Hi everyone, this is Denise, and welcome back to the Recruitment Marketing Sales Podcast. Today, we’re talking about something that’s probably causing many of you stress – the complete chaos that may pass for marketing processes in your recruitment business.

I suspect if you’re reading this, you’re juggling LinkedIn outreach, content creation, candidate nurturing, client relationships, and about 15 other marketing tasks. Then there’s managing your team and growth on top of that.

Here’s what I know about the majority of recruitment business owners – you’re incredible at finding talent and closing deals. Still, when it comes to systematising your marketing processes, you’re winging it. In the UK, we have this saying about “flying by the seat of your pants” or making it up as you go along. This approach is costing you time, money, and probably your sanity.

In today’s environment, there’s always another piece of software you could use or another AI tool you absolutely must try. It’s easy to get overwhelmed thinking you’re losing out if you don’t buy 30 different domain names or use every new platform. That’s not the case.

What you need is to focus on the basics and have systems and processes around them. You build from there. That’s what we’re talking about today – standard operating procedures, a paint-by-numbers system that literally anyone can follow and implement.

What Is A Standard Operating Procedure?

Standard operating procedures have been around for years. The earliest documented SOPs were from the British Royal Navy, which needed consistency and reliability in its operations. They needed tasks completed within a specific timeframe with documented processes for onboarding tasks.

SOPs became widespread during the Industrial Revolution, and the military adopted the formalisation of these procedures. As small business owners, we use them now for workflow and getting things done in a timely manner without losing our minds.

An SOP is fundamentally the basics – it stands for standard operating procedure. It’s simply a step-by-step guide that documents how to complete a specific task or process in your business. Think about it logically – it’s like a recipe. But instead of making a cake or apple crumble, you’re creating a repeatable system for onboarding a new client or creating LinkedIn content.

Over the years, SOPs have grown in their use, particularly with remote work. For marketing SOPs, there’s another element you can add – creating a video of the process. This is quite nuanced for marketing because you can record yourself doing something, and that video becomes a training resource.

Here’s where most business owners get it wrong – SOPs don’t need to be fancy. They don’t need lots of workflows and fancy formatting. The best SOPs are simple, clear bullet points: Step one, Step two, Step three, Step four. They work well when you have a video to watch simultaneously.

Simple Word document processes work particularly well for slightly more technical processes. Something I do is screen grabs using the snipping tool. You can paste these into your recipe if that works for you.

Why Recruitment Businesses Need Marketing SOPs

As a recruitment business, SOPs are particularly crucial because your marketing activities are relationship-based and require consistency. When you’re building relationships with candidates and clients, you can’t afford to be inconsistent in your approach.

If you stop posting or a random post goes out that doesn’t follow your format, such as the wrong colour or imagery, it can impact your brand.

Let me give you examples of marketing SOPs that every recruitment business should consider:

Content creation SOPs could include how to research and write LinkedIn posts that generate leads, how to create video content for candidates, how to create video content for clients, and how to repurpose one piece of content across multiple platforms.

Lead generation SOPs might cover how to identify and research potential clients, how to implement a LinkedIn outreach campaign, and how to follow up with prospects.

Imagine having all of these that your team could follow, so you know things are getting done right. Using and implementing these systems is important with your team because you want to support them. SOPs do that and minimise the number of questions you get.

I often say to team members, “Have you watched the SOP video and followed the SOP? Go back and look at them.” They’ll come back saying they worked it out because they’d missed step five or six. People often think they remember things, but even I use SOPs.

For our email marketing, I know how to do everything, but I haven’t done it for a few weeks because a different team member has been handling it. So, I go back to the SOP to remind myself which button to click. They’re helpful as memory joggers for people implementing the process.

The Sarah Success Story: From Chaos to Consistency

Let me share about Sarah, who runs a recruitment company. Every week, she posted on LinkedIn ten times at completely random times whenever she got a spare minute. Sometimes she posted about industry trends, sometimes personal branding posts, testimonials, or just something interesting she found.

Her engagement was inconsistent. She wasn’t getting many views and wasn’t sure what was working.

I had a conversation with Sarah about creating an SOP for LinkedIn content creation. She now has a system: Monday is industry insights, Wednesday is success stories, Thursday is a poll, Friday is career advice. She has templates for each type of post.

Once she started doing this, her engagement shot through the roof because she was doing something consistently. We’ve all experienced looking for something on a particular day. Most people listening to this podcast know that every Friday, you get a short email from us saying, “Here’s our latest podcast, you might find it useful.”

It’s consistency. By knowing what to do when, people start looking for things. We’ve all watched soaps on TV and know they’re on at certain times. The BBC has news at 6:00 and 10:00 every night. I’m wired to look because I usually work till 6:00 in the evening and time it to one minute to six.

That’s how people are wired – they’re looking for things from you. Having that SOP makes a huge difference.

The Hidden Benefits of Marketing SOPs

Let me share more benefits of creating SOPs that might convince you further.

Consistency builds trust. In recruitment, consistency is everything. Your clients need to know they can rely on you. Your candidates need to feel confident in the process. When you have SOPs for marketing activities, you ensure every touchpoint with your audience reflects your brand, values, and standards while getting people excited about working with you.

SOPs save you time. Have you ever thought, “Do I need to do this first, or that first?” only to spend time looking for passwords? You can waste hours each week on this. With your SOP, you may have saved it on your system with a search string to find it in Dropbox. That saves hours.

Scalability without chaos. This is huge. Right now, for many of you, the business revolves around you, particularly if you’re new to creating content. What happens when you want to grow, hire team members, or take a holiday? SOPs help because people just need to follow them.

If you’re working with a virtual assistant in the Philippines, South Africa, or anywhere remote, they can get consistent results. You become less of a bottleneck and more of the strategic leader you’ve always wanted to be.

Increased quality and reduced errors. When you’re rushing through marketing tasks without a systematic approach, mistakes happen. You forget to follow up with leads, miss essential details in client communications, or publish content with errors. Having an SOP reduces these errors.

One benefit I mentioned with Logan, one of our team members, is better training and onboarding. People feel included in the process. You can’t just hand someone something and say, “follow that step by step,” but having that SOP means you can go through training quickly and support your people.

Documented systems mean improvement opportunities. Having a documented system means you can identify and implement improvements. If you see something that could be done more efficiently, having an SOP gives you something to examine and modify.

There’s something valuable about peace of mind that’s hard to quantify. When you’ve got systems in place, you can take time off without worrying that your marketing is falling apart. You can focus on strategy rather than constantly putting out fires.

How To Create Your First Marketing SOP

I’m going to share the simple process for creating a marketing SOP. Here’s something that’s not popular but necessary – you need to do it, not somebody else. You want the business done your way.

Our team members have training videos and resources. I’m talking to people creating SOPs themselves. The important thing is you know what you want and how you want it delivered.

When we had our bigger marketing agency writing content, I used to drive people mad because I wanted things delivered in a certain way. I wanted our clients to get a great experience, and I wanted the documents they received formatted the same way – same font, same point size. We used Calibri 11 point with subheadings at 16 points. I wanted consistency. I didn’t want it looking like what we call in the UK “a dog’s breakfast.”

Creating that SOP fell to me. Yes, it’s t