The News section on a corporate site has to engage and inform fast, like a good front page story. Media stakeholders won’t thank you for making the latest company news hard to find, especially if they have a deadline to hit.
Roche have done a great job of designing their Media Store with these demanding stakeholders in mind. Super-easy to navigate and with a lots of best practice on show, the Roche site is guaranteed to engage and inform.
We don’t often post infographics, but I did like this one that Chris Landry from Colourfast sent to me, so I thought I’d share it.
Chris says “There is a lot more to logo designs than meets the eye. The colour, font, and shape of a business logo have certain associations that influence how a customer perceives your business…the importance of choosing an appropriate logo for your business becomes all the more important.”
“Well of course we’re serious about diversity,” the HR Director said, “You can see it on our website”.
And there it was in their People section – a single webpage with a few dry paragraphs and a library picture.
But HSBC have come up with a great way to tell their diversity story online. By including video profiles of HSBC employees with disabilities, they’ve provided content that engages and conveys key messages about HSBC workplace culture.
Today’s post comes from Chris Lee, and talks about choosing when to use different kinds of language when recruiting: using the right tool for the job. I thought it aligned neatly with our earlier posts about plain English, and with our posts about recruitment. Over to you, Chris…
Normally, when a business tries to communicate what it does to the wider population it tries to avoid using esoteric terminology. However, it becomes necessary to use industry-specific terms when advertising job roles and recruiting new staff.
The reason is simple: customers may find jargon confusing, but professionals working within an industry should not, especially if they are applying for positions that are more senior.
It is important to gauge whether applicants have the correct level of knowledge to do the job: not only to save time, but to allow the maximum about of candidates to be shortlisted. Businesses should not shy away from using the relevant terms required by the new employee, but pitching the language at the correct level is an important consideration.
As an example, in the cloud computing industry, acronyms and jargon such as SaaS, IaaS and Hypervisor are regularly used to refer to some of the foundations of a cloud-based system. Engineers and other members of staff will use these acronyms to communicate with each other on a daily basis, so when hiring a new engineer it is imperative that they have a working knowledge of these terms.
While it may seem beneficial to leave jargon out of job postings, the discrepancy between application and interview may catch the applicants off guard, wasting time on both sides. Instead, using the necessary language from the beginning of the recruitment process will help a business create a better, more informed shortlist of candidates.
Gauging a candidate’s suitability in an interview is key however, as many terms can be researched by an applicant before initially applying for a job: using jargon in an interview setting allows a business to confirm their understanding of required concepts on the spot.
It is important not to dismiss an applicant entirely for their lack of jargon knowledge: some companies use different terms, and many applicants can be trained in the terms they do not yet understand – especially in junior positions.
If a business decides to use jargon in the recruitment process it is worth knowing when to explain things using simple, easy to understand language. The following rules explain when a business should and shouldn’t use jargon:
Producing a jargon buster can be even more beneficial for a business if it is also hosted on the company’s website, having two main advantages:
Referring back to the cloud-computing example used previously, the Six Degrees Group (6DG) have implemented a jargon buster to give clients and customers alike the opportunity to understand any terms that may be unfamiliar – this is a great example of how to clearly explain difficult to understand terms.
There is a time and a place for jargon! Used well, it is a shortcut for explaining complex concepts to people who share an understanding, used poorly it can be off-putting and daunting. Just ensure you get the balance right.
Chris writes on behalf of the Six Degrees Group, a group who enjoy their contradictions. They are a fresh new brand but have got a 15 year heritage. They’re a mid-market player but have the portfolio of a corporate. For more information, head to www.6dg.co.uk
The application process is often the neglected Cinderella of the recruiting journey, so it’s no surprise it’s a common source of job seeker dissatisfaction. If a company wants to beat their rivals to recruit the best, the one thing to avoid is frustrating applicants when they try to apply. There’s one sector that’s pioneering an innovative and customer focused approach to the Cinderella of the recruiting process. And it might not be one you expect.
We’ve recently been looking at how universities reach out and help potential students, and we think they offer some fantastic lessons for corporates. The best way to show this is to share the story of one real-life student who, for the purpose of this blog, we’ll call Sally.
Sally is a student with impressive grades who’s looking for a university place in 2014. At first glance, the journey from school to undergraduate doesn’t look that different to how it’s always been, with open days to attend and application forms to complete. But although the process may look like it hasn’t changed much, intense competition for students has prompted many universities to raise their game in one key area. And that’s how universities engage with potential undergraduates.
From initial expression of interest, right through to the final decision on her application and beyond, the universities Sally contacts respond with personalised emails and SMS that engage, remind, and offer additional help. The same customer-focused approach is applied again, at Open Days, this time in person. Sally is also offered the chance to provide feedback on her experience as her application progresses, through surveys and quizzes. A feedback quiz performs several functions here. Hopefully it’s a fun way of engaging students to begin with, while also conveying a strong “We listen” message from the university. And it’s also a good way of gathering data on how well the application process is working in the target market.
The personalised communications strategy doesn’t end when Sally receives her first offer of a place at university. Remember, Sally is a student with impressive grades, and she soon has more than one offer on the table to choose from. The universities she’s applied to seem to be well aware of this. Their offer communications are also personalised and designed to engage (One simply says: “Sally – Yes!), and are accompanied by additional material on scholarships and accommodation. And if that wasn’t enough, Sally gets information on student acceptance and rejection statistics as well. Put all these personalised communications together, and there’s an obvious core message here that says: “We think you’d a great asset to have at our university, so choose our offer!”
The University of Aberdeen wasn’t one of the institutions that Sally contacted, however it does provide another great example of innovative and personalised candidate outreach. If you’d like to out what life at Aberdeen might be like, just try out their personalised video form. Don’t worry – it still works if, like me, your own undergraduate days are long distant!
Of course some people will say that there’s a difference between student outreach and candidate hiring. And they’re right. At the same time however, it’s obvious that there are strong parallels here, with academia and business both competing hard in their respective sectors to seek out and recruit the best.
We’ve only touched on a few selected aspects of how universities “recruit” in this blog, but we’re convinced the university approach offers some important lessons for online corporate recruitment.
For brand marketers, automating processes does more than save time. It also increases lead generation and conversions. That means an investment in marketing automation can increase sales revenues.
A new study by Ascend2, the Marketing Automation Benchmark Summary Report, found that of marketers who are already using marketing automation, only 7% believe that it has not be successful in helping them to achieve important objectives. More than one in three marketers (69%) who responded to the Ascend2 survey indicated that marketing automation has been somewhat successful for them, while nearly one in four (24%) believe it has been very successful for them.
Brand marketers are using marketing automation in a variety of ways and few have the skills needed to fully leverage the opportunities it presents. Nearly one in two marketers who responded to this survey have to outsource some (41%) or all (7%) of their automated marketing campaigns.
However, even with great marketing automation tools and external expertise assisting them, brand marketers are still faced with many challenges when it comes to actually making marketing automation work for them. Most marketers struggle with developing an effective strategy (45%), limited budgets (44%), and a lack of skilled staff (40%). Furthermore, more than one in three marketers (34%) identify insufficient data quality as the most challenging obstacle to marketing automation success. With that in mind, it’s not surprising that the top two factors that marketers consider when choosing a marketing automation tool are analytics and reporting (41%) and ease of use (40%).
As with all marketing tools and marketing campaigns, metrics matter. Marketers involved in this study believe that the most useful metrics for measuring marketing automation performance are:
There is no doubt that marketing automation tools can help you execute more efficient and more successful marketing programs, but without the right skills to use those tools and accurately analyze the data provided by the tools, your success with them will be limited. I believe that employee training on using marketing automation tools (among others) is an investment that would pay off for almost any company. Would you agree?
How have you effectively integrated marketing automation at your company. Leave a comment and share your success story.
Image: Carl Dwyer
