RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING: HOW TO SELL IT SMARTLY by Jim Taszarek As you drive around today, just notice the signs, "Now Hiring." Sure you'll see them at all the fast food places, but there's a bigger opportunity for us out there. Millions of well-paying jobs have mandatory retirement ages of 55-65. That means the Vietnam era workforce is heading for Sun City - thus creating millions of vacancies. Opportunity Probably every client we call on is looking for people. Just think of it -- every auto dealer, furniture store, club, law firm, restaurant -- you name it -- they're probably short on qualified people. In today's economy it's a top priority of every business -- producing an excellent reason to call on every CLIENT you have -- at the top of the company. Chances are they'd love to hear from you. Chances are they've never thought of using radio for recruiting. Your story: "This isn't about media - it's about Recruiting. If it were about media I'd see your agency and a media buyer." A Recruiting Call Don't call on the agency. Call on the HR or Personnel Director. The last thing these people care about are competitive ratings. They're not Marketing people. They've probably never met anybody who worked in broadcasting and they'll be fascinated meeting someone in "media." Not only that, they're used to paying super money to the newspapers for classified ads. (Wait till you actually see these budgets.) They won't measure you on AQH, but on the number of qualified leads you bring them. They want to know that the spot will run often -- frequency is a big deal. Then they'll be blown away by any decent sounding spot you bring them. What to Say So the story is: "We have a large audience of high school educated listeners who are already employed." That's important. You won't be bringing them the Chronically Unemployed. That's the problem with newspaper classifieds. The people who use them are usually out of work. Up until now this has been the exclusive turf of your daily newspaper. Every hospital is looking for nurses. So in that part of the classifieds, all the ads for all the big hospital groups are next to each other -- competing with each other. Our story is: "When you're running on the air, every spot is a full page ad. There's nobody competing with it. You don't have to share attention with your competitors. If you're in one of the 62 markets with a Business Journal, see their list of Top 25 Largest Employers. In small markets this information is usually found on most county government websites. Start there. Start with their HR Departments. It's easy. Reprinted from Quotabusters, by permission. © 2006 by Jim Taszarek (http://www.tazmedia.com). All Rights Reserved