5 Inbound Marketing Strategies Recruiters Need to Know

As a recruiter, you may think your main job is to find ideal candidates for your clients. But that’s only partly true.

Your full job as a recruiter is to bridge the gap between the employer’s needs and the needs of candidates. In other words, your job is to find a win-win partnership — one that strikes the right balance of fulfilling mutual needs.

Imagine grooming a candidate for a job you think they’d be perfect for and later finding out they didn’t stay at the company long. Not only is that a poor use of your time, the candidate’s, and your client’s or organization’s, but it can also cost serious money. Not to mention the added stress and time your candidates will have to put in to look for another suitable job.

Bottom line? Poor recruiting strategies wreak havoc on your reputation and harm all parties involved.

The not so terrible news? You can implement several inbound marketing strategies to satisfy employers and job seekers.

In this article, we’ll reveal 5 inbound marketing strategies every recruiter needs to know. Let’s take a look.

What’s inbound marketing, and why is it important?

Inbound marketing is a methodology that focuses on using magnetic techniques to attract people. It’s about setting up systems that encourage customers and candidates to find you.

The beauty of inbound marketing is it cuts out traditional sales tactics and instead focuses on authentically drawing customers.

Inbound marketing focuses on the following strategies:

• Attracting strategies: Using personalized content to draw customers in.

• Delighting strategies: Delivering seamless customer experiences throughout the entire customer relationship.

• Engaging strategies: Strategies that help generate, nurture, and convert leads into customers.

With that said, why does inbound marketing matter? Why is it effective?

Inbound marketing is effective because it helps you make the most out of your marketing and sales resources while simultaneously building long-term relationships.

In other words, inbound marketing can help you cultivate meaningful relationships with your customers and candidates — without the time suck that comes from traditional marketing methods.

Inbound marketing is a methodology that focuses on using magnetic techniques to attract people. It’s about setting up systems that encourage customers and candidates to find you.

The importance of knowing client and candidate expectations

Before employing strategies, it’s absolutely crucial to understand the expectations of your clients or organization, and the candidates. It’s the only way you’ll be able to personalize inbound marketing strategies to attract the right people.

In other words, you can’t design effective strategies if you don’t understand your customers and candidates profoundly.

So, first things first, get on the same page with both. Find out everything about your customers and candidates, including their:

• Expectations: What qualifications do your clients or organization expect candidates to have? What specific requirements do your job seekers expect employers to have?

• Wants: Do your customers, hiring managers, and candidates have any unique desires? Any must-haves?

• Needs: What basic needs must be met in order for your customers, hiring managers, and candidates to be happy?

• Deal-breakers: Do your customers, hiring managers, and candidates have any deal-breakers that would cause them to walk away from the relationship?

• Pain points: What kind of pain points do your clients, hiring managers, and candidates experience? How can you help alleviate them?

1. LinkedIn strategies

If you’re a recruiter, you’re probably already using LinkedIn. But did you know that recruiters and businesses these days are designing full-blown LinkedIn strategies? Gone are the days of simply uploading job opportunities to LinkedIn and checking for comments.

To make the most out of your resources, it’s essential to design LinkedIn strategies that work.

Here are a few strategies we recommend testing on LinkedIn.

Be picky when adding and approving connections

You may be tempted to add and approve as many connections as possible on LinkedIn. But if you know anything about niche marketing, then you know that if you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one.

A more strategic approach focuses on connecting with people you know would be a good fit for your business.

For instance, if you specialize in recruiting tech companies, connecting with personal chefs and fashion designers may not make sense. If most of your candidates are searching for remote positions, it may not make sense to connect with too many onsite employers.

Another benefit of being picky with your connections is that it’s easier to plan the highly personalized, relatable, and valuable LinkedIn content that your connections crave.

Build relationships

Inbound marketing stresses relationship building over anything else. After all, what keeps customers loyal to brands more than relationships?

When building relationships, focus on being as authentic as possible. Remember, LinkedIn connections are real, living, breathing people — not bots that you simply spit marketing info at.

Treat the relationship-building process the same as you would an in-person business relationship. Cultivate friendships, get to know your connections on a deeper level, and be consistent in your approach. Remember, the goal is to build relationships that last long-term.

Whether it’s posting thought leadership content you know your connections will love, or messaging connections about job opportunities, be sure to humanize communications.

2. Content marketing strategies

When strategized well, content marketing is the epitome of attraction marketing.

The key to content marketing is formulating a plan based on user intent. That will allow your ideal customers to find you quickly and easily.

Here are some strategies to keep in mind when using content marketing.

Start your content planning with topics based on user intent

1. Using a keyword planner tool like Google Keyword Planner or GrowthBar, identify your target audience’s most searched for topics.
2. Next, use an SEO tool like ClearScope or MarketMuse to identify related keywords and frequently asked questions for each topic.
3. Finally, create a content calendar including the topics you’ll cover each month and the dates you’ll post them to your blog.

If none of this makes sense or sounds complex, hire an SEO strategist for help.

Build a knowledge base

A knowledge base is similar to a blog, but the focus is more on informational content based on your audience’s frequently asked questions (FAQs). Some brands infuse knowledge bases into their blogs, too.

Take a look at this article called “What Is A Data Pipeline?” by Fivetran as an example:

The article was created to answer a FAQ that shows up high on search engine results pages (SERPs). Anyone interested in learning more about data pipelines can refer to this article for more information. But the truth is, most people don’t care about data pipelines.

Do you know who does care about data pipelines, though? Engineers and data scientists. And if they come across an article like this one, they may want to join the brand that created it.

Here are some other examples of article topics a recruiter might include in their knowledge base:

• 8 soft skills every employee needs to have
• How to find the best customer experience specialist for your team
• 27 nursing jobs available now
• What’s the difference between hybrid and remote work positions?
• How will I know if a candidate is the best fit for my team?
• What’s a cover page, and why do I need one?
• What steps do I need to take to become a software designer?
• 12 things employers want job seekers to know
• How to create a seamless onboarding experience

3. Workflow strategies

It’s normal for inbound marketing to start with trial and error. But the end goal should be to create systems that work for you — systems that make your job as efficient as possible.

In other words, inbound marketing thrives off workflows. 

Once you’ve discovered the most effective inbound marketing strategies, create a workflow to standardize your processes.

Let’s refer back to LinkedIn as an example.

Imagine your time with LinkedIn began with a random mix of sending customer messages, checking comments, monitoring the newsfeed, and using the search bar. There was no rhyme or reason to what you did. You just did a little of this and a little of that.

Now let’s imagine that after months of experimenting with LinkedIn, you’ve learned which processes are the most effective — and in what order.

With this knowledge in hand, you decide to create a daily LinkedIn workflow that looks like this:

1. Login to LinkedIn
2. Respond to all customer messages
3. Respond to all candidate messages
4. Message candidates about job opportunities
5. Message customers about candidate opportunities
6. Create a thought leadership post or post a customer testimonial in a storytelling format
7. Connect with 10 potential candidates and 10 potential customers

With a workflow like this, you can track how long each step takes, divvy out tasks to an assistant if needed, and move on to your next workflow.

See the difference? With a workflow like this, you can track how long each step takes, divvy out tasks to an assistant if needed, and move on to your next workflow.

Without a workflow, your efforts on LinkedIn might’ve taken 3 or 4 hours, easily. But with a workflow in place, your LinkedIn efforts might only take an hour or two.

So, your next order of business? Create workflows for every aspect of your business. From email marketing to social media marketing, content marketing, and correspondence, make sure everything has a solid process in place.

4. Prioritize highlighting remote work content and opportunities

Unless you’re in a brick-and-mortar niche like nursing or manufacturing, it’s critical to focus on remote work opportunities.

In a pandemic world, businesses and employees alike are opting for more remote environments. That’s why positioning yourself as a recruiter that specializes in secure remote work can go a long way.

Here are some areas of expertise to focus on if your niche prioritizes remote work:

• Companies and job seekers interested in hybrid or remote work models
• Remote benefits packages
• Flexible benefits (i.e., employees can choose their own schedules)
• Project-based work versus hourly
• Collaborating and communicating in a remote environment
• Onboarding remote workers securely
• How to find remote workers
• How to find remote jobs

5. Email marketing

This strategy might be the last, but it might also be the most powerful.

Having a curated email list is a lot like attending a party with all of your hottest leads.

With a highly curated email list, you don’t have to worry about striking up a conversation with someone you just met. Instead, you’re speaking to the right people every time.

With email marketing, you have the perfect channel to:

• Update job seekers on current job opportunities
• Update employers on desirable candidates
• Connect personally with your leads
• Develop lasting relationships with your leads
• Check-in with your leads
• Test lead magnets, like webinars and freebies
• Cross-market from your other channels (i.e., sharing blog posts)

Wrap up

Your job as a recruiter isn’t to find the perfect candidates for your clients. Your job is to bridge the gap between the needs of employers and candidates alike.

The good news? You can use several inbound marketing strategies to strike the right balance of fulfilling mutual needs.