For today’s article, we will take you through how to grow your agency using online digital inbound strategies while making you the leader in your marketplace.
Andy Bourne was starting a new agency. He was an expectant father and with the start of his new agency, he was looking to have fewer hours but more money. The golden egg that we’re all looking for in recruitment when we start a new agency.
The Problem
He had no pipeline in place. He had a pipeline in place from his previous contacts, but they had no candidates. He had very few candidates—very few highly skilled candidates. He was a one‐man agency and he had a big niche. A big niche that was covered in heavy civil engineering, rails and others to name a few. Now, the key thing is, because he’s a one‐man agency, he didn’t have enough time to go out and source the candidates. He didn’t have enough time to do the old school way of doing things.
When he came to me, he said, “Andy, you know what? Things need to be different this time. I’m going alone. Things need to be different. I know there’s a smarter way to work.” So, since he was an expectant father the way he had been working was, you know, working crazy hours that is has caused stress. It caused overwhelm. And because he was in this big niche, it was difficult for him to be seen as the leader in that marketplace. In terms of the processes used to bring in new candidates to fill in this pipeline, he was not getting high-quality CV’s. He was not getting the numbers at all in terms of CV’s. So, he recognized something needed to change. He recognized that he couldn’t do what he’s been doing for the previous ten years, but he also had this opportunity because he had this pipeline in front of him.
What We Did to Fix it
We looked at the change in his framework, the actual framework of the way he works in his agency—the actual whole way he goes about getting new clients and getting new candidates.
- Move from a mindset of being a generalist.
In his large niche, we actually went to understand, “We want to make you the go-to person. Be the leader in your marketplace.” When those in need think about getting roles, they see you.
- Think about and break down the business in terms of campaigns.
He’s going through all these different strategies to get many roles. He’s picking up the phone, making email blasts, using LinkedIn and other social media. We’ve got a hundred roles to fill so rather than hundred roles we can create a chunk of five to ten groups of roles to create campaigns that bring CV’s in.
- Digitize.
Most recruiters focus on using the telephone as their main tool to convert clients and to convert candidates. We want to take on board the principal route—digital age. We’re in the time of ‘online’.
We’re at the time of this cool tools out there and this is the perfect time where you can really leverage one-to‐many. There are many different conversion tools you can use that can really grow your business. You can speak to hundreds of candidates at a time without actually killing yourself. So, you only speak to those who actually are an A‐player. We are actually going to use the webinar as our conversion tool.
- Understand the principle of one‐to‐many.
His business at the moment is a one‐to‐one business. He speaks to candidates one at a time. He speaks to clients one at a time. He tries and get a referral one at a time. That isn’t a way to be a one‐man business and scale it. That’s a way to get to an early grave. So one‐to‐many, you can be using the webinar. You can be using automated tools. You can be using tools where you can email 500 at a time, tools where you can email 10000 at a time. Tools whereby I can speak to you, like now, thousands at a time. You’re going to say it once, hundreds are going to hear it.
- Focus on one avatar of candidates at a time.
How are you actually getting leads and CV’s in? He was using emails, LinkedIn, the phone, his database, using old contacts, trying to get referrals. We went through a set of steps to really understand, “Who is your candidate?” We went through the Avatar process and identified that most of his actual candidates, the candidates he wanted, were on LinkedIn. The problem was they weren’t responding. Also, he didn’t have a mechanism to bring hundreds to him at a time so rather than focus on five, six, seven, eight different channels, we focus on on one campaign to start with. Rather than speaking to hundreds at a time on phone‐chasing, making all these calls, killing ourselves, we’re going to use one webinar as our conversion tool. Rather than going out to hit five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten different channels at a time, we’re going to use just one. Remove the “overwhelm”. Get traction, get CV’s, and get paid.
The Initial Campaign
HS2 is a large project in the UK, a government‐funded project for part of the rail infrastructure. They had a pipeline there and what you’re going to do is create a system around this, a simple system three-step system that will be discussed further on the next part.
The first campaign we created was the ‘HS2 Freelancers’ in the London area. We want to get CV’s from the engineering of some sort, project managers and so forth and we use the webinar. We create the webinar and the landing page where we always aim to get a forty percent conversion rate as a minimum. The forty from every hundred people that come to your page actually become leads and will give you their details.
We want a forty percent conversion rate and use free traffic as much as possible and we focus on one‐to‐many. We’re going to create one message, one promotional message that’s going to bring them to you. We’re going to create one landing page and create one webinar. We’re going to get all the candidates we want onto that webinar, convert them and get the CV’s.
The Outcomes
In the first two weeks working together, we worked on creating a website, getting his LinkedIn position up and running, his digital footprints. Basically, a brand‐new agency from zero-start. Two weeks, up online, looking the part. Now, when we actually start this campaign, in four days, and this comes down to Andy being an awesome, awesome man, love his attitude, so much energy, an absolute joy to work with, he got 85 CV’s. 57 were of a quality to be sent to the client.
Since then, the clients have now been going through interviews. So far, they’ve all gone through to an interview. They’ve gone through an interview process and these are high-quality candidates.
In the next 8 weeks, he repeated this process for each of the other campaigns, over and over again. He simply copied the process we set in place. The process is on traffic and LinkedIn conversion with the landing page or a conversion tool—stroke webinar. And then, he get the CVs.
He repeated the process for 17 times in each of the campaigns. Andy realized that it would have taken him six to ten times longer to get CV’s using the ways that every other recruiter does.
It’s six to ten times faster with much higher quality. Can you see how quickly his business is going to scale?
Lessons Learned
He’s on board now with the digital age. In a webinar, we can talk to hundreds of candidates at a time. We only look at the CV’s who are A‐players. Those who are not good‐enough quality, they go into an automated system and get responses from us where we give them good value. We still give them love, we still take care of them.
What he’d been doing and what he’d been taught in the past is no longer applicable. One‐to‐one, picking up the phone, broadcasting emails do nothing apart from repel your clients and your candidates. They don’t really work any longer. So, we focus on one‐to‐many. If you’re going to say it, say it so hundreds will hear it at a time, thousands hear it at a time.
Let tools do the heavy lifting. Why should you be spending 12 to 18 eighteen hours a day working when you’ve got tools who can do it for you? Why do this when someone else can automate your business?
What You Can Do in YOUR Recruitment / Search Business
Let’s get back to our framework. You want to move from being a generalist into the go‐to person and leader in your niche. You move from a scattergun approach to focusing on, if you need candidates, focusing on treating your roles as campaigns. Then, we say, “Right, these next two weeks, we’re going to focus on these campaigns.” It could be next week, or it could be the next month. You could be needing the same roles over and over again, in which case, then you can be leveraging very, very quickly. Most recruiters though, they want to change the campaigns every week, or as Andy did, have multiple campaigns running at the same time.
The next thing you want to do is move away from using the phone as your key conversion tool. That takes up your time, takes up your energy. You want to move where you can actually communicate with hundreds at a time. Your conversion could be the same with Andy—a webinar. There are eight different models that we apply. But in terms of the actual implementation, move away from one‐to‐one and move into the one‐to‐many.
Next, you want to set up a system. Set up a system whereby you get a forty percent conversion. Now, I don’t know what your conversion rate is on the telephone. But, I know that every time I run a webinar or every time one of my clients run a conversion tool, I’m wanting to get a forty percent conversion rate the first time they run it. The highest we’ve actually got in our group is 72 percent. Those are the sort of figures we want to be working with. Once you’ve got this in place, rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. That’s how your business can scale extremely quickly.
How to Start Implementing
The problem we’ve got in recruitment is that we’ve not been educated these things. So, you might be sitting down listening, “Wow, that sounds incredible, but I don’t know how to actually implement it. I know what a webinar is, but I don’t actually know how to do it. I know there are ways you can speak to hundred at a time, but I’m not sure how to set up or what to say.” In fact, the tools now exist.
In terms of your prescription steps and resources, that’s the approach to be taking.
Remember
We’re now in the digital age. We’re now moving from one‐to‐one into one‐to‐many. There are tools that can let the heavy lifting and do the heavy lifting for you and that’s what we want to focus on.
At Recruitment Marketing International, let’s see what prescriptions we could take with your business.
‘Knowledge is power’ is garbage. Nowadays, taking action is power.
Remember to take action.
