Marketing agencies that serve manufacturers can help their clients with worker shortage issues by employing the same strategies and tactics they provide on behalf of promoting their clients’ goods and services. A good mar-com agency digs deep into its clients’ mission, culture, and reason for being to provide a unique voice for the promotion of their goods and services. This gives agencies a distinct advantage to pivot their efforts to extolling manufacturers’ virtues to prospective job applicants.
Known as “recruitment marketing,” this process of specifically using marketing programs to identify and lure jobseekers has been increasingly adapted by the HR community. In essence, it relies on proven marketing strategies and tactics to identify, engage, and nurture talent before they become applicants. A key benefit of this approach for those manufacturers and industrial companies who are already working with mar-com agencies is that they don’t need to hire an outside HR partner. Instead, their agency employs programs to elevate awareness, generate interest, and encourage application among jobseekers regarding the company, rather than or in addition to its goods or services.
Here are the ways marketing agencies use their skills to attract talent and convert them to qualified applicants:
- Leveraging the client’s brand
When marketers promote client goods or services, they rely on the client’s brand to give their offerings validity. With recruitment marketing, the client’s brand and culture are the marketable goods. So, setting a clear message regarding the corporate mission and culture are critical elements to enticing talent to apply.
- Identifying & building target audiences
Just as manufacturing marketers of goods and services “slice and dice” their messaging by various target audiences, so too must recruitment marketers tailor messaging and delivery channels by the various positions needed to be filled. What you say and where you find talent will necessarily vary between administrative, management, and factory floor positions. Recruitment marketers craft messaging specific to the position to be filled and use a host of communications channels – from online career pipelines like LinkedIn and Indeed to placement professionals with universities, community colleges, and trade schools.
- Creating landing pages/microsites for job board postings and pre-screen applicants
Having a separate website – or at the very least, a specific landing page – to direct jobseekers to is an essential step. It allows your recruitment messaging to be uncluttered by your product or service promotions and enables you to track recruitment efforts without having to extract that data from your homepage traffic analytics. It’s also the perfect place to house forms, questionnaires, etc. to pre-screen jobseekers prior to the actual application/interview process.
- Marketing to jobseekers through:
- Content marketing – e.g., emailing placement professionals with trade schools and colleges.
- Digital advertising – across the usual suspects of LinkedIn, Monster.com, and Indeed, but also with trade association and trade school websites.
- Public relations campaigns in trade publications and business desks of local dailies.
- Social media campaigns – the major platforms provide demographic information that can be used to narrow your campaigns to specific subsets of jobseekers.
All the above can be used singly or in concert to attract jobseekers to the landing page/microsite.
- Jobseeker capture and conversion to applicant
With these efforts working in concert, manufacturers have an ongoing conduit for attracting qualified candidates and a method for capturing information to help them determine who should proceed to the application or interview process.
Of course, for many manufacturers recruitment is only half the battle and employers need to work on their employee retention efforts as well. Marketers can help with these efforts as an extension of their establishment of their clients’ brands, helping the company to craft a culture that is appealing to their workforce to mitigate against high turnover rates.
In addition to providing full-service marketing and communications programs for our clients’ goods and services, Studio/D has successfully helped clients with their talent recruitment needs for years. If you’re having difficulties finding and attracting qualified applicants for your manufacturing or industrial positions give us a call.
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Studio/D is a full-service marketing communications firm working with mid-market industrial and manufacturing clients, together with companies that support the manufacturing ecosystem. We’re a team of “makers” who simplify complex communication challenges with messaging that engages and drives results. Learn more about us at StudioD.agency, or call our president, Scott Dieckgraefe at 314-200-2630.