Marketing Contract Staffing Services in the New Economy
By Debbie Fledderjohann
Companies across the United States want to streamline their processes. Flexibility, efficiency, and cost savings are necessary to survive in this new economy. They are turning to contractors to achieve those goals and become more productive.
Regardless of your firm's size, you can add contract staffing to your business model with no upfront financial investment or ramp up time with the help of a full service back-office provider. The back-office should handle the financial, legal, and administrative tasks so you don’t have to deal with funding, contracts, time sheets, payroll, taxes, workers compensation, background checks, or other administrative issues.
That leaves only one main task in your court to get started: promoting your new services. Most of recruiters' contract staffing business comes from existing direct hire clients, so the first order of business is to simply let your clients know that you can now provide contractors.
With the Internet and other tools at your disposal, it is easy to differentiate your firm and make sure companies can find you when they need contractors.
Your Website
Perhaps the most important thing to do is add a contract staffing page to your Web site. This is the best way to ensure that companies will find you when they have a contract staffing need. Some recruiters have TWO contract staffing pages, one for companies and another for contractors.
Make sure your contracting pages include keywords such as contract staffing, contract placements, contractors, contract-to-direct, etc. There are a number of keyword tools out there that can help, including Google's Keyword Planner.
Blog
The thought of maintaining a blog may be daunting, but it is a great way to increase your exposure on the Internet and enhance your status as an expert in your niche. Search engines like blogs because their content is updated regularly.
Creating content for your blog isn't as hard as you may think. You already have all the knowledge you need through all your years of experience in your niche. If you have trouble thinking of topics,think about the questions your clients and candidates ask and write articles answering those questions. This can provide a nearly endless supply of blog posts.
Social Media
Social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.) offer plenty of ways to spread your message. The king of social media for recruiters is LinkedIn. Your profile should address the fact that you can do contract staffing, and your firm should have a complete “Company Page” with a “Services” page that mentions contract staffing.
You can also join and participate in LinkedIn Groups in your niche. By adding to discussions and posting relevant content in Groups, you again set yourself apart from your competition by positioning yourself as an expert. You can even start your own Group to further expand your name recognition. Just be sure you are providing useful information rather than being self-promotional.
Try to think beyond just LinkedIn, though. You don't have to be on every social network, but you should be where your clients and candidates are. You also want to do more than just post job postings or self-promotional items. Remember, you are trying to show that you are an expert in your niche and that you are the recruiter of choice. A great way to establish that is to provide valuable information where your target audience is most likely to find it.
Marketing materials
Since companies want to streamline, they often want one vendor to meet all their staffing needs. Therefore, mailing or emailing marketing materials that explain that you can handle both direct hire AND contract placements is a great way to differentiate you from your competition. If you work with a contract staffing back-office, they may be able to help you put these together.
These methods have all been used successfully by recruiters who do contract staffing in addition to their direct hire placements. But all recruiters are different, and all companies are different, so some of these marketing ideas may work better for one group than another. Only you can decide which ones can help you expand your business and increase your cash flow.
Debbie Fledderjohann is the President of Top Echelon Contracting, Inc.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
About the company
At Social Hire, we don't just do social.
We create and implement original social media marketing plans that help our customers accomplish their organisational objectives and build up their online footprint.
We're a company that helps our customers further their social media presence by providing social media marketing on a monthly basis.
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