How To Align With Your Target Candidate Audience
Talent teams are talking to their ideal candidate personas all day, every day. They're sitting on intel gold.
30-second read (+0:47 video)
Ask, then create, then execute, then iterate.
That’s the process for always aligning with your target audience. It’s the ultimate display of empathy—as far as talent marketing is concerned.
You and your team are talking to your ideal candidate personas all day, every day. You're sitting on intel gold.
Ask your candidates:
How do you search for new opportunities?
Then map your marketing strategy to that path so you’re in all of those places.
Are you ok with receiving a cold message from a recruiter? If so, in what channel? And what should that message contain?
Then send those messages.
What information do you need in order to opt-in or out before starting a conversation? In what format do you want to consume this information? And where do you want to discover it?
Then create that content and distribute it wherever they want it.
Stop assuming how people behave and what they want. Just ask. They’ll tell you.
Then reverse engineer everything to match it.
Easier said than done?
I do this at Before You Apply with our target market. It’s what informs all of our go-to-market decisions—from strategy to content + distribution to hiring.
It’s why we don't do cold sales outreach. Our prospective buyers tell us that this isn’t how they find (and ultimately purchase) our type of solution. If that feedback were to ever change, then our strategy changes. But until it does, we do what matches their behavior and preferred experience.
Note: In this video I’m talking to an independent recruiter about how they can differentiate themselves to clients. But whether you’re in-house, agency, or independent, knowing your candidate market at a deep level should be the only thing driving your strategy.