The Full Desk Experience

Donnie Gupton [00:00:00]:
Ultimately, like, I want to be able to show people that I understand them, I understand their main concerns, and ultimately, I'm the most qualified person to help you solve this problem. If you came onto this training looking for some magical formula, some magical post that generates all of the inbound leads, it doesn't really exist. When you look at this, it's like you're trying to make yourself attractive enough to a very specific audience and capture their attention and hold their attention until their need arises. And we do this through consistently showing up and adding value, leading our market. And so there isn't one magical post. There isn't one magical thing that you do that's gonna get people to all of a sudden run to you and for you to be able to generate a bunch of inbound leads.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:40]:
Hey, guys. Kortney Harmon, host of FDE. We're bringing you a special series of episodes called FDE. Those are going to be highlights from our recent virtual conference where hundreds of you joined us for an incredible event focused on boosting revenue for 2025. Each of these sessions is PAC valuable insights, expert discussions, and actionable strategies to help you drive growth in your business. Whether you missed the live event or want to revisit each session, we've got you covered. We're going to drop each of these 10 live events to wrap up our year and kick off the new year. Right.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:22]:
So let's dive into today's session and uncover the key takeaways that will propel your success in the coming year. Stay tuned and let's dive in. I'm super excited. Donnie's one of my favorite people and one of our partners here at Crelate. Donnie is a marketing genius. He's really about lead generation. Specialist and founder of the relevant recruiter method. Really innovative about inbound lead generation specifically for recruiting firms.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:53]:
So he has been in the industry and he is talking today again about building a strong online presence that generates leads, inbound leads, and it's going to make a difference in your business.

Donnie Gupton [00:02:04]:
Well, thank you guys. Fired up to be here today. Kortney did a great job introducing. We are going to be talking all about online marketing, lead generation. But before we get in, we're going to talk about Farmer John and Farmer Mike. So once upon a time, there were two farmers in a small rural town, let's call them Farmer John and Farmer Mark. And both of them had been tilling their land for years, and they both had their preferred methods of doing it. And it worked.

Donnie Gupton [00:02:29]:
They knew how to work the soil. And so Farmer John had really been used to his same old till as long as he could remember. Very reliable tool, got the job done. So he saw really no need in any reason to change. If it isn't broken, why fix it? Okay. He was really content with the same familiar routine, even if it really meant putting in more effort, time, and energy. On the other hand, there was Farmer Mike. And Farmer Mike, although he had his way of tilling, he was always open to trying new things.

Donnie Gupton [00:02:58]:
And he's heard of a more modern, new state of the art till that he could use. So he started to really do the research. But the catch was, is he really had to take the time to learn how to operate the new till, which would require his time and his effort. And he would have to invest in some new resources, train some more people. And so, while Farmer John stuck with his old till, Farmer Mike embraced the new technology and his. He spent the time learning the ins and outs, familiarizing himself with the capabilities of it, fine tuning his techniques. At first, there were challenges and hiccups, but he persevered. And as time went on, the difference between the two farmers became very evident.

Donnie Gupton [00:03:35]:
Farmer John was still getting the job done, but his productivity was limited and he'd worked long hours and exchanging time for money, where Farmer Mike was achieving all of his incredible results with way less effort in time. And so the analogy here is you guys can stay happy, smiling, dialing, using the same old school techniques, or you can be like Mike and use the tractor. And so today we're going to talk about the tractor. Now, who am I to tell you to start using this tractor? Well, my name is Donnie Gupton. I've been in the space for eight years now. I am not a recruiter, never recruited. I am a marketing and lead generation expert. Specifically in this space.

Donnie Gupton [00:04:13]:
I started my career growing my family business from under a million to over 6 million. We had 300% growth in three years. I wanted to coach people and help people. That's always been my passion. Stumbled into the recruiting industry. Since then, I've helped over 300 firms implement the relevant recruiter method, and that's generated millions around the globe. So the whole reason I'm telling you that is so that you know that what I'm talking about today is not just some ideas, it is actually proven concepts. So I do need some interaction from you guys here as we work through this exercise.

Donnie Gupton [00:04:41]:
If you guys can be ready to comment, that would be awesome. So if you and I both owned a hamburger stand and we were in the contest, this, see who would sell the most Hamburgers. What advantages would you most like to have on your side? Go in the comments, let me know what advantages you would like to have on your side. So some people might be superior meat. We'll just kind of see what kind of shows up for people as you look at the advantages that you'd want to have on your side. Location, location, location. Love it, Matt. Anybody else got location? Again, I'm going to give you every single advantage, and I'm only one great product.

Donnie Gupton [00:05:12]:
Thank you, Daryl. Awesome. So a great product. Location, hungry people. All right, there it is, Matt. Matt, you just stole it. Okay, What I want, and I will beat all of you guys, I want a starving crowd, okay? So you can have the premium meat, Pat, you can have that tasty burger, that great product, that location. You can have all of that.

Donnie Gupton [00:05:30]:
But what we all really need is a starving crowd, right? So if we have a starving crowd and we have a burger joint, they're likely to buy burgers with us, even if we don't have sesame seeds, for example. Or whether we have the lowest prices, for example. Or whether the best burger in town. If we have a starving crowd and we're there, that's how we solve this, right? So in your situation, your clients need talent and you have talent, and now all you need to do is put your burger in front of your starving crowd. And that's what we're going to talk about doing today. Okay? Is doing that. So 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn, making an incredibly powerful B2B marketing platform. I just read today, too, that over a billion users on LinkedIn now across 200 countries.

Donnie Gupton [00:06:13]:
Now, there's still a lot of consumption going on for content. The average LinkedIn user consumes 36 pieces of content per week. Okay? But only 1% of LinkedIn users actually share content on a weekly basis. Okay? Only 1% of users are sharing content on a weekly basis. Are you a part of that? 1%? Because, see, this is where the opportunity lies. 70% of hiring leaders say they use online sources to make hiring decisions. 75% of job seekers are using online channels to search for jobs. So if you want to be the one that feeds them, then you need to commit to going all in on your digital presence, because your starving crowd is online.

Donnie Gupton [00:06:55]:
Your starving crowd is on LinkedIn. So let's dive into this as we get started here in the actual process. So how many of you guys have ever thought, I'm just another recruiter and I do the same thing? Or perhaps maybe you don't Even think that highly, you're not sure how to explain your differentiator. Maybe you do really think you're really good, but you know, you're not sure how to share that to the marketplace. Here's the thing. It's your job to drive your brand narrative, especially online in 2024. And if you look the same, sound the same, and act the same as the next recruiter, guess what? You've now commoditized yourself. And when you're a commodity, it's a race to the bottom.

Donnie Gupton [00:07:33]:
You're competing over fees, competing over price, competing against multiple other recruiters. Right? So what we want to do is really establish you as being a go to in the marketplace. And what this starts with is really getting clarity on your ideal customer. And when I talk about the ideal customer, I want to go a place deeper in talking about the ideal hiring Persona. So let's break this down for a second. If we're looking at the hiring market and we're going to go after, say, a specific niche, okay, so let's say we're in going after technology and we're going after sales professionals in tech. Okay? So that's us identifying an ideal customer on a high level. Okay.

Donnie Gupton [00:08:10]:
We should even drill it in even more to what is the company size? What is the ideal revenue size? And then from there we should actually find out, well, who is feeling the pain within the organization that is really going to end up hiring me to solve their challenge? Now, this usually isn't hr. This is usually again, if it's a salesperson, it's probably somebody VP of sales director, sales chief, revenue office or something like that. That's actually who I want to connect with because they're feeling the pain in the job going unfilled. Right. And so what we want to do is really obsess over their day in heaven and obsess over their day in hell. What is happening as a result of them not being able to fill this position? What is the ideal outcome that they would have when this position is open, closed? How fast? How are they doing it? Understand that and understand your market at a deeper level than them. And that's why we really say obsess with the target market. So once I'm obsessed with my target market, I know the industry I'm going after.

Donnie Gupton [00:09:04]:
I know who the hiring leaders are. I know their pains, their problems, their frustration. I know their day in their heaven, day in their health. Now I can start to position me and myself as being a solution to their challenge. Right? So you need to understand your unique advantage. Understand your unique advantage. And so what this is, is really understanding what skills you might have that are different, what experience that you might have that is different, what kind of knowledge, what kind of connections, what kind of character, how you do the process. Okay, but you need more in 2024 than just being a niche expert.

Donnie Gupton [00:09:36]:
You need to be able to tell a more comprehensive story. So if you can find three things that really identify yourself as being somewhat different, hey, as long as one of those three is different than your average competitor, then you have a great opportunity to stand out in the marketplace. Okay, so what we're doing when we're standing out is really trying to get a question of like positioning. So what is positioning? Positioning very simply is like, well, how do you want your market to view you? What do you want to be known for? Do you want to be known as the Mercedes Benz, the luxury product, or do we want to be more known as like Walmart, the low price leader? Right. So you guys can position yourselves accordingly. And all your actions in terms of what you do in your business should be congruent with how you're positioning yourself in the marketplace. Okay, so create a really powerful positioning statement. For example, you know, I help recruiting companies grow their business by leveraging the power of branding, marketing and automated systems.

Donnie Gupton [00:10:30]:
Okay. So I can get an idea of how I want you guys to view me in this specific light. Okay. I want you guys to view me in a certain way. And you guys really need to be intentional with how you want your market to see you in the marketplace. Especially if you're trying to shift from kind of contingent order taking recruiting into more of partnership based agreements, retained exclusivity. However you guys want to write that contract, up to you. But if you really want those, this is the key to that is getting myself to position as being different in a better solution than the rest of the folks in the marketplace.

Donnie Gupton [00:11:04]:
Okay. So that's the first step to really feeding your online crowd. And so the next thing that I'm going to recommend here to feed our online crowd is to stop selling and start educating. And what I mean by that is these last couple months have been a great example of a market, at least for most. You know, me being a coach, it's pretty interesting. I can, where I sit is I can work with certain clients that are very busy, their industries are very hot right now, and worked with another client that nobody's hiring no matter what. And so I think it's been a very unique economy that I've seen over the last year. And so the point here is, if I'm constantly just connecting and pitching to people, then I'm losing a lot of attention in the marketplace.

Donnie Gupton [00:11:43]:
Okay. So when you look at this analogy, I don't know if you guys have ever read the book the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. Very great book. If you haven't read it, I'd recommend it's kind of a classic sales book written probably 20, 30 years ago now. But the research is actually that I'm sharing here is from that book. And ultimately the concept here is like, when you look at it, only 3% of people are actively buying something right now in the Marketplace. The other 97% are not active buyers. And this is almost in any given situation, right? So then as you go down, some people are open to it, some people are thinking about it, some people think they're interested, and some people are definitely not interested.

Donnie Gupton [00:12:15]:
So if you kind of take the same analogy into the hiring space and you look at it, I don't know what the numbers would be, okay. But there's a small percentage of people that are actually hiring right now. And if we approach everybody as if they are hiring right now, we lose a lot of attention of people that are going to be hiring. And a lot of my clients, we like to get in front of people that are going to be hiring. So we're not an order taker, but we are more positioned as somebody that's a partner and can add value to that organization. So this isn't a strategy. If you, like, love chasing job boards, this is going to really get a tie into attracting inbound leads of people that are going to be hiring. So what we want to be looking at here then is really paying attention to the fact that the new currency in our world is attention.

Donnie Gupton [00:12:55]:
And your ability to curate attention online and capture people's attention is the new reality. Right. And the challenge that we are all facing is capturing the attention of our audience and then holding it long enough to be the choice when their need arises. So that's basically what it comes down to is, can I hold my audience's attention long enough to when they need arises? So if you approach is all transactional and salesy and they don't have any positions right now, you lose the attention of your audience. Okay? But if you have a quality approach, then you can capture that attention and keep that attention. So now let's put you into a stadium with your ideal prospects. Okay? So you have your ideal prospects sitting in a stadium, and right before you Walk out. The host basically lets the audience know that they had to come to this presentation, but they can leave.

Donnie Gupton [00:13:41]:
If the person that is presenting really has. The presentation has no value for you, you're not interested in it, so you have to be there for the start. But you can leave once it. What's going. So what topic would you create to make sure that your audience stays in those seats? Again, the presenter said everybody has to be here, but if you're not interested, you can leave. What topic would you put? Well, you could basically say, I'm here to tell you why we are the greatest staffing company in the world. I mean, that could be an option, right? And so, I mean, how many of you guys would be here if the title of this presentation would be I'm here to tell you why the relevant recruiter method is the best in the world. You guys would all be gone right now.

Donnie Gupton [00:14:22]:
Everybody in this presentation would be gone because it's self promoting and people aren't buying right now. Right? So now if we just switch this and we think about the five ways you're wasting money with your staffing efforts, with this approach, you have a way better opportunity to capture the attention of your market and capture the intention of the entire audience. Okay? So another analogy I could use is like if I walked in to this thing and said, hey guys, I've got a car that I can sell you. It's a Toyota Tundra 2024, 0% financing. If I walk in, those of you that bought a car last week, those of you don't even have a mark, you're going to walk out, you're not even going to pay attention to what I have to offer with this car, because you're not in the market for the car. You're not buying a car, it's not even on the radar. But if I said, hey, here's three tips on saving gas money. Hey, everybody be into that, right? So think about it from that standpoint.

Donnie Gupton [00:15:11]:
If I want to really start to educate my market and then the common thing that always comes up is like, well, if I really want to do this and sell my staffing services, then why would I bother with all this? Because with this approach, you're going to get more. And this is the reason why offering education that helps the hiring decision maker or candidate is going to get you more interest in the marketplace. And if it's really good kind of content and information, it automatically positions you as an expert and authority. You're teaching people things that they don't already know. You're adding value to them, adding value around your brand, adding value around your company brand. And when you do this strategically, you'll find a way that you can add value that sells your service and you'll get more than flat out simply pitching. Okay? So that's the thing that you have to understand is that if you have an approach that is good and you give your clients and or candidates credit, I don't always need to basically say, I'm really good recruiter and I can help you fill your roles. Let me find those purple unicorns.

Donnie Gupton [00:16:10]:
Doesn't work anymore, guys. I mean, focus on ways that you can get people and add value. Use the value to start the conversations, then have more of an organic relationship with somebody and then turn that into, hey, I think I can help you. Let's get on the phone. And now I've got some myself warm qualified leads. So now if I were to put you back in that stadium, what are you going to say this time? What are you going to say this time? Now that you're back in that stadium, are you going to sell your company or are you going to educate? Right. So I hope you walk away, you're going to go into that stadium now and you're really going to focus on educating that market. Okay? So how would you like it if I show you how to do this? We're going to walk you exactly through how you can create content that generates inbound leads.

Donnie Gupton [00:16:51]:
Okay, let's dive in. So the game is one on the phone. When I've been in this space for years, kind of pounding on the opposite, not making a bunch of outbound cold calls, not doing this I want to do. I want to capture attention in the marketplace. So you guys see me. If those of you that do follow me and are aware of me, you'll notice that I'm specifically putting out polarizing content about not cold calling. Now, of course I know that cold calling works. I know the cold calling at some point in game for a lot of people is going to be a part of it.

Donnie Gupton [00:17:21]:
But I'm not going to capture any attention by being weak about that thought, weak about my stance and my position in the marketplace. So I don't want to confuse as you guys get on here and those of you that may know me or not know me or whatever, but the game is still one on the phone. It's just how we're getting to the phone that they're so much more powerful. Right. And the way most people are getting the phone traditionally with outbound calls A lot of times sets up for a lot of wasted energy, or it really sets you up to become an order taker because you're not getting to the point where you can get on the call and qualify the actual client and ask them the questions to see how urgent they are about filling this role. So the inbound lead changes how you can basically frame the call and get on the call and have the control and really, truly qualify. How good of a client is this going to be? Is it an A client, a B client, or a C client? And so that's where the inbound really changes the game for you, is I'm not wasting a bunch of time on a bunch of burning the phone on the other end on people that aren't on the other side. When I can get the inbound lead, I'm having less calls, but the calls are going further because the prospect is much more qualified.

Donnie Gupton [00:18:30]:
Okay. So really, inbound marketing is about creating valuable experiences that have a positive impact on people and on your business. And inbound marketing is really about creating content designed to address the problems and needs of your ideal customers and attracting qualified prospects to your business. So when we look at the game and the way this game's been played traditionally for years, and you kind of take a step out and you look at it from 30,000ft, put yourself into a client or candidate shoes, especially in a slow market like this. Like, if you could imagine being a client and a hiring leader, a hiring manager at some point in time in an economy, if your industry slow, how many recruiters are just pummeled and how much you're lost in the noise? Because 15 other recruiters are doing the same thing of cold call or mass email approach, kind of the traditional things that have been doing this. So what happens is you just become a part of this noise. Here you are, there's nothing different about you. You're an order taker as well as all these other competitors around doing a bunch of outbound activities, swarming and inundating this, this potential client or candidate.

Donnie Gupton [00:19:31]:
Okay? So the shift is, is I want to go from that where everything's outbound to where actually, where we become the relevant recruiter, where actually our market becomes chasing you. Okay? That market comes and chases you down for business. And there might be half of you watching this right now going, nope, this doesn't work, no way. I don't believe that. And I can tell you I've helped many people on the business development side never make a cold call again. Okay? I think that on the recruiting Side when you're talking to candidates, I think it's an end all be all. But I can tell you very confidently, six seven figure billers, never making cold calls. No, they're not starving.

Donnie Gupton [00:20:04]:
They've got a good approach that works in the marketplace because I know there's all these bug words. If you don't know how to cold call, your kids will be starving. Yeah, right. I have plenty of very high, successful, high billing clients that are not making a bunch of outbound calls because they found a way to, to make themselves relevant in the marketplace. And so what this looks like is what if over a million people could see you and you had a million impressions around your brand just off of a single post. This is my friend Mark. I think he currently has my course record. This post here got over end up over 6 million views.

Donnie Gupton [00:20:35]:
You can see it has 105 reactions on it, 2900 comments, and you know, it's not one post makes it. But I'm just using this as an example is there's nothing you can do from an outbound activity that can ever reach those numbers. Now when you're looking at 5,6 million views, of course those aren't all dialed in, but I know what happened behind the scenes with Mark, and He had over 900 inbound connection requests from top risk and compliance talent within his marketplace. Okay, and then what happens when you start doing this and you do this consistently is you truly get these inbound leads and so you have an example of both a client and candidate. Hey, Mark, I've enjoyed reading your articles. I'm currently building a compliance team for a private equity company. Perhaps we can have a call Monday to discuss. Again, that doesn't say one compliance person.

Donnie Gupton [00:21:21]:
He's building an entire compliance team and Mark's getting that business from his content. Next one is about a candidate. Friend just sent me one of your posts and it literally resonated with me. I'll be interested in talking to you about compliance jobs if you're available to chat for next week. So that's what this can look like for you guys when you get this whole part right on the content side of things. Okay, so let's dive into this framework for a minute. This is what I've been teaching over the last eight years is a specific framework to get people interested in, to generate you an inbound lead. Okay.

Donnie Gupton [00:21:53]:
So going back, putting all of this together is we have a very ideal target market. Okay. We have a target client that we've built. We have built an ideal hiring Persona. So When I'm creating my content, I'm not creating my content to go into the LinkedIn echo chamber with a bunch of other recruiters to stroke your ego about how mad you are about the hiring manager that burned you. Your content should be speaking directly to your target audience. And that doesn't mean that every once in a while you can't post something different. But 90% of your stuff should speak directly to your target audience.

Donnie Gupton [00:22:23]:
If you're trying to move the needle, if you're trying to get dopamine rush, if you're trying to get validation from your recruiting peers, then keep creating generic recruiting content. But if I start to speak to my core target audience, then that's how this stuff works. So that is the key thing that you guys need to understand is we're not just creating content vaguely here. We're creating content for a very specific audience. And what we want to do is lead our audience, serve our audience, and connect with our audience. So here's what that looks like. The leadership pillar is really your ability to show your audience your expertise, your knowledge, and your track record of success. And so the leadership pillar, what this is going to look like is like, what are the pains, problems, frustrations, challenges, mistakes that you see your hiring leaders make? And a lot of people shy away from this, this category, or this template because the ultimately, their mindset is one of scarcity.

Donnie Gupton [00:23:18]:
They're afraid to put their bold opinion out. They're afraid to lead their market because they're afraid they might rub somebody wrong. They're afraid that somebody might disagree with their approach or their process or their idea there. And that's a quick recipe of getting forgotten. That's a quick recipe of maybe you're putting yourself out there, but you're just getting nothing from it. It's probably because you're not being bold enough with your content. So in order for me to properly lead my market, then I need to understand their pains, their problems, their frustrations way deeper than they do. And then we create content that speaks directly to that.

Donnie Gupton [00:23:52]:
So what that might look like is, you know, here's five interviewing mistakes that's costing hiring leaders their top candidate. Okay, so I'm going to be really bold now. That one was vague, right? So now I'm going to bring this into my industry, and I'm going, here's five hiring mistakes that sales leaders are making that's helping them miss out on top talent. So I want to be very specific in my hooks with my target audience and then create content around that. Whether the Content is written or video or graphics or LinkedIn slideshows. First off, it should be all, but it doesn't really matter. Pick whatever you are committed to first and really focus on leading the market. Okay? Now, if there is a specific process that you see, consistent theme, a consistent trend, you want to speak to that.

Donnie Gupton [00:24:39]:
I want to be the one that leads my market with this information, okay? I want to be the one that's willing to say the hard things to my prospective clients and candidates with my digital presence. One of the great places to look for leadership content is through the objections that you get through, the pains and problems and frustrations that your clients and candidates are speaking to as you are on the phone with them or anything that you see online. So when you do this right, this is really where people build trust in your experience, and then they really view you as an authority in the marketplace. And so for those of you that like retained search or engaged searches, or again, more of a partnership type of relationship, if you're not building content online, you're just missing out. Okay? Now, the content online does not replace your ability to fill positions. You know, you have to be good at what you're doing as a prerequisite to actually generating inbound leads. So this isn't. If you're not good at recruiting, this doesn't save the day for you, right? But when you're leading your market, it really demonstrates your ability to be successful and answer the question of why should I listen to you? Now, I want to dive into this a little bit more deeply.

Donnie Gupton [00:25:43]:
Is like, let's say there's tech recruiter John that's been posting content on LinkedIn for three years. And then your new recruiter Amy, and new recruiter Amy's like, has, you know, we all have a little bit of head trash. We start putting ourselves out there. And so, you know, our ego, sometimes we forget there's actually other people out there trying to add value to the same market. There's other people that are competing. I'm very competitive, so I'm always out showing up because I know that there's somebody on my market that's trying to take from my audience, trying to steal eyeballs for me, steal attention. And so one of the ways that my clients and myself, I've been able to capture attention from people is because we drive a narrative of success. And people, whether we like it or not, want to learn from people that are successful.

Donnie Gupton [00:26:27]:
They want to invest into people that are successful. And so as independent recruiters specifically, and small boutique firms oftentimes because our ego's so attached, we're afraid to share our success. But if we're not sharing our success, then somebody else is basically building that story for us. And so what this can look like in a very easy way is tell me a story. Kind of like a post around a case study around how you recently made a client win. Right? So it could be something along the lines of like, here's how I helped one sales team in the renewable energy space fill five roles in 30 days without reviewing hundreds of unqualified resumes. And then I would go into the post and I would give it a little meat and potatoes, like, hey, here's what we didn't do. And I would kind of knock off a couple of common things that we know that the hiring people have tried, other recruiters on the outside tried.

Donnie Gupton [00:27:19]:
And then I might give some unique language around the process that we did that really, really helped. And so by doing that, then my market can see that I'm winning and that I'm doing something and I'm showing up differently to the marketplace. But going back into the recruiter. Amy versus John. If I'm online already and I've been following John and Amy starts to pop up, I'm less inclined to start following her because I followed John. But once Amy starts to talk about her success and how she's winning now, I might open my ears to Amy a little bit more. I'm not worried about how long she's been posting. I just know she's winning.

Donnie Gupton [00:27:52]:
So I'm going to drive that narrative. So really do a great job, guys, of taking client candid testimonials, sharing that narrative. It works so powerfully for me and for my clients. It's great content to share and you can use it like I just did with like a case study type of share, or you can use it more of like, hey, go get a bunch of LinkedIn recommendations. If you guys look at my posts, you'll see once or twice a week I have a what I do is I take my LinkedIn recommendation, go grab the person's photo, and then I share that recommendation as a post. Okay? It's easy, low hanging fruit so people can see how they win. What working with me and ultimately like, I want to be able to show people that I understand them, I understand their main concerns. I understand.

Donnie Gupton [00:28:31]:
And ultimately I'm the most qualified person to help you solve this problem. If you came onto this training looking for some magical formula, some magical post that generates all of the inbound leads, it doesn't really exist. When you look at this, it's like you're trying to make yourself attractive enough to a very specific audience and capture their attention and hold their attention until their need arises. And we do this through consistently showing up and adding value, leading our market. And so there isn't one magical post, there isn't one magical thing that you do that's going to get people to all of a sudden run to you. And for you to be able to generate a bunch of inbound leads, recruiting is complex. Sometimes you just need a hand, someone beside you to give you that nudge to keep you on course. Introducing the new crelate copilot.

Donnie Gupton [00:29:22]:
Copilot is crelate's AI assistant, but it's more than just artificial intelligence. Copilot brings you recruiter intelligence. Need a quick reminder to reply to a candidate's email? Or maybe you're stuck writing up that new job description. Need a nudge to send a follow up to that client who hasn't gotten back to you? Copilot is there to help you. You craft it effortlessly. With over 30 skills at your fingertips. Crelate Copilot doesn't just keep you organized, it keeps you ahead of the game. Because recruiting isn't just about filling roles.

Donnie Gupton [00:29:56]:
It's about building relationships. And Crelate Copilot is the partner you've been waiting for. Check us out and crelate the future of recruiting. So heading over to the next pillar. We call this pillar the service pillar. This is kind of more of, I think, what people think of traditionally when they're thinking of marketing, which is stuff that add value, stuff that educates both your clients and candidates to help them identify roadblocks and solve challenges and things like that. The service pillar kind of think of like your tips, your tricks, your how to's, your how wise, your busting myths. You're really just providing a ton of goodwill to your market, really serving the market.

Donnie Gupton [00:30:42]:
And this has been something that for me is really one of the things that drives my business. This webinar training kind of falls into that service pillar. It also falls into the leadership pillar a little bit. And again, we're not here to define every single post, so to speak. It's just understanding these ideas and concepts. Okay. But when you are a person of value, then people will follow you. And so what are the tips and tricks and little nuggets you can use that would keep people interested in you? What are the some of the things you might be able to add value on that isn't always a hundred percent recruiting related, but maybe something that your hiring leader might take advantage of.

Donnie Gupton [00:31:17]:
Right? So, hey, maybe I'm going to go back into the sales script. If I'm going into the sales industry, I'm trying to generate leads for salespeople, and the sales market that I'm in is, like, slow right now. Well, maybe I can add some value on, I don't know, a quick little sales training that I have or some stats and some trends around sales in that industry. Again, what would be of value to that person in that time that I can give to them? Okay, and when you really do this value part right, people view you as a resource. They view you as a thought leader in the marketplace. Okay. It shows your desire not to just sell, but to serve and support. Okay.

Donnie Gupton [00:31:52]:
And I'm going to say that it shows your desire not to just sell and serve and support. It's easy to say, I don't want to be a transactional recruiter. I want to add value. I want to be a partner with my company as well. If I want to say that, I might as well just show that. So I'm going to continue to show up and share and show up and share and show up and share. Back when Covid hit, as you guys all know, our industry just basically froze and stop. And so for me, being a coach, it's like, oh, well, what do I do? And I just went right into value.

Donnie Gupton [00:32:18]:
And I hosted four webinars in four weeks. I think over 400 people joined on those webinars. And because I was all about value, guess what? I was actually winning right in the middle of March 2020, simply because I had a process and a place. And then I could show other people how not to sell in a time where people weren't buying. You know, if you had an approach of trying to capture intention of a hiring leader in the middle of the COVID chaos that we were in, you're probably getting a lot of crickets on that. But we had a lot of people end up having banner years and banner months coming out of COVID because of the approach that we taught. And so that's what the whole idea with this is, to really add value, serve. And then it shows your unique value, your key differentiator, and then just further sets you apart from those in the marketplace.

Donnie Gupton [00:32:59]:
Okay? So going to the last pillar, this is one that is. I find everybody has a different point of view on this, but I'm just going to tell you without hesitation, you got to go on this. We call it the connect pillar, which is who are you as an individual? What makes you real and authentic and allows your audience to see who they're really going to be working with. So powerful. Now we are in the age of AI. Here's the thing about AI, it's awesome. You should leverage the out of it. For sure, AI needs to be a part of what you're doing.

Donnie Gupton [00:33:30]:
But here's the other thing about AI, it's at the beginning phases, so it's only going to get better, which is scary. But because of that, that creates a unique opportunity for those that are still willing to put themselves out there authentically and real. Because AI cannot replace that. It cannot replace authenticity. And so you'll see now there's a lot more people that are becoming creators online, but really it's AI. So if you're willing to be the person that kind of shows a little bit behind the scenes and I can actually connect with you. When you look at the basics of who we do business with, usually it's, hey, somebody I know, somebody I like, somebody I trust, can they solve my problem? Well, if I build this connection stuff, there's a lot of opportunity to get to know me and like me and even trust me just by showing you who I am as a man, even beyond the business side of things. So what this will look like is not necessarily like you trying to become an Instagram model, taking pictures of all your meals and posting it on LinkedIn.

Donnie Gupton [00:34:21]:
That's not what I'm talking about here. But if you were to go through my profile, you'll see, you know, I share specific things. Actually, last week was my wedding anniversary. I shared that on LinkedIn. Why? Because my wife and I are both on LinkedIn generating business. She's in the real estate. I'm talking to my clients. And so that allows our network to know that we value our marriage and we value having a solid, quality marriage, which will attract other people that are into that type of thing.

Donnie Gupton [00:34:48]:
Right. So that's the idea, is sharing something personal. Now, I think the sweet spot of doing this is where I can kind of share something in my personal life, but also then tying that back into some sort of business is where it gets, you know, you can create a lot of opportunity for yourself. Okay. The big thing this builds, again, is this builds authenticity. This builds you into being real. That makes your brand more memorable. Right.

Donnie Gupton [00:35:08]:
And it offers a unique opportunity to connect and share more. It creates more conversation points for your market and your audience. So I was just on a LinkedIn Live before this then some guy had no idea comes in and says, hey man, who's tell me about the Nevada Wolf Pack. And that's where I played and helped the football team now doing some mindset stuff. And so that person wouldn't know that if I'm not constantly out there pushing my brand, sharing some of my personal life, sharing some of my personal hobbies. If you're watching this video, you know, right now, live, sometimes when I'm up here, you can actually see my helmet. For the wolf pack, some people will come on like, hey, I see you're a Niners fan. So that's the idea, right? And then the last thing about the connection content, which is frustrating as heck, is it increases your engagement.

Donnie Gupton [00:35:52]:
One of the reason I say it's frustrating is because, and I'd be curious how many of you guys could resonate with this that are already creating the content is you go out there and you'll write this nice, valuable post. It's tons of filled with value, filled with meat, when I get a couple hundred views. And then you post a picture of your wife, for example, and next thing you know, that thing's got 20,000 views on it. It's just an unfortunate game that we have to play. But knowing that, knowing that the personal stuff usually increases engagement. That's why we put it into the place, into the part of the fetus, so I can drive more attention towards my brand. And again, I'm not telling you to do this every single week, but when it makes sense, I promise you that it will build way more connection. Again, when I'm looking at my online presence and we strip this thing all down, I'm trying to make myself attractive to a very specific target audience and be there when their need arises and ultimately showcasing that I am qualified to help them get that.

Donnie Gupton [00:36:49]:
But when you break it all down, we're ultimately building a relationship with somebody. So right now I don't know all of the people that are on this call, but you guys are all building a relationship with me in some way or another. Some of you are like, forget this guy, I'll never talk to him ever again. There's part of that in this group, then there's other you like, ah, maybe I'll follow this guy and there might be a couple of you that are like, you know what, I think I might even want to work with this guy. But the bottom line is it's a one way relationship at this point in time where you guys are kind of learning about me in this relationship process. But when you really look at your content and what it's designed to do, it's really just get your market to know you, like you and trust you more and build a relationship. Okay. And it humanizes your brand.

Donnie Gupton [00:37:24]:
So the other little kind of side things that I would recommend, this is more for those that have the ability to run some paid traffic. I'm not saying that you shouldn't create a lead magnet or a guide or a resource, an ebook, a webinar. I think everybody should do that. But these are most effective. And this is where you get into true inbound lead generation is when you're going to pay for money, have somebody that wants that lead magnet go to a website where they can put in their information and generate an inbound lead. So that's kind of your most advanced part of this process is when you're doing it that way. Now let's talk about how to really leverage your desk and pack a stadium full of folks that want to hear your message. So obscurity is really the single biggest killer of any small business.

Donnie Gupton [00:38:05]:
Okay. So I know from my years of helping recruiters is there, I've worked with, usually the clients that I have the most success with are actually really, really good recruiters that have no idea about online marketing, branding, lead generation, or they do know, and you're just looking to elevate that skill. Skill. But this is kind of, I think, where a lot of frustration comes into play is there's a lot of really good recruiters that don't know how to drive their brand, that don't know how to market, and that is killing their business. They're good at what they do. And I'll be honest, I mean, if you're relying on key accounts or referrals and reputation, I mean, you're just waiting for disaster. Okay, so we want to have a good, strong marketing strategy that we're laying out here for you so that you can overcome the challenge of becoming obscure. So according to a study by HubSpot, 80% of all content online gets no engagement.

Donnie Gupton [00:38:54]:
So what you want to do in order to get engagement is grow an audience. That's one of the things that's often missed as you talk about people that constantly talking about growing marketing and branding is like, well, I need to have an audience. I need to have an audience that goes there because with the audience, I can create more meaningful conversations every single day with this ideal audience. And that's the whole idea when I'm building content or doing outreach is I'm looking to generate Meaningful conversations. Not getting people on the phone that listen to me, but aren't going to take me seriously, but people that actually are on the phone with me, that want to be there, that are actually interested, that actually have urgency to fill roles that you could help them fill, those are meaningful conversations. So knowing that that's the goal, we want meaningful conversations. And assuming you were going to spend the same time, energy and effort to build your audience and create meaningful conversations with your perfect leads, would you rather be building your audience with 22 people at a time or just one? Of course, 20, 20 meaningful conversations gives us way more higher chance of making consistent placements and finding the ideal client is going to value what you do. 20 meaningful conversations over one allows us to say no to the prospective client that does not want to work the way that we want to.

Donnie Gupton [00:40:06]:
Because I know I'm confident I have a pipeline of more clients that are coming, and all I'm looking at is ideals and really making sure that you have great search quality. So when we're starting to play a little bit of a numbers game, as we build our audience, we don't want to be doing things one to one. We want to be doing things where we really leverage our desk. And so we want to go from that one to one approach to a one to many approach. Now, the key here is how do I go one to one, one to many, without getting people in LinkedIn jail, or without killing the experience, or without, you know, spamming my network? The key thing is don't pitch. What I mean by that is how many of you guys have been on LinkedIn? You accept somebody's connection request, and before you even go to the next thing, you get an instantly an automated message from them. And their automated message is something like, hey, John, great to be connected. Hey, we've got a unique process to help you generate leads.

Donnie Gupton [00:40:58]:
If I can get you 20 inbound leads, would you want to do that? And even though you might be interested in that, just the approach stinks. It reeks. And so there's so many recruiters that are connecting. It's like, hey, you know, I noticed that you're a sales exec, and my company, we find the purple unicorns and we can find you all the best sales talent in the world. You know, let us know how we can be a resource for you. And you've lost their attention. So rather than constantly pitching here, you want to really empower your team to play the long game, get people into dialogue by asking questions and then adding value. But really you want to empower your team for those of you that have teams around you to build their own personal brand.

Donnie Gupton [00:41:35]:
And if you don't have a team that just focus on building your own personal brand, because people buy people, they don't buy logos. And this is something that is drastically changing, and it's getting this way more year over year. This is becoming a more strong thing that people are into, is just, I want to know who I'm working with. I hosted a panel interview about a year ago, and I had the opportunity to interview executives, and I was doing this interview on behalf of a bigger recruiting organization, asking these executives of what they were looking for when they were actually bringing on prospective recruiting partners. And one of the things they said is, like, nowadays, what we're actually doing is we actually know that, hey, it might be ABC recruiting company, but we want to know, John, who's actually going to be our recruiter? And that's where this concept really comes into play, is like, well, knowing now that people want to know who's actually doing the recruiting for them, that we want to go ahead and bring our team's personal brand to LinkedIn. So a lot of people I see on LinkedIn is they'll have their name, and then they just put recruiter underneath it, right? Or senior recruiter or CEO at ABC search firm. That is such wasted digital real estate right there. And so what we want to really look at doing here is rather than having that real estate just say recruiter.

Donnie Gupton [00:42:51]:
I want to speak to my ideal target audience, okay? Because one of the things that I can get by creating this is when you start to think about where the. Where does this headline actually show up? The headline's the most important part of your LinkedIn profile. Your headline is going to show up when you send somebody a connection request. Your headline shows up when you create content. Your headline shows up when you send somebody a personal message. Your headline shows up when you comment on other people's content. Having a great headline is a great way to capture the attention of your marketplace, okay? But as you're looking at this here, and you can see that this is an entire team where their brands are the same for everybody that gets on the same look, same feel, a little bit different headline. Because that's why we want to give them their power of their own uniqueness, right? For their own personal brand.

Donnie Gupton [00:43:41]:
But there's congruency around the look and feel from their entire team, okay? So that's really what you want to be looking at doing is. Well, the fastest way for me to go deploy this strategy and go from one to one to one to many is, is, is empower my team and empower their desk on LinkedIn to attract a very specific client or candidate. And so that's kind of the overview of what this will look like, is making sure that your entire LinkedIn profile is all branded well for each individual on your team and then you want to be able to drive traffic to your profile. And so the best tool for targeting, in my opinion, is LinkedIn Sales Navigation. LinkedIn Sales Nav allows you to build just filter searches, lead list searches, account list searches. I really like the account list part because then we can start to target companies that may not be doing hiring or may not have big HR departments. But LinkedIn Sales Navigator combined with a good LinkedIn automation tool, which I can share with you, feel free to reach out to me after. I got a couple tools I can recommend.

Donnie Gupton [00:44:36]:
But that really allows us to start to build our audience and then do that in a very strategic way every single day and allows me to be leveraged. Okay, so I'm going to leverage my team's desk and then I'm also going to leverage my team by helping them with some automation. When you look at your team members, every team member that you have is another fishing potential fishing pole in the water. So if the question is as well, should I do this or somebody else to do it, the answer is both. And then what we look at now is a multi channel approach to really start to expanding your audience. Now we're getting into advanced strategies. So being a football guy, we always talk about swarming of the football. And so if we look at this being the running back here, this is your prospective client and this is you on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on email, and you're swarming your market and coming at them from all angles.

Donnie Gupton [00:45:23]:
Okay, that's how you're going to capture the most attention. So whether it's again, social media, all those different things, you want your prospects to really see you everywhere. And if you really want to win online and be that authority, then this is how you really run an effective lead generation system is you show up everywhere to a very specific target audience. And the ultimate goal, of course, is to make sure that you get warm phone calls with people because that's where you make your money. So again, coming back to tie that all home, we're going to create all this online marketing, all this brand presence, deploy our team, empower our team. And we're going to do this in a way that is Ultimately driving more warm phone calls, more meaningful phone calls with our ideal prospects. Okay, so now we're coming to the end and you guys have a choice to make. And the choice is simple, but you get to make it.

Donnie Gupton [00:46:16]:
You can be like John or you can be like Mike and use the tractor. I'm going to recommend that you be like Mike. And I appreciate you guys. I did not get a chance to go into any Q and A, so I will go with that. But I'm going to leave this slide up. If you guys want to connect with me, feel free to do so.

Kortney Harmon [00:46:32]:
Well, Donnie, there was questions and I'm going to ask them. So if there's other questions, feel free. I think one of the questions was, do you capitalize your marketing only on LinkedIn or do you also have your videos for your clients on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc.

Donnie Gupton [00:46:47]:
Yep. So I just kind of hit on the at the end. That's a great, a really great question. So the thinking is really, first, I'm going to dominate a platform. So until I have LinkedIn figured out and working, what's the point of me going to have a presence somewhere else? Okay, so that's the thinking is like, I want to make sure that I've got a presence there and the presence is generating me a result. LinkedIn is obviously the. For 99% of those on here. We know our clients are on there, we know our candidates are on there.

Donnie Gupton [00:47:11]:
So that's the best place to start. But yeah, the answer is yes. Then it's multi channel, because that's where I was just talking about. I want to swarm my market. The challenge is, where does my market hang out on Instagram? And so, you know, it's easy to kind of get caught into the buzz and, oh, well, you should be there. And so, yes, so for me, Instagram is not a strategy. For me, I have a presence there, but I'm just regurgitating my LinkedIn strategy on Instagram. And that's why my Instagram doesn't grow.

Donnie Gupton [00:47:36]:
If I'm being completely honest and transparent, it's just there. So I think everybody that's listening and starting out, it's okay for you to have a presence everywhere when you start, but you want to be focused on one platform to generate your result. And then I think just kind of digging that more. I think it's LinkedIn is the next one and then from there it's Probably, I think YouTube's another good opportunity because YouTube allows you a place if you're especially doing video. Obviously you can create playlists. You can use that as a place to send to clients and candidates. There's a lot of potential value on YouTube and YouTube's own by the biggest search engine in the world right now. I know for most of my clients because they're true headhunters, they're not really interested in talent that they might attract from a Google search.

Donnie Gupton [00:48:18]:
Right. They're going to go head hunt and find that talent. A lot of people I've spoken with over the years don't have a lot of success and good quality client leads from Google because they're, I mean all of you guys are in their inbox already. So why they need to go Google for a recruiter, Right. So that's where YouTube is kind of a secondary benefit is that it's keyword search tool.

Kortney Harmon [00:48:36]:
Amazing. And one other question from Tanya. She asked is the relevant recruiter and what you do there similar to aura marketing too?

Donnie Gupton [00:48:45]:
Not necessarily so relevant recruiters. I'm where I'm going to show you. I'm going to teach a man how to fish in Aura marketing is where we're going to do the fishing for you. So our aura marketing, you would learn the same content strategy in the relevant recruiter or marketing is where we're taking that and executing the content and branding for you. So yeah, thank you for that question, Tanya. But it's same, I guess overall outcome but just a different process of how we're going to get you there. I'm happy to talk to you more about that. You can reach out.

Kortney Harmon [00:49:10]:
I love that. And Donnie, of course everyone wants to know your automated tools. So even if you send those via email, I can send those out with your presentation. That would be amazing. Thank you so much. You had a lot, lots of wonderful insights and the audience loved it. So thank you for joining us today, Donnie.

Donnie Gupton [00:49:27]:
Yep. I will send those tools over to Kortney.

Kortney Harmon [00:49:30]:
Amazing. You're the best. We hope you found today's session insightful and inspiring. Remember to stay tuned in the upcoming weeks as we'll be sharing all of this amazing content of our virtual conference. If you miss any part of it, don't forget to subscribe to our show so you don't miss anything upcoming. And if you like this valuable content, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to share it with your network and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Together we're building a community of growth and learning.

Kortney Harmon [00:50:04]:
Until next time.