Recruitment is defined as, "the action of finding new people to join an organization or support a cause."
Often business owners think of marketing and advertising as recruitment but for a moment, let's separate these into different tasks that we need to accomplish. A quick google search provides this basic distinction in marketing and advertising.
"In basic terms, marketing is the process of identifying customer needs and determining how best to meet those needs. In contrast, advertising is the exercise of promoting a company and its products or services through paid channels. In other words, advertising is a component of marketing."
Recruitment is the process for us to connect our potential customer to our organization, our mission and what we want to accomplish in our organization. Too often, we are so focused on getting new students that we are missing great opportunties in the recruitment process.
First step, take a few moments to map how a new customer joins your organization. (We'll use organization to refer to your twirling/dance program or classes). It could look like this:
Google search>Your Website>Online Registration>Start Classes
or
School flier>Phone Call To You>Register Over the Phone
Your organization may have many ways to connect with you and register or you may have one. Whatever your approach is, let's look at that approach and begin to build a relationship with your potential customers.
Let's look at the first example that we provided earlier:
Google search>Your Website>Online Registration>Start Classes
If someone googles "baton classes in Danville" hopefully your business will be one of the first listed. Now, let's assume your customer clicks to your website, likes what they see and completes the contact form. What happens now?
Do you send a personal email that gives them the link to register? Or, do you ask about what this family is looking for?
If you are doing the second, you are beginning to build a relationship with that family because you are asking about them and what they need. A great email is:
Hi Sally,
Thank you for reaching out about our classes. Can you share a bit about your child? Their age? Whether they are outgoing or shy?
Look forward to talking with you!
It's short, sweet and will get a response from the parent 99% of the time because the parent gets to talk about their kid and parents love to talk about their kids! (It's ok - we all do it.) ;)
Let's assume the parent responds with a little about their child and you reply that their child would be a great fit and you'd love to have them in class. You can then share, I'm teaching a class on Mondays at 5:30 or one of our fabulous teachers is teaching the same class on Thursdays at 7:00. Which one works best for you?
Now, they respond that they'd love the Monday class and you send the registration link and BAM, you've got a registration with a parent that now feels invested because they "know" you and you "know" their child.
This is a basic example of how to build that connection with your customers and there's so much more that we can do to build a customer base that absolutely loves your program!