Indirect vs Direct Marketing in Recruitment
Jenny Brown
December 20, 2022
Marketing
At some point in every recruiter’s life, a big decision comes along.
You’ll have to choose whether to try passively attracting new leads through strategies like SEO, or go out and actively seek them with a carefully-constructed mailing list.
This is a dilemma that has put many headhunters in an awkward position, with a set budget to spend and no idea how to use it.
The difficulty of choosing a marketing strategy
On the one hand, with SEO, you get to avoid frustrating your audience by writing content that captures their attention and makes them come to you.
No “spam” would be required.
On the other hand, if you have specific individuals in your network who you know would make a perfect client or candidate, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get through to them.
While some recruiters get overwhelmed by the marketing options available to them, others spend hours finalising their decision.
Now, if it’s you who is in this spot, you’re likely seeking an easy answer. So, it’s time to take a look at which would be better for your business – indirect or direct content marketing.
What is indirect and direct marketing?
As the team at Focused Image explained best:
“Direct marketing is when you are asking potential customers directly to buy from you or to use your services.”
Examples include:
- Social media messaging
- Flyers
- PPC adverts
- SMS
Alternatively, “Indirect marketing revolves more around building awareness around your brand that will lead to more business over time.”
Examples include:
- SEO
- Social media posting
- PR
- Referrals
From these definitions, then, it starts to become clear that the ideal channel you would use for each marketing strategy would vary greatly.
Although some platforms can allow you to utilise direct and indirect marketing, it’s not easy to commit to both when you are already pressed for time.
Is indirect or direct marketing better?
In an ideal world, you’d be able to do both indirect and direct marketing in order to attract as many potential clients and candidates as possible.
This makes it nearly impossible to say which would be better specifically for you, as the answer really depends on your goal.
Ask yourself:
- Do I need to build brand awareness?
- Have I already got a solid network?
- What marketing channels do I have access to?
- Where do my skills lie?
- Am I already seeing success in one area?
- What could my business benefit from?
- Which would be more effective at achieving my goals?
The answers to these questions should point you in the direction of either direct or indirect marketing.
Either you’ll decide that you need to prioritise generating more traffic through indirect marketing, or you’ll identify that you already have a solid audience that’s being under-utilised. In this case, a direct marketing approach would be better for you.
Comparing indirect vs direct content marketing
To put this decision into context, then, let’s take a look at one really solid form of content marketing… blogs.
Everyone loves them, as they can be great for positioning you as an expert in your market as well as demonstrating the value you have to offer to your audience.
If you were able to:
- Identify an interesting and relevant topic,
- Write about it in a clear and engaging manner,
- Optimise the article with specific keywords, and
- Post them on your website for everyone to see, then, over time, you’d start to see organic traffic coming through search engines like Google.
This is a form of indirect marketing, where you’d be working to expand your reach beyond those already in your network.
On the other hand, if you were to write an article that you post on, for example, LinkedIn – you’d be able to use this as a direct marketing tool.
Once it’s gone live, you could reach out directly to members of your audience through their inbox, inviting them to read what you’ve written.
Either way, there’d be a lot of value there for you.
You’d either be able to attract clients and candidates that don’t already know about you or you’d work to convert the ones already on your radar. The final call really depends on what position you are in as a recruiter and what your goals are for the future.
How to use content marketing to its maximum advantage
With this in mind, then, you need to start considering what the best strategy is for you.
What if we were to reveal that you really could have the best of both worlds?
Through Paiger, you can have the ability to produce content that attracts leads through SEO but can also be shared with your network.
From clients to candidates, new leads to old leads, Paiger’s Marketing Assistant AI cuts out the majority of the workload involved with researching, producing, publishing, and sharing content.
You can do it all with just one click of a button – scaling your business potential exponentially.
“Both direct marketing and indirect marketing approaches have their own roles in an overall marketing plan. However, they work best when you implement them together.” – Zoho
Conduct Indirect and Direct Content Marketing with Paiger
Our platform doesn’t only offer social media scheduling and content curation. It can also perform a whole host of other useful bits and bobs that’ll help your business perform. If you are looking for a way to boost your brand visibility and scale your revenue, book a demo today.
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