Boosting Your Business through Employer Branding

What is employer branding?

Employer branding is a unique form of branding that develops brand trust throughout the community, both with employees and potential customers. Essentially, employer branding is how past, current, and prospective employees view you as an employer.

It can also reflect on your branding overall. Think about a company that treats employees poorly. Do you have the desire to use their services, or do you already have a negative impression of the business from that alone?

Why is it important to have an employer branding strategy?

Your employer branding strategies are vital aspects of your branding and company culture. They help you gain employees and place your brand in a positive light. In the end, they'll also impact your brand reputation, which is why it’s so important to have an employer branding strategy.

A few other reasons why it’s crucial to have an employer branding strategy include:

Attracts high-quality job applicants

Having good employees is key to business success. While any employee with experience can fill the position, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll meet your expectations or provide your desired output.

By having a good employer branding strategy, you’ll improve your talent acquisition and attract high-quality job applicants who are a great fit for the role. When you hire employees who actually want to work for you, you’ll create a better work environment and optimize productivity.

Increases employee retention

As you engage your employees, provide them with room to grow and give them the tools they need to succeed so you ensure that your employees are happy to be a part of your team. They can then set goals, accomplish them, strive for better, and receive the pay they deserve, all while earning you, as a small business, profit.

By having an employer brand marketing strategy, you will retain more employees, making things easier for you and everyone involved in the small business hiring process. You then create a happy staff overall.

Saves money

Training new employees costs money and uses valuable resources. When you're hiring people and bringing them into a negative work environment, they tend not to stay long and move on to the next job, leaving you out all the money you used to train them.

By building an employer branding strategy, you can retain these employees and save the cost of starting the hiring process all over again.

Plus, when you hire productive, skilled, qualified individuals, you can increase your productivity and increase profit. You can also raise customer satisfaction, which is vital when talking about the basics of branding.

Improves brand reputation

An employer branding strategy can allow you to develop a positive brand reputation. Not only does this help you retain employees, but it also attracts new customers.

Having a positive brand reputation can improve your relationship with current and future employees, which can build loyalty and increase customer confidence in your brand.

Boosts employee morale

Creating a positive employer brand makes your workplace an enjoyable experience for your employees. With a positive workplace environment, your employees will feel like their needs are met, and they will be more likely to work hard for your company.

Every business owner’s goal should be to create a positive work environment where existing employees are excited to come to work. That starts with creating an effective employer branding strategy.

How to build a successful employer branding strategy

Now that we’ve gone over why it’s important to have an employer branding strategy, let’s discuss how to build one.

In this section, we’ll go over a few employer branding strategy examples that you could implement in your own work environment and how to build a successful strategy that helps you attract and retain high-quality employees.

Define your company's value proposition

Your value proposition is the benefit you guarantee customers will receive when using your product or service. Ultimately, it's the reason why customers should choose you over competitors.

Value proposition works in two ways regarding employee branding. For one, employees understand the overall gist of your business. They can incorporate this into their work, and you might find some employees who want to work with you because your company values align with theirs.

On the other hand, your value proposition may include your employee experience and branding. It can become synonymous with who you are and what you do, and ultimately why a customer should choose you.

Identify your target audience

No matter your business' size or vertical, your target audience for employer branding is always potential employees. There's a bit more to it than that, though. While you're aiming toward potential employees, it's important to create target candidate personas, so you have an idea of who you want to hire.

Think about the characteristics of your ideal candidate, such as the following:

• Age
• Education
• Gender
• Desired income

This will help you get a better idea of who you want to hire, which can make the hiring process go more smoothly.

Develop an EVP

EVP is an acronym for employee value proposition. It refers to the benefits an employee receives at your workplace for their attributes, experience, talent, skills, and everything else they bring to the table.

Your EVP should include the unique benefits you provide that make you stand out from the competition. The EVP you provide helps to draw people to your workplace, and it also makes people want to stay at the company.

Leverage social media

Social media started as a way to communicate with friends, but it's now become a way to market products and can even be used as an employer branding strategy.

For one, many job seekers use social media to find jobs, so you should utilize your social media accounts to promote job openings. With social media, you can get an idea of what employees are looking for in a company.

You can also use social media to place ads for new employees while positioning your brand as a positive workplace. You may want to include posts highlighting each employee to show your appreciation. Add a section to your LinkedIn regarding the employee experience you provide and employee reviews.

Engage your employees

Employees want more than a paycheck. They want you to ask for their honest feedback and allow them to provide input. They're looking for room to grow, advance, and improve, meaning you need to talk directly to them and provide them with guidance.

Give them resources to improve their performance and make sure you're congratulating them on work well done. They want to know what they do matters and that you're noticing it, so make time to collect employee feedback so you can get an idea of what you're doing right and what needs improving.

Optimize your career sites

Career sites allow you to reach a large number of potential candidates at once. They allow for awareness and give potential candidates the ease of being able to apply online.

However, you need to make sure your job postings set you up as a positive place for people to work.

With this employer brand marketing strategy, you'll want to review every aspect of your profile and listings. Add details about what makes your company a positive experience for employees rather than just a job description.

However, remember that adding compensation for a position is useful in drawing in interested candidates rather than those with expectations above what you can provide.

Supply a positive candidate experience

Another important aspect of building a successful employer branding strategy is ensuring a positive candidate experience. Rather than just focusing on what the person can bring to the table, revolve the concentration around the individual's needs.

This means you need to ask the employee why they want to work for you and what they think this place of employment can do for them. Discuss their expectations in terms of pay and schedule.

Measure and analyze the success

Once you implement your employer's brand strategy, you then need to measure and analyze its success.

It's important to take the time to see how your strategies are panning out and if they're bringing in the potential employees you desire. Or, if you're drawing in unqualified people merely looking for employment rather than a career with a company.

It also helps to monitor if you're bringing in more potential employees and if they're showing up for their interviews and coming back once hired; this all plays a role in the success of building successful employer branding strategies.

Recruit top talent with an effective employer branding strategy

If you want to attract top talent for your business, you need to have a solid employer brand marketing strategy.

Your employer brand strategy should provide employees with a positive overall experience, including when they're looking for employment, when they come in for an interview, and when they're hired.

As you're making changes to your processes and policies, make sure you're evaluating your results and making changes as necessary. If you need a resource to make this happen, consider using Mailchimp.

Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform that offers several services to help with the hiring process, leaving you free to focus on the actual hiring process rather than the hoops you have to jump through to get there.