by Mandy Wittschen, Haley Marketing

Marketing has evolved from "nice to have" to "business essential."

Over the past several years, marketing in the staffing industry has progressed from a cost-center supporting sales and recruiting (think: pretty websites and collateral) to an indispensable demand-gen function that:

• drives orders
• generates qualified applications
• builds your brand and visibility
• enhances the candidate and client experience through content and automation

Stated simply? Marketing is now a critical function for your staffing business.

Digital marketing is at the forefront of this evolution, and digital tools and strategies have become every bit as essential to your success as sales and recruiting. So…
What should your staffing firm be doing with digital marketing this year?
What are the biggest trends and challenges impacting staffing sales and recruiting?
Where should you focus your resources in 2022 to maximize your marketing ROI?

We tackled these issues and more in an earlier Lunch with Haley webinar. For detailed insights and solutions, watch the full webinar on demand here: Top Trends in Digital Marketing for 2022.

Biggest digital marketing challenges facing your firm this year:

Attention/Visibility

• More competitive noise. Blogs, ads, webinars, emails, social posts. Each year, more and more firms compete for employers' and job seekers' attention – and search engine rankings. Your challenge? Using the right tools to stand out – and ensure your message is received.
• Loss of Facebook jobs. Jobs on Facebook (as we know it) no longer exists. This change is likely having a dramatic impact on the visibility of your job postings.
• Loss of Google 3rd party cookies. While Google is planning to phase out cookies in 2023, this will impact paid advertising, and you’ll want to start working on strategies to build first-party data in 2022.

Cost/ROI

• Increasing costs of paid advertising. Both PPC advertising and sponsoring/promoting jobs are becoming more expensive. How will your firm ensure you're getting the highest ROI?
• Measuring success. "Doing" digital marketing is one thing, but how do you know if it's working? Smart staffing firms close the loop and measure results.
• Measuring the value of your marketing tech stack. There are a lot of marketing tech tools available to the staffing industry today. How do you know you are using the right ones? Are you improving your candidates' and clients' experiences? Are you increasing revenue through their adoption, and is it resulting in true ROI?

Strategy/Execution

• Making the best choices for your business. There is a LOT you can do in digital, but there is no "silver bullet." The challenge is choosing the right strategies and tools for your firm. Start by asking:
  • What are your goals?
  • Who is your target audience?
  • What's working well in terms of messaging, reach, engagement, ease of conversion?
  • What's only producing marginal results – and what might work better in 2022?
• Bandwidth. Planning and executing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy takes considerable expertise and resources. Many firms face the challenge of trying to get everything done internally and access the specialized expertise required for different areas of digital marketing such as SEO, PPC, analytics, etc.
• Implementing technology in the correct way. For digital marketing to enhance – and not impede – your business, you need the right tool for the job, and it must be used correctly. Organizational leaders should be involved in the decision-making process to ensure the technology makes day-to-day functions more efficient and provides results.

Need help tackling these challenges?

The full article on digital marketing trends shares proven strategies for seizing new opportunities to drive orders and applications – or just get in touch to start a conversation.