How to Consistently Get New Clients For Your Recruitment Agency (Inbound and Outbound Lead Generation)

New business development is one of the scariest phrases for independent recruiters and recruitment agency owners, but it doesn’t have to be.

Consistently getting new clients involves 3 key areas —

1. Picking the right niche
2. Inbound
3. Outbound

Picking the right niche

It’s tough to be a successful generalist.

I think there’s a quote like “When you try to be everything to everyone, you accomplish being nothing to anyone…”

Niching down enables you to become a subject matter expert in a particular field, build a deeper network, and fill roles quicker due to overlapping requirements.

But how do you find the right niche?

There are different ways to think about this — you can focus your efforts geographically, on a specific industry, or in a particular skill set. There are pros and cons to all of those.

The most important thing is that you choose a niche that —

1. Has a large enough total addressable market for you to achieve your revenue targets
2. Is projected to grow faster than most others
3. You have a strong interest in, or at least are curious enough about to research it in your free time.

Inbound

This is the long-term play.

Over time, this should become your primary, if not your only channel for acquiring new clients.

Inbound includes —

• Referrals
• People who fill out the form on your website
• Leads that come in through social media

The best way to consistently get referrals is to do such a great job for your clients that they can’t help but talk about you to their contacts. The best future clients come from existing clients.

In The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman talks about something called the “Expectation Effect” —

“A customer’s perception of quality relies on expectations and performance. After a purchase is made, the performance of the offering must surpass the expectations for the customer to be satisfied.

If performance is better than expectations, the perception of the offering will be high. Do whatever you can to provide something that unexpectedly delights your customers.”

Getting consistent website and social media leads is a direct result of how visible you are and your content marketing strategy.

Social Media —

LinkedIn and X (Twitter) are the most effective B2B channels right now.

Don’t try to direct sell clients on social media or do obvious self-promotion. Your audience is smart…they can figure out what you do without you making it super obvious.

Instead, share your insights and “give away” important information to establish yourself as a thought leader.

Content Marketing —

Blogging is highly underrated and compounds over time.

I’m not into fishing, but it’s the best analogy I can think of…

Imagine 2 fishermen trying to catch as many fish (aka clients) on a lake within one month.

Fisherman A goes out on the lake early in the morning and late in the evening like clockwork with the best fishing equipment, and bait, and uses the best techniques. He sits in his boat for hours each day.

Fisherman B instead focuses on deploying as many nets in the water as possible every day. Each day, he manages to get 1 net in the water.

At the end of the month, which fisherman do you think will catch more fish?

That’s how good content marketing works.

With both social media and content marketing the keys are quality, consistency, and patience.

Share not-so-obvious things you’ve learned from personal experience as often as possible. After several months and years, the results will start to compound.

You can do all of this yourself, or you can hire a Digital Marketing Manager who understands SEO, content marketing, social media, and other related topics.

I highly recommend doing both — research as much as possible on your own and hire someone who can consistently drive this for your business.

I used to think we didn’t have the budget to hire a Digital Marketing Manager until I realized that I could hire offshore talent for a fraction of the cost of hiring someone in the USA.

Outbound

This is the short-term play.

Inbound marketing can and will deliver the best long-term results if executed properly, but how do you get customers right away?

You need to pitch a high number of potential clients every day. I’ve seen the best results with pitching 40–50 companies/day, and targeting 2–6 decision makers at each company, depending on the total number of employees.

Cold calling, text messaging, email, and LinkedIn are all viable options, but the last two have worked best for me over the years.

Apollo IO is probably the best tool out there for contact info research and email sequencing.

Never do large-scale outbound emailing from your primary email domain. That will put your primary domain at risk of being labeled as spam and cause most of your emails to end up in the junk/spam folder.

Instead, I highly recommend creating multiple email domains and “warming them up” using something like warmup inbox. From there, you can A/B test different pitches to see what’s most effective for your specific buyer personas.

For me, what has consistently worked best is pitching potential candidates to companies that have posted job openings and offering as much free information about the candidate as possible. Lots of recruiters call this the MPC (most placeable candidate). From there, I can easily convert the dialogue into a meeting.

LinkedIn InMails and DMs have the highest response rates because they have built-in credibility (your profile), high deliverability, and they’re a less cluttered channel compared to email.

I automated outbound for my recruiting agency by hiring 2 offshore BDRs (Business Development Reps) who research and pitch potential clients every day. Once a hiring manager expresses interest in one of our MPCs, our BDRs hand things off to me to do the meeting and manage the account.

Side note - the combined cost of my offshore BDRs is less than what one full-time BDR costs in the USA.

My team at Ataraxis is helping other founders hire top BDRs, Marketers, and Talent Sourcers offshore, at a fraction of what it costs to hire locally for the same roles. Get in touch if you're interested in learning more about that.

Conclusion

By focusing on three key areas — choosing the right niche, leveraging inbound marketing, and executing effective outbound strategies — you can consistently attract new clients and grow your recruiting agency.

Choosing the Right Niche: Specializing in a specific area allows you to become a subject matter expert, build a deeper network, and fill roles more efficiently. Make sure your niche has a large enough market, is growing, and aligns with your interests.

Inbound Marketing: This long-term strategy includes generating referrals, optimizing your website for lead generation, and maintaining a strong presence on social media. Remember, the best way to get referrals is by exceeding client expectations and remaining visible. Consistently sharing valuable content on platforms like LinkedIn and blogging regularly can establish you as a thought leader and help drive organic traffic.

Outbound Marketing: For immediate results, pitch a high volume of potential clients daily through cold calls, emails, and LinkedIn outreach. Tools like Apollo IO and multiple email domains can help manage and optimize your outreach efforts. Hiring offshore talent can also be a cost-effective way to scale your outbound activities.

By using these strategies, you’ll not only attract more clients but also create a sustainable business that can survive the drastic swings in the hiring market.

I highly recommend investing in digital marketing expertise and offshore talent to maximize your efficiency and keep your fixed costs as low as possible.

I hope these tips work as well for you as they have for me over the years.

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