Are You Properly Nurturing Your Staffing Firm Leads?
Are you working hard with your marketing team to run lead generation campaigns and locate experienced candidates? 
Do your sales and recruiting staff attend regional tradeshows in an attempt to build up your talent pool? All of your efforts are fruitless unless your team is aware of the proper steps to take in order to nurture those leads and generate business for your staffing firm. In order to build relationships with prospective candidates, you must coordinate your marketing initiatives with a comprehensive system for nurturing your staffing firm leads.
Design a Lead Management Protocol
In order to be successful in your staffing firm lead generation efforts, you must start out with the proper underlying structure. All members of your team need to be on the same page with respect to lead nurturing, so it is imperative that you take the time to design a lead management protocol for your staffing firm. Communicate clear guidelines to let everyone know how you want leads to be qualified and what steps to take when following up with prospective candidates. Incorporate reasonable expectations that allow for prompt follow-up, while taking into consideration that unrealistic timelines are bound to result in frustration on the part of your recruiters.
Focus in on Your Target
Now that you have your lead management protocol in place, you need to make sure that your marketing message is reaching the right audience. Instead of sending out a general email to everyone in your database, segment your lists and create highly-focused campaigns. Individualize your marketing emails to address the needs of each audience subset. Once you have focused in on your target audience, it is easier to draw their attention by carefully selecting relevant topics, images and collateral.
Follow the Leader
Nurturing your staffing firm leads through thought leadership also helps to build credibility and trust in your brand. Offer valuable material such as case studies, white papers and blog articles in order to attract highly qualified candidates to your website and social media profiles. After expressing an initial interest in your staffing firm, reward potential candidates and begin to convert those leads by sending them links to helpful “how to” guides or inviting them to participate in a webinar hosted by your recruiters.
Build Relationships
Build relationships with prospects by encouraging your recruiters to participate in industry-related social media groups and respond to questions posted in online forums. Prospective candidates are more likely to warm up to the idea of working with your staffing firm if they trust your recruiters and feel like they understand where your staffing firm is coming from. Avoid pestering contacts with too many emails or repetitive social media posts. As is the case for any relationship, a solid foundation must be established first or else you run the risk of alienating the candidate. Develop a campaign calendar that is capable of establishing an open line of communication with your audience, without going over the top and becoming a spammer.
It’s Go Time
Now that you have established how and when you plan on nurturing your staffing firm leads, you must ensure that you have adequate processes in place to track your progress. There is no way to determine whether your protocols are effective without collecting data from the point of the initial contact through to the completed conversion. Consider using a software-based conversion system to maintain the information, or instruct your recruiters on how to populate a shared Excel spreadsheet.
Key Takeaways for Are You Properly Nurturing Your Staffing Firm Leads:
- Take the time to design a lead management protocol for your staffing firm
- Segment your lists and create highly-focused marketing campaigns
- Build credibility and trust in your brand by offering valuable material to prospects
- Build relationships with prospects by encouraging your recruiters to interact with them online
- Ensure that you have adequate data collection processes in place to track your progress
About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.