When setting up your recruitment agency, bringing clients on board is one of the biggest challenges.
After all, you're a recruiter — not a sales rep.
And in today's highly-competitive recruitment landscape, the battle for top clients is fiercer than ever.
But your agency needs great clients to survive.
Without an effective client acquisition strategy, your agency will flounder.
So how do you get clients for your recruitment agency?
And just where do recruitment agencies find clients?
In this guide, we'll discuss 14 essential tactics recruitment agencies use to elevate their client acquisition strategies.
14 Ways to Get Clients for Your Recruitment Agency
From harnessing the power of AI and engaging with social media to personalised outreach strategies and incentivised referrals — there are so many ways recruiters can go about acquiring clients.
Here are 14 actionable strategies for supercharging your client roster.
#1: Leverage Predictive Analytics
Researching market trends and identifying potential clients is nothing new in recruitment — but new tech has prompted a monumental shift in how we carry out these activities.
Predictive analytics forecast market trends with much higher accuracy than traditional projection methods while saving recruitment leaders precious time.
Using predictive analytics tools, you can analyse market trends and hiring patterns at the touch of a button — with cutting-edge AI-powered tools doing most of the heavy lifting.
These insights then enable you to target companies that are the most likely to have current staffing needs or are predicted to need an influx of new hires in the near future.
Read OneUp's 'State of Recruitment' report to discover recruitment trends 2024.
#2: Implement AI-Driven Candidate Matching
AI-driven hiring is one of the best ways to impress clients and ensure their continued loyalty to your agency.
Employ AI-driven candidate matching algorithms to connect clients with the best-suited candidates.
This significantly increases the efficiency and accuracy of your hiring process, enabling you to deliver quality employees to clients more rapidly.
How?
AI can sort through significantly more CVs than human recruiters, widening the pool of potential candidates.
It then matches these CVs to keywords and learns from previous recruitment data to ensure the best fit for your client's needs.
With a sophisticated AI tool in your arsenal, it's much easier to impress clients and prospective clients with the quality of your candidates and the efficiency of your processes.
#3: Offer Comprehensive Workforce Solutions
Recruitment agencies are continuously striving to differentiate themselves from rivals in the eyes of potential clients.
One way to stand out from the crowd is to provide end-to-end workforce solutions, including onboarding and training services.
Typically, businesses invest in onboarding software and learning and development consultants to help manage their workforce.
But as a recruitment agency that offers comprehensive workforce solutions, you're reducing the time and money they spend on these areas.
Additionally, operations should become much more streamlined when run by just one external agency.
#4: Social Listening and Networking
Social listening is a valuable tactic for identifying potential clients and discovering their needs and challenges.
To conduct a social listening exercise, follow key players and decision-makers at companies you would like to work with on social media channels such as LinkedIn.
Take note of their posts, the comments on their posts and the comments they make on other posts.
See if you can spot trends in this qualitative data and reach out accordingly.
For example, if they mention a lack of tech talent within their sector, it could be a great time to email them about your specialist tech recruitment agency.
Or perhaps they're discussing the quick turnover of junior staff, in which case you may want to contact them to communicate your low attrition rate.
More generally, following these decision-makers should help you identify businesses that need recruitment services.
Networking is another crucial activity for recruitment leaders looking to expand their client base.
This can occur offline, at local networking events, industry events and conferences, and online, at webinars or on social media.
#5: Develop Niche Expertise
A company in a specific market is much more likely to opt for recruiters who specialise in that niche rather than a generalist agency.
This is why it can pay to niche down into a specific industry or market.
Not only will this differentiate your agency, but if you choose the right niche, you could become the go-to agency for specialised recruitment needs in your field.
Before choosing which niches to drill down into, conduct some market research.
Ensure the market you choose is not already oversaturated with specialised recruitment agencies, and that there is enough demand for your proposed service.
Once you've selected your niche and become an expert in the field, it's time to position your agency as an authoritative resource in that sector.
Tactics to achieve this include social media networking, public speaking, and content marketing.
#6: Implement an Incentivised Referral Programme
Establish a referral program to incentivise existing clients and partners to refer new business your way.
Your contacts will all have friends and former colleagues working within similar organisations with recruitment needs.
But it takes time to contact those people and recommend your agency, and most time-poor decision-makers simply won't bother.
However, an attractive incentive for both your client and their contact can certainly motivate referrals.
So, offer rewards or discounts for successful client referrals to boost word-of-mouth marketing.
#7: Adopt a Consultative Approach
The consultative approach to sales has rocketed in popularity over the past decade as potential clients are tired of the hard sell.
This strategy sees recruiters set out to genuinely help clients and potential clients rather than just pushing them to sign on the dotted line.
Utilising a consultative approach, recruiters really get to know a client — from their products and services to their people and their pain points.
Armed with this knowledge, they can offer personalised solutions tailored to meet their needs and help them overcome specific challenges.
This positions your agency as a trusted advisor, providing valuable insights and recommendations rather than simply chasing their money.
Yet when you offer genuine, personalised help and focus on building strong, beneficial relationships with decision-makers, potential clients are much more likely to see the tangible value in bringing your agency on board.
#8: Provide Value for Free with Resource Offerings
This goes hand-in-hand with a consultative approach to recruitment sales.
Increase client loyalty and raise awareness of your brand by providing value for free with resource offerings.
Offer industry reports, salary guides, informative blogs and op-eds, and webinars without charge.
This will showcase your experience, expertise and passion to a wide range of clients and potential clients, whilst handing them valuable information for free.
Identify client needs by considering the following:
- What questions are your clients frequently asking?
- What issues are your clients currently worried about?
- Is your sector currently facing any major challenges?
- Have you noticed any significant trends occurring in your sector?
- Are there any economic or world events set to impact your clients?
Next, commission relevant, high-quality content that answers these questions, delivers useful information on the state of the industry, and provides actionable tips.
Host this content on your website and encourage recruiters to distribute it to clients and potential clients should these topics arise.
#9: Develop a Targeted Outreach Strategy
If you want a client book that's full to bursting, you need to go out there and actively sell to potential clients.
Develop a targeted outreach strategy to raise awareness and interest among potential clients.
This strategy may include tactics such as:
- Cold calling
- Email campaigns
- Direct mail
In this era of personalisation, it's crucial to tailor your outreach to your target audience's specific needs and pain points.
If you target a wide variety of client businesses, segment this target audience and deploy an outreach campaign for each group to achieve deeper personalisation.
For example, you can segment your potential client base by company size, geographic location, or sector.
#10: Utilising OneUp for Recruitment Team Performance Tracking
Strong recruitment team performance is central to bringing in recruitment agency clients.
An outstanding recruitment team will impress clients, ensuring they return to your agency — and tell others in their business about your agency.
And as your reputation grows, you can expect more inbound custom coming through the door.
So, how can you ensure your team is productive, efficient, and motivated to deliver results for clients?
The answer lies in performance-based recruitment.
Recruitment analytics tools like OneUp empower agency leaders to track and analyse recruitment performance to improve.
How?
With an intuitive interface and beautiful visualisations, OneUp ensures easy visibility over real-time data.
Create custom dashboards for each recruiter and team that clearly display progress towards their goals through top recruiting KPIs.
If some of the data doesn't look how you expected it to, it's easy to drill down into the numbers to quickly identify issues with your recruitment processes or challenges surrounding recruiter performance.
This enables you to swiftly solve these issues before they snowball into bigger problems.
Furthermore, OneUp's 'Motivate' features include real-time leaderboards, leagues, and celebration anthems to motivate recruitment teams.
Agency leaders can set up recruitment competitions and display the results in real-time on screens around the office, fostering a sense of healthy competition.
OneUp can also save you and your recruiters plenty of time, which you can then dedicate to your clients.
This software automatically pulls in the latest data from across your tech stack, so no tedious data entry is required.
You can also set up automated reports to be emailed to you and your team regularly, ensuring data is always front of mind and at the heart of every decision.
#11: Incorporate Follow-Up Phone Calls into Your Strategy
A strong follow-up call can be the difference between gaining a valuable new or returning client and the decision-maker forgetting about your agency.
In this era of impersonal digital communication, a good old-fashioned phone call is an opportunity to connect on a human level and engage in meaningful conversations with clients and potential clients.
Essentially, phone calls offer a personal touch that will be highly appreciated by many professionals.
These follow-up calls should take place throughout the client journey with your agency.
You could build them into the workflow after initial contact with a potential customer or in the days after a client meeting.
After a client project has been completed, a follow-up phone call will help to make that customer feel valued — you're not dropping them just because they have now stopped paying your agency — and is a stellar opportunity to gather critical qualitative data.
During these business development calls, you can address queries, gather feedback, and clearly demonstrate a commitment to maximising client satisfaction through direct communication.
#12: Request Client Testimonials from Existing Pipeline
Bringing in and retaining clients is all about building trust.
One of the most impactful ways to gain client trust is through testimonials.
When so much of our business communication takes place online, seeing a variety of positive testimonials from reputable companies will help to steer clients towards your agency.
Gather testimonials from clients you currently work with and from those who have been happy with the results of a hiring project your agency completed.
Prioritise testimonials that include data demonstrating strong, tangible results from your agency and aim to include a wide variety of clients with a broad spectrum of challenges.
These testimonials can be in written, graphical, or video form, depending on how and where your audience typically consumes content.
Display testimonials prominently on your website, social media platforms, and marketing assets to elevate your agency's credibility and trustworthiness.
#13: Implement Engaging Branding and Marketing Campaigns
You may be carrying out a thorough outreach strategy but still wondering 'how to get clients for my recruitment agency?'
Inbound is just as important as outbound.
While you actively contact potential clients during your outreach campaigns, your branding and marketing efforts should result in potential clients reaching out to you.
Indeed, branding and marketing play a monumental role in attracting new clients and building trust with those you've contacted during the outreach phases.
Branding and marketing are how you communicate what your agency is all about, from your vision and mission to your values.
When viewing your branding and marketing materials, decision-makers will consider whether your agency is a good match for their company.
If you operate in a serious professional sector such as law, then colourful, casual branding will likely put potential clients off working with you. However, this could work perfectly if you're recruiting into digital marketing, for example.
This is why it's essential to build an ideal client profile and put the customer's needs firmly at the very heart of your offering.
#14: Maintain a Strong and Transparent Online Presence
It's 2024, which means a strong social media presence is non-negotiable — even in the B2B world.
Maintain active profiles on social media platforms like LinkedIn, regularly engage with your audience through likes and comments, and join in discussions.
This is also the place to showcase engaging content, industry insights, and company updates.
Demonstrate transparency in communication on social media, especially if you are addressing specific concerns or posting during a time of crisis.
Ultimately, social media can be an excellent tool for humanising your agency and building and nurturing relationships.
Final Thoughts…
Remember — to bring clients into your recruitment agency:
- Harness the power of predictive analytics
- Implement AI-driven candidate matching
- Offer comprehensive workforce solutions
- Employ social listening and networking
- Develop niche expertise
- Implement an incentivised referral programme
- Adopt a consultative approach
- Provide value for free with resource offerings
- Develop a targeted outreach strategy
- Incorporate follow-up calls into your strategy
- Request client testimonials
- Implement engaging branding and marketing campaigns
- Maintain a strong and active social media presence
- Utilise OneUp to track recruitment team performance
Each and every one of the above tactics should help you to bring more clients into your agency.
However, with so much competition out there, it's vital to adopt a multifaceted approach and an intelligent strategy that combines all of the tactics outlined above.
Indeed, recruitment agencies must leverage innovative techniques and the latest tech to help them stand out from the competition.
To find out more about how OneUp could help bring more clients to your agency, book a demo here today.
