Branding – it’s largely about staying top-of-mind with your audience. Even though hiring has been roaring back from COVID shutdown levels, we’ll soon be heading into summer: the season most staffing and recruiting agencies back off their advertising campaigns.
But keeping your brand top-of-mind means staying current with broadcasting your brand consistently, even during the downtime – especially during the downtime.
Part 3 of our 6-part series on branding is all about staying top-of-mind. Since summer is nearly upon us, and many of your competitors are checking out for the next 2-3 months as the staffing and recruiting industry typically sees a downtick in activity, this could be your chance to make an essential investment in your brand that will pay off throughout the rest of the year.
Should Staffing and Recruiting Firms Double Down on Branding During the “Off-Season”?
There are many reasons to keep up with your company messaging through the summer. However, two reasons stand above the rest:
- Think of staffing and recruiting agencies like track and field athletes. Long-distance runners are made during the off-season. They’re not training for the marathon on the day of the marathon. For this same reason, many companies who spend the off-season laying the groundwork for their brand, and investing in its message, won’t have to spend the rest of the year building the brand. If you invested in your brand during the summer, you could spend the rest of the year running great campaigns that support your brand strategy.
- Summer is the season that everyone, especially your competitors, is most likely to take a break. The traffic for messaging, especially for staffing and recruiting agencies, gets quieter. Taking advantage of this downtime could be a critical step in coming out ahead of the game. Those businesses and job seekers who’ve become more familiar with your brand and its message are more likely to partner with your recruiting firm later.
This can be especially advantageous for Q3 when many businesses begin to “panic hire” in preparation for the holiday rush of Q4. When they need to hire talent, they’ll know your name.
Choosing the Correct Brand Strategy for Your Staffing or Recruiting Firm
How much is enough? Should your firm ramp up your content cadence? Or should you maintain your current pace?
Every staffing and recruiting firm is different and has different goals as a result. Many are trying to focus on keeping current with a very specific target market, while other firms want to broadcast their message to a much larger audience.
A good rule of thumb is: the more you invest in your brand now, the more strength it will have later. And this is especially true if that investment is made when there’s less competition.
When considering your marketing budget for Q2/Q3, keep in mind the potential for increased market access. Even a campaign that reaches two or three extra businesses could be just the push a business needs to tip them into establishing a long-term, mutually beneficial employment partnership.
Building Trust: Projecting Reliability When Nobody Else Is
The very best staffing and recruiting firms know how they are not in the business of just filling jobs. They’re in the business of building relationships.
Businesses who take the summer off may not be saying anything explicitly wrong, but their message is clear: “We’re only here for you when it’s convenient for us.” In the world of staffing and recruiting, this can be especially harmful to a brand.
Recruiting firms work so hard to convey reliability and trust, and rightly so. Above all, they want to assure their clients, candidates and stakeholders they can be depended on to solve complex staffing problems and provide custom solutions at a moment’s notice. It’d be a shame to undo all that hard work with a message that is at odds with successful and dependable recruitment.
The Actual Cost of Building a Strong Brand?
We get it. Many staffing and recruiting firms believe building a brand can be expensive. They’re hesitant to spend the extra budget to increase their summertime advertising spend. But this rarely holds water when compared to several much more common business decisions that aren’t guaranteed to pay off.
For example, why do businesses advertise on billboards? It might seem like an odd question. Billboards are so ubiquitous many businesses don’t actually stop to think about their usefulness.
Why then would recruiting firms not allocate a similar budget on increasing their online presence? Especially when there are so many ways to measure the ROI of your digital spend.
Still, many firms may believe they don’t have the budget to increase spending during the summer months. However, at the very least, staffing and recruiting firms should be working hard to maintain their current digital spending to support their values of dependability and reliability.
Brand Your Way Out of the Summer Slowdown
For more information on branding, check out our eBook on Brand strategy, and stay tuned to the next installments in our six-part series on branding.
You can find the first two installments in brand strategy for staffing and recruiting firms here:
- Part 1: Brand Messaging for Staffing and Recruiting Firms
- Part 2: Supporting Your Brand by Living Into Your Company Values
We can help! We believe in lifting up businesses by their brand. If you could use creative solutions to help you brand your way through the summer slowdown, contact Parqa today. We look forward to hearing from you.
Your Brand Values: Authenticity
Nobody has all the answers. In fact, any company who says they’ve got it all figured out is, by their nature, suspect. So it’s not only okay to be open with your struggles; it’s beneficial. Being open about the obstacles your staffing agency faces is just one of the many ways to model the authenticity of your brand.
Of course, it’s not all struggle that other businesses can identify with. Sharing company milestones, reflecting on interesting articles and industry news – there are so many ways to be genuine and offer a breath of fresh air in the highly commercialized marketplace of staffing and recruiting.
