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Founder and director of recruitment firm, Ambitions Personnel, Mandy Watson, only began heavily investing in a digital marketing strategy in the last few years, historically focusing on print and traditional marketing methods. While her company has experienced a considerable ROI from digital marketing, she explains why it hasn’t eradicated Ambitions’ print outreach.
There was a time that what we now classify as “print marketing” was just called “marketing”. And there was a time before that, as far back as the 15th century even, it was called something else entirely. The point? Print has been utilised as a marketing platform for hundreds of years, but the recurring modern question, “is it still a viable marketing method in the Digital era?”
As a high street recruiter, utilising print to communicate the Ambitions’ brand and its services has been essential to the business. While COVID has dramatically reduced the number of candidates we can have in our offices, traditionally, we’ve always attracted people through our print marketing by displaying bollard covers, banners, branded company cars and posters in the town and city centres where we are based.
“Doesn’t everyone perform job searches online in this day and age?” No. Pre-pandemic, our candidates were not just sitting at home waiting for job alerts on their computers. They were in the high streets, driving past billboards on busy roads and attending events.
Not all of our candidates have experience in navigating online job searches or have the resources in order to do this. People need support in person to understand what is available. Print marketing allows us to successfully communicate with the often ignored demographics within our candidate pool.
Print marketing also plays a significant part in the firm’s B2B marketing. Our direct mail campaigns, or ‘drops’ as they are referred to internally, are a well-thought-out and collaborative strategy. It’s not enough to put your name and logo in front of someone who doesn’t know you, you’ve got to think about how your print material is going to be used or engaged with.
Is your content printed onto something useful or unique, or will be binned straight away? When your staff goes to follow-up, will the receiver remember your company name? Will it be on their desk?
Again, with COVID, this had to be dramatically reduced for the majority of 2020 as so many of our clients and prospects were forced to close their doors. This also raised additional concerns regarding what material would be considered appropriate and COVID secure, but as we’ve settled more into “the new normal” etiquette is becoming more evident.
Our digital outreach certainly requires an equal amount of personalisation and thought into how we come across to our audience. I’ve found digital marketing is fantastic for targeting and converting people who already know they fit your audience and require recruitment support.
Print provides the opportunity to physically put something under someone’s nose and place them in the awareness funnel, without them seeking you first.
Every business is different, and every business has faced unique challenges due to COVID. Inevitably what attracts and converts one audience won’t work for another, but I’m confident that print will remain one of Ambitions’ preferred marketing methods.
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https://thegill.co.uk/opinion/594-have-we-really-said-goodbye-to-print-marketing