Staff Marketing – How to Attract the Right Employees

Received a lovely email today about the great result I helped one of my private marketing mentoring clients achieve.  Here's her exact words...

By the way have had heaps more calls from the add.  Actually snowed under at this stage LOL – You are definitely awesome as what you do 😛 !  Louise

Isn't that lovely!

Here's what happened.  We were on our regular mentoring call, and working through our list of actions when Louise mentioned that "since the election  and since I've started using the new marketing pieces you designed, particularly the new proposal template and brochure, and since she started using the new sales follow up script . . . . we're busier than ever and have to put on more painters!  We're booked out till January and getting busier every day."

Phew!  A mouthful I know!  Louise is one of those people who is a born implementer.  When you suggest she does something, she questions why, and if it makes sense, she'll do it - bam.  Even if it takes her out of her comfort zone - which marketing and sales does. But she listens and tries, which is fantastic.

Sorry, I digress.

There's a few factors at play here, so it's hard to know which variable has had the biggest effect on the growth of the their painting business, but something's worked!

And so, the next part of the conversation went like this.

"So I put an ad up on Career One and another on Seek and got hardly any calls.  We found one guy, that's all.  Where else do you think I should advertise for more painters?  We need them like yesterday!  They were easy to find a couple of months ago, now it's impossible"

At this point I  decided to put myself in the shoes of a painter looking for work. So I did a search for painter vacancies in Brisbane, and waded through two pages of ads seeking painters.  There was a lot to choose from - painters are in great demand.

What We Did Next

The issue here is a classic one.  All the ads looked the same.

Wanted, Qualified Painter.  Work all over Brisbane, good rates, must be experienced, blah blah. 

They were virtually clones of each other, including Louise's ad.

So we went to work on the ad and use the magic of copywriting to make the ad more appealing and stand out from all the others.

We applied the age old AIDA formula

• Attention - We created an attention getting headline
• Interest - Built Interest by outlining the type of work and the quantity of work coming up
• Desire - Stimulated Desire by articulating the excellent working conditions and company work ethics
• Action - Provided succinct details on criteria to be met and how to apply

Result?

Within minutes of the new ad going live the phone started ringing.  And it hasn't stopped.  24 hours later and the ad's been pulled.  My client is now busy short listing and choosing the right people.  The good news is that the new ad was worded in such a way that it would have discouraged the wrong people from applying.

Takeaway

No matter what you're doing in your business - marketing and sales principles apply.  You need to market your business in a way that appeals to what people want - whether you're trying to attract new customers, attract new staff or even just introducing change.