I recently wrote a report for the recruitment industry, drawing on parallels with automotive.
In it I explored the key lessons for recruiters trying to cut through the noise and reach out to their target candidates and clients in an increasingly competitive space.
On the face of it, it’s tough to see any similarities. Automotive has a product to sell, and can leverage the brand to do so. Automotive can also benefit from huge budgets being poured into advertising campaigns and sponsorship.
Successful recruitment businesses however, rely heavily on the strong relationships and partnerships they have built in their chosen sector, and benefit from a good presence on the candidate side.
The one real similarity I could find (and it turned out to be a pretty pivotal one where marketing is concerned) was around the way in which the two sectors often went about reaching their market.
Recruitment, just like automotive, invests much of its time in ‘push’ marketing when its back is against the wall. What does this mean? It’s about hitting their prospects with a sales message in the hope that the timing is right and that these prospects have a specific need for a specific car at that exact moment in time. If the campaign is sent to 20,000 people, and a car sold, it’s a successful campaign, right?
It was knee-jerk reaction marketing that saw an entire database of customers and prospects emailed in a desperate attempt to sell a car. The majority of the database had no desire to buy a car, but they were emailed all the same, because, well what’s the harm?
Well, the harm as we have proved plays out over a period of months and years. The persistent battering of its database of ‘opportunities’ triggered a loss in faith and an erosion of trust. Engagement levels dropped and sales, as a result, dropped too.
Our solution was to help businesses go back to talking to customers again, work more on the message and the route to market than the offer. What this looked like, in practice, was a process of empowerment. We empowered our clients to become digital publishers, which they absolutely loved. Think less about the sale and more about creating content that people will read and share – the sales messages will come as an organic by-product of the trust built from the valuable content. In even more practical terms, we set our automotive clients up to be publishers who produced quarterly digital magazines.
These magazines cover all kinds of topics, some automotive-related, some not. But most importantly we moved customer feedback from dread to desire, from ‘don’t send me any more emails’ to ‘I usually receive my BMW magazine on the first Monday of the month, but mine hasn’t arrived yet, please send it to me!’.
Recruitment has hit the same wall. Love your database, treat it with respect and the trust that comes out of this relationship will help you to forge the strategic partnerships that help recruitment firms find the levels of success that is drawing more and more to the ever-lucrative marketplace.
If you’re interested in discussing how we can empower you to build beautiful and profitable long term relationships with your customers call us on 020 7287 9233 or email info@goldsanddigital.com