Hi RBC community and Happy New Year! I'm beginning a column to share my observations about the market and make suggestions about how I think recruiters can successfully navigate through this economy. As the CEO of my own organization, Vipe, I am lucky enough to have both the responsibility and opportunity to report to my own board and investors. Many recruiters I have met and gotten to know do not have this opportunity, yet at the end of the day, recruitment is not a hobby or a job, but a business. I believe our interests in running successful businesses are aligned, and I hope I can be of help with my column.

Why you should increase your marketing and advertising budgets in a recession.

Why on earth should you increase costs during a recession? There are several reasons, but the bottom line is twofold:

First, there are 2 keys to running any business, maintaining and growing a revenue stream, and minimizing the costs you have. With news of the recession flooding our sensory input from the media, many people have been instilled with a fear that only allows them to focus on cutting costs. Yes, it is important to review your costs and minimize them, but simply cutting costs does not provide sustainability. You must also figure out how to maintain and potentially even grow the amount of money you are bringing in the front door.

In a recession, that becomes easier said than done, which brings me to my second point. You need to increase your advertising and marketing budgets because your competition already is. Many very large organizations have already begun pumping a significant amount of dollars into marketing. Two weeks ago I was called by a Hilton telesales representative who was trying to convince me to book a trip, any trip, in the next 12 months. I have never been contacted by Hilton before. I was also chatting with the VP of a national staffing company last week who mentioned that he observes with the number of job orders available in the marketplace reduced, the clients supplying the orders are being bombarded by recruiters.

How does he and how should you react to this phenomenon in the market? Get creative.

Spend the time to brainstorm how you might be able to not only reach more prospects (we are all in sales and know how the numbers game is played), but stand out and impress them. Split your time between coming up with ideas and researching what tools exist in the marketplace that might help you.

Three things to keep in mind when considering a marketing tool / program are:
1. What will get you the best bang for your buck? A rule of thumb for marketing is to shoot for a 10x return on what you spend for any particular program.
2. What will get you in front of an audience you don't already have access to? How can you get someone who hasn't listened to you before, to pay attention to your "pitch?"
3. How can you make the most of your existing contacts? In addition to trying to grow new business, it is imperative to not lose the business you already have. Consider how you can remind your existing customers that YOU are the service provider of choice.


In the News
There have been a few notable articles published in the last few weeks that if you haven't read already, might give you a perspective and provide you with ideas for how to successfully grow your revenue through marketing.

1. Monday of this week, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled "Ads to Go Leaner, Meaner in '09. Expect Shorter Spots, Video as Mar..." This was a great article that discussed how professional marketers are reacting to the recession and also listed key trends that will be seen this year including, ads that are "short are sweet," an explosion of video, and a lot of red (apparently red is the new color, replacing orange).
2. On December 15th, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled "The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World." I think the title is fairly self explanatory.
3. Kevin Wheeler, a guru on human capital acquisition and development, posted an article on December 18th on ERE.net titled "Video is about to become King - Are You Ready?" with a section devoted to how video can help your Branding and Position promotion. In this section he talks about how "KPMG, Starbucks and Nike all incorporate at least one video on their careers’ homepage."
4. McKinsey published an article in December titled, "The downturn's new rules for marketers" (a great article and the subscription is free) with a self explanatory title. One notable comment made was a suggestion that "New communications vehicles such as the Internet, social networking, and mobile devices are gaining scale and delivering effective results."


Solutions
Here is a short list of a few solutions out there that you should consider as options to help you spread your brand awareness, generate leads and most importantly - close more deals!

Video - Kevin Wheeler mentioned 3 companies in his article about Video that provide solutions for "Branding and Position promotion"
1. C-Looks - Clooks offers complete web-based video and software applications for e-recruitment. From recruitment right up to the presentation of one or more candidates to internal or external colleagues or customers.
2. RecruiTV - RecruiTV is a cost effective way to not just tell but show potential candidates what your company is all about.
3. Vipe (www.vipepower.com) - Vipe provides video marketing solutions allowing you to land more job orders, attract and retain top talent, and accelerate your placement process.

Radio - When I was at the California Staffing Professionals owner's only retreat back in October of 2008, Linda Carchidi of JFC Staffing Associates gave a marketing talk and one of the ideas she mentioned that caught my attention was to utilize the radio for marketing. If you choose days like Sunday, Monday or Tuesday and you are not competing with night clubs during the the weekends, you can actually negotiate very reasonable deals.

Timing
The last thing to consider is when you should take action. Timing is important. Increasing marketing presence in response to competition is obviously not as efficient nor effective as being the innovator. Now is the time to make these changes.

If you can survive through this recession, your recruiting business will be poised for significant success when things turn around. So hang in there and spend some time considering how you can get creative in marketing your brand, generating leads, and bringing in cash.

Thanks and I hope this was helpful! I'll be writing a weekly column so stay tuned. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to shoot me a message (and if you aren't my friend on RBC yet, let's change that!)

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Adam is the CEO of Vipe (www.vipepower.com). Vipe provides a B2B video marketing solution to the recruiting industry enabling recruiters to easily create, manage and distribute high-impact, short, video mail messages to enhance customer communications and drive increased sales.