The search for new clients is always difficult in a competitive recruitment market. In order to grow and become financially sustainable, every recruitment agency must consistently seek out clients who can support them in the long run.
We have had a lot of recruiters writing to us on LinkedIn and dropping in emails on “how to get clients for a staffing agency?” or even “how do we keep finding endless clients?” and we realized why not dedicate a full-fledged detailed article for this.
Traditionally, outreach activities like posting job openings, shortlisting candidates, and conducting interviews, among other things, are just sufficient for a recruitment agency. And just focusing on this will never make you successful in getting clients in the long run.
You need some out-of-the-box recruitment marketing techniques!
How To Get Clients As A Recruiter?
You may boost your own outreach by taking a more proactive approach and streamlining your recruiting agency’s efforts by using some of the tactics discussed below.
1. Firstly, Have Your Client Persona Ready
Your primary task is to first identify your target audience. Map out the following—
- Who are your prospective clients?
- Where will you find this target client base? Is it primarily LinkedIn?
- Do you have your client persona ready?
- What are you willing to offer to your prospective clients?
Get these ready before you even plan how you’re going to reach out.
2. Find Clients Via Job Posting Websites
Job posting websites are a goldmine for finding clients for your recruitment agency. If you ignore or underutilize them, you may be missing out on something significant.
Job boards are typically nothing but job search engines. There are a lot of companies that post open roles they are hiring for on these job posting websites.
There are several niche job forums catering to various industries like Monster, Snag, and Craigslist. Carefully evaluate companies continuously posting their open job roles on these websites. It could either mean they are aggressively hiring or failing to hire for their open roles.
Keep an eye out. Reach out to them and pitch your recruiting agency. Tell them how you can help double their talent or meet their needs with the talent pipeline in your recruiting database.
3. Utilise Social Media
Over 80% of companies are using social media to hire new candidates.
Businesses use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media sites as recruitment advertising platforms in order to hire. That’s a sizable number of followers and potential clients for you to contact as you concentrate on expanding your client list.
Nowadays, having professional networks on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn or in several related pages and groups would be amazing tools for creating connections and attracting clients, even if they are not actively seeking employment.
Keep a track of what your prospective clients are doing. If they are renting a new office or releasing a new product, reach out and congratulate them and ask if they are in need of new talent.
4. Send Out Cold Emails
If you think email marketing is dead, then you’re very wrong.
As per HubSpot, email generates $42 for every $1 spent, making it one of the most effective options available for recruitment agencies.
You may try sending out cold emails. Cold emails might lead to an empty worksheet that fills up during the weekend.
However, the way in which you send such emails is crucial.
You might improve your cold email writing skills by watching many YouTube videos or enrolling in an online course. Professionally written personalized emails will enhance your open rates, improving the probability of successful client conversions.
Your agency might even want to sign up for mass emailing software or even build your own to target a large number of prospective clients in one go.
It is just as important to keep track of the performance of your emails as it is to produce them. So, keep an eye on the results. List all of the objectives you wish to achieve with these emails and grade your success accordingly.
Read more: Understanding the basics of cold emails.
5. Phone Calls For Follow-Up
Following up is critical.
Despite the fact that email marketing is an important tool, a survey found that 60% of potential customers say no four times before saying yes, while 48% of recruiters never make a single follow-up effort.
Your client may have planned to contact you to review further during the first conversation, but owing to the demands of their day-to-day operations, this may have slid lower down their priority list.
They will sometimes entirely forget that they received your email. As a consequence, making a follow-up phone call is extremely crucial.
Existing clients should also be polled during follow-up calls to determine their level of satisfaction with your service.
6. Promote Client Referrals
In terms of gaining new clients for your recruiting firm, your readiness to seek referrals from prior clients may make or break your sales.
There is no better or more cost-effective marketing or outreach tactic than word-of-mouth recommendations. Did you know that 78% of people rave about their favorite recent experiences to people they know at least once per week?
Consider points of contact who have just migrated to a new firm but may give insight on who to contact at their new or old company. Although many businesses will spread the word about you to their contacts, others may need to be reminded of the importance of recommendations.
Don’t be afraid to ask for them, whether during a normal chat, an email marketing campaign, or a talk with a key contact person.
Send your clients a handwritten thank you note and two copies of your business card, one for themselves and one to share with a colleague or friend. As the world becomes more and more digital, these personalized touches may go far.
7. Networking Is Crucial
Networking may benefit you and your organization, whether you are a top executive or a junior member of the team.
First and foremost, most people will consider attending industry or local networking events.
Networking, on the other hand, may mean much more. You may rely on old college friends, former colleagues, superiors, subordinates, fellow acquaintances, and even local businesses in the area that is not in competition to assist you. If you somehow lost their contacts, use tools like TruthFinder to reconnect with them.
They may be aware of prospective clients that need your services. That is why having a strong network and cultivating great connections with everyone you come into contact with is vital to your outreach efforts.
Simply being active on LinkedIn might not help you up your networking game.
8. Cold Calling
Recruiters must understand cold calling strategies in order to ensure a successful recruitment process. Cold calling promotes your company and helps you get not just more candidates but also clients.
Trust us; cold calling works wonders in recruitment!
Unconsciously, soliciting favorable brand imagery creates a positive brand image in the eyes of prospective clients.
A boring and uninspiring cold call will not instill trust in your recruiting agency. On the other hand, if you sound eager and energetic, you transmit that same energy to the other person. This piques the listener’s interest and boosts engagement.
An excellent cold calling script contains inquisitive questions about the client’s requirements, candidate’s background, number of open positions, experience, and skills required.
Also, call records are a valuable resource that should never be underestimated. Successful recruiters should videotape their cold calls and use them for training other recruiters.
9. Content Promotion & Advertisements
Recruitment requires a diverse set of tactics. Blogs are an excellent method to shed light on what happens behind the scenes. Your blog content has the ability to have a large impact on your audience.
You may want to try delivering value if you’re always looking for new methods to attract clients. As a result, you can ensure that you generate non-spammy content that your clients will find interesting enough to read.
A brochure is a non-digital complement to a recruitment agency’s blog. It’s also a terrific approach to establishing oneself as an expert. However, instead of producing brochures, make a digital PDF available on your website with job postings and candidate and client feedback.
Infographics, case studies, and guides are also an excellent recruitment marketing tool. They combine the strength of words, facts, and visuals.
Apart from these, podcasts are an invaluable way to reach a larger audience. Many online resources are available to help businesses get started with podcasting. With a little time and money for equipment, you’ll be evangelizing your company to a whole new audience in no time.
Recruiters and talent acquisition professionals should also start prioritizing video content in their content marketing strategy.
10. Request Client Testimonials
Include client testimonials in your job advertisements and on your careers site. This may assist you in recruiting candidates, engaging, and retaining top clients. Excellent testimonials on your website or third-party employment forums are an amazing way to attract newer clients.
These are some of the exact mixes of ways how recruiters find clients for their business. Let us know in the comments below the different ways you get clients for your staffing agency.
