Quickly fill out this form to be amongst the first to receive industry insights from Firefish Software.
Loyalty marketing, when implemented properly, can transform your recruitment agency and boost profits without draining your resources.
We surveyed agency leaders at the end of 2023 and a clear trend emerged – a growing number of agencies are focussing on organic sourcing and nurturing techniques to attract and keep candidates. With the cost of using job boards steadily increasing, more and more agencies are recognising the value of the candidates in their database and are focussing their marketing efforts on nurturing them to maximise the data they've already captured.
In this article, we examine why loyalty marketing will benefit your agency, look at some real-world examples from Firefish clients, and outline 5 steps to implement a successful loyalty marketing strategy that works.
Explore real-world recruitment examples
Understand loyalty marketing and its benefits
Implement a successful loyalty marketing strategy
But what's in it for your agency? Hover over a tile to learn more...
Loyalty marketing requires putting more effort into each candidate, nurturing them to secure a faster placement when they do come onto the market. For your agency to win faster, recruiters must be proactively qualifying leads, maximising their time spent on the right candidates.
Winning faster requires an understanding of:
How to build an understanding:
Once you have a clear understanding of these areas, filtering candidates into active talent pools enables recruiters to prioritise and personalise communications.
This strategic approach not only enhances the efficiency of your outreach efforts but also ensures that the services you offer align seamlessly with the expectations of your audience. What you want to avoid is sending roles that have nothing to do with your candidate’s skillset or sending generalised communications that scream “I don’t know who you are!”.
When it comes to marketing on any level, relevancy is key. The second you send communications about non-relevant roles or topics is the second you lose your candidate's loyalty. Why should they trust you with their next career move if you can’t be trusted to send them relevant information?
Personalisation is powerful, but it’s about more than just adding a first name to the start of an email; it is about utilising the data in your CRM to understand what candidates are looking for and nurturing them along this journey. This is where your talent pools come into their own. By consolidating groups of candidates, you can establish a clear marketing message for each pool so that you can keep communications relevant.
Personalisation doesn’t have to be complex, and the goal is to make candidates feel like part of the family. When crafting your communications, consider if it delivers on most of these points:
As a recruiter, you are asking candidates to trust you to help them make a potentially life-changing step in their career. To build this level of trust there is no more powerful tool than shouting about your successes. If you demonstrate to new candidates that you have successfully supported a candidate like them into a role it will increase the credibility of both personal and business brands.
Social proof is one of the most powerful marketing tools that can be used to maximise your success however to achieve success, you must have a bank of available testimonials and case studies.
Try the following to begin building a social proof content library:
Imagine how much more powerful a communication about a role is when accompanied by a story about how a similar candidate loved working with your agency and loves their new role.
Further down the funnel, the success of your strategy relies on candidates trusting your expertise and viewing your recruiters as experts. A great way to cement thought leadership is by offering added value insight that demonstrates value.
All content should focus on a niche, remember it’s better to engage 10 right-fit candidates than communicate to 10,000 wrong-fit candidates.
Some thought leadership ideas for recruiters:
Your CRM can tell you the common skills and qualifications that lead to a successful placement in your target market; so take this information and craft your content around the data, empowering candidates to achieve their goals and elevating your brand.
Loyalty marketing has a long-lasting lifespan if you take the final steps to maintain it. As recruiters it’s common to put a candidate on the backburner once placement is confirmed. After that point they have no tangible value, but the reality is the candidates you have already placed are potentially the most valuable asset in your loyalty marketing pipeline because they will be advocates for your agency.
Word-of-mouth marketing remains the most powerful type of marketing for a recruitment agency, so it is worth investing a final contact with candidates you have placed. Thanking a candidate for using your agency and wishing them the best for their future solidifies all of the great work you have done up to this point and unlocks two huge benefits:
A good experience at this final hurdle can offer countless new hot candidates to replenish your talent pools. Consider the following when building this step: