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Digital Marketing Strategy

Built for the Future: Leveraging Technology and Automation for Growth

About the Digital Marketing Webinar

Marketing Technology is rapidly changing the landscape of staffing and recruiting. Five years ago, if you had an updated website, you were ahead of the game. Today, it is expected that your website is an extension of your sales team. Early adaptors to marketing automation are already on their way to positioning themselves ahead of the pack.

New advances are changing the way staffing and recruiting teams connect with potential clients and candidates as well as a host of new tools to run your digital marketing strategy. Are you reaching clients where they spend their time online? Can they find you when they need a position filled? Do automated emails send out to your newly active candidates? 

The team at Parqa are experts in building and maintaining comprehensive digital marketing programs and automation designed specifically for your niche and your firm’s unique needs.

Presenter:

Jared Hummel

PRESIDENT, PARQA

Jared Hummel is an experienced business leader with a history of building start-up organizations into streamlined, revenue-generating companies. As the President of Parqa, he leads with a strong financial background and is motivated by enhancing growth and finding solutions to complex operating and execution-based challenges. He enjoys working with company leaders to integrate digital strategies into overall business decisions – with an emphasis on nurturing clients and candidates through automation – to drive revenue. At Parqa, he combines his finance, operations, and marketing background to help fuel growth for the company as well as its partners across the country.

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).

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).

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.

marketing team in a team meeting Digital Marketing

The Future of Digital Marketing is Now

About the Webinar

It’s no surprise that technology is rapidly changing the landscape of staffing and recruiting. It’s changing the way that your team interacts with clients and the way they source candidates, but one of the biggest changes is in digital marketing. 

New advances are introducing firms like yours to new methods of connecting with potential clients and candidates as well as a host of new tools to run your digital marketing program. Are you reaching clients where they spend their time online? Can they find you when they need a position filled?

The team at Parqa are experts in building and running comprehensive digital marketing programs designed specifically for your niche and your firm’s unique needs. This webinar, hosted by Parqa President Jared Hummel, is a detailed overview of the rapidly changing landscape of digital marketing for staffing and recruiting firms.

Who Should Watch This Webinar?

  • Staffing and recruiting firms who are new to digital marketing
  • Teams who could benefit from an active approach to digital lead generation
  • Staffing and recruiting leaders who want the most out of their marketing budget
  • Sales leaders who want digital marketing to bolster their lead generation arsenal

Presenter:

Jared Hummel

PRESIDENT, PARQA

Jared is an experienced professional with a history of building start-up organizations into winners.  As the President of Parqa, he brings his financial expertise and passion to enhance growth and find solutions to complex operating and execution challenges, both internally and externally. He enjoys decision making and leadership in his daily responsibilities. Jared has had the opportunity to work in complex manufacturing and service-driven environments, and through complex financial transactions that have allowed him to build a very broad skill set in the operations and financial management of closely-held high growth companies.

webinar for staffing company

The Power of Online Visibility in Attracting New Business

Parqa’s founder, Tony Sorensen speaks about the importance of improving your rankings in Google’s results pages with content marketing. Your company needs to build both online visibility and brand credibility to land clients. This webinar is a must-watch for any staffing and recruiting firm owners regardless of your experience in digital marketing.

The webinar covers:

  • The importance of your firm’s online visibility in search engine results pages
  • How the content on your website builds credibility with potential clients
  • How to leverage your visibility and credibility to grow your business

We look at the shift from ranking high on Google being the most important digital marketing toward the need for website content to convince clients that your firm is the best partner for them. While your firm’s search engine ranking is still important for online visibility, potential clients won’t pick up the phone unless you build your brand credibility. 

The good news? It’s never too late to start building a digital marketing strategy around content marketing. This webinar has tips for building online visibility on search engines, building brand credibility with website content, and leveraging the two to motivate clients to partner with your firm. 

While the live webinar featured a Q&A session, registered attendees could follow-up further and get any unanswered questions addressed through a complimentary consultation on digital marketing. 

man typing in a google search

Is Google Jobs the New Indeed? Why Your Jobs Should be on Google Jobs

“Indeed will no longer consider Job Board requests to be indexed on the site.” – Indeed Employer Support – Job Board Inclusion Guidelines

Starting in 2019, Indeed will no longer be crawling company website job boards for FREE. This means recruiting agencies who want their jobs posted on Indeed will need to pay to have their jobs crawled.

For large national recruiting agencies like RobertHalf, this may not be an issue, but for many smaller boutique recruiting firms (with smaller amounts of web traffic) who rely on other job board sites this adds yet another marketing cost.

Note: if you currently sponsor jobs on Indeed, this likely won’t affect your cost 

What is Google Jobs?

A little over a year ago, Google launched a new job search feature right on its search results page that lets individuals search for jobs across almost all of the major online job boards, as well as job listings on a company’s website.

Google Jobs portal is different from other job portals in the way that Google does not store the job listings directly. Instead, Google redirects the user to the relevant job posting on one of the major online job boards or company job pages.

Note: on the above Google job listing you can see that there are three different places individuals can go to apply for the Healthcare Recruiter job (posted by Versique) – on the Versique website, LinkedIn or Neuvoo.

Recently, they have begun competing more and more with online job boards, especially Glassdoor and Indeed with their recently released features including: company reviews and typical salaries for positions.


Related Post: How Digital Marketing Can Get Me More Clients ➢


Why Your Jobs Should be on Google Jobs

With company jobs boards and recruiting agencies job boards no longer being crawled by Indeed for FREE, there will likely be a significant decrease in the number of overall jobs on Indeed.com.  As a result, if you’re not advertising your jobs on other third party job boards (LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, Monster, DICE, etc.) you’re going to want to work on getting your website’s jobs crawled by Google so they show up on google jobs.


GOOGLE JOB STATS:

Organizations that post their jobs on Google get results.
After ZipRecruiter integrated with Google’s job search experience, organic conversion rate from Google grew 4.5x. Learn More about Google Jobs


How to Tell if Your Jobs are on Google Jobs

  1. Google your company’s name followed by job/jobs (i.e. Versique jobs)
  1. Do you see one of your company’s jobs?
    1. No – (if there isn’t one there your jobs aren’t being crawled by Google) – from both your company’s website and third party applications (e. Monster, CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, etc.)
  1. Click on one of your company’s jobs
  1. On the job posting look for the “Apply Buttons” – there will be at least one, maybe more depending on how many places that jobs is listed
    1. If there is a button that says “Apply on ‘INSERT_COMPANY_NAME’ – Congratulations! This means that job is being crawled by Google Jobs and there’s nothing more you need to do.
    2. If all you see are button(s) that say “Apply on LinkedIn” or another online job board, this means Google is not crawling jobs directly from your website. Instead, they are crawling your jobs from third party applications.  Candidates can still apply for your job, they just won’t be directed to your website to apply.

*Some of the major third party job boards include: CareerBuilder, Monster, TheLadders, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, SimplyHired, Jobs.com, Dice, etc.)


Want to learn how you can get your company’s jobs listed on Google Jobs for Free? Click the link below.

How to Get Your Jobs Posted on Google Jobs

group of business professionals waiting in line

Buyer Persona: What It Is & Why You Need One

Have you ever taken on a client who may not have been the ideal client? They may be the wrong sized company, not have best practices in place, or be in a slightly different industry than you were hoping for.  

There are several different reasons why someone might not be the ideal partner (and this can go either way) and no company wants that. We all want to be clients of choice and be capable of being selective of our current client base. But where do you start determining who your ideal partner is? I’ve outlined a few simple steps to narrow in on that buyer persona.  


Related Post: Inbound Marketing: A Beginner’s Guide For Recruiting Firms ➢


Definition of a Buyer Persona  

As HubSpot describes, “A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better.” Buyer personas are designed to be a realistic version of the ideal person you’d like to have as a client.  

Determine the Title of Your Buyer Persona  

Most recruiting firms deal with two to three different people when working with their clients. The people I typically see are the HR Director, the CEO/CFO/COO, or someone supporting the office who’s been tasked with finding a recruiting firm, such an Office Manager, Marketing Coordinator, or Executive Assistant (depending on the size of the company). There could be a few other titles or positions, but these seem to be the most common ones we see in the recruiting industry.  

The next step is to narrow it down to one ideal persona. In this case, I’ll say our ideal buyer persona is the HR Director 

Curate the details of your buyer persona 

If our persona is the HR Director, we want to gather all the details about this person. We can say on average, this person is usually a female, usually middle-aged, and has been in the industry for about 15 years. She is most likely married, has a few children, and lives within 20-30 miles of her office. She’s worked in the recruiting space of HR before, but her primary job is not to recruit new members of the company. The company is mid-sized, about 300-400 employees, so she has many different initiatives to work on.  


Related Post: 6 Signs You Need a Content Marketing Strategy ➢


Design the Buyer Persona Story 

Here is the story we can now put together about our persona:  

Human Resources Hallie  

Hallie is 42 years old, married, and has three kids (aged 6, 10 and 13.) She works as the HR Director for a mid-sized insurance company. They have multiple locations throughout the state and employ 320 people on average. She’s worked for a handful of companies over the years and has been with this company for the last 5 years.  

In one of her past HR roles, she spent time recruiting for internal roles, but it isn’t what she loved to do. Since there aren’t enough people on her team, she’s tasked with handling a large amount of the HR responsibilities and doesn’t have a lot of time when there are numerous open positions to fill within the company. She’s never worked directly with a recruiting company and thinks they can be kind of expensive for what her company is looking for. Hallie tends to use LinkedIn and search engines on the internet to find the information she needs to solve the problems at hand 

Now with all that information on Hallie, we have a lot of different ways we can target Hallie to make sure our recruiting agency is the one she calls when she needs to find talent. On the next blog, we’ll discuss how we can target Hallie based on the information we know about her 

modern technology image

Rank on Google and Bank with Content Marketing

I started my first recruiting firm in 2001. In 2006, I hired a marketing agency to do SEO and PPC for us. That was before most people even knew what SEO and PPC stood for.  Back then, we were very early adopters in growing our recruiting firm through digital marketing.

When we started paying for ads on Google, we were the only firm in Minnesota doing so. We were the only firm paying to play. Consequently, I was shocked by how quickly we were able to rank #1 on Google. In fact, it led to me becoming obsessed with ranking #1 for every keyword I could possibly think of.

The agency we partnered with must have hated me, as I would lay in bed with my iPad searching for related keywords. If we didn’t show up #1, I would email our agency and ask why. Today, our recruiting firm ranks #1 for over 800 keywords related to recruiting and staffing services. We are crushing our competitors in the rankings.

In the early years, I thought that the only thing that mattered was rankings. I would ask every client that would call our firm, “How did you find us?” and they’d consistently answer, “Google.” Hearing this over and over again would get me as excited as the proverbial kid in a candy store. I couldn’t believe how many calls we were getting because we ranked #1 on Google.


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


Fast forward to 2019. More and more firms are in the digital game using agencies to increase their online visibility, which has made the process of ranking #1 a more challenging endeavor.

The typical search, such as “executive search firms in Minneapolis,” will have 7-10 competing firms paying to show up on the first page of Google. Try it for yourself.  Pretend you’re a prospective client and Google what they would. If you own a finance and accounting firm, search “Finance and Accounting Recruiters.” Do you see your company in the results? Or do you see your competitors?

Last summer, I spoke at NAPS—one of the largest staffing and recruiting conferences in the country. My presentation was titled “Is Your Website Your Best Salesperson,” and I spent most of my allotted hour sharing why the content was king.

Every year our firm will do around 300 placements, with hundreds of companies calling us after finding us on Google. In 2019, my question to ask people when they call us has changed from “How did you find us?” to “Why did you call us?” The search ranking is usually how they found us, but the content on our website that they read is why they called us. Today, 1/3 of our revenue comes from content on our website.

Where your company ranks on Google is still important, but never forget how vital the role your site’s content plays. A high search ranking brings traffic to your website, but the content on your website is what converts the traffic into revenue.

Contact us today to receive a free website analysis from Parqa Marketing.

Content Marketing Webinar

closed laptop and phone with earbuds sitting on desk

Is Your Online Brand Aligned with Your Personal Brand?

There is no doubt that a recruiter’s reputation plays a significant role in landing a search. There are thousands and thousands of small recruiting firms in the United States that have built their companies one handshake at a time.

Hopefully, as their reputation in a given market grows so does their business.  While the need to create a trusted partnership with a potential client will never go away, the market is changing, and recruiters in companies both large and small need to develop their brand online.


Related Post 5 Ways To Ramp Up Your Personal Branding On LinkedIn ➢


Your Personal Brand

Hubspot released a report in May 2018 that stated, “77% of consumers research you and your company online before engaging with your brand”.

Let me give you an example of this in action. Versique, Parqa’s sister company, recently acquired a recruiting firm with a very well-established leader in their market. He had an outstanding company and was doing excellent work for his clients.  Several years prior he had placed a CEO in a company, and that CEO called him as he was retiring and was looking for help to fill his replacement.

The experience he had with this recruiter was phenomenal, and the CEO referred him to the Board of Directors.  A few weeks later this recruiter received a call from the CEO informing him that the Board of Directors chose to go a different route because they couldn’t find any information about his practice online. At this point, he knew the market was changing, and he had to do something different. He saw what Versique was doing to build online credibility not only to drive net-new leads, but to secure the reputation of its recruiters online; many of which have 15+ years in the industry.

This is a real-life example of how a skilled recruiter, with an excellent reputation and the benefit of a referral, couldn’t close a deal because the Board of Directors could not learn more about him online.

When I hear Parqa’s clients and potential clients say they can’t afford to spend more on digital marketing, or even entertain digital marketing at all, I tell them this story.  Can you afford not to land a CEO search that on paper ten years ago would have been a slam dunk?

There are two critical components of digital marketing that every recruiter and company HAVE to focus on at bare minimum in 2019.


30 Minute How-To Guide: Check out this webinar to learn how you can build your brand on LinkedIn ➢


1.Visibility

Visibility comes in many forms, but by definition is the “state of being able to be seen.”  Some examples of building online visibility are:

2. Brand

Once potential clients can find you online, they are able to assess your credibility instantly. Your online brand must match the brand you present to a client face-to-face. This can and will be a little different for every recruiter based on your style and your niche in the market. Someone that recruits for C-suite executives in the banking industry are going to have a very different brand than someone recruiting mid-level managers for marketing agencies.  Here are a few examples of how you can enhance your brand online:

  • Build out your LinkedIn page to show relevant work experience, testimonials, and a professional picture.
  • Make sure your website is creatively designed to intrigue your target audience. An accounting and finance recruiting company will probably want to have a lot of data-driven content, while a recruiting agency specializing in demand generation may wish to have a lot of bold colors and interactive design
  • Build practice area pages on your website so that people can drill down to a specific vertical that you specialize in and understand better why you are the best choice.
  • Have a very professional flow to your website so you look organized and professional. Make sure your website’s brand ties to the flow of your social media outlets.

Alright, now you’re a master of aligning your personal brand with your online brand, right? Still have some work to do? Give us a call. Parqa specializes in providing recruiters with digital marketing services that enable firms to compete in today’s digital business landscape.

Watch Parqa’s Free 30-Minute Webinar: Growing Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn For Recruiters. LinkedIn is the go-to social network for recruiters, it’s never been more important to make sure your personal brand stands out online. Learn how to grow your business, and gain traction on LinkedIn, in this 30-Minute How-To Guide for Recruiters.

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