Finding clients or hires is not just about talking to prospective ones, presenting your services, then hoping for the best. There is a degree of nurture and constant communication that your staffing agency has to do to win them over finally. A few emails, ads on job boards, and social media posts won’t cut it. In more than one instance, you have to show them how your presence will benefit them.
Let’s delve into the practice of lead generation and its basics. If your staffing agency has not yet incorporated lead generation into your processes, now is the time to utilize your resources to attract more customers, may it be job seekers looking to get employed or companies that need your staffing services. Let’s also list some lead-generation errors and turn them into good habits.
Lead Generation: The Starting Point of Turning Prospects Into Clients or Hires
When a job hunter or a company approaches you first and expresses interest in working with your recruitment firm, turning them into actual customers would be easy. However, for people who may have visited your website or chanced upon your social media posts, it may take some additional effort to convince them to approach your staffing agency. This is when lead generation is needed.
Lead generation is the process of attracting possible customers or leads by piquing their interest and nurturing this interest. As you can see, catching their attention is only a small part of lead generation. Giving them the information they need, getting to know their interests and needs, and offering the kind of service you think works for them are integral in eventually luring the prospect over and starting a great business relationship.
Lead generation falls in the second phase of inbound marketing:
- Attract. Draw attention to potential customers through content that starts conversations.
- Engage. Provide insights to the prospect by giving them input on what they might need and how your company can satisfy that need.
- Delight. Give continuous support after availing of a product or service to make the purchase experience more meaningful.
Traditional lead generation methods include cold calling, email marketing, and referral systems. For staffing agencies with various online platforms, the usual process of lead generation is as follows:
- An individual chances upon one of your marketing channels. These can be your staffing agency’s website, one of your social media handles, or a job board.
- This individual then clicks on a call to action. Perhaps what they saw caught their attention, and this rising interest must be attended to right away. The post must have a call to action (or a text or image) that they’ll click on if they want their interest to be met with answers.
- A landing page is presented to the individual. A landing page is a one-page website where interested individuals can leave their contact information. The landing page should not just be a plain document to input one’s phone number or email address. There should be information on what the staffing agency can do for that individual regarding their initial query.
At this point, you have generated a lead. While leads are only the start of a business relationship between a possible hire or client company, lead generation is a process that should not be bypassed. Additionally, exerting more effort to catch the attention of website or social media visitors is pertinent to successful lead generation.
The Lead Generation Mistakes That Can Be Avoided
Sadly, sometimes efforts are misplaced, so mistakes are committed. Marketers find lead generation a demanding endeavor. Many of them (61 percent, according to a study) find it as their toughest challenge. As a matter of fact, with such a strenuous task, mistakes are bound to happen:
- Setting unrealistic expectations. What is a good target for generated leads in a week or month? This actually depends on the staffing agency and the metrics they have that align with company goals. But 500 leads in a week may sound like torture to your recruiters.
Make sure that your decided target leads follow the SMART model: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. This particular number of leads may still need to be determined, so have room for adjustment for your targets as you go along the lead generation process.
- Dropping leads. The BPM Forum reported that around 80 percent of leads get dropped, receive no follow-up, or are mishandled. Take note that these leads are probably waiting for a response to their inquiry, and not attending to them means wasting a potential business relationship.
Have a foolproof nurture plan in place. Know who will process these leads, scrutinize their requests, and send them a response message right away. It’s a pity if all efforts to generate leads will only produce dropped ones.
- Generating leads from the wrong audience. Particularly when using social media, you might be creating posts that are not read by the right people, which is the reason why they seem to ignore your call to action. For example, posts targeted at companies are not put on LinkedIn, where managers and other corporate leaders are more active.
Who is your staffing agency’s ideal hire? What kind of companies do you want to attract? After getting answers to questions like these, tailor-fit your online content to the platform and its usual audience. If your staffing agency has content connected with world events or social awareness, Twitter might be the place for your leads. Give time to do some audience targeting, and leads will soon follow.
- Not listening to leads’ pain points. What could turn away a potential client? Not paying attention to what they truly need or their pain points. Many leads indicate in their call-to-action what kind of service they are after. Perhaps a job hunter specifically asked if tech jobs are your agency’s expertise. But you just give a list of your services instead without answering the question.
Take time to understand the lead’s specific requests. Why not give them time to call or chat through direct messages or email? When you have a good grasp of their unique need, that is when you lay down the service you can offer them. With this sincerity, your lead can be part of your clientele.
- Not maximizing your blog and social media functions. Blogs are a fantastic means to show how much of an expert your staffing agency is with relevant topics like human resources and job development. But is that all your blog can do?
Aside from the call to action button, why not invite readers to comment on the topic, and use the comment section to look for leads? Drop a response to their comments, plus a link that leads to a landing page that can allow them to talk about how your agency can help them.
Also, many social media sites nowadays have new functions you can utilize for marketing. LinkedIn and Facebook have a “live” feature that allow viewers to ask questions on the spot. Usually, viewers who stick around these online events have an interest in your staffing agency, so why not hit them up with a link to collect their info right then and there?
ALLIED INSIGHT CAN HELP YOU WITH LEAD GENERATION AND MORE!
There’s more to attracting business opportunities, keeping up with changing corporate initiatives, and executing lead-generation practices. Search engine optimization, web content development, orchestration of competitive advantages: we have an arsenal of services aimed at your staffing agency to achieve brand consistency and cohesion towards your company’s longevity in the industry.
Contact Allied Insight today.
