Leslie Vickrey, President and Founder of ClearEdge Marketing, examines today’s top 5 most successful marketing approaches, from social media and target account campaigns to events and the ever-essential website optimization. This presentation is a chance to explore your most critical marketing questions: - Which marketing approaches are right for my business and which ones are wrong? - How can I ensure my marketing efforts deliver results in the form of sales leads, candidates and brand building? - What does successful marketing look like for an IT or Engineering staffing/services firm like mine? - What marketing tools are most effective for recruiting and what tools are most effective for business leads? Armed with IT and Engineering services/staffing case studies, a portfolio of marketing solutions and over a decade of experience building marketing strategies and tools for services/staffing firms nationwide, Leslie will guide you through the urgent marketing lessons your business needs to know.

1. www.clearedgemarketing.com
Marketing for Where You WANT TO BE
5 Proven Ways to Get Leads & Grow
Presented by:
Leslie Vickrey, CEO & Founder
May 14, 2014
Confidential Information. Copyright ClearEdge Marketing 2014.
Webinar Series

2. Your Presenter, Leslie Vickrey
2
• CEO and Founder of ClearEdge Marketing, an agency
specializing in outsourced marketing solutions for IT
services firms
 8+ years in business
 Serving clients across four continents
 Staff from coast-to-coast (30+)
 8-year TechServe Alliance marketing partner
• 18 years managing marketing operations or providing
consulting services for companies such as Spherion,
Harvey Nash, TechServe Alliance, Bartech, CRi, Aon
Hewitt RPO and Fieldglass
• Co-founder of ARA—a mentoring organization for
attracting, retaining and advancing women in tech
(www.aramentors.com)
CEO & Founder
ClearEdge Marketing

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3

4. Today’s Agenda
• What You Are Up Against: The Challenges
• Most Effective (and Efficient) Ways to Get Leads:
• Target Account Campaigns
• Website Optimization
• Events
• Social Media
• Smart PR
• Q&A
4

5. CHALLENGES IT & Engineering Services Firms Face
5
Competition for Talent
+ U.S. IT jobs grew13 percent from 2002 to
2013, while the number of people who
graduated with IT degrees dropped 11 percent
in that same time frame (CareerBuilder).
Rise of Online Staffing
+ SIA estimated gross billed revenue in Online
Staffing to be $1 billion globally in 2012 and
forecasts 40 percent annual category/
segment growth for the next two years.
Limited Resources
+ Mid-size firms typically have small sales and
recruiting teams, which limits time for strategic
planning and work.
Limited Budgets, Tough Buyers
+ While job growth was up in April, employers
remain cautious in their hiring.

6. OPPORTUNITIES for IT & Engineering Services Firms
6
Skills Shortage
+ High demand for IT in several skills areas—big
data, mobile, security and cloud services.
Employers need help accessing these
skills quickly.
Recruitment Tools Perplex
+ Job search and talent sourcing mediums have
exploded (social, mobile, etc.) making it more
critical for businesses to employ talent experts
. Employers want and need help.

7. 7
5 Proven Marketing Approaches that Spark
Opportunity & Fuel Growth

8. TAPS & INCENTIVE PROGRAMS
Right or Wrong for Your Business?
8

9. Poll #1
Does your firm have a formalized
lead generation program?
9

10. 1. Target Account Programs, Sales/Recruitment, Employee
10
• Target Account Programs
 Select a narrow, vetted prospect list
 Spend 4-6 weeks targeting this short list with marketing materials
and contact
• Sales/Recruitment Incentive Programs
 Sales Incentive Programs and Recruitment Incentive Programs
 Award sales and recruitment staff for achieving and/or exceeding
lofty targets over a set period
• Employee Referral Programs
 Provide incentives to contactors and staff for referring top
candidates
Arm Your Sales & Recruiting Staff

11. Target Account Programs: TAPs
11
“CUSTOMERS EXPECT EXPERTISE.
While the right skill match is the number one factor
in placement success, clients rank knowledge of
their industry as second in importance to ensuring
a successful placement.”
TAPs offer companies a fun, engaging platform for
explaining their expertise.
Inavero Insight
• What Is It?
 A scheduled weekly mail-based or drop-in program
for targeted accounts
 4-8 weeks, depending on target and service/solution
 Branded Components: A weekly postcard and
giveaway tied into a campaign theme
 Calls-to-Action: Get appointments, landing pages
playing new role for solutions-based campaign,
including online advertising (LinkedIn)

12. TAP Benefits
12
• Targeted & Concentrated
• Puts business development team in front of key decision makers
• Allows teams time to focus on specific businesses and needs
• Training for Your Sales Team
• Arms sales staff with purpose and materials
• Offers a training tool for new sales staff eager to learn the business
• ROI Is Easy to Measure
• Offers a simple way to measure marketing message effectiveness
• Plan on a 30% return (if program and best practices followed!)

13. TAP Sample: Campaign Overview – Outreach Cycle
13
Prospect
Build
Awareness
Schedule
Meeting
Close Deal
Touch Item Follow-up
Touch 1
Fold-over Direct Mail Introduction Piece:
How Far Will You Go to Source Java
Development Talent?
Follow-up call & e-mail
Touch 2
HTML Email:
How Hard Will You Work To Build Your
Java Dream Team?
Follow-up call & e-mail
Touch 3
Drop-off Notecard + Low-end Giveaway
How Quickly Can you Access the Java
Development Talent You Need?
Follow-up call & e-mail
Touch 4
HTML Email:
How Much Will You Sacrifice to Hire Skilled
Java Resources?
Follow-up call & e-mail
Touch 5
Drop-off Notecard + High-end Giveaway
How Long Will You Wait for Java
Development Resources?
Follow-up call & e-mail
Fold-over Direct Mail Introduction Piece
HTML Emails
Drop-off Notecards + Giveaways

14. SAMPLE TAP: Campaign Schedule
14
MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY
July 2013
14 15 16 17 18
Kick off call/Rep Training
19 20
21
Touch Point 1 –
HTML Email
22 23 24 25
LAUNCH! Push First HTML
Email to List
26
Follow-up Phone Calls &
Emails
27
28 29
Follow-up Phone Calls
& Emails
30
Follow-up Phone
Calls & Emails
31
Follow-up Phone
Calls & Emails
1
Follow-up Phone Calls &
Emails
2
Follow-up Phone Calls &
Emails
3
August 2013
4
Touch Point 2 –
Notecard & Giveaway
5
Prep Packages –
Giveaway & Notecard
6
Deliver Package
7
Deliver Package
8
Deliver Package
9
Follow-up Phone Calls &
Emails
10
11 12
Follow-up Phone Calls
& Personal Emails
13
Follow-up Phone
Calls & Personal
Emails
14
Follow-up Phone
Calls & Personal
Emails
15
Follow-up Phone Calls &
Personal Emails
16
Follow-up Phone Calls &
Personal Emails
17
18
Touch Point 3 –
Notecard & Giveaway
19
Prep Packages –
Giveaway & Notecard
20
Deliver Package
21
Deliver Package
22
Deliver Package
23
Follow-up Phone Calls &
Emails
24
25
Touch Point 4 –
HTML Email
26
Follow-up Phone Calls
& Emails
27
Push Second & Last
HTML Email to List
28
Follow-up Phone
Calls & Emails
29
Follow-up Phone Calls &
Emails
30
Follow-up Phone Calls &
Emails. END CAMPAIGN.

15. 15
TAP SAMPLE: Mailer (local message)

16. TAP SAMPLE: Metrics Report
16

17. Critical Success Factors TAPs
17
• Executive buy-in and oversight
• List quality
 Target “real” buyers of your services
• Sales buy-in
• Creativity
• Track/share results and ROI
• Going all the way in terms our outreach
 Making all the calls, all the visits.
Make the 5th Call
70% of the population
needs at least 5 contacts
before they'll trust you
enough to grant you an
appointment.

18. TAPs: Right or Wrong for YOUR Business?
18
• Can your business create and concentrate
on a narrow, targeted list of strong
prospects?
• Do you have a sales team with the
discipline and reliability to follow a carefully
designed outreach program?
• Are you willing to put some investment into
a creative program that will catch the eyes
and ears of top prospects?

19. Employee Referral Programs
19
• What Are They?
 A program that rewards employees in
cash or prizes for referring new talent
to the business

20. Employee Referral Program Benefits
20
• Expands the Resources Fueling the Talent
Pipeline
• Talented people are often friends and family with
other talented people
• Insiders have insight into who will work well within
the culture
• Ties Staff or Consultants Closer to the
Business
• Employees get to take part in bringing new talent to
the business
• Reminds Staff of the Value of Talent
• Businesses that are always on the hunt for talent,
value people and value their culture

21. Critical Success Factors: Referral Programs
21
• Simplicity. If it’s too hard to refer and get rewards,
no one will participate
• Communication! Program must be regularly
shared with entire business to ensure new staff are
aware and constant reminders in place
• Monitoring. If referral programs aren’t working, it’s
important to know why and adjust
Make It Simple

22. Referral Programs: Right or Wrong for YOUR Business?
22
• Will your business be diligent in following
up on referrals and rewarding them?
• Is your business willing to invest in giving
contractors referral bonuses or awards?
• Does your business have effective ways of
communicating with former and current
contractors to make the referral program
widely known?
• Do you have the systems in place to track
referrals and compare the success to other
candidate attraction/placement strategies?

23. Sample Referral Programs
23

24. WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
Right or Wrong for Your Business?
24

25. What Is Website Optimization?
25
• Ensuring a Sharp, Responsive Design
 This is more than how the website looks—it’s also about ensuring it performs for users across a wide
range of devices: computers, tablets, phones, smart TVs, etc.
• Enabling Strategic SEO
 Ensuring the website can be found through the search engines’ and online resources key audience use
to find information, products/services, jobs, etc.
• Creating, Maintaining Engaging, Fresh Content
 Providing informative content across the entire site and through a variety of mediums: videos, blogs,
whitepapers, case studies, news releases, social media, etc.

26. Poll #2
Is your website responsive?
26

27. What Is Website Optimization?
27
• Ensuring a Sharp, Adaptable Design
 This is more than how the website looks—it’s also about ensuring it performs for users across a wide
range of devices: computers, tablets, phones, smart TVs, etc.
• Enabling Strategic SEO
 Ensuring the website can be found through the search engines and online resources key audience use to
find information, products/services, jobs, etc.
• Creating, Maintaining Valuable, Fresh Content
 Providing informative content across the entire site and through a variety of mediums: videos, blogs,
whitepapers, case studies, news releases, social media, etc.

28. Sharp, Responsive Design
28
• A good, professional we site is the “cost of
entry” in business today
 Poor websites will limit business, partnership
and recruiting opportunities
• Websites that do not adapt with technologies
and users limit your audience
• Mobile-able websites are critical for engaging
with job seekers
 77% of job seekers use mobile job search
apps – Beyond.com Career Network Survey
 3 out of 5 job seekers have searched for
jobs on their mobile device in the past year –
Glassdoor.com Survey

29. Optimized Web Design Example
29

30. Strategic SEO
30
• SEO = Search Engine Optimization
 The art and science of getting online content
traffic from listings on search engines
through your…
- Web content
- Links
- Blogs
- Social media
• The Benefits of Strong SEO
 More visitors
 Higher rankings
 Increased engagement (downloads,
purchases, comments, likes, etc.)

31. Engaging Content
31
• Original Content
 Content that is unique to your expertise and
business will attract an audience
- SME blogs, articles
• Testimonial Content
 Content that demonstrates your business’
success and abilities is critical
- Case studies, testimonials
• Multimedia Content
 Websites that tap into multimedia (video,
social, chat, etc.) are more engaging to
users today

32. 32
Engaging Content Samples: Surveys & Reports

33. Critical Success Factors in Web Optimization
33
• Willingness to Invest. A good website requires
time, resource and investment.
• Ongoing Content, SEO Work. A website is
dynamic and must remain so to succeed.
• SMEs. The very best websites rely on original
content contributions (blogs, posts, articles, videos)
from subject matter experts. Ghost writers can help
ensure regular cadence.
Go Beyond the Basics

34. Website Optimization: Right or Wrong for YOUR Business?
34
• Do you communicate on your website to
with prospects, job seekers, partners and
clients?
• Does your website work (responsive)
across various devices?
• Is your content fresh and engaging?

35. EVENTS
Right or Wrong for Your Business?
35

36. Using Events to Reach Prospects & Candidates
36
• Event Marketing Opportunities
 Create events for clients/prospects
and/or candidates
- Learning lectures, lunches, etc.
- Networking events
- Career fairs (don’t forget about
virtual – Twitter chats, Google
Hangouts, Facebook, etc.)
- Skill-set driven meet-ups
 Sponsor and/or present at events
- Tech trade shows (host a client
event day before and/or during)
- Engineering trade shows
- User groups, SME groups
- Career fairs
- Community events (charity, sports,
education, etc.)
- Partner events

37. Created Event Example
37

38. Created Event Example
38
Placements in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Mashable, eWeek,
Huffington Post, live Tweeting – social/PR strategy

39. Sponsored Event Example
39

40. Critical Success Factors in Event Marketing
40
• Event-Business Alignment. Is the event a good
culture and audience match for your business?
• Balancing Event Content with Marketing Efforts.
Marketing and sales need to be secondary to the
event (unless it is a recruitment event—Career
Fair)
• Originality. Success at events hinges on your
ability to creativity break through the noise and
connect with prospects and candidates.
Engage

41. Event Marketing: Right or Wrong for YOUR Business?
41
• Are there unique event marketing
opportunities in your region or area of
expertise?
• Does your organization have SMEs able to
present/share knowledge with passion?
• Are you leveraging social tools to host cost-
effective recruiting events and engage in
conversations?

42. SOCIAL MEDIA
Right or Wrong for Your Business?
42

43. Poll #3
Is your business using social media
to reach candidates?
43

44. Poll #4
Is your business using social media
to reach clients?
44

45. Using Social Media to REACH Prospects & RECRUIT Candidates
45
• Identify, Listen to and Engage Talent and
Prospects
 Treat social media like a lead generation tool
 Making social candidates with skilled IT/Engineering
professionals is critical talent database building today
• Target, Target, Target
+ Use social media sites and their tools for narrowing
audiences to improve recruiting and marketing spend
+ Learn which social media sites are most important to
your clients, prospects and candidates and use them.
+ To find jobs?
+ To find talent?
+ To find services?
+ To gain knowledge?
+ To network?

46. How to Do Social Media Right
46
• Have a STRATEGY
 Determine who you want to reach and where
 Choose your sites/tools (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)
• Allocate THE RIGHT Resources
 If interns or admins are in charge of social media, ROI may not be reached
 Make SMEs your top voices and ambassadors on social media
• MEASURE Success/Failures & ADAPT
 Sales = new business leads
 Recruiters = new candidate resumes

47. Social Media Campaign & Engagement Example
47
• Multi-channel campaign promotion (email, all social channels)
• Pushed LinkedIn (#3), Twitter (#6) and Facebook (#9) as top
referring sources to website
• Overall traffic increase during campaign period

48. 48
TAP SAMPLE: Social Listening & Engagement Turns into TAP & ROI

49. 49
TAP SAMPLE: Social Listening & Engagement Turns into TAP & ROI

50. Social Media: Right or Wrong for YOUR Business?
50
• Can leaders within your organization serve
as social media thought leaders?
• Will your business be able to keep pace
(check regularly for comments, posts,
tweets, etc. and respond)?
• Is your ATS (job postings) integrated with
your social?
• Will you be committed to posting content
that is valuable to your users? Job listing
and event notices for candidates? Market
insights, event updates for prospects and
clients?

51. PR
Right or Wrong for Your Business?
51

52. Using PR to Engage Prospects & Candidates
52
• Be Practical
 Share good news: Community events,
acquisitions/mergers/funding/growth, new hires and charitable
giving updates will win you fans and take little time
• Leverage Your TechServe Alliance Resources
 Newsletters, surveys, etc.
 All information you can use to share with clients and
candidates
• Use Social Media
 Tweeting and posting can be a smart PR strategy and a great
way to build relationships with tech savvy reporters

53. National PR Example
53

54. Local PR Examples
54

55. Multiple Hits, One Program – Cook Systems, FastTrack’D
55

56. Social PR Examples
56
Live Tweet:
Events & Twitter Chats
Recognize other
People & Companies

57. PR: Right or Wrong for YOUR Business?
57
• Do you participate in events in the
community that could be communicated in
a good news story?
• Are you currently leveraging social media
for community and media outreach?

58. 58

59. 59
It’s Your Turn…
Questions? Comments?

60. Need Help? Contact Us Any Time!
60
Leslie Vickrey, CEO & Founder
ClearEdge Marketing
Tel: 312.731.3149
E-mail: lvickrey@clearedgemarketing.com
Twitter: @lvickrey
@clearedgemktg