In executive search, specialization is the key to winning more executive searches and work. Prospective clients want expert advice from a trusted source or thought leader, and seek out rich content to better understand executive talent trends and how this impacts them.

As an executive search firm you have access to a lot of talent metrics and search data, but how do you leverage this data within your marketing beyond a few slides in your pitch deck? 

Reports are often a forgotten tool in a search firm’s marketing toolkit. A report can be used as an effective piece of content to generate leads at the top of the marketing funnel, build trust with prospective clients and showcase your firm’s industry knowledge and expertise. Reports, similar to eBooks and White Papers, can also support your marketing efforts for upwards of an entire year, from email nurture campaigns to SEO and social media. 

Publishing A Report That Adds Value.  

There are essentially two methods for publishing an industry report to use in your marketing. The first is to leverage your firm’s intellectual property and conduct an audit of your own internal search and candidate data. Determine a grouping or series of datapoints that can support a specific topic to analyze, for example executive compensation trends or candidate mobility. When using your own search data to curate an industry report be mindful of outliers that may skew data points, and eliminate any clear outliers from your sample set. By using these key data points you already have available to you, you can quickly pull together a report on executive talent trends. 

The second methodology for publishing an industry report is to survey your candidate and / or client database. This methodology will typically produce a report that is less focused on data points, and leans deeply into cultural shifts or challenges executive talent faces. These reports can focus on anything from leadership traits in high-demand, to forces driving change across the industry. When surveying candidates or clients, this is another touchpoint to build a relationship with them, so try and create a survey that takes no longer than 5 minutes to complete. Using a tool like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms is a great way to collect survey data and allow for respondents to remain anonymous. When gathering survey data and responses, typically a survey should remain open for 7-10 weeks to allow for plenty of time to capture responses. Over the course of these weeks, send an initial email inviting candidates and clients to participate, followed by a series of reminder emails (around 2-3). To validate results and key trends, strive for a sample size of over 200 respondents.

Choose A Topic That’s Relevant and Repeatable.

There are a lot of “industry reports” produced that examine generic market shifts and trends. Just like you, your report should be specialized and focus on a particular niche area or problem that your clients care about. Choose a topic that will also remain relevant for the full year in order to get the most longevity within your marketing campaigns. Avoid focusing on current events or issues that in a few months will become stale and outdated. 

In addition to choosing a relevant topic, be sure to select one that can be repeated in another year. Launching a report is one way to begin building your own evergreen content, where clients and candidates actively seek it out every year like clockwork.

Add Your Spin With Key Insights.

When you have pulled together your data or gathered responses through a survey, carve out some time to dive deep into the results and begin identifying any key trends and insights. Start building a short list of about 4-6 key trends that arise from your review. These will be used as the foundation for your key insights. As an executive recruiter, you are an expert within your specialization and in a very unique position to add additional commentary and insights around these key trends. Showcase your expertise, reach and depth of knowledge by explaining or endorsing “The Why” behind these key findings. Adding your insights not only provides further validation of these trends, but elevates you as a thought leader and trusted advisor to potential clients.

You can also ask a current or potential client to weigh-in on the report findings as well. Including multiple viewpoints from industry thought leaders builds credibility behind your report and will help to expand your reach in terms of potential downloads and views. When producing the report be sure to include relevant graphs and statistics as visual aids to support your conclusions and insights.

Publishing Your Report.

When it comes to leveraging a report as a lead generating piece of content, you will need to gate it behind a form on your site in order for prospects to access. Gating a report allows you to capture important data on a prospective client such as email address, contact information, name, seniority, etc, for future marketing efforts and outreach. Once a potential client completes the form, an automated email can be triggered to send and include the link to the report for download. Requiring prospects and potential clients to provide some information in exchange for the report, is a normal practice and most leads are fairly comfortable with providing this information, plus it helps to build out your business development pipeline. 

Promote Through Outreach, Marketing and on LinkedIn

Now that the report is complete and ready to be leveraged across your marketing channels, you are ready to promote it. Here are several ways to leverage your new report in business development.

1. Include a link to the report in a personalized email to any prospects or potential clients you are targeting. Use this as an opportunity to start a conversation with the prospect.
2. Repurpose any key insights into blog articles where you can link to the full report.
3. Draft a series of short social media posts to schedule throughout the year that link to your report landing page.
4. Create a series of emails for a marketing campaign to potential clients and prospects.
5. Share your report with industry trade associations or media outlets. 

All of these activities will drive leads and prospects to downloading / viewing the full report. As more and more potential clients download the report, the report becomes another opportunity for outreach and business development. A relevant and high-value piece of content, like a report, will ultimately enable you to showcase your expertise and insights to potential clients in a meaningful way and position your search services as the client’s solution.