Six Lessons Learnt at the Recruitment Marketing Congress

We recently joined a panel of industry experts for the Recruitment Marketing Congress 2022. This virtual event aims to help recruitment marketers discover new ways of building strategies and focus their time and energy on activities that deliver results. Our MD, Brian Whigham, along with a variety of recruitment marketing specialists, took part in five fast-paced sessions to give insightful and innovative ideas. Covering everything from social media recruitment marketing to measuring success through digital.  

We thoroughly enjoyed this event and were inspired by various talks and topics. We've written our top 6 takeaways from this year's Congress to give you a snapshot of what was covered.

Rewatch the event here.

1. The role of Dark Social in your social media strategy.

The phrase 'Dark Social' caught our attention during Christina Robinson's (Green Umbrella Marketing) session. For those that don't know, Dark Social refers to the platforms that customers use but we cannot track, for example, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Tracking and measuring results is becoming increasingly complex, with dark social being one channel that marketers can't control and therefore cannot attribute value to. However, this does not mean you should ignore these channels.

The takeaway from this session was all about creating content that can be easily shared across these platforms. Although you can't track these channels, there's no denying their importance for your audience. By creating content that can be shared via these channels, marketers can engage with audiences on every medium. All of this goes toward helping you create a community and bring people together. 

Social media is all about creating interactions with your audience. Now more than ever before, marketers should concentrate on engaging with their customers and worry less about vanity metrics.

2. Should we be changing our approach to measuring marketing?

James and Kat from Think in Circles marketing took a closer look at how recruitment measures marketing success and how to be smarter with data. It's common for people to become obsessed with measuring vanity metrics such as follower count. However,  if they are not the right people, or they are not engaged, then why would it matter?

With so much data available, marketers must avoid getting bogged down by irrelevant metrics. Recruitment marketers are time short, so identifying the metrics that matter to your brand and align with your business objectives will help you make more informed decisions. Ask yourself, what you want to understand about your customer, and what metrics are essential in helping the business achieve its goals?

3. What can recruitment learn from eCommerce?

Led by our MD Brian Whigham, we discussed how recruitment marketing could take elements from eCommerce to enhance the recruitment customer experience.

In eCommerce, it's all about customer experience, engaging with target audiences and remaining top of mind over the lifetime of a customer. eCommerce brands have a deep understanding of who their customers are, and this is vital to helping them achieve aggressive and innovative strategies.

We often hear 'we need more candidates' or 'we need more clients', but what does this mean?

Our session breaks down the importance of understanding your audience and segmenting data the same way eCommerce giants do. Most recruitment brands don't have a deep enough understanding of who their customers are. If your strategy is to be the number one life science recruiter in the UK, what are we doing to dominate that space? Whether through search intent, content, communities or brand advocacy after the hire?

There's a saying in recruitment that if they are already an active candidate, then it's too late. Our invested interest should be with passive candidates, who make up 70% of the workforce.

4. How can you increase marketing activity without overloading yourself or your consultants?

Charlotte from RecWired talks all things marketing automation and what to look for when choosing technology. Content marketing & automation caught our attention as a key topic during this session.

When looking for tools to support content automation, it's essential to understand its role in your strategy. Perhaps you're looking for a tool to assist with content creation or a tool that can help with consistency. For example, Buffer is a great scheduling tool, but if you're looking for a more strategic alternative, Paiger can offer that next level of support.

The main thing you're trying to create with automation tools is consistency. Every brand is trying to create a community, but communities need nurturing to achieve engagement. Automation is great for increasing activity levels, but you also need that personal touch. Whilst automation will never replace recruiters, it is helpful for effective time management, particularly for smaller marketing teams.

5. Empowering consultants to build personal brands.

Having been in recruitment for the last 17 years, best-selling author Steve Guest joined the Congress to share some wisdom from his time in the industry. Steve is known for his books, 'Top Biller' and 'A Personal Brand Story'. But as well as being a writer, Steve runs his own recruitment agency and works as a mentor for those working as recruiters. With all this experience, Steve is well versed in empowering consultants to invest in their own personal brands.

We always bang on about personal brands and are keen to educate the industry on the power recruiters can have within marketing activity. In this session, Steve speaks about the importance of having a mix of personal and corporate branding. If consultants can build their own personal brands and utilise channels such as LinkedIn, brands can harness this as a cost-effective approach to sales and brand awareness.

Creating an engaged network as a brand is challenging. As an individual, however, you are more trusted by your audience. Providing a clear marketing strategy will give your consultants the guidance they need to reach your target market, share trending topics and build relationships online.

This session talks about the importance of educating the industry about the power of personal brands. Recruiters and directors need to understand how to nurture personal brands and change their perspectives on vanity metrics. Think beyond the instant gratification of a post and consider the long-term brand goals.

6. Prioritising tasks as a recruitment marketer.

To finish off the event, we were joined by Glenn Southam from the Lonely Marketers and a panel of recruitment marketers. In this session, we heard from; Sarah Roebuck from Eames Group, Michael Oliver from Client Server and Kim Pasteau from LHI Group.

An all too familiar topic was raised regarding creating a balance between reactive and proactive work. This will look different for every company and will depend on the size of your team, your business objectives and the skill set you have in house. Having a clear understanding of the business's goals will allow you to identify which tasks are the most important. If you know what the company is trying to achieve, you will be more in tune with what is needed to help you get there.

We learnt how marketing leaders deal with these challenges with tips from the panel. From educating your wider team to making sure you clearly understand your business goals. This session helps recruitment marketers manage their time better whilst getting directors and consultants to understand the role of marketing within the business.

The driving theme of this year's Recruitment Marketing Congress was brand awareness as the key to a successful recruitment marketing strategy. Whether you're looking to learn more about social media in recruitment, marketing automation or how to approach a recruitment marketing strategy, this event is a must-see. We are thrilled to have been a part of this year's Recruitment Marketing Congress and thank all the participants for their insightful talks. To learn more about the topics covered in this blog, rewatch the Congress.