6 Marketing Strategies for Staffing Agencies to Employ

Marketing for staffing agencies is no easy task.

Despite the fact that, according to data from Statista, staffing agencies in the U.S. alone rake in over $140 billion a year in revenue, the staffing industry is ripe with competition.

The fact is the top five staffing firms in the U.S. own over 50% of the total industry market share. That makes the fight to be the best of the rest pretty intense, especially considering there are over 20,000 staffing agencies looking to take the title.

Simply put, there’s a lot of competition in staffing.

Standing out amongst the crowd takes a consistent, well-crafted marketing plan. That’s why we put together this list of six marketing ideas for staffing agencies to improve their digital marketing game.

1. Perfect your social media presence.

Everyone knows the value of social media, but many companies never put in the time and money required to produce results.

For example, one of the best ways to improve your social media presence is to look to competitors to see what’s working and what’s not. This can be time-consuming or costly, but it’s well worth it at the end of the day.

Below is an example of the power of social media using two of the biggest staffing agencies in the U.S. As you can see, Randstad USA has over 17K followers, while Allegis Group only has a little over 2,100, despite these companies being similar in size.

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There are a couple of reasons why this is the case. Randstad is:

1. using more relevant hashtags more frequently,
2. linking to professionally written, newsworthy content, and
3. posting more often.

Don’t forget the #hashtags

Don’t forget your #hashtags! Hashtags are the best way for your social media posts to get discovered. There’s no limit to hashtags either, so add as many as you can without seeming spammy.

Looking at our two example cases above, we can see Randstad is using a greater number and variety of hashtags. For example, in just a single week, they used everything from #environment and #STEM to #scenarioplanning and #leadership.

Randstad focuses on current event keywords to bring in traffic and industry hashtags to build the right audience—and it’s been a successful approach worth replicating.

Some other common recruiting and staffing agency related keywords to include throughout your social posts are:

What should you post? Content is King

Okay, so you know you’re supposed to use hashtags, but what should you actually be posting on your social media channels?

One great thing to post on social media are articles from your blog. That way, you can direct traffic back to your website and simultaneously add value for readers with quality content (more on this later).

Here’s an example of one of the largest staffing agencies in the US, Robert Half, using their blog to help fill their social media with quality content.

Or, if you don’t have a blog, you can also post articles from authoritative, industry-related sites to help build your domain authority. For example, here’s an article from The Muse about interview tips that has been shared thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter, including by a number of staffing agencies.

Many staffing agencies will also post news related articles that get the attention of readers—as long as they relate to staffing in some way. Take this example from one of the leading US staffing firms, Aerotek.

What’s important in social media for staffing agencies is that content is always king, so whether it’s video or blog, content always has to be high quality and add value for a human audience.

Frequency Matters

Looking at the competition in the staffing industry, it’s clear that the frequency of posts matters, too. Randstad, on average, Tweets about 5-6 times a day. Allegis, on the other hand, only tweets about 5-6 times per week. This also adds to why Randstad has far more social shares and followers.

2. Get published in local newspapers and industry publications.

Getting published in local newspapers and industry publications is one of the best ways to improve your presence online. Not only will articles that link back to yours improve your backlink profile, but they’ll also help build brand awareness and reputation.

Backlinking

You see, Google and other search engines were built as hypertext search engines. This means search engines use links to crawl and index websites. The end result of this structure makes backlinks or inbound links valuable for businesses because they help decide where a website will be placed on search engine results pages (SERPs).

If you’re wondering, inbound links are simply pieces of text on another website that link back to yours. The more inbound links you have, the better. And the higher the domain rating of the site your links come from, the better.

Backlinking services are a great way to move website’s up SERPs, but our digital PR services do a lot more than that.

Digital PR

At Markitors, the digital PR team uses strategies like community panels featured on high domain rating sites like SHRM to build not only your backlink profile but also your brand awareness and reputation.

Below is an example of one of these community panels featuring a range of thought leaders insights on talent acquisition called 10 Innovative Talent Acquisition Strategies For Small Businesses.

3.  Improve your website’s visibility with search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.

Improving your website’s visibility on search engines is vital for staffing companies. When someone types in “staffing firm near me” into Google, being one of those first results on results pages is one of the best ways to improve lead generation.

In fact, according to data from BackLinko, the #1 organic result in a Google search is a whopping 10x more likely to receive a click compared to the 10th result. And the only way for your agency to get those top spots in search engines is with SEO for staffing agencies.

There are a number of SEO best practices that can help you increase organic traffic, but the best way to start is with an in-depth SEO audit. That way, you know just how your website is miscommunicating with Google.

At Markitors, our SEO audit combines over 70 of the top SEO audit and website review tools on the market to create an actionable plan to move your site up search engine results pages. That way, you know if your staffing site is suffering from SEO errors like duplicate content, missing ALT tags, or broken links, that hurt organic traffic from search engines.

If you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t fix it. That’s why the best way to get started with SEO is with an audit followed by addressing your site’s technical SEO errors.

For example, title tags need to be unique and contain keywords—especially in the competitive staffing industry. So, if your service page is titled something like “Our Services,” you might think of changing it to something a little more targeted. Take “Our Temp Staffing Services” or “Our On-Demand Staffing Services,” for example.

Technical SEO can get pretty intricate, but here are just a few more examples of the areas technical SEO services can help your business:

• Site migrations. HTTP to HTTPS, domain migrations, CMS changes.
• Mobile optimization. Mobile bot crawl behavior, AMP, progressive web apps.
• Site structure optimization. Internal linking, URL structure, taxonomy.
• Page speed optimization. Rich media compression, caching, server optimization, script compression, and more.
• Content optimization. Thin content, duplicate content, entity optimization.

All of this may just sound confusing to the uninitiated.

So, at the end of the day, why is technical SEO important?

Well, when a graph does something like this…

…and you aren’t sure why, having technical SEO services to help fix whatever duplicate content, site speed, user experience, or other SEO issues you may have, can lend you some serious peace of mind.

4. Create, optimize, and maintain your Google My Business profile.

One of the easiest ways to improve your online presence as a staffing company and compete with big players like Robert Half and Allegis is to simply create and maintain your Google My Business (GMB) profile.

Google has a special program for staffing agencies where you can register your agency and then input multiple locations. If you haven’t done this already, this is the perfect place to start with local SEO.

GMB profiles affect the results featured on local search and in Google Maps when someone types in “near me” at the end of their search, which is now more common than ever. For example:

GMB profiles also matter for searches when the city is listed in the query as you can see below:

Updating and maintaining your GMB profile really is the easiest marketing idea for staffing agencies. This is especially important if you have multiple locations across the country.

Google can get confused if you have multiple staffing offices with the same name, so make sure you utilize Google’s agency registration signup and fill out all the information for each business location correctly.

At the end of the day, when Google puts out a tool like the Google My Business profile, business owners would be foolish not to take advantage.

But it’s understandable if you’re too busy. There are always local SEO services that will help you create and maintain your GMB profile if you can’t find the time. Local SEO can help you enhance the three factors Google says help improve local search rankings: distance, relevance, and prominence.

That will really take things to the next level in terms of local SEO and bring in more consistent local leads.

5. Use industry directories to build prominence and relevance in local results.

Using industry directories to build prominence and relevance in local search is another great way to start your SEO journey.

All you need to do is ensure each of your staffing locations are listed in all the major directories with the correct N.A.P. (NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER).

This provides not only a backlink at each directory to boost your website’s domain authority, but also another location for potential clients to find your business as well as some clarity about your individual branch locations.

The best directories are usually industry associations. For staffing companies, that means the American Staffing Association, but you can always look to your local Chamber of Commerce and Business Associations as well. Some more common directories include:

• Google
• Bing
• LinkedIn
• YellowPages.com
• Whitepages
• Better Business Bureau
• Recruiter.com
• iRecruit.com
• Foursquare
• Yahoo!

If you want to help improve the legitimacy of your business in the eyes of the public, build a network of business mentions, and make it easier for potential clients to find you, industry directories and local SEO are your best options.

Read More: How to use Recruiter Directories to Improve Local SEO

6. ✍️ Start a blog and use content marketing to bring in organic traffic.

When it comes to content marketing, it all starts with an SEO strategy backed by keyword research. That way, you can produce content that is valuable to your potential clientele and draws in significant organic traffic.

Building a blog takes time, patience, and hard work, but the results are well worth the effort. Not only is your blog the perfect social media post material, but it also helps improve your backlink profile and build brand awareness.

In fact, according to data from The Social Media Examiner, investing as little as six hours a week in content marketing was enough for 91% of marketers to grow organic web traffic.

And it’s not just organic traffic. By creating content that helps your potential clients solve their problems, you can get an ‘in’ before the sales process even begins. Then, with a call-to-action that positions your business as the staffing solution of choice, when all is said and done, you’ll be converting visitors into clients regularly.

Just take a look at this blog from the staffing agency Swoon. They’ve been able to drive organic traffic to their website by creating informative, valuable content for potential clients.

There’s a reason all the major players in the staffing industry have well-rounded blogs—they produce good content.

How do you produce good content that your target audience wants to read? There are several strategies, but two common tactics in the staffing industry are job-specific content and employer FAQs.

Job-specific content

Interview questions are a really good example of job-specific content.

Say you’re looking to hire a marketing manager. Creating a blog post targeting the keyword “marketing manager interview questions” will do a few things.

• This keyword has a high search volume, so it has a high likelihood of sending a high quantity of traffic from search engines.
• Attracts candidates who are actively looking for work (they are preparing for an interview). This is especially nice if you are consistently filling the same role, and need to continuously recruit for someone like a marketing manager.
• Attracts employers who are actively looking for candidates (they are figuring out what to ask in an interview, which means that this may be a new experience or role for them, and they most likely need the help of a professional).

Make a list of the most common job titles you want to attract for your staffing agency. Create job-specific content around these roles, ranging from interview questions to characteristics.

The end result will be a steady flow of candidates and employers coming to your site for information about roles that align with your agency.

Read More: 5 Staffing Industry Blog Topics

Employer FAQs

Employers have very specific questions that they typically ask staffing agencies or search engines. A shortlist of common questions include:

• How do I hire a JOB TITLE?
• When should I hire a JOB TITLE?
• How much should I pay a JOB TITLE?
• What should I look for in a JOB TITLE?
• What are the average staffing agency fees?

Creating content answering different questions is a great way to attract employers who are at the very beginning stages of their search for a candidate.

Call in the experts to execute your own targeted staffing agency digital marketing campaign.

At the end of the day, the best marketing idea for any staffing agency is to call in the experts. By hiring your very own digital marketing team, you won’t have to worry about all the technicalities. Instead, you’ll have more clients coming to you without having to lift a finger.

If you want to get started with digital marketing, but these six ideas sound a little intimidating, just give us a call at (480) 550-6336, and we’ll help you get started on your marketing journey today.

Markitors is a digital marketing agency specializing in SEO. We help small businesses improve their visibility on search engines to get more traffic to their websites and increase revenue. Explore what’s in our SEO toolbox: audits and keyword research, digital PR, technical SEO, and local SEO.