A Product Marketing Approach to Employer Branding
Think of your Employer Brand as a product.
And your market is:
1) Your employees
2) Your external candidate audience
A core principle of product marketing is understanding your audience.
You have to be continually looking for product-market fit by talking directly to your market and getting feedback on how they perceive both your brand and your competitor’s.
Here are some steps to finding your product-market fit:
Interview a set of candidates currently on the market that you’re not trying to recruit.
Have them research your brand and give feedback on what they do and do not care about. There’s a chance that your current messaging is missing.
Conduct ongoing focus groups across all departments and key leadership teams.
Educate your people on what EB is (trust me, they have no clue), why it’s important, and get authentic feedback on the current state of your brand.
Do these in batches across a diverse set of departments and team members. It doesn’t have to be a heavy lift. Especially with everyone now being remote.
Periodically research and audit a few of your competitors to see where you stack up.
This is the level of work it takes to be a great product marketer.
And surprisingly, few employer brand leaders are doing it.