Recruitment Reinvented: Recruitment Marketing Strategy Guide

Navigating new technologies, drowning in information, and lacking clear data points can overwhelm HR and talent professionals. But you’re not alone. With the recruitment and marketing world changing rapidly, staying proactive seems nearly impossible.

That’s why we’ve created the Recruitment Reinvented: Recruitment Marketing Guide.

This is your guide to maintaining order, crafting strategies, executing recruitment marketing plans, and staying ahead of the game. This guide is tailored for in-house recruitment marketers and those invested in employer branding and talent attraction. We’ll cover:

• Setting objectives and measuring success
• Building a strong foundation
• Crafting your marketing strategy
• Activating your brand and entering the market
• Analysing results, reporting progress, and maintaining momentum

While we’ve accumulated valuable experience, we don’t claim to know it all. Share your insights, failures, and successes, and together, we’ll ensure that talent acquisition and recruitment marketing thrive!

Table of contents:

1. Defining business and marketing objectives and measuring success
2. Building a solid foundation
   a. Brand (Commercial value proposition)
   b. Employer brand
   c. Recruitment technology
   d. Marketing team
   e. Marketing budget
   f. Stakeholder management
   g. Partnerships
3. Develop your recruitment marketing strategy
4. Activation and go-to-market
5. Results, analysis and reporting your momentum
6. Conclusion

Defining business and marketing objectives and measuring success

Recruitment marketers often track metrics that don’t align with their company’s talent acquisition and employer branding objectives. To create an effective recruitment marketing plan, start by setting clear, measurable goals that support these objectives. Ensure your recruitment marketing efforts are in sync with broader business goals to avoid veering off course.

Similar to commercial or product marketers, recruitment professionals must understand their company’s talent acquisition and employer branding goals before crafting marketing strategies. Once you grasp the business objectives, create focused recruitment marketing goals that align with the larger mission.

Here’s a concise breakdown to create an effective recruitment marketing plan:

• Business Objective: Define the company’s aims.
• Recruitment Marketing Objective: Specify what you want to achieve through recruitment marketing.
• Marketing Strategy: Develop an overarching plan for reaching your recruitment marketing goals.
• Marketing Tactics: Outline the specific methods and channels to implement your strategy effectively. For instance, if you’re a recruitment marketing lead at a growing tech company with a goal to fill 50 new positions in the next quarter.
• Recruitment Marketing Objective: Increase qualified candidates in your talent pool by 50%.
• Marketing Strategy: Focus on boosting the employer brand through content and social media.
• Marketing Tactics: Execute your strategy by creating engaging content, leveraging social media, and launching an employee engagement and referral program. Monitor metrics such as website traffic, social media engagement, and candidate applications to gauge success.

From a high-level perspective:

• Business Objective: Achieve a 25% revenue increase in the next quarter.
• Recruitment Marketing Objective: Expand the talent pool by 50%.
• Marketing Strategy: Activate the employer brand through content and social media.
• Marketing Tactics: Execute through content creation, social media engagement, and launching an employee referral program.

Building a solid foundation

Brand (Commercial value proposition)

Your brand is every interaction someone has with your business. It should set you apart from your competitors and effectively communicate messages that connect with your audience. A successful brand aligns outgoing communications with the wants and needs of your audience.

How can you solve their problems? How can you enrich their lives? What makes you different from Brand X? The most admired brands in the world make compelling arguments for their products while also signifying the deeper reasons they’re in business in the first place.

On top of all this, your brand is the most valuable currency you have to spend, the one constant in a world of disorder. When positioned effectively, it’s more resistant to change than any other aspect of your marketing foundation.

One of the most important outlets of your brand is your website. It’s your business shopfront, its most visible home. It needs to positively reflect and display your brand in every way – tone, look, message and identity.

Employer brand

Similar to your commercial brand, your employer brand is essential to attracting and retaining top talent. Your employer brand is the essence of who you are as an employer and what you stand for, and it should effectively communicate why someone should want to work for your organisation.

To create a successful employer brand, it’s important to first develop an Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Your EVP is the unique set of benefits and rewards that employees receive in exchange for their skills, experience, and performance. It’s important to align your EVP with your commercial brand, as the two are intricately linked.

By aligning your core employer brand messages with your commercial brand, you can create a cohesive message that resonates with both potential customers and candidates. Your employer brand should communicate your organisation’s culture, values, and vision, while also highlighting the unique benefits and rewards that employees receive.

As with your commercial brand, your employer brand should also be reflected in your website, social media channels, and other marketing materials. Your website is the most visible home of your employer brand, and it should positively reflect and display your brand in every way – tone, look, message, and identity. A strong and cohesive employer brand can help you attract top talent and build a positive reputation as an employer of choice in your industry.

Recruitment technology

You can’t move for the tech talk in recruitment, and that amplifies 10x when we consider martech (marketing technology). But for recruitment marketing, as a new niche for vendors, there is no one-solution for all right now. Which means that not only is it difficult to know where to start, it’s also complicated as you need to think of how the tech talks to each other.

Let’s start with purpose. When considering tech you will always need to create a business case, and within that you will need to address how the solution aligns with the wider business and marketing objectives. Will this new shiny tech solution help you achieve your marketing goals?

That said, we recommend four main RecTec products you won’t be able to work effectively without:

• A content management system (CMS), which is the platform for you to edit and maintain your website content.
• An Applicant Tracking System (ATS), which will enable you to segment and communicate with talent across their candidate journey. For recruitment agencies, this may be a customer or client relationship management platform (CRM) to manage both candidate and client tracking.
• Marketing automation for email, social media posting, advertising retargeting and managing online forms (data capture etc).
• Analytics tools to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

Team

Growing your team is essential for business success and your career as a recruitment marketer. Whether you’re new to managing marketing or expanding your team, consider these factors:

• Marketing Strategy: Review your strategy and core objectives. Do you have the resources and skills needed for success? For example, if you want to boost site visitors, you’ll need web marketing expertise.
• Resource Type: You don’t always need a full-time hire. Consider freelancers for short-term projects or partner with marketing agencies (hint: we can help at Thrive!) for flexible support.
• Budget: Determine your budget and its impact on business. Secure a committed budget to prioritise high-return initiatives.
• Expertise Level: Match expertise with your needs, whether it’s an intern for daily tasks or a specialist with relevant experience.
• Career Impact: Expanding your team means adjusting to management and leadership roles. Prepare for sharing, delegating, teaching, mentoring, and managing your team and interfacing with senior leadership.

Marketing budget

Budgeting in recruitment marketing is a collaborative effort involving finance, talent acquisition, HR, and marketing leadership. Start by understanding past spending and comparing it to the budget, identifying successes and areas for improvement. Define next year’s objectives to determine budget size and allocation. Ensure alignment with business goals.

Here’s a Budget Blueprint to guide your recruitment marketing budget:

1. Introduction:
   — Define budgeting goals.
2. Assessing your needs:
   — Specify recruitment marketing objectives.
   — Analyse your target audience and their preferences.
   — Determine necessary channels and resources.
   — Set campaign timelines.
3. Developing your budget:
   — Calculate the total available budget.
   — Allocate funds to campaigns based on priority and ROI potential.
   — Account for channel costs like advertising fees or agency expenses.
   — Include a contingency budget for unexpected costs.
4. Tracking and measuring results:
   — Establish a tracking system for campaign effectiveness.
   — Evaluate success with metrics like conversion rates and ROI.
   — Continuously adjust the budget and campaigns based on performance.
5. Conclusion:
   — Emphasise ongoing budgeting and tracking.
   — Encourage adaptation to changing market conditions and business needs.

Remember, effective marketing budgeting is an evolving process. These steps lay a solid foundation for recruitment marketing success.

Average Recruitment Marketing budget, based on company size:

1-500 employees = £50,892

501-2,500 employees = £279,804

2,500-10,000 employees = £588,269

10,001-50,000 employees = £1,008,507

50,001+ employees = £2,681,438

Source: Rally

Stakeholder management

As a recruitment marketer, fostering robust relationships with both internal and external stakeholders is pivotal to your success. To cultivate strong ties with internal stakeholders, establish regular communication and collaboration with departments like HR, marketing, communications, and hiring managers. Attend routine meetings to discuss recruitment needs and provide updates on marketing efforts. Be receptive to feedback, actively seeking ways to enhance the candidate experience and streamline recruitment processes.

Equally important are your external relationships with candidates, customers, and industry partners. These connections are the secret ingredient that elevates your recruitment marketing to a Michelin Star standard. Tailor messaging and communication channels to align with the target audience’s needs and preferences.

Navigating the intricacies of stakeholder relationships can be challenging, but several strategies ensure success:

• Building Trust: Transparency, openness, and honesty in communication, along with delivering on commitments, establish trust with stakeholders.
• Active Listening: Actively listening to stakeholders’ needs and concerns fosters understanding, trust, and informs effective marketing strategies.
• Collaboration: Collaborating with key stakeholders aligns recruitment marketing with business priorities, leading to more effective outcomes.
• Flexibility: Adapt to changing stakeholder needs and preferences to maintain strong relationships and achieve recruitment marketing success.

In summary, strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders are paramount for recruitment marketers. By prioritising trust, active listening, collaboration, and flexibility, you can navigate stakeholder relationships and attain your recruitment goals.

Partnerships

A strategic move for recruitment marketers seeking to expand reach, enhance candidate experience, and improve outcomes. Partnering with other organisations allows you to tap into their expertise, resources, and networks for mutual benefit.

When selecting partners, look for those offering complimentary services, expertise, or technology to enhance the recruitment process. Consider building alliances with:

• Job boards: Gain access to a vast pool of job seekers, increasing visibility and reach. Job boards also provide insights into job seeker behaviour to refine marketing strategies.
• Marketing and brand agencies: Collaborate with creative agencies to strengthen your employer brand and reputation, attracting and retaining candidates. They offer expertise in brand strategy, content creation, and social media marketing.
• Talent assessment providers: Improve hire quality and reduce time-to-hire with data-driven insights into candidate skills and potential. Identify high- potential candidates and receive guidance on development and training.

Partnerships with key vendors empower recruitment marketers to achieve their goals. Prioritise vendors offering complimentary services, expertise, or technology to enhance the recruitment process, elevate candidate experience, and attain better outcomes.

Develop your recruitment marketing strategy

Aligning recruitment and business goals is crucial to the success of any organisation, and recruitment marketing is no exception. Too often, recruitment marketing efforts are misaligned with the overall goals and objectives of the business, leading to wasted resources, missed opportunities, and ineffective recruitment outcomes.

The first step in creating an effective recruitment marketing strategy is to set clear objectives that are aligned with the broader goals of the organisation. By doing so, recruitment marketers can ensure that their efforts are focused on the right priorities and are more likely to achieve the desired outcomes.

Before you get started on strategy design, we’re sharing some tactics to consider. And at the end of this chapter, take the quiz to figure out which strategies need to be in the mix for your business.

Marketers with a documented strategy are 313% more likely to report success.

Source: Coschedule

Creating your omni-channel marketing strategy

Successful recruitment marketing demands a multi-channel approach, including hidden gems like employee referrals, events, and niche job boards. An omni-channel strategy ensures a unified message, while understanding candidate behaviour tailors campaigns to channels and audiences. Ongoing monitoring and data-driven adjustments optimise recruitment goals. Attracting top talent means weaving channels for a seamless, personalised candidate experience.

Content Marketing Blog posts Whitepapers / reports Ebooks Infographics Videos Webinars / podcasts Employee stories / testimonials	Social Media Strategy Employee & company accounts Engaging content on relevant social platforms Paid social advertising Social media engagement Viral marketing Contests and challenges
Marketing Automation Triggered email campaigns Newsletters Targeted email outreach Personalised email content Chatbots / Live chat ATS reactivation programs	Career Site Optimisation Search engine optimisation (SEO) Job posting optimisation Google for Jobs Conversion / candidate application optimisation Landing pages / microsites
Paid Advertising Google Ads (Pay Per Click) Display advertising Social media advertising Retargeting / remarketing Programmatic job advertising Job boards	Other Employer brand & EVP development Career fairs Webinars & virtual events Targeted PR & Media Coverage Referral Programs Partnerships

Website Strategy

Your website and career site play a pivotal role in your marketing strategy. Optimising them for both inbound and outbound recruitment marketing is vital for attracting top talent. Here’s a concise plan:

• Valuable Content: Craft engaging, informative content tailored to potential talent. Showcase your culture, values, and address candidate needs.
• User-Friendly Design: Ensure a responsive, easy-to-navigate design across all devices. Simplify the candidate’s journey to boost engagement and conversions.
• SEO: Optimise your website, career site, and job postings for relevant keywords. Improve search engine rankings and attract organic traffic through content, meta descriptions, tags, and backlinks.
• Compelling CTAs: Include clear, persuasive calls-to-action on every page. Encourage actions like job applications, signing up for job alerts, or social media engagement to boost conversions.
• Ongoing Optimisation: Continuously monitor and optimise your strategy based on data and performance metrics. Track engagement rates, conversion rates, and ROI to stay competitive and attract top talent.

By focusing on valuable content, user-friendly design, SEO, compelling CTAs, and ongoing optimisation, you can create a website marketing strategy that sets your organisation apart and attracts top talent.

Strategy Design

To create the best recruitment marketing strategy, there are a number of questions you need to answer. Work your way through the questions below and take a look at the example strategy below.

1. What are your recruitment goals for the next 6-12 months?
   — Are you focused on filling a specific set of roles or building a pipeline of talent for future needs?
   — Are you looking to increase the number of job applications or improve the quality of your candidate pool?
2. Who is your target candidate audience?
   — What are the key skills, experience, and qualifications that you’re looking for in talent?
   — What channels are your target candidates most likely to use to search for job opportunities?
3. What is your budget for recruitment marketing?
   — How much are you willing to invest in marketing and advertising to attract top talent?
   — Are there any specific channels or strategies that you’re willing to invest more in?
4. What channels and strategies have you used in the past?
   — Which channels and strategies have been most effective for you in the past?
   — Are there any channels or strategies that have not worked well for you in the past?
5. What resources do you have available?
   — How much time and staff do you have available to dedicate to recruitment marketing?
   — Do you have in-house expertise in areas like content creation, social media management, or search engine optimisation?

Activation and go-to-market

Ready to roll? Time to go-to-market. This chapter outlines the steps to engage your target audience. Here are the key considerations:

• Planning and Execution: Create a detailed plan for executing outlined strategies, including content calendars, targeted ad campaigns, and performance metrics.
• Team Alignment: Ensure all stakeholders are on board with the recruitment marketing strategy. Collaborate with hiring managers to identify role requirements and HR for a smooth hiring process.
• Technology Implementation: Set up necessary technology for strategy execution, covering social media management, email marketing, and website analytics.
• Testing and Optimisation: Continuously test and optimise each component for maximum effectiveness. Analyse metrics, adjust ad campaigns, and refine content based on feedback.
• Reporting and Analysis: Regularly report on strategy success and use data analysis to identify areas for improvement. Monitor metrics like cost per hire, time to fill, and applicant-to-hire conversion rates.

Ready, set, go! Get out there and engage your target market effectively.

Pay attention to the details

As your strategy goes live, remember these key elements:

• Brand Consistency: Keep all recruitment efforts aligned with the organisation’s brand, maintaining a consistent tone, visuals, and messaging across all channels.
• Candidate Experience: Ensure a user-friendly, transparent, and respectful hiring process to enhance the candidate experience.
• Compliance: Stay informed about relevant recruitment laws and regulations, including equal opportunity employment and data privacy.
• Collaboration: Collaborate effectively across departments and stakeholders, fostering clear communication and alignment on the strategy.
• Adaptability: Stay flexible and responsive to industry changes, new technologies, and trends. Continuously refine your strategy based on performance metrics and feedback.

With these considerations, you can activate your strategy successfully, achieving your goals while upholding your brand reputation and providing a positive candidate experience.

Results, analysis and reporting momentum

In this final part, we dive into data analysis to enhance your strategies and yield better results. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Performance Metrics: Identify and track key metrics like cost per hire, time to fill, and applicant-to-hire conversion rates for each strategy component. Evaluate success and adapt the plan as necessary.
• Data Analysis: Utilise data analysis tools to glean insights into candidate behaviour and preferences, pinpoint areas for optimization, and improve the strategy. Analyse website data, social media engagement, and candidate survey feedback.
• Reporting: Regularly report on strategy success to key stakeholders, including hiring managers, HR, and senior leadership. Share performance updates, highlight successful campaigns, and note areas for improvement.
• Optimisation: Continuously refine the strategy based on data and feedback. Fine-tune ad campaigns, adjust content and messaging, and enhance the candidate experience.
• ROI Analysis: Evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the strategy with a return on investment (ROI) analysis. Compare the strategy’s cost to the value of hires made through it.
• Continuous Improvement: Foster a culture of continuous improvement within the recruitment marketing team. Always seek ways to refine and enhance the strategy based on data and feedback.

Metrics to measure

Measure the metrics that truly matter for your business and recruitment strategy:

• Cost per Hire: Total recruitment marketing costs divided by total hires. Gauge the strategy’s cost-effectiveness and find optimization areas.
• Time to Fill: Measure the duration from posting positions to hiring candidates. Identify process streamlining opportunities.
• Applicant to Hire Conversion Rate: Evaluate the percentage of applicants hired. Improve screening and interviewing processes.
• Candidate Quality: Assess candidate qualifications, skills, and experience. Ensure high-quality hires.
• Source of Hire: Track successful hires’ origins, like job boards or referrals. Optimise recruitment channels.

By analysing these metrics, you’ll make data-driven decisions to enhance your recruitment marketing strategy. Lower costs by streamlining processes, optimising candidate quality, and improving your overall ROI.

Reporting up your results

Ensure stakeholder alignment and secure resources by providing a comprehensive monthly report to your C-Suite. Transparency and visibility pave the way for smoother budget discussions and more strategic flexibility. Include the following in your Monthly Recruitment Marketing Report:

• Executive Summary: Briefly outline key highlights of the month, such as the number of hires, cost per hire, and time to fill.
• Performance Metrics: Share crucial metrics like cost per hire, time to fill, and applicant to hire conversion rates to evaluate strategy success and optimization opportunities.
• Recruitment Marketing Activities: Summarise the month’s recruitment marketing efforts, including notable campaigns, website updates, and strategy changes.
• Candidate Experience: Update on candidate feedback and process improvements.
• Employer Branding: Report on employer branding activities, like new content, testimonials, influencer relationships, or other initiatives.
• ROI Analysis: Provide a concise ROI analysis to assess the month’s cost-effectiveness and identify effective channels and campaigns for strategy optimisation.

This concise report empowers the C-Suite with insights into the strategy’s effectiveness and progress toward recruitment goals.

Conclusion

We know that navigating the rapidly changing marketing and recruitment landscape can be overwhelming. New technologies, a surplus of information, and a lack of structure can make it challenging to stay on track and achieve success. That’s why we’ve created this playbook, to help you stay on top of your game and develop effective strategies and campaigns that drive results.

Remember we don’t know what we don’t know.

Hopefully you now have a comprehensive roadmap to help you navigate through recruitment marketing strategy. But, we know our knowledge is not exhaustive and we really want to hear from you. Share your findings, failures, and successes with us so that we can continue to improve and grow together.

We’re committed to helping you Thrive! In your recruitment marketing and talent acquisition career. We hope that this playbook has provided you with the tools and insights you need to succeed in recruitment marketing. Keep pushing forward, stay proactive, and never stop learning!

Download the full Recruitment Marketing Guide and receive these bonus resources:

• A recruitment marketing strategy design template
• A comprehensive brand checklist
• A recruitment technology Q&A