Top Brands Attract Top Talent – Online Branding for Your Business

In the world of recruitment, the term “Branding” usually falls outside of the Recruiter’s core focus area, yet it is one of the most integral parts to any recruitment marketing strategy. The truth of the matter is that brands attract talent. Both the active and passive market wants to ultimately work for a company that meets with their ideals. In today’s fantastic world of the Internet, people can gather information through online search, interact via social platforms and consume any form of media with the simple click of a mouse.

How employment branding works –

Because employment branding appeals directly to the hearts, thoughts and visions of your potential employees, it gets that potential market in the mind-set that they want to be a part of something that appeals to them far more than their current positions – it’s the question you want them to ask themselves: “Maybe I could be happier if I were a part of that company”. Yet that takes care of one market, the active talent. What about those people that are content, comfortable and not really in the market to move? Your branding and advertising strategy needs to catch their interest. These individuals need be attracted to a powerfully convincing reason to want to consider a change.

There are so many South African Job Seekers in the market with access to job content at their fingertips, they are becoming far savvier – they are now taking the lead and being proactive in personally approaching companies that they want to work for rather than relying on agencies or companies to hopefully contact them. So why then are Recruiters not leveraging this opportunity to advertise and communicate with this receptive passive market? As a company it is becoming increasingly pertinent to be aware of the fact that your brand should be positioned as the brand of choice if you want to attract and retain the right talent. Online branding offers your company the ideal platform to market your brand, product and services to a very specific market – leverage it.

Unfortunately one of the stumbling blocks towards leveraging this powerful tool called ’employer branding’ is the internal corporate red-tape. There are no set Employment branding rules, each company is different and it is a business tool there to aid you in building credibility, trust and to attract the right active and passive market, which in turn could be placed by you. So drown out the noise of what you are hearing in the industry, and make an informed decision as to what you as Recruitment professional really need from the plethora of online advertising options.

If you want to create a talent pool of quality and relevant CV’s while building community of relevant industry professionals with whom you can interact, then it is time for you to start thinking ahead and plan your brand awareness strategy today. There are many platforms that can be used within your online branding strategy, however to give your company an idea of where to start, let’s begin with an overview of the platforms that your company should be considering:

Available platforms for Employer Branding Strategy:

Banner Advertising: – if you have an understanding of where your target market is, then banner advertising is a good place to start accessing the right market the display advertising with a strong call to action. You could advertise on generalist job websites such as Jobs.co.za and niche job sites (such as BizCommunity)- and even look at extending your strategy outside that of job websites and potentially look at news, lifestyle websites. By doing this you are communicating to the right market and creating relevant brand awareness.

Niche websites:- there are a number of niche websites where you are able to access a market that will land on a site of interest For example a gadgets site where the intended market is accessing “techies” would be the ideal platform for you to position your brand if you are likely to be looking for PHP developers or other technically minded individuals. The campaign can be structured in such a way that the call to action drives users to search through available positions and to register their CV’s on your careers website while building your own talent pool.

Segmentation and Target Advertising – with today’s amazing technology, the ability to segment and target a specific markets through banner campaigns, eNewsletters, sponsorships and dedicated mailers is readily available to Recruiters. This route is a great way to become top of mind with your target market that is receptive to your message.

Facebook:– this platform is an effective tool when companies want to create brand awareness and engage with their target audience. There is the free avenue whereby your company has a Facebook page which allows interaction between your company and individuals that have liked your page. While the paid for option (paid search advertising) offers you the ability to directly target a specified target market. Employee participation is also an option to consider leveraging off your existing employees to ‘comment’ about the working life and culture to help attract the target audience. Facebook offers great search options when placing paid for advertising, which reach people within their specific interest areas.

LinkedIn:– LinkedIn is a professional networking tool that Recruiters can use to and connect with. You are also able to advertise your company by using the company profile pages to get your company the relevant branding awareness needed, while ultimately leading potential candidates back to your own careers website where you are building up your own unique talent pool

Twitter: – is a great tool when wanting to share various mediums of information. Companies are able to use it to advertise Job Ads, create awareness about your company and post information about events. You can also get the backing of internal staff to tweet about the wonderful working life at your article, or ask skilled employees to tweet relevant articles demonstrating that this company is an industry leader within its field, and an employer of choice for potential employees.

Google: – much like banner display advertising Google allows you to reach and extended market that can be very targeted and geared towards offering a great ROI. Google AdWords campaigns provides several advantages over other types of advertising: it has immediate visibility, complete accountability, and the budget is flexible. Google advertising allows companies to target specific category websites to advertise their vacancies through the Google Content Network, while leveraging their existing Recruitment Management System (Careers Website) to build up their talent pool through the traffic that is sent to the company website.

Now that you can see what each of the above platforms can offer you, you can decide which of these platforms will best match your strategy and end goal. Not every company will use all the platforms available and it is far better to use the necessary platforms effectively than use all, and have an ineffective campaign.

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