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One of the ups and downs of sales and marketing is that unfortunately our customers; as a recruiter, your clients and candidates, may decide not to purchase your services straight away. The harsh reality is; that they will purchase on their time scale. Unfortunately not yours or mine.
Let’s talk about the customer buying cycles and the thoughts that people go through when they’re making a purchasing decision. It is the same process whether that’s a product that they’re buying or whether that’s a service that they’re buying, it’s exactly the same.
It’s the same in any industry whether you’re selling a fridge or whether you’re selling a relationship or whether you are selling your amazing candidates to clients.
It happens in different ways and in different time frames for different people. This is known as the buyer’s cycle. A great way to remember it, I always call it ‘the acid test’ because this takes us through all the different elements.
The first one I’m going to cover is awareness, the second is contemplation or consideration, the third is intent and the fourth is the decision.
Now let’s talk about the buyer’s cycle. When it comes to purchasing decisions you only probably need to look at your own behaviour around deciding to buy something for the home or for your kids or for your significant other or whatever that might be. You tend to go through a cycle. Generally, you don’t turn up to the store and say “Right this is what I going to buy. I’m just going to buy this now “; Some individuals might do that and it’s likely that they are further down the buyer’s cycle.
Now some people break this down into three sections, other people break it down into four.
Awareness
First of all, we become aware and then we may consider that we want to buy that thing or we decide – Do we actually want to move company? Do we actually need to recruit somebody now or later? Then we go through this intention while we start to consider it in a lot more depth. Then we have a real buyer’s intent and then finally we make that decision. – That is a classic buying process. So how does it relate to you and your marketing? How can you think about that?
Many people ask us how does content marketing work; will it bring leads straight away?
It can and sometimes it can take longer because it depends on what stage people are at when it comes to the buyer’s cycle. Often people will become aware of you through social media, then they go to your website, they read a full blog post like this and then they sign up for your emails.
In a recent blog post, we talked about LinkedIn articles and newsletters. Share content on LinkedIn, and people will become more aware of you. That’s the great power of social media it can create that awareness about you.
It could be because a candidate that you’ve placed, their best buddy is also looking to move and they recommend you as the recruiter of choice. It could be that within an organisation, one part of the company has used your specific recruitment company and now they’ve recommended you to another part of the organization. So that’s where the awareness starts. You get onto people’s radar and they may or may not want to use your services straight away but at least you are there.
Contemplation / Consideration
The next part that happens is – I call it contemplation, some people call it consideration. This is where people are starting the evaluation process and they are really starting to look around a lot more. They may come and have a look at your website. They’re going to read your content. They’re going to start making a judgment about whether you are the type of person that they could work with, whether you understand them.
Remember people will look at your content before they make a decision to pick up the phone. This is where they’re making that consideration about – Are they really as good as say they are? Do they get me? Do they understand what is important?
That’s where you really have to make sure that you have all your ducks in a row. When I say that I’m talking about how you are profiling yourself as an authority in your recruitment sector. Do you have a website where you are actively sharing content? Do you have resources available? Are you actively posting on LinkedIn adding value and branding yourself as a recruiter of choice? This is where people are making decisions about that next stage.
Intent
Are they going to pick the phone up?
Maybe they’ve been receiving the emails that you’ve been sending out to them for a while and now they’ve got to know you they’re starting to trust you a little bit more and now they want to do something about their marketing.
We often with our emails have people that respond to us and say “ I have been receiving your emails for a while, I now know that I do need to do something about marketing. It’s the middle of the year or whatever and we want to press the button on this, can we have a conversation?”
Decision
Then of course people move into that decision mode and if you’ve got all the other things right along the way and your offer is crafted in such a way that it appeals to people and they get that you can add the value that they need, then they are more likely to say yes.
If you will follow that process all the way through by creating that awareness, being present online, people are able to see you… If you’ve got your website set up and the branding you; are portraying exactly what you can do for people in an ethical and congruent way? If so you have warmed those people up.
Now some people may take days to go through this process, some people take weeks and some people take years and one of the benefits of online marketing is that you can automate this. You can get your blog posts created for you. You can outsource all of the content to an expert and you can be there when people are ready to buy from you.
So that is the buyer’s cycle and I call it ‘the acid test’. So remember it’s about awareness. It’s about contemplation and consideration. People are going through these different phases. It’s about intent and when we get to the intent part, they’re going to pick up the phone and talk to you so you need to know what your key sales messages are that are going to convince that person that’s in conversation with you. And then of course they make a decision to work with you.
How We Can Help
We have many clients who are on for their best year already because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we provide.
Book your call and demonstration here if you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you too.
Thanks,
Denise
P.S. If you want to join Superfast Circle and would like to find out more, speak to us here.
