These are ‘must haves’ that enhance the overall strategy and help them engage with clients and candidates. One of the most important of these is the call to action on your website.
Do you have a call to action?
You would be surprised how often we find that we sit down to look at the marketing with a recruitment business and find that they either do not have a call to action on their website, or they do, but it isn’t really doing its job properly.
Just for clarity when we are talking about a call to action, we mean something on your site (or indeed, any marketing) that encourages a response. It does what it says on the tin and calls to the user to act on something. Usually this will be specifically aimed at encouraging candidates or clients to interact with your services in some way.
A good call to action for a recruiter will:
- Be ‘above the fold’ so that it is seen as soon as someone lands on your homepage
- Be nicely designed, and have appealing buttons
- Have appropriate language ‘click here for…’ ‘call us…’ ‘subscribe…’ and so on
- Be on brand which will probably affect the two points above, particularly the kind language you use
- Give the user something to do (preferably recruitment based – after all that’s why they came to your site) such as search for vacancies, download your free guide to… something relevant to pique their interest.
The recruitment landscape is a pretty competitive place, so having the right call to action is really important if you want to engage with visitors. They also give you another advantage. The time taken to use or interact with a call to action can increase the length of the visit by your prospective client or candidate. That helps with your SEO.
3 great ones are
1. Embedded video. Video consistently proves itself to be a great call to action. They can be used to promote your recruitment services, introduce you to clients and candidates, promote an event or even share some advice or tips that will enhance your standing as an expert in recruitment. Avoid auto play videos though, they have had their day (and now they just annoy people!) In fact they are counterproductive - because everyone immediately turns them off.
2. Inbound marketing and lead generation. Adding forms, assessments, sign-ups for webinars, and other options for clients and candidates to download information, are all part of your inbound marketing approach. The information provided by your visiting client or candidate should be feeding directly to Mailchimp, Active Campaign, HubSpot or similar and enhancing your database of prospects. That alone proves the value of having a good call to action.
One of the advantages of inbound marketing call to actions is that you can place them to target the right visitor. So, your free guide to improving your CV or invitation to watch your webinar on interview techniques goes on your candidate page or above your vacancy of the week and so on.
3. Social sharing tools
Adding social sharing to your website is easy, spreads your content and is a great way to engage with visitors. There is a difference between your social media links (which take visitors to your social feeds) and a social sharing tool, which allows them to share content. That means social sharing tools should be used appropriately and sparingly. I doubt anyone is likely to share your about us page on their own social feeds, but they may well share that blog you wrote that they really found useful.
Add social sharing to things like blogs, offers, vacancies (particularly high demand ones) and similar content that is worth sharing on.
Review your call to action on your site and use these fixes and tips
If you don’t have a call to action on your site, then hopefully this article has encouraged you to have one. If you do, or are planning one, then here are a few tips and fixes.
- Add ‘respond words’ to your website. So, for example ‘call us’ next to your telephone number
- Avoid words and phrases such as ‘submit’ or ‘enter your details’ on call-to-action buttons and links. They are off putting and cause a negative reaction
- Countdowns create urgency. So, for example, if you have a great job offer that is closing for applications soon, put up a countdown from a free of charge provider such as motion mail
- Specific works much better than generic. Which is great news for recruiters who work in specific industries, have targeted vacancies and so on
- Test, then test and after that, test again. Knowing what works and what doesn’t is the best way to make the most of your call to action strategy
If you have a great social media presence, fantastic email campaigns or pretty much any other marketing in place, then a call to action is one of the best ways to convert. We suggest you review it regularly (now is a good time) and use the above tips to optimise it as you go.