As a staffing agency, you’ll need to either fill permanent vacancies or find staff to fill temporary positions. This means finding not only a steady stream of clients to work with but also a constantly evolving list of candidates to fill those positions for your clients. Whatever your business approach is, you’ll need a solid marketing plan to ensure you can achieve both objectives.
But where do you start with something like this? Email marketing? Running a social media campaign? Going to networking events? Your choices are almost limitless.
So in order to make the most use of your limited time and budget, it’s important to develop a staffing agency marketing plan. In this article, we’re going to run through some high level considerations when developing a marketing plan for your agency.
What is a staffing agency marketing plan?
In the context of a staffing agency, a marketing plan is used to attract new candidates, reach potential clients, get your agency noticed, and, more importantly, close deals. When done right, it can provide direction to your business and keep it on track to achieve growth.
But to have any chance of success, your marketing plan must be strategic and consider the unique circumstances of your business. For instance, if you’re a small startup operating in a crowded marketplace, you’re going to have a very hard time competing with the big fish. That is unless you can carve out a niche for yourself, capitalize on some personal contacts, and stick with a growth plan for slowly expanding your clientele, list of services, and revenue. Know what you’re up against and what you have to work with; this is what the best marketing plans seek to accomplish.
How to write a staffing agency marketing plan: a step-by-step guide
1. Identify your target market and USP
You’re not going to try and acquire clients from every business sector out there. Every good staffing agency marketing plan has a firm idea of what their target market is so that they can narrow down their efforts to a few select industries and businesses. Ensuring that it fits your business model will be crucial to finding clients for your recruitment agency, especially if you’re working in a highly competitive sector like healthcare, finance, or IT. Based on the size of your business and the services you can offer, determine your ideal client based on company size, location, industry, and revenue.
You’ll also need to determine what your unique selling point (USP) is? This is what will set you apart from the competition and allow you to carve out a niche for yourself. What can you offer that other staffing agencies in your sector can’t? This could be a competitive price point, extra services, or a high-tech sourcing and placement system that other staffing agencies don’t have. Your USP will play a big part in your marketing efforts so take plenty of time to determine what yours is if it’s not immediately clear.
2. Define your marketing goals
Ancillary to the above will be your marketing goals. What is it that you want to achieve with your marketing? It’s no use writing down a bunch of vague goals (that are more like hopes) which can’t be measured or easily explained to someone other than yourself. They must be clear, specific, and measurable. For instance, having X number of clients by the next quarter, having a revenue of X amount by the end of the calendar year. The purpose of these goals is to give you something to aim for. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t meet them on time. Just set a new timeline and adapt your marketing as needed.
3. Acquire and make use of the right tools
With a firm grasp of your target market, USPs, and marketing goals, you can now begin determining what tools you’ll need to meet those goals. Having the right tech that will allow you to run and market your business effectively will be crucial to your long-term success. Here’s a snapshot of some tools that many businesses rely on today. Remember to choose a provider that matches your own marketing and business goals.
- Email Marketing Automation
Many businesses both large and small make use of email marketing tools to simplify both their business planning and marketing efforts. Some of the best products allow you to create newsletters and opt-in forms, send out targeted emails, and build lists of potential clients.
- Web-Design & Analytics
Your website will play a big part in your marketing. Determine which hosting company you should go with, what website builder tools you’ll need, and how you will measure its performance through analytics.
- Social Media Scheduler
Posting daily on business social media accounts is time consuming and not something many small businesses can juggle. Instead, lots of businesses rely on social media scheduling tools that enable them to program content at the beginning of each month, that will then automatically post throughout the month.
4. Set your budget
Now to the one step that no business can afford to skip, your budget. It’s fine to have big ideas for your marketing plan but they must align with your budget. How much will all this cost? Are there some cost-effective solutions?
How much you can set aside for your marketing will depend on a range of factors such as your agency’s size, your industry, and your other expenses. Once you have a reasonable lump sum to work with you then need to determine how to allocate it. This will allow you to accurately determine your ongoing monthly costs and the occasional one-time expenses you’ll need to make.
5. Measure, adapt and optimize your plan over time
With your marketing plan now organized and set in motion, the next step will be the ongoing process of measuring your progress, adapting to change, and aiming for optimization. No marketing plan is perfect from the get-go. The best ones have a degree of flexibility built into them to allow for changes when needed. Some of your marketing efforts will work, others won’t. That’s why you need a system to measure how well you’re doing and where improvements can be made. Regular reviews of your staffing agency marketing plan should be made at least once every quarter.
Final Thoughts
While it’s a crucial factor in every business, marketing is just one piece of the pie. The best staffing agencies know this and seek to make it work within a cohesive framework for the whole business. Keep in mind also that marketing is a means to an end. Steady growth and increasing revenue are what you’re after, and marketing is how you achieve that.