Hi everyone... Wayne here. Always been interested in marketing, eventually leading me in to doing a Marketing and Business Management course at Oxford Brookes in order to expand my knowledge further and now I work as a content writer at Firepath Digital.
If you're attempting to personalize branding materials or impress a client with a unique design, you might want to consider creating your own font.
It's easier than it sounds. I have limited (read: none) design talent, and I was able to create a font in ten minutes using Prototypo.io, a Typedesign software. There are plenty of alternative tools you could also consider, such as Fontself, Yourfonts, and Metaflop.
To quickly learn how to create your own font, follow these ten easy steps.
Disclaimer: With Prototypo.io, you cannot export your font to use on marketing design materials or documents unless you pay for Prototypo's Pro subscription. However, if you want to create your own fonts to use for personalized branding purposes, it might be worth the money. The Pro account is only $8.25 a month, and if you sign up for one year, you get four months free.
How to Make Your Own Font
1. Go to Prototypo.io, and click the "Design Your Font" button.
2. Once you fill out the sign-up form (You can sign up with your Facebook, Google, or Twitter accounts), you must choose a pre-made template. For my purposes, I chose "Prototypo Elzevir".
3. Next, name your project. Then click "Start designing".
4. You're now instructed to change height and width dimensions of your font by moving the green bar to the left or right. When you're happy with the proportions, click "Next".
5. Now, adjust your font's thickness. When you're satisfied, click "Next".
6. Move the green bar to the right or left to adjust "Ascender" and "Descender" of your font. When you're happy with it, click "Next".
7. Now, choose one option in each row you prefer to solidify your font's uniqueness. For instance, I chose the "Raging" font on the right, the "Caracas" font on the left, and the "Swirly ~" font on the right to change how the "R" "A" and "~" will look in my font alphabet. When you're done, click "Next".
8. Move the green bar from left to right or vice versa to adjust your Serif height, width, and median. You'll see your font change on the screen, and when you're happy with how it looks, click "Next".
9. Now, you'll see the final result of your font. Click "Finish". You'll be given the option to watch a tutorial next, but you can skip the tutorial if you'd like to go straight to your dashboard.
10. Here's your account dashboard. You'll see all the choices you selected for your font on the left, such as capital height, width, and spacing. You can still adjust if need be. Additionally, there's a text box on the right, where I typed "Caroline Forsey's Font". You can type a paragraph to see if you like how your font looks.
11. If you pay for a Pro subscription, you can click "File" --> "Export font" to use anywhere you'd like.
from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/make-your-own-font
Before the days of smartphones -- if you can remember such a time -- taking a great photo was a labor-intensive process. You'd have buy a fancy camera and editing software for your desktop computer, and invest some serious time and energy into learning how to use them.
But, thanks to our mobile devices and the editing apps that come with them, we can now take high-quality photos and edit them without too many bells and whistles -- all from the same device that we use to make calls.
Brands are catching on, too -- the kinds of visuals remain important to marketing. But make no mistake: Taking a great photo on your smartphone is not as simple as pointing and shooting. There are plenty of bad smartphone photos out there -- I'm sure you've seen at least a few.
What's the secret to taking great pictures with your smartphone, then? As it turns out, there are a few of them. Check out these tips below to improve your smartphone photography game. (And once you have the photo-taking part down, check out some of the best photo editing apps for mobile.)
How to Take Good Photos With Your Phone: 25 Tips & Tricks
1. Use gridlines to balance your shot.
One of the easiest and best ways to improve your mobile photos is to turn on the camera's gridlines. That superimposes a series of lines on the screen of your smartphone's camera that are based on the "rule of thirds" -- a photographic composition principle that says an image should be broken down into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, so you have nine parts in total.
According to this theory, if you place points of interest in these intersections or along the lines, your photo will be more balanced, level, and allow viewers to interact with it more naturally.
Today's phone cameras automatically focus on the foreground of your frame, but not every picture you take on your phone has an obvious subject. To adjust where you want your camera lens to focus, open your camera app and tap the screen where you want to sharpen the view.
If you're taking a photo of something in motion, for example, it can be difficult for your camera to follow this subject and refocus as needed. Tap the screen to correct your phone camera's focus just before snapping the picture to ensure the moving subject has as much focus as possible. A square or circular icon should then appear on your camera screen, shifting the focus of your shot to all of the content inside that icon.
But be sure you tap the screen of your smartphone to focus the camera on your subject -- that'll help to ensure that it's focused and the lighting is optimized.
Pro Tip: Once you've taken your photo, you can use filters and apps to make the subject even more vivid, or to crop it to frame the subject correctly. The brightness, contrast, and saturation of the photo can also be adjusted accordingly -- all from your phone.
"Negative space" simply refers to the areas around and between the subjects of an image --and it can take a photo from "good" to "great."
When you include a lot of empty space in a photo, your subject will stand out more and evoke a stronger reaction from your viewer. And what does negative space looks like? It's often a large expanse of open sky, water, an empty field, or a large wall, as in the examples below.
Taking photos from a unique, unexpected angle can make them more memorable -- it tends to create an illusion of depth or height with the subjects. It also makes the image stand out, since most mobile photos are taken either straight -on or from a bird's eye view.
Try taking a photo directly upward and playing with the sky as negative space, like in the first photo below. Or, you can try taking it at a slight downward angle.
Pro Tip: If you take a photo and find the perspective is a little askew or tilted, use the SKRWT photo editing app to make the lines look clean and square.
There's something so idyllic about seeing the sky reflected in a body of water. There's a reason why we love seeing that -- our eyes are drawn to reflections. So look for opportunities to play with them in photos.
There are plenty of out-of-the-box places to find reflections -- puddles, larger bodies of water, mirrors, sunglasses, drinking glasses, and metallic surfaces are just a few.
In some photos, there's a line that draws the viewer's eye toward a certain part of the frame. Those are called leading lines. They can be straight or circulinear -- think staircases, building facades, train tracks, roads, or even a path through the woods.
Leading lines are great for creating a sense of depth in an image, and can make your photo look purposefully designed -- even if you just happened to come upon a really cool shape by accident.
Symmetry can be defined as "a vague sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance." And pictures that contain symmetry can be incredibly pleasing to the eye -- it's also one of the simplest and most compelling ways to compose a photo.
In photography, symmetry usually means creating an image that can be divided into two equal parts that are mirror images of each other. That's a bit different than reflections -- symmetry can be found "in the wild," as per the staircase picture, or you can set up your photo accordingly, like photographer Eric Christian did in the first photo below.
And remember -- use those gridlines from tip #1 to line everything up perfectly.
Repetitive patterns are very pleasing to the eye -- they appear whenever strong graphic elements are repeated over and over again, like lines, geometric shapes, forms, and colors. These patterns can make a strong visual impact, and photographing something like a beautiful, tiled floor can be enough to create a striking image. Other times, it's more fun to keep an eye out for where they appear naturally or unintentionally, like with the congruent fire escapes on the left.
Isn't it cool when an entire photo is black and white, except for a single object? It turns out that yes, indeed, there are apps for that. One of our favorites is Touch Color -- an app that automatically converts a picture to grayscale and lets you fill in the parts you want to colorize.
Color blocking can help to highlight the elements of a photo that you want to stand out, like a plant or something else with a bold hue. It achieves a similar goal as negative space, in that it can help a single subject stand out -- but with color blocking, the photo's other elements remain intact for a cohesive image.
When you take a photo from a distance, it's tempting to zoom in on something specific you're trying to capture. But it's actually better not to zoom in -- doing so can make the photo appear grainy, blurry, or pixelated.
Instead, try to get closer to your subject -- unless it's a wild animal, in which case we would advise keeping your distance -- or take the photo from a default distance, and crop it later on. That way, you won't compromise quality, and it's easier to play around or optimize a larger image.
You may have heard the phrase, "It's the little things." Sometimes, that also applies to photos. Close-up images that capture small, intricate, and delicate details can make for really compelling visual content. Keep an eye out for textures and patterns like peeling paint, a gravel road, or a tile tabletop.
Pro Tip: Use the "sharpen" tool in your favorite photo editing app to (conservatively) sharpen the details of your photo. You might also download the Camera+ app and use its Clarity filter, which is what The Wall Street Journal's Kevin Sintumuang calls the app's "secret sauce -- it adds pro-camera crispness to almost any shot."
It's hard to find a great smartphone photo that was taken with a flash. Most of the time, they make a photo look overexposed, negatively altering colors and making human subjects look washed out. In fact, even the iPhone 7's flash is rumored to have some flaws.
Take advantage of the sources of natural light you can find, even after dark. This gives you a chance to play with shadows, like in the second image below, or create a silhouette with other ambient sources of light, like traffic and surrounding buildings.
Once you've taken the photo, play with the "Exposure" tool in your favorite photo editing app to see if you can make the image slightly brighter, without making it too grainy.
Sometimes, using your camera's flash can improve a photo -- but rarely does it do so at night. Because dark shots reveal a much sharper contrast against your phone's flash, it can make any flash look look invasive and uneven
In already well-lit spaces, however, a flash can help to soften some dark shadows behind or beneath your main subject.
When framing your next shot, look on the ground or against vertical surfaces for any dark shadows you might want to remove. If you see any, flip on the flash manually in your camera app. Setting your phone's camera flash to "auto" won't guarantee that your phone will notice the shadows you want to get rid of. Just remember to turn the flash off again when you're done.
Check out the difference in the two mobile photos of a metal figurine, below. You can see the desk shadow is considerably softer in the flash-based photo on the right. The flash even brings out more details in the body of the subject. Consider this difference next time you're shooting product photography.
15. Consider buying a mobile tripod.
Although mobile devices make it easy to snap any photo on the go, there's never been an easy way to ensure the shot stays level and balanced when you shoot -- especially if you want to be in the picture and not just take a typical selfie with your extended arm.
Mobile tripods give you the freedom to mount your smartphone for quick hands-free shots without lugging any heavy equipment with you. Most mobile tripods are barely bigger than your mobile device, and can bend to any angle. Check out one of them from Joby, above, and learn how these miniature tripods can help enhance your mobile video experience below.
16. Set your camera app's exposure manually.
Another mobile camera feature you'll want to set manually is your exposure. Tapping your screen when your phone's camera is on doesn't just refocus the lens on a new subject -- it also automatically adjusts how much light the camera lets in. This, too, won't always look just right. It's best to adjust it by hand.
To change your mobile camera's exposure by hand, open your camera app and tap the screen. When you see the lens refocus, you'll see a very small sun icon and a vertical scale. Slowly swipe your finger up and down this scale to adjust the light level.
17. Create abstracts.
Abstract photos are meant to capture the essence of an object, or a series of them, without revealing the entire landscape as a whole. In other words, they serve the purpose of creating unique, surprising images from ordinary subjects.
This look can be accomplished by cropping an abstract portion of an otherwise normal photo, or by taking close-up shots of objects that leave the viewer wondering -- in admiration, of course -- what the subject might be. And subjects with patterns or repetition are great candidates for abstract photography, like in the photo of sliced figs below.
Posed photos can be great for the sake of memories -- happy moments with friends, family, or the occasional run-in with a celebrity. But sometimes, candid shots of people doing things, or people with people, can be far more interesting.
That's because candid photos are better able to effectively capture the emotion and essence of a moment. One of the best ways to capture this kind of shot is to just take as many photos as possible. You'll have more to choose from, and the best photos often happen when the "stars align," so to speak, in a single moment -- everyone's eyes are open, one person is tilting their head just so, and you finally got a shot of your chronically closed-lip friend smiling with his teeth.
Composition is a huge part of what makes a photo great, but so is the photo's subject. Some of the most delightful and remarkable photos come out of cool, unique ideas. Images are more effective than text at evoking emotion from your viewers -- that often means getting your photos to say something.
Try thinking outside of the box when it comes to what you're capturing -- your viewers could be pleasantly surprised by a cool or unexpected subject.
Speaking of evoking emotion, sometimes the most memorable photos are the ones that make us giggle. The image below of an older woman wearing a brightly-colored shirt stating "Hi hater" is funny because it's unexpected -- and there's a part of us that admires her, too. The second image of the dog toy on a dinner plate pokes fun at classic Instagram food shots, but it's from a dog's perspective. If you can make your audience laugh, they're likely to enjoy your photo.
A smartphone camera might be more convenient to carry around than a full-fledged photojournalist's camera, but it comes at the cost of protection.
Your phone is usually in your pocket or your bag when you're out of the house. All the while, the device's camera lens is collecting all kinds of dust and lint. Be sure to clean this lens with a soft handkerchief before taking a photo. You might not be able to tell just how dirty the lens was until you start editing your picture, and making sure the lens is crystal clear before taking a shot can keep you from starting from scratch.
22. Attach an external lens.
Want to get really fancy? External lenses are for you. There are actually several out there that can be attached to the top of your smartphone's native camera lens -- from fish-eye to wide-angle lenses, these add-ons can bring an entirely new quality and perspective to your photos.
According to Wirecutter, the best camera lenses for iPhone photography are made by Moment, a manufacturer of mobile lenses. Start there, or do some research to find the lens add-ons that fit your smartphone photography needs.
Composing and taking your smartphone photo is just the first step to making it visually compelling. Editing your photos is the next step -- and a very critical one, at that. Filters can be a valuable photographic tool, particularly when it comes to two goals: 1) Removing blemishes from a picture, and 2) making food look even more delicious.
For the first, InStyle magazine compiled a fun list of "The Best Instagram Filters for Every Beauty Complaint" -- and now, the iPhone photos app offers many similar filters. There are also apps like Pho.to, which can automatically retouch facial photos without a lot of work. And when it comes to those photos of your daily meals? One of the latest apps available is Foodie, which comes with its own set of filters optimized for different types of food.
But there are many other great photo and video editing apps out there for mobile devices -- check out this post to see some of the best ones out there.
In the 46 years of its existence, email has become more of a marketing tool than a casual interface for friends and co-workers. In fact, according to TowerData, the first email marketing blast ever sent in 1978 achieved a whopping $13 million in revenue, which amounts to about $78 million today. And the email trend continues: A recent survey from the Direct Marketing Association and Demand Metric found that email marketing receives four times more ROI than other marketing avenues, including social media.
Looking at these statistics, any contemporary marketer could easily assume that customer acquisition is email’s primary use. But while lassoing in buyers is certainly an essential part of email marketing, it is merely one of its several applications. In fact, you can leave a lot of opportunities on the table if you do not diversify your email efforts.
A Multipurpose Tool
Ironically, email’s spike in popularity has led to its detriment in recent years. By now, most of the population knows how to spot spam, and consumers are conditioned to delete items that appear overly promotional. To combat these knee-jerk email responses, your job as a digital marketer is to build reciprocal relationships with customers.
Because consumers are reluctant to embrace basic, conventional marketing emails, you need to vary your approach to maintain their interest. You might have their attention, but getting them to the consideration, conversion, and recommendation phases of the revenue generation loop requires creativity and a give and take mentality.
Too many marketers talk at their customers rather than engage in a two-way conversation. However, more giving approaches are simple ways to get prospects to come to you. Consider tactics such as sharing your customers’ thoughts and experiences through social media, sending key information around their needs and your products’ benefits, and making it easy to share discounts or offers.
It is worth mentioning that the above “giving” approaches often fall short in generating any immediate revenue, so they are easy to overlook. “The State of B2B Email Marketing” shows that 77% of B2B marketers rely on email marketing to increase ROI. This comes as no surprise considering that it is easier to send mass emails than it is to distribute personalized, relationship-building messages. But while those impersonal emails might hook prospects initially, they are likely to end up in their spam folders before long. You need to use multi-touch attribution models to measure their effectiveness.
4 Ways to Give More (and Take Less) in Email Marketing
Imagine your intentions behind email marketing as taking the valuable content you provide to consumers—even if it does not deliver direct ROI—as giving. When you do this, it becomes clear that marketers today take more than they give. To change this in your own work, consider how the following four email marketing methods stray from the taking mentality to focus more on giving to customers and prospects, fostering powerful relationships.
1) Segment Your Customers
Forgoing the give and take model puts your strategy at risk of becoming too generic. Additionally, it fails to tap into your audience members’ diversity and appeal to what matters most to them. However, with a segmented email campaign, you can achieve a 760% increase in revenue, according to Campaign Monitor. By segmenting your base, your emails that ask for ratings and referrals (what consumers can give) have a better chance of being passed along.
2) Build a Content Map
Specific groups require different content, and a one-size-fits-all approach will not attract anyone in particular. Once you segment your audience, building a content map should be your next step. After all, your creative emails mean nothing if you do not share the most relevant content to your subscribers. Start with your largest segment and expand from there.
If you give something of value to each segment, such as a whitepaper or infographic that accompanies an email newsletter, each unique demographic is more likely to remember you and find value in your emails—resulting in more views, clicks, and shares.
3) Create a Schedule
Planning ahead means building an email marketing schedule each quarter. For example, let us imagine that you have a conference coming up and you want to meet your customers while you are in town. To be proactive, create a schedule that highlights the dates when you need to start targeting your emails specifically for that event.
When you are creating your schedule, though, remember that give and take is a never-ending process—once your customers have bought your product, keep the dialogue going. For instance, Harry’s, a shaving supplies company, sends a guide to its customers explaining post-shave routines. In doing so, it gives an award in the form of content, making customers feel special and appreciated. If you do something similar for your product, your customers might tell their friends about it, too.
4) Monitor Key Data
Every marketer understands the importance of reviewing data, but few try to uncover the subtext of that data and make inferences about what to do next. When it comes to gauging the success of these give and take email marketing approaches, monitoring results is essential. If your latest emails have low referrals and unimpressive KPIs, stop wasting your time with them.
The DMA claims that the click-through rate, conversion rate, open rate, and ROI are the most significant metrics to analyze when it comes to email marketing. Paying attention to these items can help you optimize your approach and provide clarity about which give or take efforts are the most impactful.
The first step in developing the best email marketing method is to ask yourself whether you are getting the right results. From there, adapt each strategy to your customers’ responses and balance out your give and take approaches to further solidify your efforts. True, it might be tedious at times, but following these steps is a strategic way to take advantage of email marketing’s full capabilities and giveyou an edge over the competition.
Nowadays, writing a letter can seem completely archaic. I mean, do people even send mail anymore or do they only communicate through email and messaging?
In the business world, letters are actually still crucial for collaboration. To convince someone to offer you a job, you need to write them a compelling cover letter. And to persuade someone to speak at your company’s event, you need to write a gripping pitch.
A lot of professionals overlook the importance of writing high-quality business letters because they seem outdated. As a result, most people don’t actually know how to write one.
Fortunately, if you're in the same boat, we've got you covered. Below, we'll teach you how to craft a persuasive business letter for any purpose and situation.
How to Format a Business Letter
Write the date and your recipient's name, company, and address.
Choose a professional greeting, like “Dear,”.
Craft a compelling introduction.
State your intent in the letter’s body text.
End your letter with a strong call-to-action.
Choose a professional closing, like “Sincerely,”.
Physically sign the letter with your signature.
Type your name, address, phone number, and email address.
To teach you how to write a business letter in more detail than the snippet above, let's take a look at a letter I wrote to Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot’s CTO, when I was a wide-eyed college student trying to convince him to speak at my school.
I’ll analyze the most important parts of my letter -- the introduction, body text, and call-to-action -- and explain how and why they can strengthen your own business letters.
Business Letter Example
October 1, 2016
Dharmesh Shah
HubSpot
25 First Street,
Cambridge, MA 02141
Dear Mr. Shah,
When my freshman year of college ended, I was fortunate enough to work as a digital marketing intern at a startup called SlideBatch. They were introducing a new content marketing tool to the market, and my job was to apply that tool to their clients’ social media marketing campaigns and prove that SlideBatch was an effective marketing solution. I was so excited to get to work, but I had one small problem. I didn’t know what content marketing was. So, I did some research on the Internet and discovered HubSpot’s Marketing blog.
Fast forward a year and half, and I’m still reading HubSpot’s Marketing blog and leveraging its insights at my third digital marketing internship. Reading your blogs changed my life. I entered college believing financial advising was my destiny. But, after learning about HubSpot’s inbound marketing philosophy -- how helping people is the ultimate way to increase brand trust and engagement -- I was hooked. Shortly after my internship with SlideBatch ended, I decided to pursue digital marketing instead of financial advising. I’ve haven’t looked back since.
HubSpot’s influence on my life is the reason I’m writing to you today. I’m certain if you spoke at my school, DePauw University, about your life, HubSpot, and the inbound marketing philosophy, there would be hundreds of undecided students who start pursuing digital marketing. I know this because DePauw’s McDermond Speaker Series is one of the best platforms for business leaders to showcase their passion for their industry, company, and work. Brad Stevens of the Boston Celtics, Angie Hicks of Angie’s List, and Bill Rasmussen of ESPN have all successfully used the McDermond Speaker Series to inspire the world’s next generation of business leaders, and I know you could, too.
We would be honored if you spoke at our school. Thank you for your time and consideration, and we look forward to hearing from you!
Sincerely,
Clifford Chi
313 South Locust St.
Greencastle, IN 46136
555-555-5555
cliffordchi@aim.com
Introduction (first and second paragraphs)
To instantly grab Dharmesh’s attention and entice him to read the rest of my letter, you'll notice I didn’t lead with the standard "I’m writing to you today because…” introduction. Instead, I engaged him with a story about how I discovered HubSpot and how his company changed my life. I thought this would strongly resonate with him because I assumed, as a co-founder of HubSpot, he would love to see how his life’s work has benefited others.
In your own business letters, you don’t necessarily need to tell a story to immediately hook your reader and persuade her to read on. But you should definitely describe how she’s made an impact on your life. This is what will truly grab and hold her attention.
Body text (third paragraph)
After my introduction, I swiftly segued into why I was writing to Dharmesh -- to ask him to speak at my school. Personal anecdotes are an effective way to engage readers, but I’d lose Dharmesh’s attention if I didn’t cut to the chase.
Once I stated my letter’s intent, I quickly pitched the benefits of speaking at my school and bolstered the reputation of my school’s speaker series. By emphasizing how speaking at my school could inspire hundreds of students to pursue digital marketing and highlighting the group of impressive speakers Dharmesh could join, I focused on the dividends he would reap from being a McDermond Series Speaker, rather than how my school would benefit from his guest appearance.
So whether you’re trying to convince someone to hire you or speak at your school, you must first persuade your reader that doing what you ask of them will ultimately benefit them and be in their best interest.
Call-to-action (fourth paragraph)
In my last paragraph, I politely ask Dharmesh to speak at my school again. Even though I already asked him this earlier, it's important I end my letter with a clear next step. It packs more of a punch and crystalizes the desired action in his mind.
Strong call-to-actions are a crucial element of a persuasive business letter. Because if you don't tell your reader what to do next, you might as well have never written your letter in the first place.
from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-write-business-letter
Unfortunately, this talent shortage is only worsening -- research by Korn Ferry predicts by 2020, the technology, media, and telecommunications industries alone could be short over one million skilled workers globally.
To succeed long-term, it's critical your business is able to hire and retain the best, most talented employees. But it's a daunting task, which is why you need a talent acquisition strategy.
Talent acquisition vs. recruitment
Recruitment is used to fill a specific role with a qualified candidate, and is typically a short-term strategy to fill a vacancy. Talent acquisition, on the other hand, is a long-term HR strategy meant to attract the best, most qualified people and convince them to bring their unique skills to your company. Talent acquisition aims to attract talent regardless of specific vacancies.
Your pursuit of top talent shouldn't solely rely on traditional, short-term recruitment strategies like sending LinkedIn messages or attending Job Fairs. To ensure top talent acquisition and retention, you'll need to devise a strategic long-term plan.
Here, we've cultivated four critical talent acquisition strategies to ensure you're finding the best people.
Talent acquisition
Talent acquisition is a long-term HR strategy that aims to fulfill organizational needs by finding top talent, and convincing them to bring their unique skills to your company. To succeed long-term, it's critical you attract and retain talented employees regardless of vacant roles. Talent acquisition can help you do this, while solving for long-term organizational needs.
1. Align with your business goals.
Consider your business goals for the next one to five years, and use those objectives to tailor your acquisition strategy to meet those needs. While recruitment tends to focus on filling vacancies within departments, talent acquisition is more about considering how your company is going to expand long-term, and then finding employees who can help take you there.
For instance, are you planning on expanding into Latin America? If so, perhaps your HR department should focus on attracting candidates with international or regional experience. Or, maybe you're planning on creating a new product, in which case, your HR efforts should focus on attracting talented software developers and coders.
Certain roles might not even exist yet, but you'll want to consider what type of talent you'll need to hit your business's long-term goals. Remember, investing in the right candidates will pay off for your company, long-term.
2. Use data and marketing to create better acquisition material.
You wouldn't create a marketing campaign without data, so why should you recruit without it?
Talent acquisition should be treated with just as much importance as any of your marketing campaigns. Convincing people to join your company is just as necessary as incentivizing people to buy your products.
There are plenty of different opportunities to use data to strengthen your talent acquisition strategy. For instance, you might use data to figure out where your top talent came from, and use that information to focus your talent acquisition efforts on certain academic programs or professional networking sites.
Additionally, your HR team should partner with your marketing department to refine job descriptions, career pages, emails, and more.
Using data, you can figure out if certain questions are deterring candidates from filling out job applications, and eliminate those questions. Alternatively, perhaps you'll find adding images or videos to highlight company culture incentivizes more candidates to fill out job forms. Or, maybe more candidates apply for a job with description A over description B.
By using analytics and data, you're able to ensure your job descriptions and career pages aren't deterring qualified people from applying.
3. Expand outreach strategies.
To find better talent, you'll need to expand your sourcing strategies. Different skill sets require different methods of outreach. You'll find your best marketers in a different place than your best programmers, so you'll want to diversify your sourcing approach.
Rather than spending all your time on LinkedIn, consider other specialized job boards, academic programs, or networking events where you might find a specific group of talented professionals. For instance, to attract talented coders, Deloitte's recruiters attended a hackathon and found prospective candidates.
It's critical you identify where you can find the vast majority of your top talent, whether that be professional events, conferences, online forums, or social networks. Then, focus on strengthening relationships and networking with the right people -- not only will you grow your pool of potential hires, but you'll also grow brand awareness for your company, which will help you attract talent in the future, as well.
4. Focus on better employer branding.
Employer branding is critical for creating a successful talent acquisition strategy -- in fact, 62% of professionals across 26 countries rank employer brand as the deciding factor when applying for a job.
When talented candidates are comparing companies, they're going to choose the one with the best values, culture, and work-life balance. By cultivating an impressive employer brand, you'll attract better talent and find more long-term success.
To succeed with talent acquisition, you'll need to be able to answer the question, "Why your company, over all the others?" This is why employer branding is a critical strategy for finding the best employees.
Consider how you can reframe your branding to focus on the best aspects of your company's values and culture. It isn't just about mentioning health benefits or compensation -- you'll also want to convey your impressive company culture, in which employees collaborate efficiently and enjoy spending time with one another. You might mention your flexible remote policy and other work-life balance perks, or your company's emphasis on growth opportunities.
It's important you broadcast these unique attributes through employee review sites like Glassdoor, as well as your "About Us" page on your company website. When highly qualified people are contemplating your company over your competitors, it just might be those reviews that end up convincing them.
from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/talent-acquisition
