Strategic Marketing

What marketing is working best right now for staffing agencies? Below we examine what works…and doesn’t…to help you build a stronger marketing strategy that achieves your goals:

How do you create the “best” marketing strategy for a staffing agency? The process starts with asking the right questions to really understand where you want to go.

Why do some firms have close rates as high as 80% and others as low as 10%? Why do some firms consistently grow and add new staff while others undergo cutbacks and lay workers off? The answer isn’t simple, but firms can begin to answer questions like these by looking at how they market to customers.

Traditional marketing techniques encourage companies to identify what customers want and provide that value in a “product”– without developing an on-going ‘give and take’ relationship with the customer. But many successful companies have made a paradigm shift in how they market to customers–it’s called “Relationship Marketing.”

What’s the best strategy for your business right now? That depends. In some market segments, the smartest decision is to re-focus on core business activities. Put more effort into out-hustling and out-servicing your competitors…and take away a greater share of their business.

However, if your market segment has become too small to support your operations, a business line extension may be more than a good idea.

All too often, staffing is viewed by HR and hiring managers as if it is a commodity. Their common argument is that staffing firms all provide the same types of services drawing from the same pool of talent. To compound the problem, the industry has been its own worst enemy, teaching people how to buy based on mark-ups.

But the point of this article is not to gripe. The point of this article is to get you thinking about what you can do to differentiate yourself, and how you can become a market leader.

Is it possible to regain your uniqueness? Is it possible to exist profitably as a commodity purchase? Can your staffing service do both?

Strategically positioning your staffing service is the subject of this article.