Good to go? Ask yourself one question first.
Wednesday 17th February 2016
Now don't get me wrong, recruitment consultants and CV writers have an important function to perform. For corporate clients they save time by sifting out candidates they believe are not suitable for the role, and they present candidates in the best light possible.
That said a couple of things happened over the past fortnight that made me think about target marketing. Not so long ago for a targeted direct mail campaign all you would have would be a name, address and telephone number. The art (or is it more of a science?) of targeting is now far more sophisticated. The consumer market has socio-demographic profiling, enhancing targeting ability, and of course the rich data gathered from websites on preferences and interests.
In B2B land Data on companies, information on markets, competitors, key messages, on company strategies too are all available if you know where to look. That's information that can be used for messaging, direct engagement, website content etc. In short target marketing has never had it so good. The vision of 1-2-1 Marketing of the 1990s', personalising the customer message, is possible. That means right down to CxO level and what's important to them, both as a decision maker/influencer in the procurement process and as an individual.
Now back to my original paragraph. I have been running my own business now for 6/7 years, with 20 odd years in ICT Marketing, and am South East based. Why do I, with all this information available online, still receive personalised emails to my company email address inviting me to call/contact someone regarding, for instance, a Device Marketing Executives job based in Manchester - where the prerequisite is for someone experienced in the Medical supplies sector? Why, when I own my company, do I need to have a CV written for me? I am sure you may have experienced similar.
A little bit of research would have revealed my background as being irrelevant to 60% of roles I am being approached for. The point is just by spending a couple of minutes more in gathering more than just the email address (ie other market information) the sender could have saved themselves time and effort that could have been used finding the right potential candidate. It reminded me to ask myself the next time I lead a campaign to ask myself - What additional intelligence would augment my campaign and engage my targets better?
By using just basic information, the emails I refer to above came across as a phishing expedition - something which I am sure no professional services company would condone.
Would it?