TALiNT Partners has been tracking the rise of marketing in recruitment since the first lockdown in 2020, when the best in the sector doubled down on data, brand and value-adding, differentiating content. 

Over the last two years, conversation about the impact of AI in recruitment amongst our network has focused on data management and the role of marketing in enabling sales to optimise talent intelligence for better conversion. Marketing has a louder voice in transformation, selecting more fit for purpose rectech, and ensuring it’s maximised.   

On 14th August, Access Recruitment hosted a lunch for 20 marketing leaders from the sector’s best staffing, search and talent solutions firms to share tips and tactics on marketing effectiveness. Deftly chaired by Allie Lawson, Global Marketing Director of Access Recruitment, the discussion explored the challenges and opportunities for marketing leaders.  

Kicking off the debate, Eva Clarke, Marketing Manager at Cititec Talent said: “Although Marketing delivers high-quality leads, we sometimes face accountability for their conversion rates, which can lead to us becoming more involved in business development. If consultants don’t follow up on the leads or update us on their outreach progress, it becomes challenging to track and assess which strategies are effective and which are not.” 

“Data is the best point of reference to find the right problem to solve,” said Kirsty Garner, Global CMO of Phaidon International, who added that it’s important for CMOs to work closely with CFOs.  

“Marketing should have a revenue target, not just a budget, based on agreement between sales and marketing about what success looks like; but it’s important to be able to show where sales enablement resources aren’t being used because the CFO will be a stronger ally in making sure they are.”  

Analytics is making salespeople more accountable for wasted leads. “Being able to demonstrate the margin that could have been made from leads that should have been converted and followed up on is powerful in changing behaviour and getting buy in from the board,” added Alexa Bradbury, UK & EMEA Marketing Director for Impellam Group.   

AI impact 

Last month, TALiNT Partners hosted an AI workshop for a select group of marketing leaders with renowned futurist Rohit Talwar to build an end to end, multi-media campaign in less than hour. The session highlighted both the current limitations of AI tools and future capability in enabling marketing and sales leaders to leverage brand and content. 

This opportunity, and challenge, was explored at the Access lunch with one marketing leader saying: “It’s helped us decide not to commit to any tech agreement over six months because technology, and how we need to use it, is changing so quickly.” 

Whilst everyone has super-users and ambassadors to encourage better use of tools and adoption of processes, the stick is being used more than carrot to ensure the basics are done. 

“We review all requests for marketing support to ensure they align with our goals and ask for proof of effort beforehand,” said Jenny Wood, Global Head of Marketing at Salt. “This collaborative approach allows us to access the necessary analytics, enhance the quality of content for better responses, and helps us identify and provide targeted support where it’s most effective.” 

Making consultants build a business case for marketing support has become a more common approach. Monique Sollazzo, Head of Marketing at Search Recruitment Group, has combined carrot and stick to improve results. “We create a detailed playbook for each campaign, outlining how you can maximise the content, right down to example posts that should be shared and what should be avoided (such as memes). We also use a scoring system to encourage a healthy sense of competition,” Monique said. “However, there are five essential actions you must take to demonstrate you’ve fully utilised the tools at your disposal. If you haven’t completed these, you haven’t made a strong case for further marketing support.”   

Salt’s Jenny Wood echoed this point, saying: “The importance of sales enablement support can be under-utilised, and marketing can point to which teams are making the most and least use of the resources provided.” 

Creative competition 

The lunch highlighted some very creative uses of carrot and stick to tap into the competitiveness and personal brands of recruiters.  

“Our BDM launched The Hunger Games for who could keep their LinkedIn Recruiter licenses,” said Kat Tyndall, Marketing Manager at James Andrews Recruitment Solutions. “We had already utilised our licenses and trialled the use of 12 more but told consultants they had to use them or lose them. We had a very transparent league based on InMail response rates, how many candidates were being added to our CRM system and how many placements were subsequently made. Low scorers were guided to courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library.  

“After 3 months, we used the league table data to select who would keep their licenses, even those who had the original ones, and if people weren’t using it, we took it away.” 

Another route to marketing effectiveness and sales enablement is to embed it into professional development, as Sherelle Tomlinson, Senior Marketing Manager at (TIARA Scale Up Recruiter of the Year finalist) CLM Search explained: “How leads are followed up on and how CRM and insight tools are used are built into L&D and reviews for sales, so it’s supported by managers.” 

Collaboration between sales and marketing leaders is vital to agree objectives around development and best use of tech and data. The prize is better conversion, and everyone wins.  

“It’s clear from today’s discussion that the biggest challenge for marketing leaders in recruitment is to ensure that data and tools are being used properly to understand where the holes are, how to plug them, and what’s working best,” concluded Allie Lawson, in her round up to close the debate.   

“This allows marketers to focus on driving best performance instead of having to keep proving their worth.” 

Whether it’s through gamification or stricter business cases for support, marketing leaders are demonstrating their impact on sales conversion, data optimisation and tech transformation.