Five Marketing Strategies HR Should Embrace

Are you struggling to attract top talent to your organization? Do you wish your current employees would do more to promote your brand’s message and help recruit new prospects? Are you doing an “OK” job but feel there are areas you could improve?

Even if you can’t hire a marketer for your HR team, you can still adopt marketing strategies to amplify your brand and its message. The right marketing strategies can help you attract talent, boost employee morale and, in turn, encourage your current employees to become your biggest brand advocates.

Here are five marketing strategies your HR department can adopt right now—even without hiring a marketing manager for your HR department.1.

1. Develop a consistent brand voice.From recruiting talent to sharing the benefits of various employee programs, your messaging should be consistent. Marketing pros excel in this area, and you can benefit from adopting their techniques. Make sure all benefit plans and job descriptions are consistent across platforms—internal emails should match the messaging on the website, which should emphasize the same key points as your LinkedIn page. To ensure consistency, first, establish your company culture and determine how you will convey that through various channels. There’s one caveat: You do need to change your messaging based on your audience, but your brand should have one clear, consistent voice.
2. Bring all employee programs together in an easy-to-use dashboard. Marketers initiate different campaigns for each of their initiatives, track results, and modify the campaigns based on metrics that include engagement, conversions, and brand recognition. But all the campaign results are housed on one central platform—typically, a customer relationship management tool that integrates with a content management system. HR directors can—and should—use similar tools. This applies to both recruiting campaigns and communications about employee perks and benefits programs. Including details for all employee programs on one dashboard makes it easy for employees to understand the programs and take advantage of them. It also makes it easy for HR management to track results.
3. Be creative when trying to “sell” a new position.Create benefit-driven ad copy that is fun to read and reflects your brand. Take it one step further than the “who, what, when, where, and why” to tell employees and prospects exactly what’s in it for them. Don’t forget to use a variety of media to reach your audience. Some people are more likely to engage with video, while others prefer written content or even an audio podcast. Reports say conversion rates on recruitment emails reach 40 percent or higher when the email includes a video featuring real employees or some aspect of gamification.

4. Experiment with new channels and platforms to reach new prospects in exciting ways.Once you’ve honed in on that compelling message that will engage and entice your audience, share it across a variety of social media platforms. While most HR efforts tend to be concentrated on LinkedIn, experiment with new channels to reach a new audience.
5. Create employee brand advocates.It’s just a short leap to creating brand advocates among your existing employees when you follow the four suggestions above correctly. In fact, it might even begin to happen on its own. Your best employees will promote your brand—and talk about what a great place your company is to work—in their own social media networks.

But it doesn’t hurt to give employees some guidance. Establish social media guidelines for employees so that your brand remains consistent, even though your team members may develop messaging in their own voices. You might even consider incentives for employees who successfully recruit others through their personal social media efforts or rewards centered on specific campaigns. For instance, you might have a “leader board” that tracks the number of followers employees have, and the number of times they tweet about a particular initiative. At the end of the month, the winner might receive a restaurant gift card.

Think Like a Marketer 

As your company’s HR director it helps to think like a marketer—that is, view all your communications from the perspective of your prospects. Make sure to focus on the benefits of a specific program or position, and don’t be afraid to get creative with your tactics.

Above all, keep your brand’s voice consistent with your company culture. And make friends with those in the marketing department, in case you ever want to bounce ideas around. After all, you’re in this together and an organization’s ability to attract and retain the best employees benefits everyone.

A version if this was first posted on V3b.com

Photo Credit: gar_xxx1 Flickr via Compfight cc