This is part two in a three-part series in which we discuss what you can expect from digital recruitment marketing in the new year. Here, Nathan Perrott, Senior Digital Strategist in TMP’s London AIA office, discusses the importance of content marketing, native advertising and more.

4: Content marketing will become a core part of direct sourcing

Social media strategies are simply not successful without a good content strategy. And I’m not talking here about a content calendar full of social media-only posts that don’t really provide any value to a target audience. I mean quality content that provides real value to the talent you’re trying to attract.

The beauty of content marketing (from your end user’s point of view) is that you’re providing them with something of value – you don’t sell to them. It shouldn’t always be about the careers or company culture message, and certainly shouldn’t be a “we’ve got a job you might be interested in” message. Organizations need to focus on their audience, understand what makes them tick and produce content that the talented people they want to attract will find interesting and of value. Organizations that provide great content will more often than not find that the rest will take care of itself.

5: Native advertising will be utilized more by employers and accepted more by users

Native advertising is the placement of paid (sponsored) content within a natural surrounding. It’s kind of like an advertorial, but usually less interruptive and more suited to the environment, format, surrounding content and platform.

Native advertising has often been the center of controversy. Is it ethical? Does it attempt to trick people? Is it obvious enough that it’s paid content? However, I think most of the concern is purely down to the infancy and audience understanding of native advertising. Once consumers become fully aware and are comfortable with it, it will become mainstream.

Due to the decline of print advertising revenue, publishers are having to find new ways to generate income – and native advertising provides them with that opportunity.

A recent study by Fractl published on moz.com reinforces the case of shifting focus to inbound marketing to solve these problems:

• Banner blindness: The average click-through rate (CTR) of display ads is 0.1%.
• Eroding email engagement rates: Industry CTRs range from 1.5%–4.79%.
• Skipped pre-roll ads: 94% of people hit the skip button.
• Fragmented consumer attention: 77% of people watch TV while using another device.
• Inability to track outbound marketing ROI: Marketers can easily track content performance and conversion with inbound.
• High cost-per-lead for outbound marketing: Inbound leads are more cost-effective, with over 2x the marketers citing inbound (45%) as their primary source of leads versus outbound (22%) in 2014.
• Low brand engagement: While outbound marketing interrupts consumers, inbound marketing attracts and engages prospects in an organic way.

(It’s worth mentioning that the above stats are from a consumer marketing perspective, not based on the recruitment marketing niche.)

With the above in mind, it makes sense, especially when talking about jobs, careers and employer marketing (something that’s harder to “sell” to someone that isn’t looking to “buy” it), that organizations must invest less in interruptive, old-school outbound marketing practices (traditional advertising) and invest more in inbound-led marketing strategies – content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, native advertising and influencer marketing.

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About Nathan Perrott

Nathan Perrott is the SVP of Solutions Engineering (Europe) at Radancy, with over 24 years of experience in digital talent acquisition strategy, Nathan has developed deep expertise in talent attraction, candidate engagement, and conversion rate optimization through tech-enabled digital recruitment marketing strategies. Nathan welcomes connections on LinkedIn to discuss innovative solutions for solving talent acquisition challenges.

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