The Imitation Game of Recruitment Marketing

(Why recruitment business owners are getting their marketing wrong)

Over the last 12 months, some 93,000 people have entered the recruitment industry, whilst the number of new agencies setting up shop has surpassed the 2007-high.

This has posed a significant challenge for recruitment business owners and suppliers to the industry – how do they get their message seen and heard? More importantly, how do they get their target market to want to do business with them?

Open the pages of most of the mainstream recruitment media and you will be faced with a plethora of news stories (propagated by PR agencies) and adverts (crafted by marketers) ‘warning’ recruiters that they need to “streamline” their operations (cause). By doing so, the message is that recruiters can “save time and money” (perceived benefit) whilst ensuring they “avoid losing ground” (consequence) to their competition.

But does this approach work?

Its possible, although I very much doubt it and here’s why.

These are what we call ‘anti’ campaigns – those messages that attempt to encourage consumers (or in this case, recruiters) to change their existing behaviours by taking up the promoter’s product or service. Trouble is, they have the opposite effect.

As children we were told not to eat all the sweets on the table, but of course we all did it. We we were told sweets are bad for us (“All your teeth will fall out” – sound familiar?) but by drawing attention to the consequences of eating too many sweets, our parents were inadvertently implying that although it was probably wrong for us to do so, other children just like us ate the sweets too. So that made it OK for us to eat them because we were part of a bigger picture, right?

Marketing works in the same way. By giving greater visibility to an issue (i.e. “Not streamlining your processes will cost your agency time, money and could compromise your competitive advantage”), you actually give affirmation – or ‘social proof’ – that the problem not only exists, its commonplace and the ‘norm’ for most people.

This creates a safety-in-numbers mentality: the more you see that others are experiencing the same challenges as you, the less inclined you become to change what you are doing. It’s rather like bystander apathy, where you hear a person screaming on a busy street but don’t rush to help because no one else is.

So how do you get your potential customers to change their behaviour and get on board with you?

Rather than highlighting what everyone else is doing (e.g. “Recruitment agencies are losing ground and money by failing to streamline everyday processes”), focus on the positive effects associated with streamlining your processes (e.g. “By streamlining everyday processes, recruitment agencies are gaining ground on their competitors and generating higher profits”).

Industry-wide

It’s an approach used in every industry. Take a product like Febreeze for example.

When Proctor & Gamble launch Febreeze in the late 1990s, sales were poor at best – that is until they realised that they had gotten their messaging all wrong.

Febreeze eliminates bad odours and the initial marketing followed that line of reasoning – that this product will get rid of stale odours, such as those caused by cats and dogs. It offered to provide a solution to a problem. But that, ironically, was the problem in itself – people didn’t want to admit that they’re house stinks! Therefore, purchasing the product was seen as an admission to having a smelly house – not the desired effect the product’s manufacturers were hoping for.

Proctor & Gamble were about to withdraw the product altogether until their research team closely observed the way in which consumers really used the product. They found that people didn’t buy Febreeze to cover up unwanted smells, they bought it because they like knowing that their house smelled clean.

As a result, the marketing of Febreeze switched focus à la Shake ‘n Vac (remember that from the 1970s?) and within a year Febreeze had racked up sales of over $230 million in the US alone – because they focused their messaging on the positive effects of using their products, not on the negative consequences of not doing so.

So, much like constructing your CV, if you want people buy into you and your product, you need to figure out a way to package your expertise in such a way that the benefits you can offer your customers in return far outweigh their investment in you. In doing so you will be able to increase the take-up rate of your product or service.