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Brand Credibility

Let Your Expertise Shine - Parqa Marketing

Brand Credibility Part 6 of 6: Show or Tell – Let Your Expertise Shine!

One thing staffing and recruiting agencies know better than anybody is the difference between simply working and actually getting the job done.

When it comes to your brand, you could be working hard and doing everything right by:

  • Starting from the ground up, creating a brand guide complete with all the elements of a cohesive brand that defines your agency
  • Taking the time to define what you do and who you serve
  • Log hours creating and broadcasting consistent messaging that resonates with your audience
  • Build credibility by living into your company values every day

So how could it be, after all this time and hard work, this strategy still might not move the needle? 

We’re wrapping up our 6-part series on brand credibility with one of the most crucial elements to building credibility: demonstrating your expertise.

Read on to learn about how demonstrating your expertise could be the most important ingredient to your brand strategy, the final step in building credibility and creating a winning and successful brand.

Expertise Puts the “-ability” in “Brand Credibility”

Can your staffing and recruiting agency solve persistent and complex employment problems for your partners? Of course you can! But how?

Simply telling your audience that you can create employment solutions and help their businesses grow is a good start. But stopping there accomplishes very little. It might be good news that you can create employment solutions, but unfortunately, your audience is less likely to choose your agency simply because you say you’re up to the challenge.

Your audience is looking for more than lip service. They’re looking for themselves in your content. Ideally, they’re looking for a story or a challenge similar to their own, like finding and hiring job seekers in a candidate-driven market. They’re looking for the solution you (and only you) can provide and how it not only solved the problem but was the beginning of a years-long, mutually beneficial partnership

When you demonstrate your agency’s expertise, you demonstrate a clear ability to get the job done. Only those agencies who can clearly demonstrate proven results will attract the most clients and job seekers. 

Why Demonstrating Expertise Can Be a Tricky Business

Expertise is like salt. Too little or too much can spoil a recipe.

In the same way, demonstrating your expertise can be a tricky business. Modesty in marketing is always good. On the other hand, leaning too heavily into your expertise, and you risk blurring the line between genuine enthusiasm for your work, and bragging.

The balance in developing and delivering just the right mix of expertise often comes down to subjective unknowables, like:

  • Intuition to know what content works the best
  • An ability to read an audience
  • Tactfulness in how or where you tell those stories
  • A moral compass to guide how much or how little to highlight your successes

Once you can create the right strategy, showing your work – from your process, successes, and even your mistakes – can build a potent back catalogue of expertise that is supported by the emotional weight of genuine storytelling.

Broadcasting Expertise With Your Digital Marketing Strategy

At Parqa, helping staffing and recruiting agencies demonstrate their industry experience is one of our favorite things to do. Nothing moves the needle like telling your story through authentic, relevant stories on platforms like your website, social media, email campaigns, and many more. 

When it comes to your online marketing goals, we believe there’s an opportunity to leverage every digital platform available to broadcast your industry expertise. Here are some of the key  tools and strategies we use to highlight your industry expertise in your marketing mix: 

1. SEO

Primarily a tool to increase your agency’s brand awareness and direct more traffic to your site – a key SEO strategy can make your agency rank higher in search results. The search engines which deem those higher-ranking sites to be the most authoritative sources in their industry or subject matter will make them more visible to consumers who will then associate your company with industry expertise.

2. Social Media

Not just for pictures of the office dogs. Using your social media platforms to create engaging and useful content, interact with your target audience and answer their questions is a great way to promote your staffing and recruiting agency and a powerful tool in demonstrating your expertise.

3. Blogging and Guest Blogging

What better way to demonstrate your staffing and recruiting know-how than to share or interpret industry information, trends, and interesting articles? Actively blogging and contributing blogs to other sites not only keeps visitors coming back to your site, but is also a great way to position yourself as a modern and savvy staffing and recruiting business.

4. Reviews and Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials are the physical evidence of your industry expertise. Publishing your feedback from clients and employees to your website is a key strategy to adding their powerful endorsement directly to your site. But you shouldn’t stop there. Responding to positive and even negative reviews on Google or Glass Door is not only mature and thoughtful but demonstrates your commitment to following through on your commitment to excellence. 

5. Customer Service

Providing excellent customer service is often not the foremost strategy in promoting industry expertise. But nowhere is word-of-mouth and strong relationships more powerful than in staffing and recruiting. When you go above and beyond to create a customer experience that is second to none, you’re laying the groundwork for associating your strong brand with positive, uplifting experiences.

6. Case Studies

What better way to demonstrate your expertise than by telling a true story about a real client, with a real challenge, and a real strategy that accomplished real results? These should be editorially written with plenty of data to support the outcome. It’s even better when you can get an authentic testimonial from your client at that specific organization to speak sincerely about the great experience they had with your firm. 

It’s okay if creating a digital marketing plan that leverages all of these powerful tools sounds like a tall order. That’s where a digital marketing agency can help.

Entrusting your content strategy to a marketing agency – especially one that specializes in serving staffing agencies and recruiting firms – might be the best business goal you can set.

Everything Your Staffing/Recruiting Agency Needs to Know About Brand Credibility

Branding, maintaining your brand credibility, and demonstrating your industry expertise is an ongoing process. It’s one that takes attention to detail, savvy and consistent commitment.

For everything you need to know about brand credibility and the importance of your agency’s most powerful tool, check out our previous five episodes here:

  1. The Set-Up: Brand Messaging for Staffing and Recruiting Agencies
  2. The Follow-Through: Living Into Your Company Values
  3. Brand Your Way Out of the Summer Slowdown
  4. How Messaging Can Resonate or Repel Clients and Candidates
  5. The Core Components of a Brand Foundation

At Parqa, we’re big believers in the power of branding. We want your staffing and recruiting agency to be empowered to create and sustain a powerful brand.

We’d love to help you create content and a strategy that will:

  • Project the trust and reassurance that is so critical to your industry
  • Establish your agency as the leading expert
  • Help you to rise above your competitors
  • Create and nurture leads
  • Ultimately, grow your business

For everything you need to create industry expertise and brand credibility for your staffing and recruiting firm, contact us today!

The Core Components of a Brand Foundation

Brand Credibility Part 5 of 6: The Core Components of a Brand Foundation

We’ve all heard plenty of marketing jargon related to branding:

“That is so on-brand.”

“Their branding is incredibly strong.”

“I love their look and feel.”

But what does it mean to actually be on-brand? How can you know whether your brand is clearly identified and boldly deployed? At Parqa, we like to say that marketing is how you communicate about your product or service. Branding, however, is how you make someone feel when they encounter your brand.

Your Brand’s Core Components

Whether you’re a talented creative professional or someone who knows absolutely nothing about design (or even marketing in general!), this article will bring you the core framework that constitutes a brand.

Your Brand Logo

This is the primary icon or symbol that represents your brand in the marketplace. Since your logo is the very first piece of your brand that a user will see, it is incredibly important to get it right. There are many different kinds of logos including:

  1. Lettermark: This is exactly what it sounds like. The letters in the name make up the logo itself. (Think: HBO, IBM)
  2. Wordmark: This is also fairly straight-forward: The entire word is the logo. (Think: Coca-Cola, Google)
  3. Pictorial mark: This type of logo is a standalone icon without any words accompanying the logo design. (think: Apple, Target, Twitter)
  4. Abstract mark: This is a specific type of pictorial logo, but instead of a recognizable object, it’s more of an abstract, geometric shape or icon. (Think: Pepsi, BP)
  5. Mascot logo: This is a type of logo where the mascot is the logo itself. (Think: KFC, Kool-Aid)
  6. Combination Mark: This logo includes an image and the words in one combined graphic. (Think: MasterCard, Pizza Hut)
  7. Emblem: This version is very similar to both the Pictorial and the Combination mark, but the unique difference is that the words fit inside of the emblem itself. (Think: Starbucks Coffee, Harley-Davidson Motorcycles)

Your Tagline

A tagline is a brief, memorable phrase that is used to support your brand throughout your marketing efforts. It should communicate the primary sentiment or feeling you would like people to associate with your company, brand or service. Here are a few examples to get the creative juices flowing:

  • “Have it your way.”
  • “Just do it.”
  • “Ace is the place with the helpful hardware folks.”
  • “I’m lovin’ it.”

Your Mission & Values

Whether you want to categorize these as separate elements within the brand strategy, or group them into one, it is mission-critical to your brand that you have these elements clearly identified. Your mission statement is a brief 1-2 sentence statement about why you exist in the marketplace and what you aim to bring to the world through your product or service. Your core values are the primary pillars that your business stands on, and that your employees and team members embody in the day-to-day. These help you create a culture and a driving force for what you truly stand for in the world.

Color Palette

Every brand must have an approved color palette, as it is a crucial part of building a successful identity as a company. The colors, shades and hues you include should have a “why” behind them, as well as rules and guidelines for how they are deployed (Think: primary, secondary, tertiary, accent, etc.). You want to have a base color, an accent color, and a couple of neutral colors that encompass your color palette. See some examples here:

Color Palette Examples

Font Selection

There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing fonts, but there are important guardrails and guidelines to help you pick one that will work for your brand. First and foremost, you’ll want to make sure you select a font that matches your brand’s personality. It should be unique and memorable, legible, and communicate your brand’s personality. Serif fonts are thought to be classical, traditional and trustworthy, while sans-serif fonts are more modern, clean and help create minimalistic look-and-feel. Whatever you do, choose one that makes sense with who you are as a company.

Your Personality

Once you choose your brand personality, you may find many other components of your brand fall into place – like your brand colors, font and tagline. That is why establishing your brand’s personality should be one of the first steps you take in creating your brand.

Begin by choosing 3-5 character traits about your brand that clearly communicate who you are in the marketplace, what sets you apart, and what makes you, you. Here are a few personality clusters as examples. What most clearly resonates with your brand?  

  1. Energetic, cutting-edge, passionate
  2. Calm, Approachable, helpful
  3. Formal, inclusive, trustworthy
  4. Cheerful, playful, sincere

Your Brand’s Voice & Tone

Your brand voice is the distinct personality your company or brand takes on in all of its communications. If voice is what you say, tone is how you say it. They should fall hand-in-hand with the Brand Personality you’ve identified (above).

Graphics & Iconography

Graphic elements or iconography are the little details that help deploy a brand. These patterns, gradients, overlays and icons help to build an entire system within your brand that is consistent and clearly recognizable.

Your brand’s graphics and Icons can be hand-drawn textures, line style treatments, background patterns, usage of white space and/or color blocks, or curated shapes. Are you a company that uses hard edges and geometric patterns to communicate innovation and modernism? Or are you wanting rounded edges that communicate synergistic, cause-and-effect relationships? There should be a why behind all the graphics and icons that are created or developed to visually express your brand.

Brand Guide

Your brand guide should be an internal document that, while it is not a separate entity or component to your brand, is a holistic, all-inclusive guide that outlines exactly how your brand should and should not be deployed.

All of the above elements outlined in numbers 1-8 live inside this centralized document. Your brand guide should be shared with everyone that touches your marketing or branding materials of any kind – whether they’re working on your website, your social media accounts, your event booths, fact sheets, or anything else in between. Think of this document as a how-to guide for your brand. 

Need Branding for Your Staffing & Recruiting Agency? We can Help!

Moral of the story? There are a lot of important factors that go into brand strategy, and it’s incredibly important to get it right. If you’re not sure where to start, reach out to me personally on LinkedIn or get in touch with the branding experts for staffing and recruiting companies at Parqa Marketing here.

Play To Win: Planning Your 2021 Marketing Strategy

About the Webinar

In this session, we discuss key elements for planning your 2021 Marketing Strategy, specifically related to achieving your business goals. We walk you through how to:

  • Define and speak to your core audience
  • Create an online presence that clearly defines your value proposition (using the StoryBrand Methodology)
  • Determine your most urgent needs and strategic proactive initiatives (read: create your marketing plan)
  • Confirm your delivery/accountability team to implement your strategy
  • Put your plan into motion…so it’s not just another good idea stuck in your notebook
  • Bonus: Create realistic expectations for measurement and ROI

Presenter:

Kelli Schutrop

VP OF SALES, PARQA

As Vice President of Sales, Kelli helps CEOs, owners, and visionaries transform their business goals into realities by building brands and driving qualified leads. She has managed marketing and communications for leading executive search and consulting firms, and has provided marketing consulting to more than 18 brands, including one of the country’s top advertising agencies (Olson) and one of the country’s top search and consulting firms (Versique).

The Proven Process: How Marketing Can Help You Come Out of COVID-19 Stronger

About the Webinar

COVID was the curveball no one expected. We are X months into our “new normal” and everything is virtual. Prospective clients are looking online to validate (or discredit) their decision to partner with you. Does your online presence help or hurt you? Whether you’ve been investing in successful marketing for years or have not given it much thought, it’s time to learn The Proven Process of Digital Marketing and how building your brand credibility, online visibility, and lead generation will help you come out of COVID stronger. This presentation will provide tangible takeaways you can implement (internally) within days, as well as a roadmap to implement marketing the right way to achieve results for years to come.

Presenter:

Kelli Schutrop

VP OF SALES, PARQA

As Vice President of Sales, Kelli helps CEOs, owners, and visionaries transform their business goals into realities by building brands and driving qualified leads. She has managed marketing and communications for leading executive search and consulting firms, and has provided marketing consulting to more than 18 brands, including one of the country’s top advertising agencies (Olson) and one of the country’s top search and consulting firms (Versique).

4 Ways for Staffing & Recruiting Firms to Come Out of COVID-19 Stronger

4 Ways for Staffing & Recruiting Firms to Come Out of COVID-19 Stronger

At Parqa, we sit in an extremely unique position in our industry. Not only have we had the opportunity to speak with our current clients, past clients and prospective clients over the past couple weeks about what’s happening in their businesses, but we’ve also been at the heart of many leadership calls of our sister company, Versique, a Minneapolis-based Staffing & Recruiting firm. Versique has been spending many long hours on calls with top 50 search firm owners across the country, as well as many other forward-thinking staffing groups.  Parqa also belongs to several marketing best practice groups and has been able to gain deep insight into what other marketing companies are seeing, hearing, and learning from their clients in all different industries and verticals. As the shock of everything is starting to calm, I feel it is my responsibility to share some of the commonalities we are hearing across all industries, spaces and platforms in an effort to lend helping hand and a few basic principles. It is our goal that we all come out of the COVID-19 pandemic stronger than we were going into it. Here are the 4 greatest insights I feel are worth sharing.

1. Prioritize your health & wellbeing to lead well

On a webinar I attended this week, the moderator talked about this process unfolding in 3 waves:

  1. Survival – doing what we need to do as business leaders to help our business survive and protect the greatest amount of employees as possible. (i.e., The last 3-4 weeks)
  2. Regroup – Experts see the next 2-3 weeks as a time when businesses can’t make many more moves, so owners and leaders should take this time to get a little sleep, connect with employees, take an afternoon to clean the house or get out and go for a jog. This is by no means rocket science, but I think we can all agree it is all too often overlooked.
  3. Rebound – We are already getting reports out of China saying that as restrictions are eased, people are going stir crazy. Tourist sites, restaurants and other attractions are being flooded with people. How do we, as business leaders in America, intentionally take the coming weeks and months to plan to capitalize on the resurgence? It is imperative to start planning now

As we enter the regroup phase, what are you doing to protect your health & wellbeing so that you have the energy to not only survive, but to thrive as the world bounces back?  What you do in the coming months will be more important to the future of your company than ever before.

My advice:

  • Embrace and cherish time with your kids.
  • Eat healthy!
  • Start a workout routine or continue a workout routine.
  • Get adequate sleep.
  • Stay intentionally and authentically connected to your employees.
  • Call old friends and family that you maybe let fall off the radar.

2. Prepare for the rebound NOW by building a brand that shines

Our very own Sr. Social Media Manager, Chanel Schmidt, and LinkedIn’s Jake Ruby just did a webinar on the importance of maintaining your brand on social media during these times.  The numbers don’t lie; with the record unemployment numbers and the lull in daily work for a lot of remaining employees, social media engagement and activity has skyrocketed.  While most people aren’t in a buying stage at this very moment, they are researching and learning like never before. Don’t misunderstand—the point isn’t to hard sell. The point is to remain visible and top-of-mind with your network and community.  Are you being seen?

Just yesterday, I spoke with a firm that had a new business line develop “unintentionally” prior to COVID-19 that they want to take advantage of on the other side to grow substantially in the future.  My recommendation to them was to take this time to update their website, “launch” this division on social media and use it in their talk track when they are reaching out to existing clients so that it is top of mind when hiring starts again.

My advice:

  • Take a look at all of your branding platforms—digital, social, print, you name it—and make sure the messaging is CONSISTENT and clearly communicates who you are, what you do, and how you solve your clients’ pain points and alleviate their challenges.
  • Start or continue to post regularly on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
  • Make the website content updates you have been meaning to make for the last year that clarify your message and communicate your true capabilities and competitive advantages.
  • Update fact sheets, capabilities documents and 1-sheeters that you leave behind with clients.
  • Look at your sales scripts you have used for 10 years and critically think about how to improve them.

3. Create and post content regularly to stay top-of-mind and build your community

Value, value, value.  In a world of noise, it is more important than ever to bring value to your community.  As business owners and leaders, everyone is looking to us – clients, candidates, other business owners and people that don’t even know us yet.  We are all in this together, and as business leaders, people want to hear what we have to say. Let your voice be heard. Lead through this time of adversity well.

Like all of us, I get hundreds of emails every week with updates on COVID-19. I am not saying we as leaders have to be health experts or pandemic experts, but the reality is that these people are filling my inbox everyday and are staying top-of-mind.  What happens if instead of COVID-19 updates we take the time as thought leaders to assist our community and let people know what we are doing, what our industries are doing, what our best practice groups are saying?

My advice:

  • Build your community and offer value through thought leadership content creation.
  • Take this time to educate, train and teach rather than hard sell.
  • Post great content and engage with your audience on social media.
  • Take time to read, comment and share your network’s content to support them.

4. Be Forward-Thinking with Technology

It is being plastered all over the news: “The world is never going to be the same.” While some people take that from the standpoint of fear, others are taking it from the standpoint of great opportunity.  There is no doubt that the buzzword of 2019 and 2020 was already “digital transformation,” but I believe the events we are living through right now are only going to expedite this process. Companies that transform are going to come out stronger, while companies that resist change are going to be left behind.

At Parqa, we were already using Microsoft Teams, so when we all had to pack up and work from home we didn’t even miss a beat.  Our sister company Versique was slightly behind in the transition, but in just four short weeks, they have almost completely migrated to the cloud.  We have had Town Hall meetings via Teams, documents are being migrated from our antiquated server, and remote VPN logins and file accessing is dying literally in days, not months.

This is just one example, but I have spoken to numerous technology companies that sell into the staffing and recruiting industry, and there are so many technologies out there that make work faster, more efficient, produce a better ROI, allow for reduced internal headcount, and provide a better client and candidate experience.

My advice:

  • Audit your tech stack and take time to research and implement new technologies.
  • Focus on how you can make your team more efficient.
  • Focus on how you could improve the experience you offer to clients and candidates.
  • Look for ways to automate and standardize processes to scale.
  • Take this time to clean your CRM/ATS database – technology relies on clean data!
10 Brand Questions Every Staffing and Recruiting Firm Should Be Asking Now

10 Brand Questions Every Staffing and Recruiting Firm Should Be Asking Now

About the Webinar

With the fluid nature of the market today, many Staffing and Recruiting Firms are looking for ways they can weather current market uncertainty and come out on the other side stronger than they were entering 2020. One of the most effective and often overlooked ways you can minimize dips in your business while coming out in a position of strength is by investing time and resources towards brand awareness and visibility on LinkedIn.

During “10 Brand Questions Every Staffing and Recruiting Firm Should be Asking Now” we’re going to sit down with Chanel Schmidt, Director of Creative Services at Parqa Digital Marketing to discuss how staffing and recruiting firms can start focusing on building brand awareness and when they should start considering a paid strategy to increase their reach. Chanel has gained unique insights through working with staffing and recruiting firms of all shapes and sizes to build effective brand strategies.

First Five: How do I get started building my brand today?

• Why does having a great brand presence on LinkedIn matter?
• What are the most essential factors of building and maintaining a brand on LinkedIn?
• What types of content should I post to build a great brand as staffing/recruiting company?
• How often should you post organically? Why is it important to post regularly?
• Paid LinkedIn – if I have my organic presence at all-star level, where do I start with paid LinkedIn campaigns?

Last Five: What can I expect from investing in a paid branding and lead generation strategy?

• How does LinkedIn’s brand awareness/lead gen service work?
• What sort of impact can I expect it to have on business?
• How do I quantify the results? How can I connect this to requisitions or revenue?
• How much time does it take to execute a paid strategy on a daily/weekly basis?
• What sort of positive or negative feedback do you hear consistently?

Presenter:

Chanel Schmidt

DIRECTOR OF CREATIVE SERVICES, PARQA

Chanel Schmidt is a driven and creative social media marketer with a proven track record of building marketing strategies and leveraging relationships to deliver results. As the Director of Creative Services at Parqa, Chanel leads all brand and client campaigns across the social media landscape from strategy to execution. Motivated by positivity, creativity and helping others, Chanel is passionate about strategic campaign planning, problem-solving and team building. What makes her tick? Understanding how social cohesively integrates within the broader media universe to deliver against business objectives. In her previous role, Chanel helped transform social media into the highest ROI-driving media channel in the organization, while growing the company’s influencer marketing program by more than 20x.

Why Staffing and Recruiting Firm Owners Refuse to Invest in Their Brands

Everyone wants their company to be the first name that comes to mind when their ideal customers look for a partner. But many staffing and recruiting firm owners are still hesitant to invest in their brand to get themselves there. There are a range of reasons, and even though my team and I spend a lot of time explaining the benefits, I still run into a few common barriers. 

I think it’s time I put these issues to rest and illustrate just why investing in your firm’s brand is critical to long-term growth.

“It’s Too Expensive”

While it’s true properly building your brand isn’t free, when I compare it to other expenses and consider the long-term gains, I’m shocked that this is still a sticking point for firm owners. The fact is that to properly benefit from any investment in your brand, you need to commit to it like you would any other investment. If you throw a small budget at a project for a few weeks and expect a huge burst of leads or boost in stats, you’re going to be disappointed.

When you need to add another recruiter to your team, you do that immediately even though that is an expensive investment that isn’t guaranteed to work. You need the increased capacity on your team and you’re willing to give them the proper chance to prove their impact. If this is an easy choice, why don’t firm owners do the same with their brands? 

The key to mitigating the expense of brand building is avoiding costly mistakes. If you’re looking for ROI, make sure the data you’re capturing is accurate and useful. Without accurate data, adjusting your marketing efforts to best reach your ideal clients is difficult, resulting in wasted money and low returns. Committing to brand building and thoughtful planning goes a long way toward positive ROI from branding.

“I’ve Tried It Before, I Didn’t See Results.”

The word that most firm owners leave out of this statement is “immediately.” While I don’t doubt that a lot of firms have tried to expand their brand, it isn’t an overnight lead magnet. In some cases, there will be an initial boost of leads in the beginning, but as time goes on, the focus on short-term lead generation wears down and the leads stop coming in.

There are two things wrong with this approach, even if you are an experienced marketer. First, the goal of brand building is not simply to generate leads, instead, you are establishing your credibility for potential leads doing research. When your ideal customer decides it’s time to speak with a recruiter, they’ll do their research, and your firm needs to be well represented.

The second problem is the timeline. Building a strong and trustworthy brand takes time and if you don’t see it through to the end, the time you put in at the front end will be wasted. Think about the trial period you give a new employee or new vendor; with only a month or two to proves themselves, what kind of results can you expect. Successful investment in your brand requires support and confidence that while there might not be immediate returns, the work you put into your brand will pave the way for future growth and continued success.

“I’m Already Well Known in my Market”

First off, congratulations. Seriously, being the top of mind firm in your market is no easy task and goes a long way to growing your business. But it doesn’t stop there. Even if people know your name across your market, investing in your brand is still important to answer one question from the people who’ve heard of you: “Why should I work with you?”

If your potential clients don’t have the information necessary to trust your experience, they may not pick up the phone to call. What’s more, if they are searching for you or your firm by name, but they need to work with other members of your team, you need to establish their credentials as well. Bios and consistently published content work to not only promote your firm and your team, but they give online leads a body of information that they can learn from.

If you’re well known in your market, the next step is to answer the question, “Well known for what?” Investing in your branding and that of your team establishes your firm as a thought leader in your industry and the best option in your market. Make it easy on your sales team and convince your clients that you’re the best partner before they ever pick up the phone.

“I Don’t Know Where to Start”

This is one of the most common answers I hear from owners. The good news is, it’s also the easiest to answer. If you’re tackling your branding and marketing in-house my answer would be to start small, updating your website and social media profiles and creating new web content. While you can start with simple actions, the key is to be consistent and dedicate time and resources to the success of your efforts.

Honestly, digital marketing is a complex animal, and if your team isn’t equipped with the skillsets or the time to tackle it, you’re better off working with a partner. I’m not just saying that because I want to be that partner either. If you start with the best intentions but lose steam when other parts of the business get busy, it will be hard to see any concrete results. Just as your clients come to you as the expert in filling open positions, digital marketing and branding firms specialize in improving your online presence.

By committing resources to branding and engaging a specialized firm to reach your goals, you have the greatest chance for success. Your team is free to focus on what they do best and make use of your improved brand, while our team handles the constant upkeep and content creation of a successful branding initiative. So in short, my answer to this question is not so much where you should start, rather that it isn’t too late to start building your brand, provided you’re willing to commit and invest in the long-term success of your brand.

If you’re ready to discuss building your brand, or you still have some unanswered questions, I’d love to chat and identify some areas for improvement in your marketing efforts. Get in touch today

How to Make Your Brand More Attractive to New Leads

At Parqa, we believe there are three integral pillars that hold up successful digital marketing campaigns: brand credibility, online visibility, and lead generation—and there’s a good reason we start that list with brand credibility. First and foremost, the credibility of your brand is what encourages, or discourages, leads to pick up the phone and call you. And, in today’s digital world, the very first assessment of your brand most often happens in one place: your website. 

While there is much more that contributes and enhances your overall brand credibility, below we’ll take a closer look at how impactful a good website can be and insights into how you can make sure yours is a step ahead of the competition. 

Your Website and Brand Credibility

So much of a consumer’s buying decision takes place before they ever email you, call you, or come into your office. When someone receives a message from you or comes into contact with something about your firm, typically the very first thing they do is immediately go to your website. The presence your business has online is vital to the credibility of your brand and the likelihood of a potential client becoming a client. 

We like to use the analogy of the CEO of a $100 million dollar company that wants to meet with you and assess if your firm is the right one to do business with. Would you invite them to your house, greet them in sweatpants, and then profess your expertise? No, you wouldn’t. But you would invite them to your new, freshly designed office space and greet them in a suit and tie. 


Related Post: Redesign Your Website? Why You Need to Work with an SEO Firm ➢


Your website and other online mediums function in the same exact way. Does your website sport a clean, professional design, navigate smoothly, and provide relevant, insight information? Is it a reputable extension of the professional mastery your firm has earned over the years? Or is it clunky, out-of-date, slow, and devoid of any content that positions you as a thought leader within your niche?

To dress up your website as the salesman it should be, always ask yourself these questions:

  • Does our website tell the story of our credibility, expertise, and differentiators?
  • As soon as a client (or candidate) sees our website, could they easily identify what we do best?
  • Is our website intuitive and easy to use, or is it making potential leads jump through unnecessary hoops to contact us?

Your website doesn’t sleep, doesn’t call in sick, and can engage with thousands of prospects at a time. If your website isn’t reaching its potential, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity to build and reinforce the credibility of your brand. 

For a more exhaustive break-down on how your brand credibility can attract new leads, including the value of social media and online visibility, here’s our latest webinar on the topic.

Is it Time to Refresh Your Staffing and Recruiting Website?

As a staffing and recruiting firm owner, you’re always grappling with major business decisions. From growing your firm through business development to finding the best tools and technologies to help your recruiters fill searches and job orders, there is no shortage of critical issues that require your attention.

For many owners, dealing with all of these pressing issues forces them to put their marketing, and in particular, their website, on the back burner. As a digital marketing agency that specializes in tackling digital transformation for staffing and recruiting firms, we see this critical misstep time and time again. If you want to grow your firm, it’s a misstep you can’t afford to commit.

But how do firms know when their website is due for a refresh? We recently hosted a webinar and published an eBook on this very topic. Here are some of the highlights.

Does the Look of Your Site Feel Old?

In the staffing and recruiting world, a first impression carries a ton of weight. They are plenty of firms out there who can solve the hiring challenges that employers are struggling with, and a bad first impression can send a lead directly to your competition. You should think of the look and feel of your website as the first impression your firm has with a visitor.

So ask yourself, what will a new visitor to your site think of your website? Will they have a positive first experience? Will they be turned off by an outdated, unoriginal, or boring design? If you can’t answer with confidence that a new lead will find the design of your website appealing, it’s time to refresh your site


Related Post: Redesign Your Website? Why You Need to Work with an SEO Firm ➢


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How Quickly Does Your Website Load?

In today’s on-the-go, instant-satisfaction world, potential leads will not patiently wait for your website to load. If pages on your site take more than three seconds to load, you have some performance issues that require attention.

Your staffing and recruiting website does not need to be a super-charged sports car with light-speed load times, but if your site is performing like a Vespa, it’s time to refresh your site.


Related Post: 9 Stats That Prove the Importance of Website Design ➢


What Does Your Website Say About Your Firm?

Today’s buyer conducts a lot of research before they deem a vendor worthy of their engagement. That means that they’ll be hopping all-around your website to see if your firm is credible enough to solve their business challenges. Is the content on your site going to accurately demonstrate your firm’s reputation? Or will your content fall flat and send them seeking out another firm?

The content on your site must convince visitors that your firm not only understands their unique pain points but has the ability to solve them. If your content is not focused, aligned with your current business initiatives, and engaging, it’s time to overhaul it and create new, compelling content. 

macbook with keyboard

Why Design is Important When Promoting your Business

As we’ve mentioned before, in previous blogs, visual content can boost your lead generation conversion rates tremendously. Now more than ever design plays a huge role in promoting your brand.

You’re probably wondering what’s considered “good design” when promoting your business. Good design is functional, communicative, and appealing to the consumer.

No matter the digital platform your brand appears on; your design should stay consistent.


Related Post: Content Marketing: Your 3-Step Recipe for Lead Generation ➢


Drive More NEW Leads

Design and visual drive engagement, which drive more new customers. Nearly 46% of people say that website design is the number one criterion for discerning the credibility of your brand (HubSpot). Think of design as a first impression during an introductory meeting.

Whether on social media or your website, brand design should grab the attention, especially I to new consumers who haven’t been associated with your company before. Essentially, design could be the determining factor of what drives conversion. So, don’t take it lightly.

Makes Your Brand More Memorable

Think of the most successful brands like Target, McDonald’s, and Apple. What do they all have in common? A well-thought-out design driven by creative vision. You can easily identify their logo, colors, fonts, etc. at a moment’s notice, even when you can’t see the whole logo. Keeping your brand design simple but bold can be very effective.

Design makes your brand more memorable than text does. Specific visuals can help represent your company in a meaningful way that emphasizes your core values.


Related Post: Rank on Google and Bank with Content Marketing ➢


Gives A Competitive Edge

Design is a powerful tool that can give you the competitive edge needed to differentiate yourself from your biggest competitors. Think about a time when you chose a product or service over another simply because its packaging or branding looked better.

Aligning your company brand with your design and creative strategy can help your business gain a competitive advantage and increase engagement. You risk turning people away from converting if the design isn’t well thought out.

As you can see, design plays a significant role in generating the success of a business.

Contact Parqa today to kick-start your branding efforts and align your creative vision with your business initiatives.

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