Guidelines for Creating Your Staffing Firm Marketing Strategy
Establishing a strong staffing firm brand and gathering a loyal following is a great place to start, but a well thought-out marketing strategy is the key to growing a successful staffing firm. 
Without a comprehensive marketing strategy, any efforts to attract clients and candidates are bound to fail. In order to make the best use of your marketing budget, your marketing strategy must be goal-oriented and include follow-up procedures. Be sure to allow some room for flexibility, as it is often necessary to change your marketing initiatives in order to respond to the market research and data that you collect. Don’t be short-sighted when creating your staffing firm marketing strategy; remember to design a long-term marketing plan that is focused on growing your business.
Study Your Staffing Firm
In order to better assess the future of your marketing efforts, it is essential that you take the time to understand where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Be honest when evaluating your staffing firm and invest in market research in order to see where you stand within the industry. Do your recruiters have extensive experience in one particular staffing niche? Do you offer a great referral incentive program? Have you identified shortcomings in your current website or social media outreach protocol? Make a detailed list of the positive aspects to feature in your marketing strategy and come up with a plan to address your identified weaknesses.
Play to Your Strengths
Now it’s time to sit down and begin to structure the actual marketing plan for your staffing firm. Set realistic goals and identify timelines in order to hold your staff accountable. When creating your staffing firm marketing strategy, meet with your team and get their buy-in to ensure that everyone is invested in the ultimate success of the organization. Play to your strengths and determine where there is potential for new opportunities. Create a detailed marketing strategy that lists the specific tasks you are going to follow and be sure to highlight the superior customer service that potential clients and candidates have come to expect.
Communicate with Your Audience
Rather than simply speaking to your audience, it is important to get inside of their heads and really identify great ways to communicate with potential clients and candidates. Understanding how your audience thinks and learning what is truly important to them allows you to create a stronger marketing strategy, complete with effective images and messaging. What are your clients’ and candidates’ needs and how is your staffing firm prepared to ease their pain? Do you need to change the way you deliver your services to accommodate their busy schedules? Is integrating your ATS and making a responsive website the way to attract a wider audience? Before deciding to expand your reach to include new markets, make sure that you have thoroughly exhausted all available opportunities in your current target audience.
Identify Your Methods
Now that you have set marketing goals and determined how best to communicate with your audience, it is time to get down to the nuts and bolts of your plan by identifying the actual methods you are going to use. What actions are required in order to put your staffing firm marketing strategy into practice? Which marketing campaigns are going to help you to reach your goals? Are social media outreach efforts the way to go? How about email campaigns aimed at specific email lists? Does attending an industry-specific tradeshow promise to offer a high return on your investment? Focus on the niche of the staffing industry where you excel and be sure to not stretch your marketing budget by trying to do too much all at once.
Monitor Your Effectiveness
After creating your staffing firm marketing strategy and beginning to put your plans into action, remember to collect data in order to effectively analyze your efforts. Pay attention to the marketing feedback, and be prepared to adjust future initiatives in order to realize the greatest ROI. Ask new clients and candidates how they heard about your staffing firm and solicit information about their current needs. Determine how to pair your expertise with those needs in order to help them achieve their business and career goals. A successful staffing firm marketing strategy requires attention to detail and innovative thought, so be sure to not become complacent as you carry out your marketing efforts.
Key Takeaways for Creating Your Staffing Firm Marketing Strategy:
- Take the time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your staffing firm
- Play to your strengths and identify new opportunities
- Identify great ways to communicate with potential clients and candidates
- Determine the methods you are going to use to carry out your marketing strategy
- Pay attention to the marketing feedback, and be prepared to adjust future initiatives in order to realize the greatest ROI
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.