Demand Generation - the Real Future of Recruitment Marketing?

https://www.phenom.com/blog/recruitment-marketing-guide

A lot of companies have been saying for a few years that the future of recruiting is marketing. I think most talent acquisition leaders have embraced this methodology, and have either adopted or are adopting principles from marketing to help them attract and continuously feed their talent pipelines.

More Budget Means More Pressure With talent acquisition getting larger budgets for recruitment marketing initiatives, talent acquisition leaders will at some point face the pressure of tying their efforts to revenue. Top-level executives are going to start expecting the same key performance indicators (KPIs) that marketing is held to. This evolution of recruitment marketing will likely open the door to demand generation, or what I’m coining as talent demand generation.

So, What is Demand Generation? Content Marketing Institute defines demand generation as the practice of creating demand for an organization’s products or services through marketing. The direct outcome is that your audience is more likely to purchase your products or services.

When applied to cultivating talent, demand generation can be defined as the practice of creating potential interest in working for a company based on their unique EVP, benefits and perks, and culture through marketing. The direct outcome is that your audience is more likely to want to work for your company.

Demand generation starts off by reverse engineering leads based on your end goals and historical data. Then you get into inbound marketing, content marketing, social marketing, and how to nurture and rate leads. While all this activity is going on, there’s ongoing performance tracking and A/B testing to optimize results and increase conversion rates.

People that specialize in demand generation are data driven. They live off KPIs, making executives happy because they know what they are getting in return for the budget they allocated. The most difficult part of demand generation is aligning marketing and sales, or in this case, recruiting. The goal is to get recruiters and marketing on the same page to create a seamless and optimal experience for candidates.

Most recruitment marketing strategies stop after they apply for a job. Demand Generation goes even further in the process to build advocates in order to drive referrals and create testimonials.

I think talent demand generation will play a large part in the future of recruiting. Recruitment marketing and recruiting needs to be completely integrated in order for companies to strategically remain competitive in the war for talent. Aside from providing recruiters with quality candidates, recruitment marketing will also take care of administrative tasks in an automated yet personalized way. The result is candidates don’t feel like they are getting the same spam emails that everyone else receives and recruiters can focus on what’s most important – developing relationships with talent.