Choosing whether to outsource your recruitment marketing or manage it internally is not an easy decision for a college to make.
Yes, you’re struggling to reach qualified teachers and recruitment is dangerously slow, but when your budget is as tight as most colleges are, it can be difficult to justify the cost of outsourcing.
But in practice, there are so many benefits to outsourcing recruitment marketing that it will likely save your college money in the long run.
Here are just a few reasons why outsourcing your marketing to specialists could be the best decision your college could make.
Save time, money and resources
Understandably, budget is always the biggest barrier to colleges outsourcing marketing. But let’s be clear about one thing: Marketing is a full-time job (and then some!).
So if you don’t have a dedicated marketer at your college, as very few do, you’re essentially asking someone (or a few people) to take on the responsibility of a difficult job that they’re not trained in or qualified to do.
Think of it this way: You wouldn’t ask a maths lecturer to start teaching an art class, so why would you expect admin staff to do the job of a marketer?
All this means is that they’ll be burning time and resources scrambling to get to grips with new marketing tactics and technology to produce very average results (at best). These are tasks that would take a fraction of time if managed by a qualified marketer, and you’d get much more in return for your money.
When you think about the bigger picture like this, you could even say colleges burn more budget by not outsourcing.
Stay ahead of the curve
With fewer qualified teachers on the market, there’s a lot more competition to reach them, and doing so requires a sophisticated and forward-thinking marketing strategy.
Businesses that offer recruitment marketing as a service have a whole team of marketers whose job it is to keep ahead of all the changes happening in the marketing world. And right now, there’s a lot of change.
As educators, you don’t have time to keep up with the latest in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Google algorithm changes and emerging technologies. You have a different job to do. Outsourcing marketing means you can be confident you’re not missing out on any new opportunities to stand out online – just leave that to the experts.
Which takes me to my next point…
Get access to marketing experts
When you outsource your recruitment marketing to a third party, you’re not just asking them to manage your recruitment marketing workload – you’re investing in their knowledge and expertise too.
So they won’t just manage the tasks you need them to do, like running targeted social media campaigns to promote your vacancies to the right people or optimising your careers site for SEO. They’ll also come up with their own fresh and forward-thinking ideas that will help your college stand out to candidates all over the country.
This is because outsourcing marketing isn’t just operational but strategic too. Whoever you outsource your marketing to will have the knowledge and training to support you in whatever way you need, and even be a rich source of information for anyone internal who wants to know more about marketing.
Reduce time-to-hire
When you’re hiring in a candidate-short market, timing is everything. Slow time-to-hire metrics can be financially crippling and usually result in very few quality hires. If your college is taking forever to get job ads out there and not promoting them to the right people, this will be having a huge impact on the hiring process.
Outsourcing marketing means the process of attracting and reaching candidates will bring much quicker results, which speeds up time-to-hire considerably and ensures you’re reaching the best candidates before other colleges snap them up.
Improve your marketing ROI
Back to the budget question: Do you keep track of your marketing spend and the return you get on that spend from your results?
If you’re not tracking your recruitment marketing return on investment (ROI), how can you be sure you’re saving money by handling it in-house?
Part of working with an external party on your marketing is that they will always closely track your results and important recruitment metrics. This means they can communicate tangible numbers back to you and focus on providing you with a good return for your cash.
Get access to the best tools and technology
To get the best results from your recruitment marketing strategy, you need access to the most current marketing technology for colleges as well as experts who know how to get the most out of it.
Outsourcing your marketing means you’ll benefit from tech tools that your college won’t have to pay to access as the experts should already have them at their fingertips. They can also advise you on which tools you’d be worth investing in for your college, and many can even train staff in how to use the tech as part of their service offering.
FEjobs can help!
The good news is, FEjobs can help! As part of the Eteach Group, we’ve launched a new marketing service, Eteach Media, that’s specifically there to support schools and colleges in their recruitment marketing efforts.
If you’re interested in hearing more about how the Eteach team can help you grow your employer brand and reach more qualified candidates, request a call back and someone will reach out to you with more information.
About the author
Katie Paterson
Katie Paterson is a writer and digital marketer specialising in recruitment, marketing, HR technology, and business growth. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland.