Author: Buyer Advertising

Mobile Coupons Are Here

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These days, it seems like everything is going online. Advertising campaigns, genealogy trees, even farming (we’re looking at you, Facebook). And now: coupons. Designed for touch-enabled smartphones like the Droid and iPhone, mobile coupons work work at the app level by displaying a coupon with a specific code that can be either scanned or entered into an online ordering system. And if the coupon out of date or expired? Too bad—it won’t display anymore.

Mobile coupons seem like a cute idea, but they make a lot of sense, too. It brings chronic coupon clippers up to date with new technology, and leads the bargain-savvy into logging on daily for the latest deals—meaning you’ve got an audience just itching to learn about your products. Mobile coupons are green, too. No paper needed.

Of course, there’s a ways to go before you can shelf your zip-lock bag full of Shaw’s coupons. You won’t find many storefronts (especially in mom and pop operations) that are happy to accept a coupon in the form of a picture on your phone. But the technology is both catchy and catching on: two ingredients needed for future growth. Keep an ear to the rails (and your hand on your smartphone).
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Tweeting for Jobs

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It’s a simple task, yes? Simply boot up Twitter, log in with your company account information, and soon you’ll be uploading a 140-character job description for every position you have to fill. Easy! But hold on there. Before you go flooding your followers’ logs with line after line of spam, there’s one important realization you need to make: Twitter isn’t a job board. It’s a social tool.

Most people who log into Twitter aren’t looking for jobs—yes, even with today’s economy—they are human beings looking for recreation or searching for information (or both). To present your company in the best light possible and attract the most qualified candidates, you need to reach out in a human way. One way to approach Twitter is to think about helping other people—not yourself. Instead of focusing on the positions you need to fill, invite questions about your workplace. When commenting your answers, be specific, and answer honestly. Offer insight into your company day.

If there’s a golden rule in the Twitterverse, it’s this: connect. Find your niche, and interact with your followers. For some, reaching people is all about humor (think of the Old Spice guy and his recent campaign of individualized, video responses to questions). To others, connecting is all about opening the door to a play-by-play of their Friday afternoon Foosball match. How you go about it is up to you. Just remember to be kind, gracious, and human.

Your Recruitment Strategy: Play Ball!

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Every time you invest capital into your recruitment efforts, you’re stepping up to the plate. Like the best baseball teams in the nation (as to exactly which ones, we’ll leave that up to debate), you obviously want the most effective players on your side. Not only the top performers, but candidates who would best suit the environment of your offices and your culture. Let’s round the bases with a few coaching tips.

Keep your eye on the ball. Oftentimes, as strategies grow more elaborate, the goal is lost, having given way to packing in as much flash and pizzazz as possible. Even award-winning campaigns are still failures if you’re not attracting the population you want to hire. Gathering attention is great, but don’t forget to plainly state the type of candidate you’re looking for, and what they can exact as your employee.

Cover your bases. An extensive recruitment campaign brings to mind subway posters, giant billboards, and magazine inserts aplenty, but it doesn’t cover where America is spending most of their time: online. Most job seekers, especially young ones, spend more time logged into their personal computer than ever before. Don’t forget to post job opportunities and promote your employer brand on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, through blogs, and on your company site.

Swing as hard as you can. Carry campaigns into other mediums. Have mailers than send recipients to your website, and have mailing sign-ups on your site.  The more candidates you can gather, the smarter, more effective workforce you’re find yourself working beside.

Are You a Good Brand Steward?

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It’s a war of two worlds: the flash, fun, and razzle-dazzle of your brand and its advertisements, versus the reality of workers within the walls of your business. While the big players of a company can plan out a fantastic marketing campaign, oftentimes it takes longer for the employees themselves to catch up with the hype (if they ever do at all). When employee engagement lags behind, opportunities are lost.

There’s the story of a customer who wrote an email to the makers of Axe Body Spray with the single subject line, “HELP!” followed by an energetic, creative appeal. Apparently, this ppor soul had used their product, and just like Axe’s commercials, had been immediately accosted by hordes of lustful women. Instead of rolling her eyes and hitting “delete”, the rep at Axe HQ responded to this gentleman’s message instead played along, offering suggestions over the course of several emails such as where the hunted homme could hide out, and how to scrub off man musk off his body in the most effective way possible. At the end of the parlay, the rep wished the customer well and sent along a gift basket … as well as asking for his phone number. The quick-witted and engaged employee played into Axe’s brand strength—and likely earned themselves a customer for life.

Take the time to build brand appeal not just for customers, but for your employee base themselves. When your brand becomes a vessel for your promotions and lives in the minds of your employees, magic happens.

Networking, Farming, and You

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Not too long ago, we posted this quote on our Facebook page: “Networking is not about hunting. It is about farming. It’s about cultivating relationships.” Quote courtesy of Ivan Misner. Hunter/gatherer tropes aside, farming is an excellent metaphor about networking the right way. It’s about a mindset—and not just the actions a company needs to take to succeed at networking. A hunter is primal, focused, and infuriated every time his spear misses the wild boar—meaning, of course, no tasty dinner for his family tonight. On the flip-side, the farmer is patient. He plant his seeds months in advance, cultivates the seedlings as they arise, and harvests on the plants’ own schedule.

As any good farmer will tell you, it’s important to choose your fields wisely. You’ve going to want to plant on fertile grounds where your business potential is maximized. In the online world, this translates into sites like Facebook, Twitter, and your own company blog. But the modern farmer can’t neglect his tool shed. Sites like Digg.com and StumbleUpon bolster your efforts and catalyze the growth of a customer and fan base. Seek out forums and exchange links to stay relevant and visible.

A good farmer also knows when to weed the garden. In social networking circles, weeds translate into spam messages and negative feedback. Whether you pull out the green invaders by hand (managing content on a per-post basis) or use a pesticide (IP filtering, content management tools for your blog) every garden needs to some attention paid to upkeep in order to thrive. Make sure you’re keeping an eye on your networking investment. Be genuine. Be real. Offer value. The customers will come.

3 Commandments for LinkedIn

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It’s a great resource for job seekers. It’s also an invaluable tool for job recruiters. Since its inception, LinkedIn has been the go-to hub for everything career related. And why not? Not only can this sensation site allow prospective candidates to share recruitment leads and help build their own career-boosting community, employers can view credentials of potential employees with only a few clicks of the mouse. But how can employers promote themselves the most effectively? Read on for some quick fixes and important tips.

Fill out EVERYTHING. Every piece of information you transcribe into LinkedIn—no matter how small—is fodder for helping your SEO rankings and providing critical data for employees-to-be. It may seem tedious, but list every piece of information you can as an employer as LinkedIn requests. Even if that includes size and location of your organization and hours of operation.

Lend a helping hand. Get proactive about your presence. Offer recommendations to former employees and send messages to like-minded companies. The more you grow your circle of contacts, the more attention you’ll gather.

Plug it in. Connect your LinkedIn site to your existing assets—think blog, Facebook, Twitter, and webpage. Not only will you provide a resource to those candidates casually learning more about you, you’ll also provide at-a-glance information that helps you disseminate critical information—information that helps a candidate base make better, more informed decisions.

Your Two Brands: Part 2

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Last week, we had the chance to discuss your two brands: your company and your employer brand. This week, we’d like to unpack it all and offer some practical advice for moving forward developing your reputation as an employer.

After reading our last entry (you did read it, didn’t you?), you understand the importance of developing your employer brand. Let the information you gathered from your research step help direct your advertising and marketing recruitment efforts. If you have dissatisfied workers in your ranks, launch employee rewards programs, incentive programs, and specialized internal advertising to bolster the sagging morale. Likewise, if people just don’t know much about you as an employer, that’s an indication to hit the magazines with some advertising, start a social media presence on sites like Facebook and Twitter, and use other media to get the word out about why working at your organization is a great idea.

In any case, take the time to develop tangible assets like your Employee Value Proposition. And plan, plan, plan. That’s why experts like us at Buyer Advertising exist—to maximize the effectiveness of your employer brand and deliver the talent needed to make your business succeed.

Until next time,
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Your Two Brands: Part 1

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As a successful organization, you know the value of your brand. It connects customers with your services, instills a sense of confidence in buyers, and finds a home in the brains of your target audience. It’s the buzz surrounding your business. But, as you’ve probably deduced from this title, we’re talking about two brands. The second being, of course, your employer brand.

How you represent yourselves to employees-to-be is very relevant to the success of your business. That’s because as you recruit talented people, your overall expertise and capabilities grow along with your employee pool. Your two brands don’t exist in a vacuum. There is always cross-contamination—for the better or worse. One example is Google—a fun, ultra-modern, Internet-savvy brand has since paved the way to an exceptional employee brand.

Even still, building an effective employee brand takes special attention. When it comes to your employer brand, take the time to get to know yourself. Conduct polls both inside your organization and outside to accurately gauge where you stand. From there, you can build a campaign that’s specific to hiring top talent—maximizing your advertising dollars spent. At Buyer Advertising, we recognize the critical importance of an employer brand, and in many cases, work specifically towards redefining that aspect of your company.

Tune in next week for more tips on building your employer brand!

4 Tips for Tweets

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You’re turning to Twitter to update your customers and let them know what’s going on behind the scenes. You’re also using tweets to promote job openings—landing you the largest applicant pool you can, helping your HR department to recruit top talent. It’s a smart move. As more ‘net surfers turn to Twitter for news, information, and—let’s face it—recreation, maintaining a presence is just good business sense. Here are a few tips to make your tweets go from peeps to hoots.

Make it diverse. By changing up the tone and subject matter of your posts, you’re proving that there’s an actual human behind your machines. That’s a good thing.

Keep it to 140 characters. No, really. Short-linking makes it very easy to gush about your latest product or service, but people read Twitter because they like brevity. Give the people what they want.

Re-tweeting isn’t cheating. While your Twitter account shouldn’t be a directory of other people’s offerings, don’t be afraid to re-tweet the latest buzz from another source.

Be interesting. Seems easy, but the art of pushing out interesting content for users to consume is, well, an art. Some companies never get it right. The ones that do enjoy more online sales and better candidate pools.
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New Methods for New Media

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The face of recruitment is changing. There’s already been in shift in how your organization hires employees, and social media is responsible. Where job seekers used to open the classified section of their newspapers, where they once logged into Monster.com, now their method of choice for securing a new position is to turn first to their social networks. That’s where you come in. To recruit top talent, you need to put yourself at the front lines. But it isn’t as simple as building a site on Facebook, as Tweeting out your jobs every morning. Tackling recruitment using social media has to be effective—not just cost-effective. It requires a new strategy.

To reach the maximum number of hires, talk to the client in a more personal way. If your approach comes across as too business-like, you’re going to scare potential recruits away. Answer questions as they arise on your networks. If you prove to a there’s a human on the other end of the keyboard and that your social media site isn’t simply Job Board 2.0 or a bullhorn that’s an afterthought to your hiring practices, you’re going to have more interest in your open positions.

Another approach to consider is building a place for social media promotion into your traditional marketing. Update your website with links to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Build job promotional details into your current materials and job marketing efforts. The more people would follow your lead, the larger the pool of quality of employees you’ll have.