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Firstly, let's just take a step back and ask 'why might I need a recruitment marketer?' and 'what will they do?'...

Recruitment marketers will generate new leads and warm-up your talent pool. They will curate content which adds value to the community of clients and candidates you serve and position your company as thought leaders in the market. They will be able to expand your services and offering through productisation. They will help you to provide a better, more rounded customer experience and regeneration will become natural as marketing constantly reminds customers of your brilliant brand. And if you are a recruitment business looking to expand rapidly, guess what, a recruitment marketer will be able to attract recuiters to work at your business! Tik Tok, Instagram, targeted ads, making your 'work for us' page on the website more attractive - they got you!

Now I could carry on, but I hope you get the picture: there is a lot that can be done and us recuitment marketers will always find more to improve.

As a recruitment business, when should you start thinking about marketing?

Amber Loach, UK Director of Prominence says, "I typically say by the time you hire your fourth or fifth recruiter is the right point to start thinking about marketing your business. There are a couple of good reasons for this: 1) you will hopefully have a little bit more time or the ability to pay someone to assist you, and 2) you should have the funds available to support a marketing budget."

For small businesses working with a marketing agency like Prominence, can be hugely beneficial. But the general rule goes, for every 5 sales staff in your business, you should have one non-sales professional to support. To be honest this ratio is rarely stuck to in recruitment and of course there are many elements of sales support to think about when making a hire, (I may be biased but I think marketing should be up there with one of the first!)

So, when should you hire an in-house marketer and when should you use a specialist digital agency?

Let's start by thinking about what you want to achieve first.

Are you looking to improve your website and SEO to ensure customers can find you?

Do you need to generate leads in a new market you've never worked in before?

If it is 'quick wins' you need or you have a few of the above projects which are priority then I would suggest using a marketing agency. They will have a whole team of specialists to get those projects done at a faster pace!

But if you are looking to add marketing to your top level business strategy, you want to get your consultants engaged with marketing, get them building personal brands to increase inbound leads, you want to build a brand or you want to organically attract internal talent then you might want to start thinking about your first marketing hire.

As a general rule agencies like Prominence will only work with recruitment businesses with a headcount of 20 or less.

Camino Partners is the only agency specialising in placing non-sales professionals into recruitment. Having partnered with over a thousand recruitment businesses over the years, they draw on this insight to appraise your current business and advise on what you need from a back-office point of view.

If you are wanting to add a marketing function to your business, read How to: Create a marketing function from scratchand get in touch with our Marketing Specialist Senior Consultant, Matt Franklin.

Prominence is the largest specialised lead-generation Digital Marketing Agency for the Australian and New Zealand Recruitment sectors, and they’ve just launched in the UK and Ireland. Their results-focused in-bound digital marketing services are proven to improve the productivity and profitability of recruitment agencies internationally. They focus on marketing to three core recruitment target audiences, which we refer to as the three C’s, Candidates, Clients and Consultants (recruiters). ​