Contact US
Articles Tagged with

Content Marketing Strategy

Marketing Automation 101: The Basics of Building a Marketing Machine (2021)

“The core problem we’re going to have going forward is that you have two forces [that will] govern much of what [happens] in the future. The first is globalization, which we’re not going to repeal, and the second one is automation, which we’re not going to repeal.” – Eric Schmidt, Former Executive Chairman of Google, Inc

With the marketing world moving steadily towards more automation, it’s natural to take a step back and wonder: what is automation? 

Automation has been around since the printing press, the loom, and even the wheel. Throughout history, humans have found ways to automate repetitive or laborious tasks to machines: why would we stop now? While automation can conjure up images of machines from the Matrix, it’s less dystopian and more beneficial than you might think.

Simply put, automation allows humans to do more with less. 

Think about it this way: where would the automobile industry be without the creation of the assembly line? Where would we be without the machine-based search algorithm that Google built? Automation is a part of your smartphone, your coffee maker, and countless details of your everyday life. 

Marketing automation can be thought of in the same way that every other form of automation can be: it allows you to do more with less. Think of marketing automation as a way to do the work of a large marketing department, but for the cost of a single marketer.

Marketing Automation Basics

With automation, you can scale your staffing & recruiting business without having to scale your marketing team. In today’s world, how valuable is that?

In essence, with the proper techniques, you can create a marketing machine.

Marketing automation consists of software and tools that allow you to efficiently market to your customers throughout the entirety of their buyer’s journey. You nurture prospects with engaging and relevant content and then, with a few loving prods and pats along the way, you turn those prospects into customers. It’s one of the reasons that Netflix is ranked one the most reputable companies on the planet: they don’t just sell to their customers, they provide value-added service to them at every stage of the funnel. They have built a marketing machine that removes the friction between the customer and the company.

Here’s how you can get started.

5 Steps to get started with marketing automation:

  1. Generate relevant leads by creating great content and driving traffic to your website. Focus on making your content informative, not promotional. By providing educational information, you help solve your prospect’s pain points which allows them to move smoothly through the rest of your funnel.
  2. Build your marketing funnel using landing pages, email marketing, and content that is valuable to your prospective buyers, whether that’s a blog, an ebook, a whitepaper, etc.
  3. Create content that includes calls-to-action with other relevant content that will help your prospects to solve their problems. If you’re discussing obstacles in the recruiting world in an article, you should link to another piece of content at the end that helps solve those obstacles or presents new ideas.
  4. Send out relevant and timely messages to your prospects at the various stages of the funnel. Your prospects are always on the move, their information and needs change everyday–it is your job as a marketer to figure out what information will help them progress along their journey. Sending the right information at the right time is critical to building trust with your customers, and solving their problems, even after they’ve become a customer, is how you build a reputation as enviable as Amazon’s.
  5. Work with your sales team to integrate your marketing and sales efforts, by creating a delightful sales experience for your prospects and customers, your sales team will begin to understand your customers from their perspective. Rather than interrupting your leads with irrelevant messages and cold calls, marketing automation allows your marketing and sales department to work in harmony to understand and help your customers every step of the way.

The key to successful marketing automation is remaining customer-centric. Much like Netflix’s mission of being the most customer-centric company on the planet, marketing automation is all about your customer, not you. 

Where we see many fall short with marketing automation is when they only focus on their existing mailing lists and ignore the rest of the 99% of the market out there. Marketing automation is not just emailing your leads to death; it’s a holistic approach to creating great marketing that is non-intrusive, relevant to prospects, and delights the customer at every stage of the funnel.

Modern desk with plant and laptop

Get Started with Content Marketing Using S.M.A.R.T Goals

“The secret of a getting ahead is getting started.” 

As I said in my previous blog, going straight into content production mode without a proper digital marketing strategy tied to your goals is like heading out on a road trip without a map—you’ll run out of gas before you ever reach your destination. 

While it’s important to “just get started” with your content marketing efforts, setting a few high-level goals can be the difference between successfully growing your business through content marketing and getting left in the dust by your competitors who are investing in content marketing. If you begin creating random content, especially, overly-salesy content, you risk isolating prospects or completely turning them away with shoddy, self-promotional content that lacks value to the end user. Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about your audience. So be smart, and set some realistic goals that your team, whether an entire marketing team or one employee, can spend the proper time needed to create something your company is proud to share, and are confident will help someone through your sales cycle. 


Related Post: Is Your Online Brand Aligned With Your Personal Brand? ➢


 

S.M.A.R.T Goals – Specific. Measurable. Attainable. Relevant. Timely 

Specific – is your goal specific? E.g., I will increase my website traffic by 20% from 5,244 to 6,292.8 visitors per month by April 1st, 2019  by increasing my blog frequency from 2 times per week to 4 times per week 

Measurable – is your goal measurable? E.g., I will generate 12 new client leads worth a total of $1.8 million in potential opportunity revenue by April 1st, 2019 

Attainable – is your goal achievableE.g., I will grow my new clients leads by 20% from 10 worth $1.5 million to 12 worth a total of $1.8 million in potential revenue opportunity 

Relevant – Is your goal relevant? E.g., My goal of increasing my web traffic by 20% this quarter to 6,292 visitors will allow me to reach my overall goal of increasing my total new client leads and revenue opportunity by 40% year over year 

Timely – Is your goal timelyE.g., My goal is to improve our website traffic by 5% every month in quarter 1, which will lead to a 15% increase by April 1st, 2019. 


Related Post: Visual Content Can Boost Your Lead Conversions – But How? ➢


 

In other words, don’t underestimate the effort and attention needed to provide quality content that sticks. No matter the size of the team, content is never a quick fix, it’s an investment in the long term success of your business. Start small, and find a point you feel you can replicate your efforts and continue to build upon that. It’s ok to have your goal be one piece of content each Quarter, or even one piece of content Bi-Annually. The key takeaway is to start somewhere and allow that following to build. 

Parqa provides full-ranging content marketing services based on your S.M.A.R.T. goals that allow you to communicate your brand and expertise without adding unreasonable responsibility to your staff. If you want to discuss how you can pivot your marketing efforts to maintain and grow within your industry, reach out to Parqa today! 

Man happy on the laptop

How Recruiters Can Build Trust Through Content Marketing

As I mentioned in part one, building trust is your number one job; everything else is noise. You can be the smartest person in the world or the world’s greatest athlete, but if you don’t have trust, you don’t have anything.

It’s no different when it comes to marketing. Part of marketing’s role is to make noise and attract people’s attention. But that’s where most people’s understanding of marketing ends. This blog is about the other side of marketing, the side that builds goodwill and trust with your customers. It’s about marketing that will enable you to build long-term enduring relationships with your customers.


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


How To Win Friends and Influence People (with Content)

I remember the first time I read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” it was such an eye-opening experience for me. I was in the middle of my undergrad degree in business and decided to work on my people skills. It wasn’t long before I found myself volunteering, teaching classes, and dedicating myself to a life of servitude.

In many ways, the best way to understand content marketing is to understand the concepts of Dale Carnegie’s book. Even though it was first published in 1936, its message is as relevant as ever. What Carnegie understood about business wasn’t a secret recipe that you can implement in 5 easy steps–he didn’t have a checklist for building lasting relationships, he simply understood that business was about relationships, and relationships were about trust.

As I said in part one of this feature, establishing trust is arguably the most important objective of any business. One of the most cost-effective and scalable ways to establish trust with your audience is to create quality content. Not only does quality content help businesses establish trust through branding, but it also helps with positioning, thought leadership, and converting leads into sales.


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


Content Influences People and Their Purchasing Decisions

According to a recent survey, 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. (Demand Gen Report, 2016) This means that businesses who aren’t providing the right content are losing out on half of their sales. Due to the ubiquity of the internet, buyers are more informed than ever, and the buyer’s journey has completely transformed—which means that businesses are investing more than ever in creating quality content.

Winning friends and influencing people is all about trust, and by creating content for every stage of the buyer‘s journey, businesses can establish trust, build credibility, and forge lasting partnerships with their customers. Using the methods we’ve covered in both parts of this blog, you can not only build trust with your customers but also spur them into action with your content.

Parqa provides full-ranging content marketing services that allow you to communicate your brand and expertise without adding unreasonable responsibility to your staff. If you want to discuss how you can pivot your marketing efforts to maintain and grow within your industry, reach out to Parqa today!

Content Marketing Webinar

Happy man on laptop

The Importance of Voice in Your Recruiting Efforts

Remember the last time you got a phone call from a robo-caller? It may be using the correct words and grammar, but you can tell right away that it isn’t human. When you hear the voice, it’s obvious that something is off and that clouds the message. 

Every writer has a voice. Even if you don’t take the time to develop it, your writing will have a certain tone and style. Just like you can recognize a friend by the way that you talk, you can recognize similar patterns in someone’s writing.  

Using the right voice is important for narration in fiction writing, but it’s just as important in business. Making sure your business’s content is relatable, relevant and easy to understand goes a long way with both clients and candidates. Take the time to recognize your business’s voice and cultivate good habits in your content to build immediate rapport with your readers. 


Related Post: 5 Simple Ways to Repurpose Your Best Marketing Content ➢


Talk to Your Audience, Not at Them 

Even if you can match the right tone, relying on unnecessary language to either sound smart or sound more official gets in the way. There is a time and place for formal language, and it may even work for your company. Make sure your content sounds like a conversation and not a textbook. 

Writing the way that people talk to each other makes things easier to read and very human. You can connect with the writer quickly and even place yourself in their shoes. For recruiting firms, use the simplest language you can to get your point across.  

Jargon is ok when you serve an industry where those terms are commonplace. When you explain concepts with more complex language than required, you come off as condescending and detached. The voice you use is how many people relate to your company first, so put away your thesaurus and make sure you aren’t turning them away. 

Consistency Establishes Credibility 

In business, your reputation is everything. You work hard to establish a name for yourself and your business so why shouldn’t your content support that brand? We all like working with reliable people, but if your content’s voice isn’t consistent, you’re building a negative reputation for yourself. 

Think of it like meeting friends at a party. The person who is known for being rude and crass shows up and the rest of the group tries their best to avoid that person. The person known for telling great stories and keeping the party entertained always has an audience. Your voice establishes consistent expectations for your audience. When clients and candidates know that they can come to you for clear concise content, they will be more likely to come back and recommend your firm. 


Related Post: Content is King: How to Build Your Credibility With Content Marketing ➢


 

Differentiate Yourself 

Like I mentioned before, whether you’ve built your voice or not, it’s there. This voice is unique to your brand. Take advantage of voice in your content to differentiate your firm. Other than making your content easier to understand, your voice gives your company a personality.  

When working with candidates, make sure your voice matches the hiring personas you’ve set up. Matching the voice and tone to those personas will stand out to the candidates that you are working to attract. Similarly, your brand voice establishes you as an expert to potential clients. You must walk a line between attracting candidates and clients as well as building credibility. 

Developing a consistent voice that is unique to your brand is just as important as a good logo. When you have a strong voice, your audience can immediately identify your content. They know they can trust the information provided and they can contact you to get even more information.  

Learn how Parqa helps executive search firms find and build their voice to creating engaging digital content. 

five quality score on ipad

The Importance of Building Trust With Your Audience

Trust is the glue that binds us together. It’s the foundation on which human interaction is built. Without trust, we would be stuck relying on ourselves for survival–I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be able to survive on my own. For most people, everyday interactions, like texting a friend, or buying something at the store, are modern-day miracles.


Related Post: Is Your Online Brand Aligned With Your Personal Brand? ➢


“Brands are all about trust. That trust is built in drops and lost in buckets”

– Kevin Plank, Under Amour CEO

There is a great essay called I, Pencil, and I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already. It’s a testament to the sheer depth and breadth of our modern global economy. It essentially states that there isn’t one person on earth who knows how to make a pencil, yet most of us can walk down the street and buy a pack of them for a couple of bucks.

It’s trust that facilitates these transactions between otherwise complete strangers. It’s trust that helps us make decisions on who to surround ourselves with every day. But trust can’t be bought, it must be earned over a lifetime.

It’s interesting to think about trust in 2018—during the ’90s, when the internet first came out, skeptics thought it would be too difficult for consumers to trust businesses on the internet with their information and credit cards. But it didn’t take long for a man named Pierre Omidyar to come along and flip the script on the naysayers.

Pierre created a website called AuctionWeb, a site “dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace.” AuctionWeb started off as a side project for Pierre, but by 1997 there were over 2 million auctions and counting on the platform. Pierre soon had the brilliant insight to institute a rating system for buyers and sellers to rate each other, which was a signal of how trustworthy one was on the platform.

Today, AuctionWeb, now called eBay, is one of the largest marketplaces in the world with over 175 million buyers and 1 billion products listed. By implementing a rating system, eBay became the trusted third party that allowed buyers and sellers from all around the world to seamlessly transact for goods and services. The rating system is still the gold standard of trust today and can be found on popular apps like Airbnb, Uber, Yelp, Amazon, just to name a few.


Related Post: 4 Ways to Build an Effective Relationship With Your Marketing Agency ➢


Trust is the Foundation Upon Which Progress is Built

As trust becomes ever more important in the digital age, businesses must spend more and more time investing in building trust in their brand and their business. Recruiters can take a page from the eBay story, and build trust into their business strategy.

While getting referrals, recommendations, and testimonials is a great way to convince your leads to work with you, it’s even more important to build trust throughout the entirety of the buyer’s journey. In the second part of this blog, I’ll list a few ways that recruiters can build trust with their audiences and become the gold standard of service for their market.

If you’re working to build trust with your clients and candidates, Parqa is here to help strengthen your digital brand as a trusted recruiter.

Parqa Marketing is a digital marketing agency that works to transform your digital marketing efforts.

man looking at macbook pro with latte

5 Benefits to Using AI in the Recruiting Industry

One of the biggest ongoing challenges a recruiter faces is seeking out qualified talent day after day. Luckily, with the rise in technology, attracting top talent just got even easier. How? The answer is artificial intelligence. AI is rapidly becoming more commonly used by recruiting firms, as it makes their job more efficient and less stressful.  

So, what are the benefits of using AI in the Recruiting Industry? Continue reading to find out.    


Time Saver 

Time management is crucial in the life of a recruiter. The last thing a recruiter needs is to spend extra time on tedious tasks such as scheduling interviews, screening applicants, and ensuring the needs of your team members are met. Fortunately, AI reduces the time spent during the hiring process. 

It takes a great deal of time to go through hundreds of job applications. Using automated assistants or chatbots can help the application process move a lot faster and reduce the time it takes to identify top candidates.  

In addition, it can be exhausting to post a new job posting repeatedly. Thankfully, AI is aiming to incorporate a virtual assistant as the first line of contact during the application process to build a trail of interaction and information with the applicant. That way a recruiter doesn’t have to start from scratch every time and lose valuable time.  

Highest Quality Talent 

There’s no question that using AI can help attract the highest quality candidates. According to a survey, nearly 63% of HR professionals say AI has changed the way recruiting is done within their organization. AI formulates concise and accurate job descriptions to represent exactly what you’re seeking in applicants.  

Using automated processes to source candidates can impact the recruiter’s efforts by scouring the Internet for talented candidates, while the recruiter focuses in on other important tasks.  


Related Post: How to Generate Quality Blog Topics as a Recruiter ➢


Increased Diversity  

Implementing AI into your application screening process will help eliminate any potential bias you may have. Ultimately, boosting the diversity of your talent pool. Having a diverse workplace can improve the overall growth of your organization.  

Improved Candidate Experience 

Surprisingly, AI can give your candidates a better experience during the hiring process. How is this possible with minimal human interaction? AI tools are designed to quickly provide answers and responses to candidates to maintain a business relationship.  

AI keeps candidates in the loop throughout the entire hiring process. Chatbots have been successful in creating positive experiences for candidates by continuously providing information and answers to maintain open communication so they never feel they’re being ignored.  

AI doesn’t only improve candidates’ experience either. It improves your team’s experience internally as well, boosting the growth of your organization.  

Cost-Effective  

As you know, the process of hiring a new employee is costly. And you’re probably thinking that implementing AI will be even more expensive. Even though AI comes with additional costs, it will positively impact your ROI in the long run. Hiring the most qualified talent will reduce turnover and save money on the expenses surrounding adding new talent.  

In the end, AI is advancing several industries worldwide, including the recruiting industry. If you haven’t incorporated AI into your business practices yet, I highly recommend doing so, as there are several benefits. 


Related Post: Why Recruiters Should Target Candidates With Their Content Marketing ➢

crinkled paper and pen

Content is King: How To Build Your Credibility With Content Marketing

As a recruiter, your tenacious, go-getter mindset serves you well. It’s the valuable trait that fuels you when you’re putting in the work to identify the best talent, and when you’re building positive and lasting relationships with clients. When you’re creating and implementing your firm’s content marketing strategies to grow your business, it’s important to tap into that same committed work ethic.

With content marketing, it’s imperative that you remain committed to generating content, patient in evaluating results, and aware of the various, and sometimes unquantifiable, ways that content is affecting your business.


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


Remaining Patient When Setting Goals in Content Marketing

In most of your business strategies, your goals are created using a simple equation. By doing X, we hope to yield Y. In recruiting, you might purchase an additional LinkedIn recruiting seat for your firm, with the goal that it will increase revenue by a certain number. The time-tested equation makes for an easy ROI analysis upon the completion of your initiative.

In content marketing, that’s not a great way to set goals. Why? Because your content has a broad impact on your company. A single piece of content has the ability to improve your search rankings, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, educate prospects, engage with your audience, create brand awareness, and improve your brand’s reputation. There are simply too many variables to insert into a linear success equation when it comes to evaluating content.

A common pitfall that companies fall into is they get discouraged with their content efforts when they don’t collect quick wins from it. They then drop the ball on content creation, for a while, out of frustration.

I made this mistake when I first started creating content for my recruiting firm. I was so focused on how much traffic our website was generating, and how many leads we were converting, that I was losing sight of the long game. You, of course, should set goals for the various content metrics out there—whether that be rankings, traffic, or conversions. But don’t forget to be patient. If a piece of content doesn’t generate a lead this month, or even over the next few months, that doesn’t mean it won’t eventually. There are so many ways that content can help your brand, that you must avoid rigid evaluations of whether or not it’s working.

Instead, your primary goal should be to create good content regularly. You never know when a piece of content is going to serve as the conversion point for a lead. The life cycle of a piece of content can go for years, which is important to keep in mind when evaluating the metrics of your content.


Related Post: 5 Simple Ways to Repurpose Your Best Marketing Content ➢


Staying Committed to Producing Content Across All of Your Channels

In recruiting, your reputation is everything. Candidates measure your reputation when weighing whether to trust you with guiding them toward the next opportunity in their career, and your clients weigh your reputation when deciding whether they can trust you to find them the perfect candidate.

If your firm isn’t producing a steady amount of content, your reputation is in jeopardy. Before a lead picks up the phone and calls your firm or sends you an email, they will read three-to-five pieces of content.  As they come across the content they read, they will be evaluating your brand.

Ask yourself this, what does our content say about us? If you only post a blog every couple of months, leads will take notice and question your commitment. If your social posting is inconsistent and unfocused, leads will notice. If you don’t have any long-form content that tackles the important questions and topics of your target audience, your leads will notice. Gaps in the consistency or quality of your content will stain how leads are appraising your firm.

By staying committed and patient, you’ll be able to supply leads with a steady diet of educational content that will both inform them about the solutions to their pain points and to the value of your firm.


Parqa Marketing is a digital marketing agency that works to transform your digital marketing efforts.

desk with keyboard and notebook

How to Generate Quality Blog Topics as a Recruiter

Now more than ever, blogging is the key to successful content marketing. Neglecting to post blogs can hurt your brand and your business’s chance of being seen. As a recruiter, consistently generating fresh blog content brings potential clients and candidates to your site. The main challenge is while you’re busy making placements, it’s hard to find time to brainstorm intriguing topic ideas, let alone write quality blogs. After reading this blog, you will have the skills and tools you need to master the process of generating excellent blog topics, even on a tight schedule.


Related Post: Why Recruiters Should Target Candidates With Their Content Marketing ➢


Identify Your Target Audience

Start by nailing down your target audience – Who will be reading your blog? Knowing your buyer personas is extremely helpful for this step. Think about who they are and what they’re interested in. Potential clients and candidates will find your blog one day, and it’s important to make sure they’ll find engaging and useful content.

Industry Trends – What are People Buzzin’ About?

Are you aware of the latest trends in your industry? Do you keep up with the latest news? What is your network buzzin’ about?

Staying on top of the answers to these questions will help you tap into fresh topic ideas for your next blog. For example, a big trend in the recruiting industry right now is the positive impact artificial intelligence is having on the recruiting industry. Writing about methods and predictions related to AI would be a great topic for a potential blog in the future.

There are several resources you can use to determine the latest industry trends such as online articles, magazines, social media, podcasts, television, etc.

These first two steps are essential for a strong start and continued success in writing engaging blogs.


Related Post: 5 Tips to Inspire Your Team and Yourself to Blog ➢


Topic Generation Tool

There’s going to come a time when your brain stops working, and you cannot think of any great topics to write about. Luckily, using a topic generator tool allows you to quickly and efficiently come up with topic ideas. Once you have finalized your target audience and researched industry trends, insert specific keywords into the topic generator tool you’re using.

Topic generators can help boost your SEO ranking, which plays a large role in growing your brand awareness and your business. Without a stream of fresh content, your SEO ranking will sink along with your social media presence.

Not all topic generator tools are built the same, but all have the same end goal of providing you with a variety of ideas. Below is a list of tools I recommend using to generate quality blog topics.

Don’t be Afraid to Reach Out for Help

If after all that, you’re still truly stumped, don’t hesitate to ask your fellow co-workers, family, and friends for suggestions. Asking others for ideas is especially helpful, as you never know what their unique views can bring to the table. Word of mouth travels fast, and someone may have heard about a topic in the industry that could spark an idea for your next awesome blog.

While writing blogs can be a challenging process, coming up with good topics can save a lot of headaches. If you’re having a difficult time growing your brand and are interested in expanding your blog content, partner with us today.

To learn more about how content marketing can grow your business, check out our recent webinar recording.

Content Marketing Webinar

target posted on a tree

Why Recruiters Should Target Candidates with Their Content Marketing

The last time the national unemployment rate was this low, Planet of the Apes was raking in the cash at the box office. No, not the stunning, CGI-dependent reboots or the laughable Mark Wahlberg fail. I’m talking about the original Charlton Heston classic, with its delightfully cartoonish hair and makeup and brilliant political allegory.

Low unemployment has created many opportunities for recruiting firms. Hiring is never easy for companies, but in this job market it’s nearly impossible without the industry knowledge and network that savvy recruiters possess. To take advantage of the low unemployment before it inevitably shifts back to normalcy, recruiters should absolutely be creating smart and informative content that is targeting business owners. At the end of the day, without clients to provide staffing solutions for, there’s no way to make money.

However, far too often I see recruiting firms neglecting the opportunity to create compelling content for candidates. And that’s a big mistake—, especially in today’s labor market.


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


Many Candidates are Unaware of Their Value

Being in the recruiting world, or even recruiting-adjacent such as myself, it’s easy to forget that other people are unaware of the current labor market. As recruiters, you eat, sleep, and breathe labor, so the trends and happenings of the industry are always top of mind. Business owners aren’t quite as in the know as you are, but with hiring being a vital element to their business success, they also maintain a strong understanding of the labor market. You’d be hard-pressed to be speaking with a prospective client and blow their minds by telling them about the low unemployment rate. Anyone that has had to hire in the past year is well aware of the challenges.

Candidates, on the other hand, not so much.

They’re busy working and growing their careers. Unless they work in the HR sector or are passionate about labor trends, they won’t know that they currently are more valuable than they have ever been in their careers. When talking with professionals across a vast number of industries, I’m always shocked when I discover they have no idea how low the unemployment rate is or how competitive hiring has become.

This ignorance of the labor market presents tremendous opportunities for recruiting firms to be pumping out informative content to inform these talented candidates. Especially firms that place permanent hires, as you’ll be drawing largely from a passive candidate base. By furnishing educational content that details how rare the current market is, and how advantageous it is for job seekers, you can build trust with candidates and begin to warm them up to the idea of changing jobs.

Candidates are Easier to Reach Organically Than Clients

As a recruiting firm owner, you naturally want to dedicate their content marketing resources to attract clients. More clients lead to more business—I get that. But in terms of attracting organic eyeballs to your content, and your website, going after candidates is a far easier task.

For one, there’s simply more of them. It doesn’t take an economics expert to notice that there are more worker bees than business-owner bees out there. Let’s say your firm specializes in engineering recruitment. If you’re writing a blog targeting engineering firm owners, there’s a finite number of them within the reach of your market. Depending on where you’re located, there may be anywhere from 10-100 firms, so you’re hoping that an owner at one of those firms reads your blog. How many engineers live within the reach of your market? 1,000? 5,000? 10,000?

Secondly, candidates spend more time online seeking information. Millennials have overtaken baby boomers as the largest generation in the American workforce. Of the many stereotypes out there about my much-maligned generation, one that is undoubtedly true is we depend on, and regularly rely on, the internet for our information. From finding the best Vietnamese restaurant to scoring tips on finding a new job, the internet is the first place we seek out information.

The combination of more eyeballs and an increased likelihood that candidates will seek out your thought leadership online creates a tremendous recipe for increased traffic to your website, which can help you get clients. With a sound and optimized website, the organic traffic to your candidate-targeted blogs will directly improve your organic rankings for other pages on your site. The better your organic rankings, the more likely you are to gain an organic client lead.


Related Post: 5 Simple Ways To Repurpose Your Best Content ➢


Content Marketing Tailored to Recruiters

You might be thinking, “This all makes sense. I need to write more Candidate-driven content. But…writing is hard and I’m way too busy growing my firm to sit down and write content.”

I’ve got some good news for you: Parqa Marketing can help. We’re a digital marketing agency that exclusively works with recruiting firms. Intrigued? Schedule a call with our team and learn more about how we can transform your digital marketing efforts.

Need help getting blogging? Let’s talk!

Content Marketing Webinar

search bar touch

Content Marketing: Your 3-Step Recipe for Lead Generation

There’s no way around it. Everywhere you look there are either marketers trying to sell you lead generation strategies or entrepreneurs trying to create them. So why all the fuss? Isn’t there a clear path that leads to more customers and clients? After five years of growing my company, Versique, from the ground to a thriving $17 million leader in executive search & consulting, I believe there is.

So, let me ask you, what is the one thing that every successful lead generation strategy has in common?

A robust content marketing strategy.

That’s because 47% of buyers view 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with you. You literally can’t have one without the other; no matter how good your ads are, how high your marketing budget, or how many cold calls you’re making each month – if you’re not distributing the right content in a valuable, relevant, and consistent way, you simply won’t drive the potential customer or client to action.

So, whether you want to call it lead generation or content marketing, we’re talking about the same thing.

Let’s dive in and look at the three requirements of a strategic content marketing strategy and how to successfully execute them in your business.


Related Post: 5 Simple Ways to Repurpose Your Best Marketing Content ➢


1. Creating and Distributing Valuable Content

The digital space is getting noisier and more crowded each day. With the average consumer seeing over 4,000 ads between the time they wake up in the morning until the time they go to bed – it’s increasingly important to add value with each piece of content you produce.

Yet with all our responsibilities, to-do lists, and business pressures it can be tough to strategically plan to create valuable content, let alone to distribute it effectively. Use the following list as a guide to remind you of ways you can execute on this without taking too much time planning strategy. In our final point, we’ll cover the optimal frequency of each.

  • Blogs
  • Social Media Posts
  • Infographics
  • Vlogs
  • Podcasts
  • Website Landing Pages
  • Press Releases
  • Email Campaigns

2. Creating and Distributing Relevant Content

Creating relevant content goes beyond value to adding more in-depth and specialized information in a systematic way. Here’s the best way to understand the difference:

  • Valuable content is worth the reader’s time.
  • Relevant content helps the reader accomplish or learn something they need to know.

These pieces of content take more time and strategic thought to produce but are more targeted and useful for your market. Use the following list as a guide to remind you of ways you can execute writing relevant content without taking too much time planning strategy. In our next point, we’ll cover the optimal frequency of each.

  • eBooks
  • White Papers
  • Webinars
  • Case Studies
  • Newsletters
  • TV & Radio Spots

3. Consistently Producing Content

Consistency is the key to success in both life and business. Without taking a consistent approach to content marketing your lead generation will be feast or famine – great during the months you’re producing and terrible during the months you’re not.

Use the following list to help you plan out your strategy:

What to Post Daily –

Social Media Posts: Social media posts are a great way to humanize your personal or business brand, stay in touch with your customers, and stay relevant to your target market. Depending on the platform, your posting schedule could include one to several posts each day.

What to Post Weekly –

Blogs: A weekly blog is helpful to not only get both valuable and relevant content to your target market, but also for SEO and ranking purposes as well.

Vlogs: Videos are exploding reach on every digital platform out there today. By publishing a weekly Vlog or professionally done video, you increase reach, engagement and further humanize your brand while setting yourself apart as a thought leader in your niche.

Podcasts: Podcasts are another trending avenue to show yourself as a thought leader and expand your reach within your target market.

Email Campaigns: Depending on the campaign, you may have daily, weekly, and monthly emails going out to your list.

What to Post Monthly –

Infographics: Producing a helpful infographic each month and distributing it to your networks is a powerful way to stay relevant and current.

Website Landing Pages: By creating a new lead magnet and subsequently a new landing page each month you’re able to exponentially increase your email list while simultaneously reminding your target market that you are innovative and current within your niche.

Case Studies: Publishing new case studies and customer testimonials should be considered a staple in your marketing strategy. Potential customers want to see that what you’re doing works and from others, why they should work with you.

Newsletters: Although print newsletters lack relevancy, a stunning and dynamic digital newsletter is a great way to stay in contact with your target each month.

TV & Radio Spots: It really can’t be helped. We are programmed to look up to people featured on Radio and TV as experts and specialists in their field. Maintaining a regular media appearance still provides brand value.

What to Post Quarterly –

Press Releases: Press releases around current or trending events within your company or niche is a great way to gain credibility as well as add valuable content to your marketing strategy.

eBooks: The popularity of eBooks continues to rise. By releasing a new eBook each quarter you can stay ahead of your competition and current with your market.

White Papers: Academic publishing can help you be a leader within your field, and there’s no better way to do that than a quarterly white paper.

Webinars: Unfortunately, webinars are too often used as strictly a sales tool – with the only purpose to get people to buy NOW. However, that is not the best use of this type of content. Adding as much value as possible for 30+ minutes will allow your listeners to lower their guard and be more receptive to hearing a pitch either at the end or with follow up email campaigns.

In the end, the result of a strategic content marketing campaign done well, is a pipeline full of profitable customer action, aka Lead Generation.
If you need help growing your recruiting firm and want to know how I grew mine to $17 million in revenue and 120 employees in five years, we should talk.
To learn more about how content marketing and when to use gated content to grow your business, check out our recent webinar recording.

Content Marketing Webinar

1 2 3

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Privacy Settings
We use cookies to enhance your experience while using our website. If you are using our Services via a browser you can restrict, block or remove cookies through your web browser settings. We also use content and scripts from third parties that may use tracking technologies. You can selectively provide your consent below to allow such third party embeds. For complete information about the cookies we use, data we collect and how we process them, please check our Privacy Policy
Youtube
Consent to display content from - Youtube
Vimeo
Consent to display content from - Vimeo
Google Maps
Consent to display content from - Google
Spotify
Consent to display content from - Spotify
Sound Cloud
Consent to display content from - Sound
Contact Us