We’ve crossed into the autumnal part of 2021 (we aren’t sure how that happened either!) The world is opening up and it feels like we’re in a very different place from where we started this year. So how has the situation changed for recruitment marketing in 2021? What are the struggles, the potentials and the dreams for us recruitment marketers?
Challenges in recruitment marketing
For many of us one of the biggest challenges we still face is budgets. Business is rebuilding and heading back to March 2020 levels but with organisational changes and cutbacks that have had to happen it does seem that marketing has taken a back seat. There’s still the drive to change the world but as ever the financing behind those grand plans is questionable. This is particularly the case for big ticket items such as tech or new hires, both essential to pushing things forward but both on the backburner for now.
Marketers need to demand marketing budgets and educate businesses not to see them as a cost pit but as a tool to drive accountability and ROI.
Opportunites in recruitment marketing
Within the community the biggest opportunities right now centres around headcount. Building up marketing teams to either bring them back to full strength or to recruit extra support. Increasingly we’re hearing about teams bringing in apprentices or interns to help with offering a baseline level of support and dealing with some of the reactive tasks, freeing up other members of the team to be more strategic.
If apprentices are something you might be thinking about, take a listen to The Lonely Marketer podcast episode where we cover just that!
Maybe this is the time when we learn how to manage the dynamic between reactive requests and proactive work. The constant battle between what others see as urgent and strategic work is ongoing but there’s the possibility that with more support in the team now’s the time to find the answer.
If anyone finds the magic pill to that problem then let us know!
Dreams for the future
This is the part that we like. What does the future hold for recruitment marketing? As always technology features heavily. We all know that there are gaps within tech in the recruitment marketing sector, nothing does quite what we want it to so it’s about finding the right solution for you and exactly what you need to do. Often our tech dreams cover packages that are being used by consultants and other areas of the business so there’s work to be done building the business case and getting buy-in from all areas.
Email marketing is having another moment too. We expect to see more experimenting with segmenting audiences, what messages resonate and finding out if, and how, email marketing can add to a wider engagement strategy. Email marketing is not dead, many of us have just not been doing it right for a while
In our bones we also feel like strategy is going to be even more important in the next 6-months. The past 18-months have acted in some ways like a reset button and there’s more energy and drive to get going, to get sh*t done. But as we all know the best way to do that is with a strategy.
We need to get closer to understanding what recruitment businesses are training to achieve. What are their targets? Are new locations or verticals on the horizon? How will marketing play a role in that?
Over to you. Here’s to the rest of 2021, 2022 and beyond!
This article was created off the back of a Lonely Marketers huddle with some of the most senior recruitment marketers in the industry representing £100m’s worth of turnover and established around the globe.
This is a regular feature of The Lonely Marketers community which TwoEnds is proud to power as we aim to complete our mission of building the best recruitment marketing teams there possibly can be. You can more recruitment marketing ramblings here.
