Paul Rawson
Scale-up your business through marketing
Paul has been in marketing for 20 years. Starting out in retail and then moved internationally in 2005 working in China, the Middle East and Singapore. Entering recruitment in 2008 into Fircroft, growing the marketing team from 1 to 17 people. Then starting his own recruitment company onto working at Rullion. But now Paul has moved sector swapping recruiters for lawyers at a private equity-backed law firm.
The Summary
What are your tips for marketing in recruitment?
- Have a process
- A good CRM system
Marrying those two things with well-networked recruiters makes it easier to scale up the business.
Many recruitment offices didn’t have a marketing element and you got stuck in a place where you can’t get £20k to build a website despite a huge turnover. Marketers are consistently proving the ROI of each activity to executive teams who do not see them as anything more than the colouring-in department.
How do you convince a CEO to give you an opportunity as a marketer?
Be proactive and become more sales focused. Here is how I will affect sales, build the brand and bring in ROI. It can be said that recruiters are great marketers in that they are constantly networking and branding themselves. You have to be energised to work with the recruiters, get their respect and then start your plans.
How do you define sales?
Marketers have been defined as getting X amount of MQL’s, this means nothing if they don’t convert which caused even more friction in the handover when the MQL’s don’t produce sales. We should be measuring marketers and sales on revenue and when they both move towards that common goal it can remove the friction.
Account-based marketing – what is it?
Producing content specifically targeted towards a set number of companies. An ABM approach can help a recruiter have a reason to pick up the phone and follow up with the sale.
This content needs to help your desired company/ person at helping to remove any issues or problems they have in a quick and useful way.
PPC can be so specific within ABM to target one company, one person via LinkedIn adverts and that budget spend is extremely targeted and convertible. If you can target X company at X seniority level for not too much money, why wouldn’t you do that?
What’s your view on personal brands on LinkedIn?
It’s definitely relevant within the recruitment sector. Most recruiters have their own personal brand anyway and are known in their sector for certain things. They just haven’t developed it into blogs, content etc. Within a personal brand, it’s about turning up, interacting and keeping active. The ultimate thing within your personal brand is to be known and seen for X thing you want to be seen for. If you are known by everyone in your specific niche section then you’ll become the go-to person for that purpose.
No. 1 piece of advice for a marketer starting out?
Do a CIM qualification. Don’t complain about not being taken seriously if you are not actively seeking more knowledge across all business. It will help you get some technical knowledge at a set standard.