Brand Advocacy – Being remembered for doing the right thing

They say the best form of marketing is when your customers say nice things about you – back in the it was called word of mouth, now it has a much cooler name – Brand Advocacy.

“Your Company is no longer what you say it is – it’s what your customer believes it is”.

Brand advocacy is a term used to describe actions taken by clients who love your brand and continuously support your organisation by promoting your products and services to new customers and prospects. Therefore, we are so happy to be mentioned in a blog article by WeDo-HR Support published on the 12th March entitled “How to be the HR Directors Trusted Partner”, an extract from WeDo-HR’s Managing Director Sarah Cooks keynote speech delivered to APSCo Scottish Forum.

In the keynote she talks about her own experience in explaining what a HR Director is looking for in a good recruitment partner and narrowed it down to 4 key things;

1. Respect my process  “…I spent a lot of time on this, it works for me and my team and it’s set up to help me manage the business… “

2. Be easy to do business with “…When I was working in financial services we were setting up our preferred supplier list.  One of the agencies we added was a recommendation from the CEO.  My team hadn’t worked with them before but they met all our criteria so they went on the list.  The first role we sent to them they responded really quickly with a great CV.  The next day another agency who we had used often sent in the same CV.  We rang them to say we had already received this CV and they kicked off a bit….. “that’s not possible we have exclusivity on this CV the other agency must have an old CV etc etc”

I rang the new agency to explain we had a bit of a situation – my plan was to see if they may consider a split fee.  Right away they responded with “Don’t worry we won’t take a fee, that’s a great candidate they will be perfect for your role, let the others have the fee.  We don’t want to cause problems.”

As you can see I still rave about that agency now, Campbell and Fletcher.  I can’t remember who the others were…”

3. Offer me something I can’t get in house “…I already pay for an internal recruitment team – if I am using an agency I want you to add something that I can’t get in house…”

4. Be well networked in my sector “…Where do the people who can fill my hard to find roles live?  Give me access to candidates I don’t yet know… The people I talked about earlier who were easy to do business with (ED. thats Campbell & Fletcher in case you have forgot :-))  – they were also really well networked.  They would go to the opening of an envelope ????.  Which meant they knew everyone, and took the time to really know the individual what motivated them, what successes and challenges they had experienced recently, what sort of culture were they a good fit for, what were they were looking for long term.”

Tracy Fletcher, Managing Director of Campbell & Fletcher Recruitment, commented “It’s amazing to think that Sarah still remembers the first time we dealt with her. The gesture to waive the fee wasn’t done for any other reason except it was the right thing to do at the time.” She added “Sarah’s 4 key things list almost encompasses exactly what we do every day and on every role we look to fill – it is what has led to our success and ever growing list of happy clients and candidates.”

To find out more about Campbell & Fletcher Recruitment then please either contact us here or call us on 0161 932 1722 to discuss either your recruitment need or next career progression.