How to Get ROI from Your Colouring-In Department (Recruitment Marketing)

If recruitment is ultimately a sales job, then modern recruitment marketing is a technology job.

Yet, many recruitment businesses still inadvertently sideline their marketing teams, dismissing them as the 'colouring-in department' tasked only with making things look pretty.

It’s time to change the narrative.

When aligned with your CRM, data, and overall business strategy, marketing transforms from a luxury overhead into a powerhouse for generating clients, candidates, and consultants. Here is how to unlock the true ROI of your marketing function.

Recruitment Marketing and Recruitment Sales are Disconnected

I recently had dinner with a recruitment leader (anonymous) and we were talking about her goals for the year…

Profit, Bullhorn ROI, more sales…

Then she said:

I want to get more ROI from my colouring-in department!

In our Bullhorn RoI and Bullhorn Automation Buddy programs we often come across Recruitment Marketing departments who are disconnected from Sales – disconnected enough to warrant a (healthy) scepticism.  This is often demonstrated by graphs showing community sizes rather than fees generated from marketing activities. Plus, they sometimes are not Bullhorn or Bullhorn Automation / Bullhorn Analytics super-users (sometimes they barely even login).

Why? We often find that this is due to a complete lack of understanding (by Sales) of what Marketing is there for. Marketing are often not equipped to generate leads, and if they do, Sales sometimes don’t stop cold calling or working bad pipelines long enough to convert them.

Perhaps the data is bad, or candidate/client personas are not mapped, or too much time is being spent on content?

Who Cares About Your LinkedIn Followers and Website Clicks? Recruiters Want Candidates to Apply for Jobs, and Clients to Give Them Jobs

Marketing often struggles from a lack of perceived ROI. This can be down to vanity stats - web clicks, job application #s, blogs posted, LinkedIn follower #s - as opposed to sanity stats - viable leads, calls booked, jobs logged, placements etc...

Sanity stats are generated by marketing tasks delivered by a robust, targeted, connected blend of sales and marketing functions.

• Marketers should actively drive lead generation – not simply be focused on brand and blogs - AKA "colouring in".

• Plus, systems' knowledge and adoption is crucial. Connecting your website to Bullhorn (and not simply to post jobs), and using Automation to drive viable business opportunities and is a must.

5 Things You Can Do to Get Your Marketing Department to Put Their Crayons Down (and Generate ROI)

1️⃣Target your market. "Ready, aim, fire", is better than "Ready, fire, aim". Who do your recruiters need to speak to? What are their personas? Is your content strategy about them, or about you?

2️⃣Data needs to be owned by sales and marketing and seen as an asset rather than a hobby (something to keep in case it's needed). It needs to flow, not stall.

3️⃣Websites and content need to be setup for sales as well as candidate attraction. Optimise, manage, measure.

4️⃣Automation needs to clean cold data, wake up dormant data, warm up and drive heat into monetisable data.

5️⃣And, crucially...

...all 4 points above need to be connected so you can place and retain the candidates and clients you already have in your CRM (Bullhorn). (Spending crazy amounts of time and money on LinkedIn and PPC may not be necessary if you monetise what you already have!)

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📍Final Thought: Create A Connected and Tech-First Sales and Marketing Recruitment Strategy to Get Warm Leads and Real Opportunities

Want help building an automation and outreach strategy to wake up your community of candidates and clients and keep them warm? Let’s talk.

I offer free consultations to help leaders / recruiters / automators unlock the power of their Bullhorn database and website and create opportunities .

BOOK YOUR FREE CONSULTATION