In part one of this series, we talked in-depth about the importance of training and technology in your recruitment and retention strategy. In this article, we will go into more detail about the benefits of strategic marketing and franchising within the staffing industry.
Marketing Can Set You Apart
As staffing professionals, marketing is central to everything we do. Marketing increases brand awareness, allows a business to reach more qualified candidates, speeds up the hiring process and improves the hiring experience for candidates. Marketing also promotes the services we offer to potential clients and highlights what differentiates us from other staffing companies. However, if done incorrectly, marketing can have a negative impact on your business.
Before launching a successful marketing campaign, you need to conduct extensive research to learn more about your target audience and where they consume content. Your candidates might be spending most of their time on TikTok, whereas potential clients could still be keeping up with the local business journal. How will you reach both audiences? You also need to determine your goal for the campaign. Is it to build awareness? Increase applicant flow? Attract potential clients? All of the above? The tactics you leverage need to align with your end goal for the campaign to be successful.
For example, last summer, to encourage job candidates to seek out work in the midst of the pandemic and celebrate our incredible employees, we launched the first ever Spherion Works Sweepstakes campaign. The campaign awarded Spherion employees in good standing exciting prizes, resulting in increased employee recruitment and retention for our franchisees. The campaign also helped build candidate pipelines for our existing clients while attracting new ones. The sweepstakes was such a success that we decided to bring it back this year, awarding more than $150,000 in cash prizes nationwide and a grand prize of a brand new hybrid pickup truck to our employees.
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Franchising Is Key to Support and Efficiency
Small business owners are extremely busy, so those who feel they won’t have time to be creative in their staffing and recruiting strategies might consider looking into a franchise opportunity. When you franchise with a staffing business, you’ll likely be able to pass on the burden of administrative tasks like payroll, billing and invoicing. You’ll also receive support in marketing and training so you can focus on running your business. And you’ll have access to the latest technology and tools in a cost-efficient way, thanks to economies of scale. For those not part of a franchise, I’d suggest looking into vendors who can help outsource those tasks to gain internal efficiencies.
At Spherion, the cohesion among our corporate support and field staff is also key to our franchisees’ success. Business ownership can be lonely and most people don’t understand how taxing daily operations can be. But when you’re part of a franchise brand, you have access to an incredible peer group that you can learn from, lean on and celebrate with.
Regardless of whether you’re part of a franchise or are pursuing business ownership on your own, to succeed in the staffing industry, you need to remain curious and open to learning. Test new tools, strategies and technologies and, if you fail, fail fast and learn from your mistakes. The substance of our work may remain the same, but our overall strategies and practices need to be pushed outside the box in order to move our businesses and the industry forward.