Measuring Recruitment Marketing Success.
By Paul Quinn, © 2003.
PART ONE:
One of the biggest failings in the marketing efforts of
recruitment agencies is that most neglect to accurately
measure the results of their marketing activities. The reason
for this failure varies. Some agencies aren't sure how or what to measure, some believe they don't have
the resources or know-how to measure, and others appear
to believe that recruitment marketing activities can't
be measured.
In this two part series about measuring recruitment marketing
success, we will discuss three critical issues - (i) why
you should measure the results of your marketing efforts,
(ii) what information you should be measuring, and finally,
(iii) how you should go about implementing an effective
measurement system.
Why Measure?
In the present economic environment where a cautious approach
to marketing expenditure is the norm, it is imperative that
recruitment agencies operate an effective marketing measurement
system. An effective marketing measurement system provides
agencies with vital decision making information which can
be used to streamline operations and positively impact the
bottom line.
The fact remains that marketing is seen by many as an expensive
overhead. In measuring the results of your recruitment marketing
efforts the whole dynamic changes. You can clearly show
how your marketing expense has impacted the organisation
using 'hard' data.
The benefits of establishing a marketing measurement program
include:
 Understand
what works and maximise ROI. Develop a clear picture
of what mediums provide you with the highest number of
quality candidates or the greatest number of new client
leads.
 Assess marketing
experiments. Use hard data to determine the impact
of running an advert weekly instead of fortnightly, or
to help assess a trial period of advertising in a new
publication or Internet job board.
 Assist in media
buying negotiations. Arm yourself with information
on the exact quantity and quality of candidates sourced
from a particular media source to ensure you understand
the true value of your media spend.
 Help set marketing
budgets. Take a more strategic approach to budget
setting by apportioning your limited marketing dollars
to the marketing programs which deliver the best results.
 Assess training
effectiveness. Understand what impact initiatives
such as consultant copywriting training can have on candidate
response rates.
 Set and measure
marketing KPIs. Use hard data to set and measure performance
targets. Eg. Increase placements that result directly
from your corporate website by 25% within a six month
period.
 Justify your
spend. Use factual information to document your argument
to Directors or to other departments within your company
that your spending plan is sound.
In short, a well designed marketing measurement program
will help ensure that you are spending your marketing budget
wisely and will also help you identify the most efficient
and effective ways to attract quality candidates and clients.
What to measure?
Once you have decided to implement a marketing measurement
system, the next step lies in deciding which variables to
measure.
Which variables you measure is normally dictated by the
specific goals you have set in your marketing strategy.
For example, your marketing strategy may specify that, in
order to achieve financial targets, your agency needs to
attract 800 new candidate applications each month and place
at least 1 in 40 of these applicants. In this example you
would need to ensure that your marketing measurement system
tracks both the number and quality of candidate applications
received from each media source.
At a minimum, recruitment agencies should be performing
'media source' tracking - a measure of the effectiveness
of their candidate and client attraction techniques. Media
source tracking is explained in more detail below:
Measure: |
Typical
Criteria: |
Considerations: |
Media source effectiveness
|
Candidate Marketing:
Total media costs divided by the results per media
source.
Results can be broken down into:
- The number of job applications
received per source,
- The number of interviews conducted
per source,
- The number of placements made
per source.
|
What
media source yields the best quality candidates?
2,000 applications per month from an Internet job
board may sound impressive, but how many of these
candidates were interviewed and converted into placements?
- How does the effectiveness
of each media source differ depending on the:
- Skill level sought?
- Location of role?
- Seniority of role?
|
Client Marketing:
Number of new client requisitions received per
media source.
|
Measure, for example, whether a client-targeted
advert in the Financial Review yields more new requisitions
than an investment in e-mailing a client newsletter
to your current client base.
|
In addition to measuring media source effectiveness, there
are other areas of marketing performance that can and should
be measured. For example, brand-building activities such
as sponsorships or print ad campaigns are often high spend
areas that should be tracked. Measurement of these activities
is typically achieved by engaging a market research firm
to measure brand recall and awareness. Such research will
usually measure the level of prompted and unprompted recall
and awareness of your brand name and logo amongst your target
market before and after each branding campaign is performed.
In doing this you will build a clear picture of what impact
specific marketing campaigns have had on raising your profile
amongst your target audience.
Now that we have established the reasons why you should
measure the results of your marketing efforts, and discussed
some of the key metrics to track in your measurement program,
in the next issue of Boost we will continue our discussion
and examine the steps you can take to set up an effective
marketing measurement system in your agency.
Back to article index.
|