Have you fully embraced recruitment marketing? Echo Gravity's Brian Jameson shares his insights on adapting your hiring strategy to the digital age. As a starting point, Pete and Brian discuss why the staffing industry has been slower to adopt digital recruitment compared to other industries. Afterward, they discuss the importance of maintaining the human touch in an increasingly virtual world.
If you feel overwhelmed by the competitive world of SEO and digital marketing, you are not alone. Brian and Pete emphasize the importance of developing a targeted, long-term marketing strategy to boost staffing growth. In addition, they offer practical suggestions for identifying what is working, addressing the gaps, and committing to a clear road map. From unexpected success stories to the significance of testing and refining, they've got you covered!
Looking ahead, they explore the potential for artificial intelligence in staffing. This leads to the discussion about the power of analytics, the advantages of marketing services, and the potential dangers of addressing risky topics in a polarized culture. The episode wraps up with a reflective conversation about success, aspirations, and the joy of sharing knowledge.
Have you fully embraced recruitment marketing? Echo Gravity's Brian Jameson shares his insights on adapting your hiring strategy to the digital age. As a starting point, Pete and Brian discuss why the staffing industry has been slower to adopt digital recruitment compared to other industries. Afterward, they discuss the importance of maintaining the human touch in an increasingly virtual world.
If you feel overwhelmed by the competitive world of SEO and digital marketing, you are not alone. Brian and Pete emphasize the importance of developing a targeted, long-term marketing strategy to boost staffing growth. In addition, they offer practical suggestions for identifying what is working, addressing the gaps, and committing to a clear road map. From unexpected success stories to the significance of testing and refining, they've got you covered!
Looking ahead, they explore the potential for artificial intelligence in staffing. This leads to the discussion about the power of analytics, the advantages of marketing services, and the potential dangers of addressing risky topics in a polarized culture. The episode wraps up with a reflective conversation about success, aspirations, and the joy of sharing knowledge.
You're listening to the Hire Calling Podcast. I'm Pete Newsome and this is your source for all things hiring, staffing and recruiting. Really excited to have a special guest on today Brian Jameson from Echo Gravity. Brian, how are you today?
Brian Jameson:Doing great Pete. I really appreciate you having me on here Just excited to share whatever insights I can.
Pete Newsome:Wonderful. Let's talk a little bit about Echo Gravity before we get into some deeper stuff. Your co-founder, partner of Echo Gravity, tell us a little bit about the mission you guys are on.
Brian Jameson:Yeah, so full transparency I used to be and I think I've shared this with you aside I was actually recruited by my business partner to work in staffing back in 2004,. Worked in staffing for a few years, then I moved on to selling marketing services for a few years. I love sales, love marketing, but loved marketing so much I was like, all right, well, what's my transition? To getting into a marketing role? I actually went back and did the MBA route so wanted to just get that under my belt to see if that could catapult me into a marketing role within a company. To be honest, when I went back to school, I probably worked for a bigger company and get into some type of marketing leadership program and that sort of thing. But, as it would have it, it was around 2008, 2009, which we all know what happened around those times.
Brian Jameson:So the job prospects were not scientific and actually reconnected with my business partner at the time, kevin O'Brien. He was working for a software company at the time as their chief operating officer and they needed marketing help. So I basically interned with them and started to get into marketing and, yeah, found this book called Inbound Marketing. It was written by the guys at HubSpot and that was around the time they started their software company. Most people know HubSpot and not. At the time they were all about marketing automation and content generation, how you can push stuff out there and drive basically traffic back to your website and create leads and that sort of thing. They've turned since into more of a full blown kind of CRM solution and some other things, but just went in all in on that. I just thought it was like the greatest thing and so we started implementing those same tactics at the software company, creating a lot of contents, getting on social media, which was kind of in the nascent stages at Facebook, linkedin and some of the other ones and just started pushing that stuff out there, doing different types of campaigns and just thought, really cool results from a lead gen perspective, all B2B type stuff.
Brian Jameson:And after a couple of years and again the economy was not great around that time in 2000, I think, 2011. So after school I went and worked full time for them around 2011, 2012. It probably wasn't great and my then boss and current business partner there might be a good opportunity to bring marketing to the staffing space, which we also know really well, and we kind of share the same philosophy that it's marketing within staffing at the time and I would still argue to this day is a bit underserved and underinvested. And so that's what spawned Echogravity.
Brian Jameson:We kind of went out in 2011, just said, just he and I and said, hey, we'll kind of go out there and be this like outsourced marketing duo and at the time we were writing blog posts, we were writing social media, posting stuff, running. It's kind of soup to nuts, just he and I doing it. And slowly it grew and he starts to gain some traction. And then we added some more, much more capable team members that were actually writers and were savvy on social media. And that's really what started our journey with Echogravity. And since then we've grown organically over that time and currently our 15, 16 people and service 95% of our client bases in the staffing and recruiting space.
Pete Newsome:I love your story. You were getting started about the same time. I was starting Four Corner Resources and, as you know, I didn't do any marketing for 13 years and if I had a dollar for every time, I've kicked myself for not having a different perspective and approach back then. But I didn't know what I didn't know. I, like you, I was a salesperson. Marketing meant nothing to me back then and I think about it so often and say what a massive missed opportunity. So what do you think it is with the staffing industry? I think about this a lot. I'm sure you've put even more thought into it. Why do you think the staffing industry has not embraced the digital world like so many other industries have?
Brian Jameson:Yeah, I think it's. I mean my personal opinion. I think it's a combination of just that sales mindset and that producer mindset is kind of the old school mentality which I think a lot of firms back in the day would promote, which is, hey, you got to smile and dial, you got to hit your numbers, you got to go on so many meetings and take so many people out to lunch, and that's the way you're going to get requirements and that's the way you're going to build relationships. And I still think it's true. I mean, you still need to build relationships and absolutely there needs to be a sales and producer recruiting presence out there to foster those relationships. But I think that's part of it.
Brian Jameson:It's like you know this mentality that I can kind of go out there and do it, and I think that you know it's kind of been delivered from you know leadership over you know kind of the old again old school mentality is, you know, kind of get out there, build your relationships and go do it where you know so they've under invested in marketing or they've looked at marketing as, hey, you know, create a brochure or you know, have something to leave on someone's desk or leave behind in the folder and you know I think we both agree like those things are kind of dated and you know, in this digital world that we live in and you know, just being a little bit behind the curve and being able to push out stuff over digital formats and having people be able to find you and learn about your business and learn about issues that you're solving that may be topical and, you know, in a less salesy type of way, instead of just smiling and dialing, it's fostering a relationship over time, talking about topics that might be pain points or things that you're just posing the questions out there, posing the topics and having an opinion, having thought leadership, position and an idea on it and letting prospects and people kind of latch on to those as you go.
Brian Jameson:And I think, over time, I definitely feel like the sentiment has grown and embracing marketing more, whereas before it might have been like the big guys, like have a marketing team to do those things, so that starting to see definitely a lot more small, medium sized firms starting to embrace that mentality. I mean you look at social media and the prevalence, especially LinkedIn and this industry I think that it has, and then you can kind of see the way that, indeed, and some others, have really forced people into the marketplace to focus on digital, and you kind of need to be there to some degree right Now to be able to engage with people.
Pete Newsome:I think you have to be there for sure, and companies still occasionally ask for a brochure. We were on a webinar together a couple of weeks back that's when I invited you to join me here because we had so many great things to talk about then, and the subject of brochures came up, and I just think it's so funny where today it still happens, where prospects will say can you send me a brochure? And I tell them, I tell them, like, get out of here. The brochure lives on our website, right, which is so much more thorough and so much more information you could ever have in a pamphlet of any kind. But yet that mentality still exists, and as long as we give into it, right, it's going to stay, and so part of me thanks.
Pete Newsome:Well, who am I to tell companies not to do what they've always done? Because I think I have an advantage over them, right. But on the other hand, I don't mind talking about it because I think the rising tide raises all boats, right. And so our industry is so well poised to be thought leaders, and I don't think anyone's in a better position to weigh in on hiring practices, recruiting practices, staffing practices, than our industry, my industry, right, that you support, but yet we're generally not thought leaders. We're generally thought of as just salespeople trying to sell bodies right, which is how industry used to be referred to as body shops. That's not at all the case anymore. So I mean, do you think, I mean from the time you guys started in business, so 2008 to now, how much evolution have you seen? Because I have to tell you I haven't seen that much.
Brian Jameson:Yeah, that's a fair point. I think it kind of goes back to how you said it and it's kind of spent like 13 years going at it with that same mentality and it takes, I think, time to realize that you actually have a story to tell. You've got a history there, you've got all that experience, you've got the scars and the stories to tell and the knock is in the belt. And I think a lot of people maybe it's human nature that people are just like well, I don't really have anything that's interesting to say, or I'm not good on social media or I'm not a good writer. But I think that's also part of the opportunity of being vulnerable out there and being real and authentic. Because it's like to your point about the brochures. That's like a glossy thing and it's talking about how typically right, so typically how great we are and all the good things that we can do. Which brochures that may have their purpose and, depending on your audience and what you're doing, if you're a firm that goes to recruiting fairs and you're meeting with people in person, maybe there is an opportunity for that. But I think it does boil down to just sharing that story and kind of being not apologizing for anything and just putting yourself out there, and I think there's just still that hesitancy sometimes for firms to do that, and I guess that's where also we come into play and we'd like to try to be the people that help those companies that maybe aren't quite sure how to get started or aren't sure how to tell that story, or it's all sitting up in their head and it's like, well, I don't know how to articulate this. Well, that's where a firm like us or others agencies can really help to bring that stuff to fruition in a creative way or tell that story in your voice, even though maybe it may not be easy for that person to do it, or that salesperson, that recruiter or whoever that may be.
Brian Jameson:So I think it's just one of those things that's continued growing, just like social media in the early days, and maybe even I know we'll talk about AI probably here but people are like I don't want to get into AI yet, but it's kind of that early adopter phase, I think, in that regard, whereas maybe thought leadership and content and social media and something of that things people are realizing they kind of, I think, need to be there. It's just a matter I think of. To what extent are they putting themselves out there and putting content out there to help market themselves? I mean, the personal brand is another aspect to this where every salesperson will probably tell you a successful one.
Brian Jameson:You're not just selling the company, you're selling yourself, because in this world that we live in and the relationship matters when something goes wrong, they want to be able to rely on someone that's going to have their back. So, working on not just telling the story of the company or the firm that you work for, but telling your own stories and your own unique ways and how you can help your customers with those needs and sharing those success stories. Hey, I've been in the trenches. I can help you with these things and here are some ways that we've done it in the past and that might resonate with you.
Pete Newsome:It's a hard initial step to take, and I have experienced some of these hard steps in different aspects of life. Starting a business. I thought, wow, I'm going to step off a cliff. And it's such a big drop until you take the step and you realize it was only like a foot down. It's like a movie where the person goes over the ledge and you're like they're gone forever and they're only hanging on a ledge five feet down and all as well. That's how it was when I started Four Corner and that's how it was for me when I first started to venture out and share an opinion on anything publicly I've said this, I think publicly before, so I'll say it again is that I used to naively say well, what am I supposed to say on a staffing company website?
Pete Newsome:It's five pages. You have our contact information, you have our about us, you have a home page with pictures and here's the services we provide. That's kind of it. But in reality, as I was alluding to earlier, as you've reinforced, we're in the trenches. We are ground zero of how hiring happens, what works, what doesn't, and so we're so well equipped as an industry to share it. But it doesn't happen right. So we know that. So what can be done about that, I think, is the next logical thing to talk about. So when companies come to you, is there any kind of consistent theme that you see of problems that businesses staffing companies are looking to solve or hoping marketing will solve for them?
Brian Jameson:Yeah, I think that's a great question, I think a very thought provoking one. I think there typically are the obvious ones right, we need more for many years, right Up until, I would say, 2023. And recently it was like the last three years hey, we need candidates, we need to access more people, we need to build that candidate pipeline Number one it's kind of like the high level Number two we need clients, we need to build that pipeline. So I think that's where maybe the challenge sometimes exists is how do you get from this very bottom of the funnel need and we're talking about marketing, which is very top of the funnel in building awareness and building recognition and engagement which sometimes does, I think, requires some education in most cases.
Brian Jameson:I mean, definitely, some clients come to us and they know exactly what they need and we kind of just get right into discussing how the relationship can work and the types of things that we can do. But sometimes there is this conversation around well, let's just talk about what marketing looks like for a stacking recruiting firm, because ultimately that's the goal is to put more candidates into positions that you've got, gain more clients, grow the business. So oftentimes I don't think it's like hey, I need to build my brand awareness or I need to build, I need to engage more prospects over this channel or that channel. Sometimes they'll say, hey, I want to. You know a comment when actually able to get us like hey, I want to be. You know, number one on Google is also a big one that we'll kind of get. Snap your fingers.
Pete Newsome:You can make that happen next week, can't you?
Brian Jameson:Yeah, which is you know, and then that's a good conversation to have, because then we can talk about specifics, about, okay, well, that's a good goal to have, right, but it is a journey that you've got to take in order to do those things. And you're competing. You know the 20 person, 30 person firm that's competing against the 10,000 person firm. Just by the sheer volume and size of those companies, you know you're not gonna be able to compete to some degree on Google with that. So it's like you need to develop strategies to come in from other angles and really find out. You know how you want to engage and differentiate there so that you can be found.
Pete Newsome:I think it's, and I want to hear your opinion on this because you're the expert but my you know. I've formed an opinion from my own experiences over the past five years as I've entered into this world, and it's almost like the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. So it started with me. As I confessed to you earlier, I shouldn't repeat all this live because it just makes me look so terrible but that I thought oh, email marketing, right, like that's it. I just need to do email marketing and it will solve all my problems, even though my website was five ugly pages, right Disregard that.
Pete Newsome:I just need to send emails consistently and on a cadence and all will be well. So clearly, that's not it. I had to establish that presence and commit to a strategy. But as I've progressed, I've learned my strategy was based around SEO to be found on Google, right Keywords and content all the things that will lead to having your site show up on the front page, being ranked. But as time goes on, I've realized how intimate strategies can be for all the different channels that are out there and I have not conquered. I haven't conquered any of them, but I haven't even made inroads to many of them, like Reddit, for example, or Quora.
Pete Newsome:I'm convinced you could build an entire business around marketing correctly on social channels like those right. Linkedin is huge in our space. I don't think we've taken very good advantage of LinkedIn. I'm looking to change that in the near future. So I think there's a huge intimidation factor coming in. I certainly was intimidated because I thought there's so much to know and I don't know any of it. But what do you think is the biggest barrier that staffing companies need to overcome to enter into the space and commit to marketing seriously? Commit to it.
Brian Jameson:I think number one is I think we kind of touched on it Like it's not a snap your fingers and okay, I hired this firm, they're gonna help me from one day to the next, it's definitely. And if you think about the other way around, like, are you gonna hire internal staff to help? And when you bring on somebody internally, there's typically a runway to bring them up to speed and, just like any salesperson to start producing or any recruiter to start producing, it takes time. So I think that's one of the maybe the challenges and, I don't know, maybe misconceptions that I don't wanna paint a broad brush stroke on that. But I think that is definitely one of the things like having that mindset that it's not gonna happen overnight. It is a marathon, it's not a sprint, which is something that we use that terminology a lot with clients.
Brian Jameson:And, to your point, like there are so many different things. So it's like, if you are and we service small to medium sized businesses, for the most part I would say 95% of the clients we service are under a hundred million in revenue, so the budget is not gonna be that of and the major billion dollar companies that are out there where they can kind of throw resources at like, oh, let's just test and see what happens on Cora or Reddit or some of these other channels that maybe aren't the mainstream marketing channels that you can pursue. So I think having a strong understanding on how, what dollars you wanna put in different areas and certainly an expert or a resource that you hire or a firm that you work with can help you identify what some of those things are and putting your eggs in that basket. Don't spread them all out in different areas, because I think that's one. I guess another area was like oh, we need to do marketing.
Brian Jameson:It's like they wanna do, we wanna do all these different things, versus like hey, let's just stay focused in this area, whether that's hey, let's just focus on LinkedIn or let's focus on creating more content so that we've got stuff to share on social platforms like LinkedIn, or to help our search profile or SEO performance, and so that's probably the things that I would point to. I guess, in some of the challenges and kind of like the barriers maybe, so to speak, is just like not knowing where the focus should be and like just having a simple strategy that doesn't need to be a robust. It's like, hey, we wanna get three pages to rank in the top five on Google. Let's start there. Start simple and you can build a plan around some simple strategies like that, versus trying to maybe boil the ocean with your first go around or entering into the marketing world and trying to market your staffing firm.
Pete Newsome:I'm glad you clarified that because, trust me, I was not suggesting you should go after all these channels. The opposite right, because each of them are so need their own strategy. If you take something like YouTube, the big influencers there seems easy, right, Seems like they just put up videos, but if you listen to those who've achieved great success there, it's a science. These people are tacticians with it. They study every nuance that goes into, whether it's the content, title, the images associated with it, what time they post. I mean, there's so much, and you mentioned not boiling the ocean, right? I think that's a great way to put it and you don't need to do that. That's the good news, but you do need to get in the game.
Pete Newsome:I say that, like anytime I start talking about this, some of my team members will be like, why do you encourage others to do it? Because there's so much room, there's so much opportunity in our industry and I think, our industry as a whole. Like my self-serving reason for doing it is that I think we lack credibility sometimes and we're seen as an adversary to HR, for example, which should not be. We should be their biggest ally Because, once again, we have the knowledge. So I think there's so much room for everyone to do better and to improve our industry perception, and what you said about being patient and needing time. We're in a relationship-based business most of us are, anyway and you don't build relationships in a matter of a day or two, so why would you expect your online presence to thrive that way? Right, the best customers any of us typically have are those that were the hardest to get into, because we had to burn it and it's the same thing right.
Pete Newsome:If success came easily, the barrier to entry would be really low, and that would be an entirely different situation. So I'm a big believer that anything worth having is probably worth putting in time and effort to achieve, and for me, marketing is certainly that. Now I do want to ask you about branding. One of the big changes that I've seen over just recently, over the past couple of years, is personal branding becoming so prevalent. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because I see, once again, like everything else, some people are doing it really, really well and reaping the rewards, but most aren't. I mean, where do you think the trajectory of that is?
Brian Jameson:Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think, and it aligns, I think, with the whole concept around thought leadership, where before maybe it's like hey, I'm going to post something on social and if you think about getting outside of staffing, recruiting, just the whole influencer marketing space, right, I mean, there's YouTubers out there that are making millions and millions of dollars just by posting stuff like how to unbox gifts and toys and things like that, and so I mean, I think there's an audience for almost everything out there. Right, if you think about it instead of you know, back in the day maybe it was hey, I'm in the Chicago market and I've got this set of companies that I'm going to go after. Well, now it's a little bit more of a level playing for field. You can kind of go after anybody, and so if you've got something you're passionate about and you've got a story to tell and you're willing to put it out there, you know you may be resonating with someone that's halfway around the country or on the other side. You know, on the East Coast, on the West Coast, and I think that all plays into it.
Brian Jameson:I think you know with personal branding and, admittedly, I think it's an area, like you know, I haven't really explored it much, to be completely honest, for my own, for our own stuff, but we've helped some companies and some people, some clients, with that and I think it just boils down to you know, if you're passionate about something and you want to go into it and you want to share it and put yourself out there, then people are going to resonate with it. So, but if you do it from a position of like, hey, I just want to get the rewards out of you know, because I've seen these other people doing it and just put stuff out there in a non authentic way, I think it's really easy for people to, you know, kind of tune out to that or just kind of see it as more noise. But I do definitely see personal branding as another element. Maybe, you know, peeling back layers of marketing onion. You know, if you think about it like the company brand and you know the people within it, and then you've got opportunities to go a level deeper and, hey, this is my personal brand, this is what I'm going to be about and this is what I'm going to talk about and people can get attracted to it or not, and I think the pros outweigh the cons. You know people are not going to be like, oh, I don't want to work with this person because they, they have a position on something like this.
Brian Jameson:As long as you kind of stay away from like the really polarizing stuff which you know there's plenty of that out there. But if you just keep it, you know, purely focused on you, know how you, how you're helping people or you know what you're doing. You know we have a client that is focused on. You know other like parents that are out there that are in business and not just in their staffing business and it's not necessarily, you know most of it's not even really about staffing, but it does help her push, put her her brand out there in a way that A lot of other people maybe aren't talking about that stuff and it can build some connections and build a following and it's like oh, by the way, this is how I help companies and this is what I do as part of my business and that does have some benefits in the long run.
Pete Newsome:I couldn't agree more with that, and even though it seems like staffing is pushed towards commoditization a lot, we see vendor management systems and that sort of thing trying to take the personalization out of it. But my perspective is that we as individual staffing companies are all so unique in the way we do things, and who is a good fit for four-corner resources is not going to be a good fit necessarily for the company down the street and vice versa. And that's okay. Right, because it's a very intimate thing, I mean that's. I believe in that fully. Is that nothing's more personal than recruiting and hiring? Right, Because these are the people you spend your waking hours with.
Pete Newsome:So when you start working with someone, I mean I would imagine part of your job is to have to draw that out. Right? Just kind of walk through high level of if once someone engages in ecogravity I know my peers out there are like I was five years ago and that is to say, largely clueless, right? Maybe they weren't as clueless as me, but I know a lot of them are more, even more right, I know that. And you're starting off. Just kind of walk through that process from introduction to starting to put your content out there. How does that work?
Brian Jameson:Yeah, I think it starts with just getting a good pulse check, or audit, if you will Like. Okay, where are we at today? Is there anything? Is there a track record that has been successful, anything? Sometimes we work with clients that they have been dabbling in some stuff and they've found a thread and they're pulling on it and it's working out well. So we try to take inventory of all of those things that are already working.
Brian Jameson:So we don't want to. A good example is like with a website, right, or the content that's been out there and they've already got really good search rankings. So we don't want to come in and say, hey, let's do something, so propose something that's going to sabotage that or have an unintended consequence is probably a better way to put it for that. So it's really about capitalizing on what's been going well and then finding the gaps. I think it's probably the first thing that we're looking at. So it's definitely like an audit phase and then from there it becomes a let's build out a roadmap that's going to focus in on filling those gaps and then capitalizing on the good stuff. Looking at the budget, right, I mean budget does come into play. So how many resources can we put out what's the level of effort that needs to go into it and really trying to focus in on those things. And, again, trying to be specific. I mean, typically we're not going to get hired to do everything under the sun, so we're going to try to pick our battles, so to speak, and really focus in on those things. And that might just be hey, let's get a really strong. You've got this great, great brand, you've got a great personal brand out there, because you've got all this history, you've got these, these contexts and you've got stories to tell. So let's have a strategy where we're going to share those and put together a content calendar. You know calendar, the roadmap is a big piece to it.
Brian Jameson:And then, I think, the execution part, like sometimes a lot of what we do is holding everybody accountable to moving stuff forward. It's easy to talk about ideas, I think, and everyone has ideas, but it's like how do we bring those to fruition? And having those conversations like and we'll propose ideas. Maybe they're not all the great ideas, but let's pick and choose the ones that we want to try to pursue and test it. I like to say marketing is a lot of testing, and especially for somebody that hasn't done a lot of marketing already. You don't know what's probably going to work and what's not. So sometimes it's a matter of like, let's just test this out. You know, maybe it's A B testing to some regard, but really it's like let's see what's what's going to stick and what's not, and you know, okay, we learn as we go. Let's throw out the stuff that's not working, let's keep improving on the stuff where we're starting to see some traction, and then focus in on that and then refine.
Brian Jameson:I think is kind of like as we move further down that life cycle is it's a lot of refining. Looking at some of the metrics of what we're seeing, I mean in the digital world you can measure pretty much everything how much time somebody spends on a page, how much I mean you name it right and you probably know as good as anybody and even the staffing metrics right. All the applicants that come in on the interviews and the submissions fill rates and that sort of thing. So the analytics become a huge tool. There's so many tools out there right now that can help you in marketing and they all measure some aspect, to the point where maybe you can drown some of the analytics out there and also that I guess becomes another aspect to this is focusing on, like the KPIs or the key metrics that you really want to focus in on, that you feel like driving that performance.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, as you're talking, I'm thinking of some things that I expected to work really well that did not, and some other things that we did that were very much a pleasant surprise, and we would double down on those things and keep our foot on the gas. Can you think of any stories or examples that you could share about something that just was a big win or a surprise, that so a real success story that you didn't necessarily expect to see?
Brian Jameson:Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think I would relate to that tremendously. I think there's been stuff where like, hey, let's put together an e-book on some, let's say, some specific technology that a company's really invested in and we think we're going to get great results from it, and it just kind of falls. It gets a little bit lukewarm, but then we'll do a post about maybe it's like a poll that we put out there on LinkedIn, and then it's something maybe as simple as what do you expect it to? What are the top five reasons why people are rejecting your offers? And people will latch on to things that you just don't think they will.
Brian Jameson:Sometimes and I think those have been some of the surprising things I think, especially with social, that it kind of takes a mind of its own. Sometimes there's definitely been blog posts we've written, you know, in some regards where I think that just all of a sudden are getting huge, huge hits and tons of traffic and it's like, wow, we never expected that to get that type of traffic. And, you know, sometimes it's all about the topic sometimes, and again it goes back to, I think, being found, especially when you're getting at a, I think, something that's a little bit more topical or timely. Maybe is something that people latch on to, or you're calling out a specific type of audience. You know you've done some posts like on millennials versus Gen X, and that's an area with what you're doing is zen gig maybe as something you might have also some further insights, or even more insights than I do. Yeah, sometimes you know people have a strong opinion when you start kind of calling out some demographics of the population.
Pete Newsome:Right, right, right, it's a dangerous path at times to go down. I mean, as you mentioned earlier, we're at a very polarized culture right now and there's you have to be conscious of those things and it's a risk. Reward is, I think of, we do a live stream with I'm the Gen X, or, of course, but then we have a Y and Z. It's called Gen X Y Z and you know some of the opinions and things we talk about, about how we perceive things in the workplace. I know it's different, right, it's different. You got to proceed with caution at times, but, to your point, we had a video go viral on TikTok, of all places, and we put so much quality content out there and what I believe to be high quality content, and this was a video of, like you know, two little kids and one like push the other one over. I mean it was like a America's funniest home videos type of thing and that's what went viral, right, and it had some text about like me at work on a Monday or something, you know, just absurd that you'd expect to see on TikTok. But I'm like, okay, the hours of work and the dollars and the content we produce of such high quality, and that's the thing that goes viral. Okay, you know that's, but I'll take it right. And so that's what works on TikTok, which is which would not work at all on LinkedIn, for example. So, you know, everything you said, of course, resonates really well with me, and that testing is you know, one of the things that I like is the numbers person is you can quantify it all, right, you, there's no, there's no ambiguity, and sales has a lot of ambiguity around it, right, why did I not get that deal? Well, it's subjective, right. Why can this person not get more? You know, bringing more business, that's very subjective. Marketing is not, which I love. I mean, you can see what you get out of it. You know the analytics, as you were saying. So I think I think it's just such a so many people in my position who are your prospects just don't realize the power of it and how effective it could be. So, you know, I'm certainly a big proponent of companies using marketing services more. What would you say is ecogravities, you know, really, advantage in the market. I mean, there's a lot of competition out there, just like in staffing. There's a lot of organizations that do what you guys do.
Pete Newsome:I can give you my perspective from when I met Kevin, your partner, years ago. Years before I met you, sit out as very professional, told me what I needed to hear, even if it wasn't what I wanted to hear, as someone who wanted quick results. Kevin is one of the people as I've shared with you before we started recording who said this is a mountain you have to climb. It doesn't happen overnight. It's going to take a matter of months before you start expecting results. Great advice, but also, you know, as someone who's a sales minded person, that's not what I wanted to hear. I was like I want to give you a dollar a day and have you generate two for me tomorrow. Right, that's what I wanted. Kevin's like that's not going to happen and I respect and appreciate that in a way that I could not have back then.
Brian Jameson:Right.
Pete Newsome:I did, and I appreciate it then, because I've kind of sold that way too, let me give you the bad news right, so you can't hold it against me later. But other than that being, you know, upstanding and forthright and all that what's echo of gravity, is a real advantage in the market.
Brian Jameson:Yeah, so yeah, absolutely right, and there's an agency out there probably for every aspect of marketing. You can go find design agencies, seo, contents, I mean you know kind of people that focus just on the function, and then there are firms out there that just focus, you know, on staffing and recruiting. I think that's grown over the years. I look at that as probably a sign that there's a demand for it and there's a need for it, and so I think you know kind of to use your analogy, for all ships rise, I think, when there's more players in the market. But what we've tried to do is really focus on one of our key pillars is on the thought leadership and content base. So we've invested pretty heavily in helping our clients tell stories, be creative in the way they tell those stories.
Brian Jameson:You know, I think that's as we go forward in this world and we've touched a little bit on some of the technology and tools. I mean, even two, three, four years ago it was much harder to design graphics. Now you've got tools like Canva. That has someone that doesn't have, didn't go to school to learn the Adobe tools or haven't put the time in to learn those tools. Now you can go on, you know, on a Canva like type of tool, and create a really nice presentation with maybe not all of the skills that the kind of traditional graphic designers have. I still think there's a need for graphic designers because you can't do everything now, but there's much more of a level playing field. So I think creativity in how you tell those stories is something, as we go forward, that is going to continue to be a need, and so we've tried to invest pretty heavily in being able to help companies with that, you know, whether it's in the written form or that's helping to write a script to do a video.
Brian Jameson:You know we're not video production company, but you know we like to try to be in a position where we're helping companies from a thought leadership perspective but at the same time we also can provide, you know, full service on the marketing side.
Brian Jameson:So we've positioned ourselves as kind of an outsourced firm. So whether you've got, you know, internal staff or you don't, you know we can plug the holes there to provide marketing strategies and execute on that marketing, and I think that's been probably one of our, you know. Let me think about some of the differentiates we bring to the table. I would probably point to those. You know, obviously we've got some experience in staffing, recruiting, so do others, so I mean that is a differentiator to an extent, but maybe not the full story. So I typically go back to you know how we can help companies tell those stories, create great thought leadership, great content, and then with those, in my opinion, what we've seen. I mean it's hard to push stuff out on social or, you know, get SEO traffic or get leads without having great content or great thought leadership.
Pete Newsome:Couldn't agree more. I think such a great answer. I didn't know how you were going to answer that and I'm glad you said it the way you do. Sorry, but it really resonates because it's going to.
Pete Newsome:It's not about the pretty pictures on your website, that somebody you know so, friend Kate, you'll appreciate this asked me to look at his website the other day and he's like okay, I'm getting ready to pick, you know someone to hire. And they said what I need is I need better graphics on my front, my on my homepage, and need videos. I'm like two people a month see your homepage right, like you could have. It doesn't matter, you could have the, the secret code to a vault with a million dollars in it, and no one would ever see it on your homepage. So without the content, it's not going to matter and it does all start there, in my opinion, because it's you hope you want to be found.
Pete Newsome:But what are they going to think once they find you right? Are they go? Is it? Are you going to put yourself out there as an authority and you know someone with expertise, as you just said, or is it going to be hey, you have a pretty picture that's not going to lead you to a whole lot of confidence in choosing that as a staff company, as a staffing partner. So I think that's such a great approach and and and it's the right one for sure that I think you know you guys are separated from a lot of your competition, who just does not view it that way, and I just have a lot of respect for the way you guys do business.
Brian Jameson:Yeah, we always want to make everyone look cool. But if we can make them look cool and, you know, get that stuff to resonate, I think that's that's kind of where the ideal spot that you want to be, and knowing your audience right, and I think you know you can create great content. But if it's missing, missing that mark to the audience, then you know that that's maybe missed opportunity. So, really having a good understanding, like knowing your, your we call them buyer personas or your target personas and you know understanding, you know what makes them tick and everyone's a little bit different and you know it might seem simple on the surface but sometimes it's kind of hard to to really get at that and peel back the layers, like what type of content do they consume, what do they do on their free time?
Brian Jameson:And you know you can start to group people into these personas and really understand who they are, because even today they're all people, they're all humans.
Brian Jameson:They'll, you know, do the same things that everybody else does. They just happen to be in specific in a specific industry or specific buying position or there are certain types of you know candidate and that sort of thing. So, having a really crystal clear view of that and understand, like maybe you need a survey, maybe you need to talk to your clients, and I think that's another thing that maybe not everybody does, even though it seems maybe a bit obvious. You may think you know, you know the answers to what they may say. But sometimes just doing a simple actually like hey, find your top five clients and like hey, mind if I just pick your brain for 10 to 15 minutes to you know, ask them like why do you choose us over? You know the other five companies that you maybe can work with, and you might be surprised at some of the answers that you get and that can be good ingredients to go and create more stuff and find more people like that.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, it sounds simple when you say it, and, but it's to apply that effort and to put structure around. It is so complex for a staffing company or most businesses anyway small businesses, medium businesses, big businesses to stop what you're doing and to put that kind of effort in place, right, or even even something like a content calendar, which you mentioned earlier. It's so necessary, right, but how many companies can do that on their own? So I think they need most of us really need a third party to come in and oversee that effort and to know what order things should be in, what steps need to be taken. It's not intuitive, it's not, I mean it. It may even be intuitive to some degree, it may be easy to comprehend, but to do it you almost need someone from the outside to hold you accountable, I think, to ask those questions, to put those steps in place, I just I think you know a third party is very much needed.
Brian Jameson:Yeah, I love the analogy of I don't know. I always played sports growing up and I just love the analogies to. You know, running a business, like a sports team, like every team, has a coach for a reason, and if you look at the NFL these days, they've got a coach for every position, right. So you know there's a reason. Even the best of the best, they've got someone there to help guide them. So, whether that's someone you have internally or whether that's you know an external, you know third party resource, they can help you as a server purpose and hold you accountable, like you just said. I mean, sometimes we're our own worst enemies. Like you know, I need to go to the gym today, but you know I go there and I don't know what to do. So you know I go to a gym where they tell me what to do. That's right.
Pete Newsome:Yeah, I mean knowing what to do and actually doing it very, very different things. I don't know if you're watching Hard Knocks right now, you know with the Jets.
Brian Jameson:I think that happened yeah.
Pete Newsome:That you know. I didn't know the story of Aaron Rodgers and the this coach who he bonded with in Green Bay, who came who's now with the Jets, who had a Tim Vary head coaching stand elsewhere right, that just hearing Aaron Rodgers talk about Aaron Rodgers is the best in the game right now and there's just to watch him. I've just fascinated by getting to see him up close. How great he is, but he still has a coach, right, he still needs a coach and relies on a coach. So that's such a that really is meaningful to me right now because I just watched episode three last night.
Brian Jameson:Yeah, it's on my. It's next time I've watched the first two. I, I, I, I didn't give into that stuff all day. I think there's great, great analogies between the sports teams and I think also the competitiveness. That might be a topic for another podcast.
Pete Newsome:Well, I'll get you back on it. I promised I told you 30 minutes worth 48. So last question predictions for the future. You mentioned AI, so now I'm going to you know we'll bring that up. How could we not? What? What do you see? What you know? Crystal ball, what's? What's going to be different five years from now? Biggest change that AI is going to bring about?
Brian Jameson:Oh, man, I I.
Pete Newsome:I know you didn't know, I didn't prepare yourself, I knew this, this one better, right?
Brian Jameson:I mean, if I guess, if I had a crystal ball, I probably would be maybe in a different spot than I am today. But if I were to predict the future, I mean, I definitely think. You know, as we've kind of talked, you know, casually, I think AI will certainly play a role, no question. You know, the biggest change to you know, if you think about technology and technology and marketing specifically, that has happened since, in my opinion, since Google. So I don't see I see it as a tool. I don't see it. You know, maybe it'll replace some, you know, functions, but I don't think you're going to see marketing people go away. I don't think you're going to see recruiters and sales people going away or the need for a staffing firm go away. You know it's just going to. It's going to be another tool and the people that embrace it and find the ways to make it a synergy for what they do. Well, I think we'll reap the rewards of it. You know it's going to.
Brian Jameson:I think it reduces a lot of time spent in a lot of areas, whether, even if you're a writer, you know, I don't, you know we're not using AI to go write blog posts for clients or anything like that. But we're writing stuff and we're taking the work that we're doing and we're using that tool to make it better or to do to do more work, to do it to be more productive. And I think maybe that's, you know, if you read some of the news out there and just you hear some of the top leaders and some of these companies, they're talking about productivity a lot and being more productive with what you've got, and I think that's probably to sum it up. I think people, you know productivity is, is, is poised to be, you know, be able to do more with less using some of these technologies like AI. You know this automation that's out there now, which is huge and that's kind of, you know, before AI can happen, automation was a huge or it still is a huge topic of conversation out there.
Brian Jameson:So I don't I see that stuff only growing and becoming more intertwined. But I still think there's, you know, there's still going to be the need to, to still engage with people and tell those stories. And now, you know, in the history of time, that's, you know, kind of go back to. You know all the books and things that have been written out there. They're out there for reason, telling those different stories, and I just I don't see that going away. You know, and maybe we'll see like AI movies in the future. I don't, I don't know.
Pete Newsome:But I don't think you will know that's a oh no right.
Brian Jameson:Exactly, that'll be the yeah. Will we know? Will we not know? I don't know. But.
Pete Newsome:No, I, no, you're I, we, nobody has that crystal ball, right? That's an unfair question. So thanks for answering it anyway. I wish we did.
Pete Newsome:But we, we know that it's here to stay and I, you know, I think of it the same way, right, it's. It's going to allow us to be better at what we do, go faster and more thorough, do new things, more with less. That hasn't changed, I mean, since you know I, you're younger than me, but since I've got out of school, that was that, was it do more with less. And of course that's going to continue. That's human evolution and it's going to be a fun ride, that's for sure. So I'll get you back on.
Pete Newsome:We'll talk about personas. Maybe next time We'll talk about technology, because there's so many different areas we could go down. But thank you for for providing such a good overview today and introducing, you know, echo gravity to my listeners. I think anyone who's considering hiring a marketing firm, and if you haven't ventured into that world, you're, you're behind the curve, but it's not too late to catch up, that's for sure. There's so much opportunity that I hope you give Brian a call so we'll put all your contact info in our show notes, Brian, and thanks for thanks for all your time today. It's been great.
Brian Jameson:Thank you, Pete. I appreciate it, Love what you're doing out there and, yeah, I think you're kind of a testament to a lot of stuff. I was saying just getting out there and putting bringing this stuff to the forefront. So love what you guys are doing and wish you guys all the success in the world.
Pete Newsome:Thanks, thanks so much. Yeah, no one, no one was starting from scratch more than me.
Brian Jameson:That that we've proven, I think, pretty well, so so I appreciate that, yeah, and it's awesome to share that stuff out there.
Pete Newsome:So all right everyone. Thank you for listening. Brian, thank you again and have a great rest of the day.
Brian Jameson:Thank you.