February 4th, 2021
Content marketing can be a great addition to your employer branding strategy.
Content marketing is a strategy that includes regularly creating and distributing content that is attractive and useful from the point of view of our audience. From the employer branding perspective, it’s a powerful tool that can help you strengthen your employer brand and attract talent to your organization.
It is worth remembering that, unlike traditional forms of marketing, content marketing is not based on advertising, but building long-term relationships, for which the starting point is the content you generate. This way of addressing your audience will only grow on importance as it fits with the preferences of the next-gen candidates.
To learn how to master the use of content marketing for better employer branding and talent attraction you can check out some great talks from Lego, IBM, and other experts at EBCon Employer Branding Conference.
But first, let’s go through 5 reasons why you should start using a targeted content marketing strategy.
1. It helps you boost your employer brand
In the age of information, content marketing is a powerful tool. It helps to promote your employer brand and build awareness – 81% of respondents in the Content Marketing Study 2019 agree with this thesis. Furthermore, it also plays an educational role (73%) and leads to increased credibility (68%) which has an overall impact on leads generation.
As further study insights show, a huge challenge for companies is conducting content marketing activities based on a strategy – 70% of companies simply do not do it. This means the stakes are high and now it’s the best moment to gain a competitive edge by adding some structure to your activities related to generating content.
2. It attracts better applicants & improves the recruiting process
Generating the right content can improve the recruiting process since candidates can do a lot of upfront research on your company and open roles before ever talking to a recruiter.
Moreover, it helps ensure that applicants are better qualified because they’ve chosen to apply based on what they learned about your organization and they feel a sense of connection to your corporate culture and values. Sharing good content keeps candidates – passive and active – informed and excited about what your employer brand stands for and what your company delivers to its’ employees and community.
3. It supports both your employer brand and corporate brand
It’s crucial to realize that some candidates will be attracted to your company on the basis of your corporate brand, just as some consumers will be attracted to your products on the basis of your employer brand. Therefore, your ability to source and engage candidates and secure top talent relate to the overall strength of your brand. Through sharing targeted content, you give the candidates the opportunity to organically learn about your brand and make them better understand what you have to offer when it comes to employment opportunities.
4. It helps tell your brand story & increase the engagement
With content marketing you can tell your brand story, engage people with your values and your purpose. The vision and mission statements alone are not sufficient to explain who you are and what you stand for. It is important for your employer brand to get outside of the box in communicating with prospective candidates. Remember, the way how you do it is as much important as where you distribute your content to reach your audience. We’ll cover this subjects on our free webinar dedicated to using content marketing for talent attraction. Register now to learn how to use your content on different touchpoints to make the best out of it!
5. It’s much more cost-effective than paid advertising
Digital ads and paid search are great ways to generate applicants. But the downside is they are expensive, and they eat up a fair amount of your employer branding budget. The paid ads strategy gets trickier if you are trying to reach niche candidates or bidding for a highly competitive industry – like IT candidates.
Therefore, the organic content strategy is the best alternative. Creating and distributing useful and relevant content can generate more leads in the long run. Content marketing is 3x more cost-effective at lead generation than paid search, says the study from the Content Marketing Institute.
Those are the top 5 reasons proving you should start planning out your content marketing strategy right now. However, remember that the solution is definitely not more content. The key is developing content with the right objective in mind and understanding your audience before you create it, not to mention how you’re going to get it in front of your target group.
