In Episode 304 of the Talent Matters Podcast, Wave CEO and Founder Dave Jenkins is joined by Jade Brar-Haase from Branded by Aquila to discuss how recruitment agencies can build and manage effective sub-brands across different sectors.

Jade shares her experiences as an ex Associate Director at a UK-based recruitment agency, from building effective cross-department campaigns to the importance of sub-brands and how to create and manage them strategically.

From their insightful conversation, we’ve distilled 5 practical takeaways that any recruitment agency can readily apply to their operations, empowering them to build and manage effective sub-brands.

Personal branding is not an ego-driven activity.

It’s 2024, and personal branding shouldn’t be viewed as an ego-driven activity but as an opportunity to give you an edge over your competitors. We’ve all seen videos or photos that make you go, “Oh, it was so cringe. It was so bad”. However, you need to see the promotion and awareness that a person is gaining for free.

However, personal branding doesn’t happen in a silo; your company brand feeds into it and vice versa, making it business-critical. Every recruitment agency needs to be educated about it and invest in it.

The importance of sub-brands in target market strategies.

Rule 101 of marketing (and business) is knowing your target market, whether that’s candidates or clients. However, a one-size-fits-all marketing approach when you are hiring across different sectors can be tricky. If it feels like your brands are fighting for a voice or struggling to match them all up, it’s likely time to split out.

Sub-brands should come from a market development strategy, targeting a specific new audience or sector, allowing you to create a tailored message that improves the focus and brings better results.

Improving accountability through sub-brands.

When an agency launches a new sub-brand, it has to be viewed as a new business, not just another department, and for that sub-brand to succeed, you need everyone to be bought into the process and have clear accountability.

For example, if you have a website specifically for your vertical, you need to create and contribute to marketing ideas like blogs, e-books or market insights; otherwise, it will be a bit rubbish. If these core areas are missing, it is easier for senior stakeholders to identify these gaps and offers less opportunity for teams to hide behind other people’s success.

Focus your budget on what is working.

If you are spending a lot of money on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and it’s not yielding results, turn it off! However, that is not to say you shouldn’t explore and test different things, especially when you are trying to understand a new market.

It is mainly about monitoring and measuring the success of your campaigns and reviewing what is working. Think about the most successful touchpoints, and do not be afraid to do more of what works.

You can’t be in all places at once.

Launching a sub-brand is very exciting, and it’s easy to feel like you need to be in all places at once. However, spreading yourself thin will only result in rubbish marketing. Make sure that before launching, you have a clear plan of what key channels you want to be in, and stick to it. As your marketing starts to succeed and yield results, you can add to the plan and marketing support.

Another top tip is to learn from what worked well with your parent brand, or use data and your market knowledge when making decisions on exploring new channels. Whatever you decide, keep assessing, reviewing and measuring. 

Listen to the podcast.

The Wave Talent Podcast can be found on YouTube and also on Spotify.