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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]
Today I want to share seven marketing tasks that you could add to your to-do list over the summer. What would make me think about this apart from the fact that the weather is improving?
I wanted to share this idea with you based on a call last night with the marketers in Superfast Circle. We have a marketing mentoring call, and we focus on planning a lot of the time. We help them look at what particular activities they want to do in different months, how they construct everything, and how they can get everything done, and so I shared how I break down the tasks we need to do.
Obviously, I was using our 90-day cycles – this particular 90-day cycle that we use runs from June, July, and August. We have a lot of tasks that we want to get done during that period, and so in today’s podcast, I’m going to share some of the themes.
Reflect and Review
Halfway through the year, it’s time for reflection and review; sometimes, you might have just a touch more time. For many people in the recruiting sector, particularly in the UK and the States, the end of the year is often a really busy time, so you need to plan for that; the summer is a great opportunity. Let me give you seven particular tasks to add to your to-do list that I think you’ll find useful and keep moving forward.
1. Review Your Year So Far
Now, Sharon recently recorded a video which you can find on our LinkedIn profile and in our Recruitment Marketing Mastery group, where she shared the Stop, Start, Continue process. This particular process is quite classic. It’s a bit like Plan and Reflect. What you do here is you look at, “Okay, so what’s currently working? What’s not working? What do you think we should stop? What do you think we should start? What do you think we should do more of?” Pretty classic Stop, Start, Continue. I’m sure you can work that out because we often keep battering on doing the same things and think, “Is this working?”.
Reflect on what you’ve done so far this year. Is that delivering how you want it to deliver? Now, of course, bear in mind that if you’ve only been doing things for a month, it’s probably not going to deliver results straight away, but if you’ve been doing something since January, then you need to be thinking, “Okay, so what have we got from this? Can we see any positives? Are things moving in the right direction?”.
2. Do Competitive Research
Competitive research is good. I believe that you can always grow and scale no matter what’s going on with other people in the market. It’s always good to just look at what some of your competitors are doing. You may find they’re not doing anything, but it is a good time to go and check them out and say, “Okay, so what are they doing? What posts are they writing on social media that are getting more traction?”
We’ve had a couple of people that have joined Superfast Circle because they see that some of their competitors are steaming ahead, and they’re not. They want some support, help, understanding, and consulting around improving what they’re doing. So factor that into your Stop, Start, Continue process.
3. Connect With Your Database
Now, number three is around your database. Now is a great time to send out emails to both of your clients and your candidates, a bit of a review of the year.
I review the jobs market for some of our clients, and that gets sent out to their database; of course, that is something you could do, but we strongly encourage our clients to connect with their database in the summer months. Send out an opportunity to have a career consultation. This is a time of year when people are reflecting. They’re about to potentially go away on holiday, maybe for some of them for the first time in a long time. The recruiting market has been strange, with the four-day week and remote working.
We have inflation increasing in the UK for the first time in several years. There are lots of things going on that make people reflect and think, “Maybe this is the time to move”. Organisations may be thinking, “Okay, maybe we need to improve our sales team, maybe we need to increase our marketing team because we need to be out there more and generating more business”. There are all of these things going on in people’s minds.
Think about how you’re going to communicate with your database. Get some emails out and start talking to people. Often you will find people have a little more time in the summer that you can contact them and have a career consultation or a conversation about their talent planning.
4. Plan a Candidate and Client Campaign
In a previous podcast about marketing campaigns, I talked about how easy they are to create; you just need the content that goes in them. Of course, we provide that at Superfast Circle. It might be that you decide to do some Facebook Lives or some LinkedIn Lives where you’re doing CV clinics, you’re helping clients, or you’re just out there. Whatever it is will help you get in front of your market now.
Don’t think, “Oh well, I’ll wait till September. I’ll wait till then, and I’ll start again then”. Do it differently and start now. Use the summer, or if you’re over in Aus, use the end of the financial year as a reason to get a campaign together and ready to move forward.
5. Plan the Rest of the Year
Sharon and I have a particularly busy end of the year. The final third of the year is mega busy; people think about marketing and their growth plans for next year, and lots of people want to have conversations. It’s one of our biggest sales quarters, which means it’s very busy because we’re on the phone a lot, creating content and running events. I use the summer as a time to get ahead and plan things. I like to start thinking, “Right, okay, this is the middle of the year, one half of the year is now over, and we’re moving to the second half of the year.”
6. Get Ahead With Your Content
If you’ve got some time over the summer, you can start thinking, “Okay, what content am I going to need towards the end of the year? What are the conversations going on in a candidate’s mind, in a client’s mind, that I can give them some solutions and some answers to, and maybe I could get ahead and write that content?”.
Even just thinking, “Okay, rather than writing one blog post a week, maybe I could factor in some time, so that each month I’ve written an extra three blog posts, or I’ve created some more social media, so that by the time you get to the end of summer, Oh wow, I’ve managed to create another 20 pieces of content here that I can use over the next few months when I’m going to be mega busy.” That is something to think about.
The market will always tell you what they want, and you can find this in so many different ways. A hot tip here is to go into your website analytics and have a look at the content that performs the best. Or go to LinkedIn, and look at some of the posts you’ve shared and are performing the best. I also go into our podcast channel and look at the podcast that has been listened to most. That gives me a clue about what conversations are going on in people’s minds, and maybe I can expand on it.
If you have Creator Mode switched on on LinkedIn, you can do an analysis of where your content is doing well. All of these different things get you ahead of the pack. I often will look back to see what content tends to do well towards the end of the year. And often, it’s marketing and planning. Anything around planning and growth will always perform well for us, and you will have your version of that, so just think about how you can get ahead with your content.
7. Prepare the Shop Front
The final thing to do is to prepare the shop front somehow. You’ll notice at beauty salons that to pull people in, and they might have signs saying, “Get your skin ready for summer”. Or they’ll have the whole shop decorated in October, or at Christmas, for the different celebrations. They want to attract people into their shop when driving past it. For you, your website is your authority piece online.
Maybe you’re thinking, “Okay, I want to have a real good push towards the end of the year”. What are some of the tweaks that you may need to think about when it comes to your website? Do you need to update some things? Do you need to refresh some of your content? Do you need to get an opportunity for people to opt in? Do you need some new images? Do you need some new pictures? Some people in our Superfast Circle are just doing a bit of a rebrand, and everything will look amazing for them as they approach the end of the year, which is their busy time. Think about what you could do that might work.
In Conclusion
I’ve shared seven easy-to-action things this summer that will set the frame for you. We discussed reviewing where you are so far this year, which is the Stop, Start, Continue process. We talked about emailing out to your candidates and your clients around talent planning and career consultations, mapping out and planning a candidate and client campaign. Look at the podcast episode around marketing campaigns because I give you some ideas on campaign planning there. Think about planning for your busy times.
Solstice is a time to remind yourself that now is the time to think about the future. Get ahead with your content, do some competitor research, and go and have a look at what other people are doing. Finally, your website updates; what could you do there?
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Thanks,
Denise
P.S. If you want to join Superfast Circle and would like to find out more, speak to us here.
