How to use Marketing to Build a Top Talent & Employer Brand
Brands use Marketing to increase Sales, Revenue, and to beat the competition. While this is a great strategy, a brand is only as good as its talent. Yes, brands are in competition to get and keep customers; but they are also competing to get and keep great talent. In order for brands to grow, they need great talent in every function of the business.
http://ceoworld.biz/2015/06/08/infographic-2015-global-recruiting-trends/
For Brands to be able to attract top talent, they need to be a desired place to work. To be a desired place to work, they need to understand what motivates their employees. While this will vary by industry and company size there are similar things that many employees seek. These include:
- Feeling valued for their contributions
- Freedom to do interesting work and solve intriguing problems
- Fair and competitive compensation including incentive and performance pay
- A fun place to work with activities to bond with co-workers
5. Training and advancement opportunities
If these things listed above are in place, Brands are on the right track to building a great talent brand provided their product offerings are solid.
Getting employees excited about coming to work each day will increase the talent pool by generating word of mouth. When people have something good they tell their friends.
http://ibmempbranding.com/what-is-employment-branding-3/
Beyond the offline word of mouth, Brands need to own their identity online by in-sourcing their online and offline assets. This starts with their own websites, digital properties and collateral used to sell their offerings. With talent branding, Brands are selling prospective employees on the idea of applying and wanting to work for their company in a particular role. This is similar to marketing their commercial offerings to potential customers.
Brands will need to conduct Market Research to understand who their competitors are and where they stack up in the talent market. Compensation, Company Culture, intelligence from applicants.
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Information from this research can be used to develop a positioning strategy that can be applied to the talent brand.
Every Brand should have a career page on their website as this will drastically reduce recruiting costs. This page should include the following:
- Pictures of employees from each function with a short bio and why they chose to work at the brand
- Perks offered with story on company culture
- An application that is easy to fill out. i.e greenhouse.io or a form with a file for a cover letter and resume Greenhouse can be linked with LinkedIn.
- Social Sharing buttons for job postings
Creating Engaging Job descriptions
The function head, Marketing and HR need to collaborate to write job descriptions that convince applicants to apply, similar to copy-writing for commercial offerings.
Providing candidates with a great recruiting experience is key to making as with out this your talent brand will suffer.
Empowering and providing incentives to employees
Encourage employees to share company content and jobs on LinkedIn. Also, encourage employees to make referrals with incentives for referrals that are hired.
If you are not happy with the amounts of applications post the jobs on LinkedIn and Indeed to widen the applicant pools. Niche site may work as well.
This is how to use Marketing to build a great Talent Brand.
About the Author
Dan is passionate about using Marketing to help businesses drive sales. HubSpot Certified in Inbound Marketing, Dan has worked on various marketing assignments including Start Ups, a Political Campaign & a Digital Marketing Conference.
Prior to teaching, Dan served customers as an Outside Sales & Marketing Rep in NYC. In this role, he taught & trained Dentists on the company’s products & services using a consultative selling approach combined with direct marketing. He also supported the company’s marketing efforts at industry trade shows.
He writes & publishes a business blog on the topics of Sales, Marketing & Social Media entitled Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today; which has grown to 23,000+ followers on LinkedIn and 19,000+ on WordPress.
Dan is seeking a full-time marketing role in Direct, Inbound, Digital, Content, Product & Social Media Marketing. He is willing to be a CMO to create and build out the Marketing function of your organization if it does not exist. If your company is hiring for roles in these areas, contact him directly via a free LinkedIn Message or email him at Dan@DanGalante.com to set up interviews.
