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(Please excuse any typing errors. This is a direct transcription for your benefit.)
I’ve got something today for you that I hope you are going to enjoy. It’s a strategy that a number of our clients used successfully last year and it appears to be working as a key convincer this year too and that is – case studies.
It’s not really surprising when you consider that the majority of us want some guarantee or understanding of what a service provider can do for us as a potential new client of theirs. If we are investing money with someone, what are we going to get a return on our investment? One of the best ways to see if this company is for me is through a case study.
Case Studies work particularly well in recruitment. They are a great way to tell the world how valuable your recruiting service is because they go way beyond a simple testimonial. What you can do with a case study is demonstrate a real life example of how you were able to satisfy your customer’s goals.
We’ll use the word customer in a generic way and what we mean by that is clients and candidates. If you are a recruitment company and you want to grow, we could be talking about how you can attract talent as well.
So how do you make case studies a powerful asset for your recruitment company? The best thing to do is to write your case study about someone your candidate or client can relate to; whether that’s a candidate or client. Now what do we mean by that?
The case study is all about social proof
Let’s say you are an engineering recruiter and you want to attract more engineering clients or you want to attract more engineering candidates, then what you need to look at is – “In our list of great clients, in our list of great candidates who have we got that we maybe can interview, that would be a great case study so we can demonstrate our expertise?”
What that does is deliver for you the goal of ensuring that your ideal customer, reads your case study and then they also get that:
- You are comfortable in the industry.
- You understand it.
- You know the specific needs whether that’s a candidate or a client.
- You know how to give them relevant results making it specific to your recruitment sector .
The best way to do that is to develop a range of case studies; because there’s nothing better than a case study to convince people.
When we look on a number of our client’s websites, we look at their Google Analytics, the pages that are often read the most along with their blogs are also the ‘About Us’ section, their ‘Testimonials’ and their ‘Case Studies’.
You can use these in a number of different ways depending on your clients, or if you’re in a competitive niche. You can anonymize case studies and put them on your website or you can put a link and say to people “contact us” and then deliver this to them privately.
A case study can be reformatted in many different ways. For instance, we have very few case studies on our website because we are in a competitive market. Lots of recruitment companies don’t necessarily want their prospective competitors to know that we’ve worked with them. We have all of our case studies on PDFs and we’ll email people. If you would like to see a copy of one of ours so you can see how to format it, then by all means give us a call and we’ll share that with you. So, we’re making it specific.
Tell a story
A great way to create a case study is to tell it in the form of a story. Talk about what happened, who is your customer, what was it they were doing, what was it they needed help with, what were their goals and then how did you satisfy those particular needs.
If you can have a story element in your case study, this will make a big difference because then people can relate “That’s somebody like me!” So stories are one element that you can use in your case study.
Formatting and visual imagery
Something that’s really important is formatting, particularly if you are dealing with very busy candidates or clients. MDs of organizations are skim readers because they have so much on their plate that if you give them a big chunk of text they are probably not going to read it all. You need to make sure your formatting is good and it makes things stand out.
You want to think about headers, relevant images, and bulleted lists. If you’ve got some charts or some infographics that you can put within the case study that’s fantastic! Make sure you use bolding. It’s great if you can put them on your website because there will be some SEO elements to that as well. People will be looking for reviews, case studies about you and your recruitment company that can make a difference.
Results
The other element that helps is real numbers. If you’ve got real numbers, not that the numbers wouldn’t be real, but numbers that can make a great impact on people. So what do I mean when I am talking about real numbers? Just saying that “We delivered the recruitment campaign to brief, on time and within budget” – though that is a great thing for your potential client or candidate to know, “We provided a role within set time frames” – that’s fine but people want to know how many? What time frame?
So specifically:
- How long did that take?
- What was the budget?
- How long did the recruitment process take?
Those are the sort of facts and figures you want to be thinking about. If you can show real numbers and real proof, that’s great. You will need to make sure that your client or candidate is happy for you to do that, even if you are anonymizing their surname or company name.
The other area to talk about is some of the specific strategies you implemented because what that does is it helps you in selling your particular services. What do we mean when we are talking about that? This is when you sell your services simply by giving them some of the details, you don’t want to give your intellectual property away but rather just saying “Our search process led to x result”. What you want to think about is “It was a combination of a 3-month dedicated search campaign, using our 8 step process that includes ‘XYZ’”, will make a big difference.
Where should you start?
How we suggest you do this – well, ideally you could get one of your clients or candidates or whoever you want to use on the phone or you can outsource it. We do this for our clients and it works well because we are a third party. We tend to get honest feedback then pool that together. Ideally what you want to do is to set up a call with one of your clients and candidates (whoever you want to use) or if it’s one of your team, or one of your recruiters and you want to bring new recruiters in, then obviously you can interview them and you will want to ask them a few specific questions.
This will depend on the markets that you’re in, but questions about their story, what were they doing before? What was the situation? Are the classic interview style questions – situation, behavior, action, results.
If you were going to look at something like that format, they you will be able to collate all the information that you need. Then you just get it transcribed and written up. I would recommend outsourcing it if you aren’t sure about what to do but alternatively, you can do it yourself.
Create a case study. Put it in a branded document. When someone contacts you and says “Have you any case studies?” You can say, “Yes actual here’s a link to our website or here’s a PDF for you to read. I’ve noticed you’re that type of client, I’m going to send you a PDF on ‘XYZ’ that is relevant for you.” That makes a huge difference.
A number of our clients talk to us about when they’ve sent a case study out, that it does make a huge difference in their conversion rate so be prepared to watch your conversion rate go up. Case studies don’t always have to be just text. It could be a podcast like this. It could be a recording. It could be a YouTube video. It might be an Infographic that you can use.
As social engagement and trust dominate the marketing landscape the requirement to have relevant case studies is going to increase. They will help you secure more business. They will help you stand out because it has that social proof element. It builds your authority and if you are the recruiter with case studies as opposed to the recruiter without case studies, who do you think your candidates and clients are going to gravitate towards? See how much use it could be to you? Particularly if you are wanting to pull in new business this year.
Would you like help to create your case study? We can help. Go here and fill out a contact form and put the word case study in the subject field and we will be in touch.
Show Notes:
24 secs. – Our topic for today!
1:02 – Download this episode!
1:39 – Case studies show people what they can get in return (whether they are clients or candidates)
1:59 – They are a great way to tell the world your service is
2:32 – How do you make case studies an asset for your recruitment company?
2:40 – Write about somebody your client or candidate can relate to
3:14 – For example…
3:24 – What does writing about somebody that people can relate to do?
4:15 – Pages in your website that are read the most
4:25 – How you can use these case studies
4:30 – You can put them on your website
4:35 – You can put a link and encourage visitors to contact you
4:56 – You can email them as PDFs
5:13 – Write your case study in the form of a story
5:54 – Stories work because people can also relate with them
6:04 – Formatting is important
6:22 – Your formatting should be good and it should help your case study stand out
6:45 – Putting them on your website will help your SEO
6:57 – People want real numbers
7:25 – People want to know how many, how long and how much
8:00 – Sell your services by giving them some of the details without giving away your intellectual property
8:36 – How do you do this?
9:13 – When you interview them, what do you ask them?
9:34 – Collate the information or have it transcribed
10:16 – Case studies don’t always have to be just text!
10:56 – Bye!
Thanks,
Denise
P.S. If you would like the team at Superfast Recruitment to write your case studies., call us on 01524 784 331
