Making Marketing Make Sense

NeonLogic

There are many different types of strategies in the communications space. There are brand strategies that define what and who an organisation is, there are content strategies that articulate the stories an organisation tells, SEO strategies that focus on the website search ranking, video strategies, website strategies, campaign strategies, and so on.

Seems like we’ve just tacked on the word ‘strategy’ to all of those, right?

Well, that’s kinda the point. NeonLogic’s function, our approach, is all about being strategic in everything we do. Sure, you can run a campaign without a strategy. (Good luck with that though.) You don’t need a strategy to do SEO, but how do you know what keywords to focus on if you don’t know where you are going to? You can create video content without a strategy, though it could be an expensive exercise and heaven forbid someone asks what the ROI is down the track.

So, this brings us to the marketing strategy.

Again, you can run marketing activities without a strategy. Many organisations do – more than they’d like to admit to. That’s part of the problem though – without the strategy behind it, how do you know what you’re doing in terms of marketing is right? It’s akin to running to a destination without knowing what or where that destination is, or which is the best route to get there.

That’s what a marketing strategy is all about.

It’s about developing a plan for long term marketing activity. It’s about setting a destination and a route.

Now, all good strategy begins with knowledge. Researching before making decisions is oh, so important. Read our Situational Analysis article here for more on that. But a marketing strategy has some big-ticket fundamentals:

What are your objectives for marketing? Are you all about building brand, acquisition of leads, product sales?
Who are you marketing to? Perhaps the most critical. Who are the audiences, what do they want to know, how do you reach them?
What is the journey you want to take your audience on? Are there certain steps, or bits of information they need to progress from casual awareness of your brand to being an active participant in your brand?
What is your Value Proposition and message to market? This one crosses heavily into brand strategy, but knowing your value and message to the market is a key component that will define your approach.
What content needs do the audiences have, and what content can you create? Are they keen to read long form blogs about your offer, or do you need to share tips or sector knowledge? Can you resource this?
What channels are best to reach the audiences? Social, website, SEO, paid, billboards… Honestly, I could go on here. The list in today’s fragmented landscape is near endless. Choosing the right ones is critical.
How is your strategy going to come to life? This is where the creatives translate our strategy, often in the form of mood boards or messaging.
How are you going to implement and measure your strategy? Can we set up a plan to get started, what budget do we need to consider, and how will we assess success?

These are all elements of a marketing strategy.

A strategic mission

However, there is one other piece that is perhaps a little more elusive. The items above are the ingredients. The steps that must be well selected and defined. But we also require something that ties them all together. This is our strategic mission.

A strategic mission could be to leverage real stories as referrals, it could be to focus on building the brand through networking activities, it could be to build inbound activity through content creation, or running seasonal campaigns through paid digital channels that feature offers or discounts.

The strategic mission, like all of the elements above, is unique to each organisation and defining the right one is key. It is the piece that brings them altogether. It is the culmination of the research, the insights gained from it, and, it is the clear path that defines all of the other elements.

So, in short, that’s a marketing strategy. It is an exercise in understanding, exploration, definition, and setting a mission that charts a path for an organisation to be better at marketing.

This is a link to get in touch, because you know it makes sense.

Elevate Your Talent Acquisition Strategy

NeonLogic

Your pipeline is empty. Your careers site is updated and ready to go. Perhaps you even have a shiny new Employer Brand. It’s time to get cracking on some recruitment marketing, right? Not so fast.

Before rushing out to market, it’s advisable to take stock, think, and implement a thoroughly researched, well-thought-out and structured Talent Attraction Strategy to support your recruitment needs and ultimately succeed in your organisational goals.

Here at NeonLogic, we follow our proven Bright Thinking methodology; Discover via research and insights, Think through strategic and creative solutions, Produce by implementation and delivery, and finally Analyse and evaluate successes (and things to work on!) to inform re-deployment.

It’s a methodology that has enabled us to support and guide numerous clients through their journey to creating and implementing their own bespoke Talent Acquisition Strategy.

Do I really need a Talent Attraction Strategy?

Ultimately, your recruitment goals almost always benefit from underpinning advertising activity with a strategic framework to inform decision making. Allowing you to connect better with various audiences, develop punchy campaign concepts, and deliver creative and messaging specifically tailored to each of these audiences and their needs, and then advertise to them in the right place, at the right time.

A Talent Attraction Strategy framework defines how your Employer Brand connects to its audiences across a landscape of paid, owned and earned assets. It seeks to determine what your organisation should say, whom you should say it to, and what exactly should be said not just about your job opportunities, but about your values, your benefits, and your culture.

Understanding Audiences

Interrogating audience data and understanding audiences is critical in learning whom we are talking to, what we need to say, and where we need to say it. Knowing your candidate is perhaps the most important component of modern recruitment marketing. We want to know who they are, where they are, what drives them, what are their concerns and doubts, and most importantly – what do they need from you? If you don’t truly know and understand your candidate and their key influencers, be they colleagues or friends and whānau, how can you best speak to them and provide them the information they need to choose your organisation as the place where their career can flourish?

Goals and Message

At the early strategy stages, a key output is defining the objectives and proposition. Understanding what we are trying to achieve for marketing informs tactical and strategic decisions. We work with our clients to define a clear set of objectives and rationale to support long-term business goals. Building a clear proposition gives creative purpose and direction, ensuring we are using the right message to connect with your prospective candidates.

Getting Strategic/Thinking Through Solutions

Our Think stage is where the magic really starts happening, defining core messaging to inform creative, mapping the audience’s needs to understand which steps along the journey resonate best with different Talent groups. Then determining how and where each key marketing asset should be used for maximum impact, from above the line advertising and promotion to inbound marketing channels for a deeper connection to your talent pool.

Analysing Success

Strategically-minded Talent Acquisition leaders have known for a long time that getting the right people for the job is about so much more than simply ‘post and pray.’ Analysing the efficacy of your Talent Acquisition Strategy, and remaining boldly open-minded to acknowledging what hasn’t worked so well in addition to celebrating successes, is key to effective re-deployment and continuous improvement.

Through a combination of tools, such as A/B testing your creative, properly set-up Google Analytics, or even a reporting dashboard customized to your goals, data and analysis is essential to continue optimizing your Talent Attraction Strategy over time, further honing your messaging, and reallocating budget to the media channels which work best for your specific organization and audience. Your stakeholders will thank you for your increased ability to track recruitment goals against business KPIs, and your hiring managers will thank you for delivering more quality applicants to interview!

So not so fast on launching that ‘quick win’ advertising campaign! If you’re ready to take your talent acquisition marketing to the next level by developing a well-researched and considered Talent Attraction Strategy, get in touch or check out our Case Studies for successful Talent Attraction Strategy examples.

Our team is committed to achieving success for our clients, by working together to create an innovative and comprehensive strategy, bespoke to your specific goals. We look forward to sharing our ‘bright thinking’ with you!

Making Marketing Make Sense