purely correlates with the amount of advertising revenue spent on the related platform. Recruitment / Careers Website A well designed and functional website is vital to the successful measurement of online marketing success. We go into greater detail on what to consider when building a new website here , however to enable your business to measure results you just need to be aware that your website should act as a centralised hub for all marketing traffic. Importantly traffic will likely not enter the site through the one location, instead coming in to jobs, consultant profiles, landing pages, company blogs or other pages.

Recruitment marketing is now a more effective way than ever for recruitment agencies to engage and attract candidates (or clients), and it is only going to become more significant as we go forward. It can be tough to stand out from the crowd whilst also sticking to your budget, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. If you’re in charge of your agency’s brand, and you’re looking to get the most out of you marketing budget, look no further! Here are our 11 top tips to make your marketing budget go further. 1. Analyse Your Previous Marketing Initiatives  Analysing any previous marketing efforts is first on our list. Without this data you’re shooting in the dark. Website (Google), social and newsletter analytics are the best tools to acquire quantitative data. Outside of this, your ATS or recruitment database should track placement sources and peaks and troughs in candidate applications. Lastly, feedback from your hiring managers or recruitment team on the calibre of candidates being generated from each activity is highly valuable, even if it can be a little opinionated sometimes.

If you, like most recruitment leaders and marketers, struggle to get your team to engage with the content posted to the LinkedIn Company Page, there is now a tool to help! The new LinkedIn Employee Notifications feature allows you to easily let your recruiters know when you’ve posted an update on the Page. Why is the LinkedIn Employee Notification Tool a Good Thing? It’s easy for employees to miss your company’s posts amongst the constant stream of content on their feed, which means they often won’t engage with them. The Employee Notifications feature helps businesses expand their organic reach on LinkedIn by giving your recruitment team the opportunity to amplify the content and act as brand advocates by sharing it with their connections. When an employee receives a notification and clicks on the post preview, they are redirected to the update where they can comment, react or re-share, enabling your recruitment agency marketing to go farther. How to Increase Your Employee Engagement on LinkedIn 4 steps notify your employees about a post: Create the content from your Company Page on LinkedIn and post it Click the menu in the upper right-hand corner of the post (…) OR click on the ‘Notify Employees’ button if it is already visible Click ‘Notify Employees’ A pop up will appear, click ‘Yes’

Scrolling through your LinkedIn feed can sometimes feel worthy of a game of bingo. How many times do we see #humblebrag posts with the sole purpose of self-promotion? We’re not saying that’s entirely a bad thing, but if you want your post to stand out from the crowd and effectively communicate your message to your reader, you’ll need to be a bit more strategic! Here’s our top tips for creating LinkedIn posts that will get your business noticed. Use Attention-Grabbing Visuals We’ve all experienced the sore-thumb syndrome that comes from scrolling through social media feeds too much.  But the reality is that we are all fickle creatures and value our precious spare time. If you’re on a break between meetings or sitting in the back of a taxi home, what’s going to get your attention? Not a big block of text, that’s for sure! LinkedIn’s own research shows that posts with images have a two times higher comment rate, and larger images have a 38% higher click-through rate than other images (LinkedIn recommends 1200 x 627 pixels for single images). If you have the means to produce video content, you can upload up to 15 minutes of footage (10 from your phone) to LinkedIn’s native video platform. You’ll be able to share your story in a more captivating way and build trust with your readers by ‘showing, not telling’. Ask For Opinions It suffices to say that a lot of people like the sound of their own voice, especially online. Were you ever told in your more junior days that the best way to build a new relationship is to ask for advice? Not only do you make the person you’re asking feel important, but you also have the opportunity to start a discussion. Social media is no different, and putting out questions or polls can be a great way to engage people. Don’t worry, if you’re strategic about the question you post you won’t look uninformed. In fact, the question itself can be an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the industry. Think about topics trending in your market at the moment. It could be anything from world news (e.g. the impact of the upcoming recession or the increase in energy prices) to niche announcements about businesses changing their HR policies or letting people go. By kicking off the conversation, there are endless opportunities to engage with readers and build rapport. Host an Interactive Discussion Taking things one step further, you could also host a native video livestream from your company page. It may sound daunting, but evidence shows LinkedIn Live video generates 24 times more engagement than the average post. Content-wise, there are lots of options, from livestreaming a webinar or panel discussion, to keynote speeches at conferences. And you can book the streams well in advance so you can also get some mileage out of promoting the event and building your ideal audience. Drive Traffic to Your Website It’s been reported that the average user spends just seven minutes and 30 seconds on LinkedIn every day. One way to get around this is to be a ‘save for later’ article that drives the reader back to your website where it’s being hosted. This is beneficial for many reasons – it gives the reader a greater understanding of your brand and also offers the chance to browse around your site. They’re already there, so why not take a look around? It also breaks you away from the LinkedIn feed and prevents you getting lost amongst the ‘I must read that one day’ pile. Don’t Forget Your Employees Another interesting stat for you – 30% of a company’s engagement on LinkedIn comes from employees. They are also 14 times more likely to share your company content when compared with other types of content. Think about each of your employees as being an online brand ambassador with the capacity to amplify your messaging across their networks. Not only will it boost your brand recognition, but it says a lot about your team culture and values when you have employees wanting to see you succeed. There are many ways you can maximise opportunities with employees, such as: Creating a branded cover image for them to add to their personal profiles Creating a hashtag for your business and encourage your team to add it to their posts Sharing your employee’s LinkedIn posts on your company page Summary LinkedIn remains the number one professional networking site in the world, and is constantly developing new and innovative tools to help people and businesses connect. This list is just a taster of what can be produced off the back of a strategic, measurable social media plan for your organisation. Here at Prominence, we are specialists in recruitment marketing and work in partnership with our clients to build brand recognition, drive engagement, and boost revenue. We understand the challenges of operating at the frontline of talent shortages, changing attitudes to work, and tightening profit margins. If you’d like advice on the best way to build your network and attract new clients to your business, get in touch with us today.

One of the key measures of how strong your online brand is, is the volume of RELEVANT website visitors it receives. It doesn’t matter if you have the flashiest, best looking website in your region or even country, if you don’t have enough people seeing it, the design means nothing. The higher the number of visitors, the greater the volume of job applications, client vacancy requests and even recruiters applying to work for you will be. Obviously, there are other metrics you should pay attention to, but knowing your website Sessions and Users, and how this compares to industry averages is a very good starting place. Finding Industry Averages So, what are industry average website traffic numbers? Well, there is no easy answer to this because every business is different and there is definitely no publicly available data on the subject (we recruiters are a private bunch!). With many recruitment clients throughout Australia and New Zealand we are probably the best place organisation to access and provide some insight on this subject. Comparative data is best broken down by the number of recruiters working for the agency, which is a good indicator of size. As well as size, we’ve split the data into clients with active marketing programs and those that are typical of the average recruitment agency.  We’ve included Sessions and Users as these are both helpful numbers to know. Sessions is all visits to your website, Users are the total number of unique visitors to your website.

Salary surveys are old marketing, right? Actually, far from it. Even in today’s digital age they remain one of the most effective sources of warm client and candidate leads. The key to getting results out of salary surveys is to modernise the approach. The large agencies have been producing sizable hard copy reports for many years. They’ve obviously updated this approach a little and made them available online – providing the user enters their details! The big difference now is that there is no need to spend an eternity collating and producing all of the statistics, only to find out that you have half-data or missing results. To get the most out of your recruitment agency’s salary survey, the key is to do two things: have an online tool that provides the participant with some form of instant gratification, and produce one or more offline and online reports that report on the trends in the data. Online Tool The volume of people searching online for salary data, either as a job seeker or employer, is only just behind the volume of people searching for jobs. The big difference is that many of these people may not be quite ready to search for jobs, so their details can potentially be captured at an earlier stage. One look at the suggested search results in Google gives you some idea what people are looking for:

At Prominence, we don’t develop websites but as a specialist marketing agency for recruiters, we do get exposure to a huge volume of recruitment websites. One thing we’re repeatedly surprised by is the number of poor sites that sit high in the top 10 of a simple Google search. By poor we’re referring to either old or non-responsive (not suitable for mobile) designs, little in the way of calls to action (after all you want people to do something when they land on your site) or just generally short of useful or engaging information for any of the three core recruitment audiences (the three c’s, [recruitment] consultants, candidates and clients). Luckily, there appears to have been a sea of change creeping in over the last few years, with many recruitment firms investing in updated websites. The problem for most of these companies however, is that although their websites now look visually appealing and are technically up to date, they still aren’t showing up on a Google search for relevant keywords. Worse, the same agencies that have old fashioned and dated websites still remain in the top 10. Enter the mythical beast that is Recruitment SEO. Search Engine Optimisation Search Engine Optimisation isn’t new, it was here in the heyday of AOL and Ask Jeeves. To a novice, it can appear to be a hugely complex subject with many unknowns. It’s actually fairly simple, you need to focus on getting a few basics right and then, if you really want to push the boat out, there are a number of technical measures that can also be implemented. Google changes how it ranks search results on a regular basis, but assuming you have a fairly modern website that is responsive, then the only three things you need to consider are: site structure/architecture, keywords/phrases and maintaining regularly updated good quality content. Website Structure Your web vender should have helped with recommendations for this. However, because doing this correctly requires more work than a standard website (from you) and obviously adds additional expense to the project, it often gets missed or only half completed. Think of the structure in the mind of your customers (any one of the three c’s). The site needs to be easy and obvious to navigate but also it MUST have individual pages that are dedicated to your business’s core areas of service. Examples include, pages for each of your locations, specialist business areas, jobs you recruit for, and business specialities (permanent, contract, temporary, executive etc). The reason for doing this is to provide Google with pages that are keyword rich for each specific area of your business. If, for example you just have a single page for all of your specialist business areas, then the chances are that each speciality will only be mentioned once at most and potentially other synonyms that could be searched, won’t be included. If this is the case you’ll be missing out on good quality, relevant traffic. One last note on structure, whilst your building these pages you also want to ensure that if someone happens to land on them, that there are obvious calls to actions (CTAs) so you can convert additional traffic into leads and results. Keywords/Phrases This isn’t jamming your site full of every keyword you can think of. It is however, thinking about the terms that people are likely to be searching for when they find your site. Take it a step further and it should just be the terms that people who YOU WANT to visit your site, are likely to be searching. For example, if you run a specialist medical recruitment business in Melbourne do you want people finding you when they search for a generic term like Australia Jobs? If you do this, a high percentage of those who click through to your site won’t find information that is relevant and will therefore quickly leave your page. This tells Google your site isn’t relevant for this term and could actually harm your SEO. Instead focus on key phrases that are relevant to your audience, in this example, perhaps Medical Recruitment Agency, Melbourne would be better. There is some science to selecting keywords, for example you should review monthly search volumes by using Google Keyword Planner and review your high-ranking competitor’s website to see what they are targeting. However, a large part of your planning will be based on your industry knowledge and then experimentation. When you have your key phrases thread them carefully throughout your website, focusing the most important words on the Home Page (Tier 1) and then the others on their own dedicated pages (Tier 2 onwards). It’s important to not only include them in the body text but also ensure they are in the Page Title and Heading Tags. Lastly, track the performance of your selected phrases. There are lots of tools available to do this, we favour Agency Analytics, now Unamo SEO, and simply using Google Incognito Search to regularly check where your site features. Regularly Updated Content This requires the most time and effort but is important for two reasons. First, Google likes websites that have regular new content, second is backlinks. Backlinks are links to your website from other websites. The higher the quality of the links your site has the more likely your site is to rank highly. This also explains to a certain extent why some older sites have a high Google ranking, they have been around for a long while and built up many backlinks. Don’t worry about paying third party providers to actively pursue backlinks, it’s an old-school practice that generally does more harm than good. Instead, focus on having good quality content that other people will want to link to. This could be a research paper than other sites link to as a reference, a press release or a simple blog that is shared across social media. The better the site linking into your website the greater the impact. So, if you can find ways to get links from newspapers, industry publications or anything else similar then this is especially good. Start Small This article is only a brief introduction to Recruitment SEO, there are obviously many more things you can be doing, some of which are technical such as Canonical Tags, XML Sitemaps and even getting a Wikipedia page. Our advice is to start small. Pick a part of your business that generates a lot of your revenue (or one that you’d like to generate a lot of your revenue!) and then focus your SEO efforts on this area. Once you start seeing results (anything from one to six months), you can then build this out across other parts of your business. It’s worth noting that large international recruitment agencies don’t have any real advantage with SEO. They may get more press coverage and have bigger marketing teams, but they also have to cover a broader range of keywords. This means a smaller agency with good website structure/architecture, well thought out keywords/phrases and regularly updated, good quality content can just as easily get to the top of Google Search. If you’re looking for support with your recruitment website’s SEO content, feel free to get in touch . Good luck!

Over the last month, chances are you have been prompted at least once to review a restaurant, hotel or any one of hundreds of other products or services. The difference, compared with only a few years ago is the broad variety of websites that now request reviews. Some are very specific to the industry that they service, for example, Zomato for restaurants, whereas others are relevant to almost every business, for example, Google Reviews. You may not have even noticed that reviews are becoming commonplace in the recruitment sector. Again, only a few years ago the only major review site relevant to our industry was Glassdoor, albeit that Glassdoor hasn’t experienced much momentum in Asia-Pacific yet. As of today, the review sites that currently exist and are relevant to recruitment agencies in APAC include Glassdoor, Indeed, Seek, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. With all of these channels, ever increasing prompts to leave reviews and consumers who are more readily used to reviewing everyday elements of their life, the chance of you or your recruitment business either wittingly or unwittingly receiving reviews is considerably higher than ever before. As online reviews continue to become more commonplace the reviews that your business has will, without doubt, start to impact your ability to attract top talent and also win new business. Just imagine the day you receive a response to a well thought through RFP stating that the business isn’t proceeding with your agency because of numerous poor online reviews. Obviously, this is an extreme example, but at the other end of the spectrum are really high-quality candidates who elect to work with another Recruiter because they have better or more credible personal LinkedIn reviews (in this case recommendations). Good News The good news is that it is relatively easy to position your business in a positive light if you choose to proactively take control of your agency’s brand across core websites or apps. This is because the vast majority of our industry isn’t keeping up to speed with this fast-changing consumer behaviour. With the exception of LinkedIn, on every other review site, it is nearly impossible to remove or edit unwanted feedback. This means that if left unchecked the probability of your agency’s reviews being negative is high. Even if as a business you pride yourself on excellent service there are bound to be the odd anomalies. This is because people leaving reviews are significantly more likely to have had a negative experience than neutral or positive. The only way to counter this is to actively seek positive reviews on your target channels. As an individual Recruiter, the simplest way to do this is to always be looking to transfer any positive feedback from candidates or clients into online reviews. Expanding on an earlier point, this generally means encouraging recommendations on the main professional networking channel LinkedIn. As an individual Recruiter, it is absolutely critical to have up-to-date recommendations from relatable candidates and clients. As a Recruitment Manager or Director obtaining positive reviews is a little trickier and involves greater amounts of up-front planning. In our experience, working with many agencies, we have found the best way to do this is to combine review requests with more commonplace satisfaction surveys. Typically, most agencies these days send out automated or semi-automated requests for feedback to clients and candidates that they have either placed or possibly have just organised interviews for or with. These feedback requests are normally through tools such as Survey Monkey and encompass NPS (Net Promoter Score) questions. The Resulting NPS score and other feedback provide a really good indication of how satisfied with your service that particular customer is. It is then only a small logical leap to send those who have left positive feedback a message requesting them to post this on your chosen review channel. In some businesses, it may also be suitable to incentivise the customer to do this, for example offering a voucher or similar. What is critical is to ensure as much of this process is automated, to maintain a good, consistent experience. There are other methods to encourage positive feedback, for example, you could ask candidates during your initial interviews to consider leaving feedback at a later stage. Whilst you’re building your businesses’ positive reviews and even once you have them flowing, it is really important to also engage with everyone that takes the time to review your business. This is especially true if you’re unfortunate enough to receive negative reviews. The key here is to show you’re listening, that the issue is being investigated appropriately and to avoid long winded back and forth arguments. Summary Hopefully, this article encourages you to at least review the existing online feedback that exists on either yourself or your business. If you are looking at implementing a positive review system please feel free to get in touch.