Account-Based Marketing for Job Seekers, Part 4 of 5

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Job seekers seem to be taking a spray and pray approach, stuck in the bad old days of marketing. What should they do differently? Adopt account-based marketing (ABM). In this part of our series, we’ll look at the framework for finding the right job with ABM.

ABM is built on the basics of marketing, like the 4Ps. If it’s been a while and you haven’t read Marketing White Belt, this is a quick refresher:

Let’s examine the third P: placement. In the context of most marketing strategy, placement refers to where we put the product for sale. For example, in retail we decide where the product will sit on the shelf, how high or low on the shelf it will be, what products it is surrounded by, where in the store the product is located.

In the context of an account-based marketing job search, the question for us as job-seekers is where we will put ourselves for sale as the product. We face two types of placement questions: physical and digital.

Physically speaking, if all the ideal companies we wish to work for are located in another geography, we then have to consider if we should move to accommodate that geography. Do we pack up our belongings and move from the East Coast to the West Coast or vice versa?

Digitally speaking, our ideal companies are active in certain channels online. We must identify where they’re active and put ourselves there as well.

For example, just as it would be foolish to not have a resume, it would be equally foolish not to have a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a talent solution software provider first, social network second; if we were to look in their quarterly earnings reports, we would see that the majority of the income is derived from software sales, selling talent recruiting software.

After you have set down the basics, such as buying your own website domain and putting up a personal professional website, optimizing a LinkedIn profile, etc., examine where your target companies are active online. Some companies may be more active on Facebook, others on Twitter, still others on closed forums like SpiceWorks.

Now, do some research. What types of content does the brand post? What hashtags, what topics, what conversations do they have? If you know the hiring manager or executive you are attempting to interview with, examine their writing. Read their blog posts, read their website, read their personal social media updates. If you really want to take it to the next level, feed their writing to tools like IBM Watson. Use your understanding of placement to develop a full picture of the people you want to work with.

In the next post, we will tackle promotion, the outreach process. If you think about placement and promotion, they are two halves of the same coin: inbound and outbound.

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