Feb 14, 2020

Employer Branding 2/4 ⤵️ Employer Brand Touchpoints

By Kerry from Try Catch • Issue #20 • View online

Morning, Friday.

It’s Kerry from Try Catch, hitting you with Try Catch Essentials Newsletter #20! 🌟

We hope we’re the first newsletter in your inbox to wish you a Happy February 14th - no V-Day only exclusive offers though, just dropping knowledge about employer branding! 🤓

We’re continuing our newsletter collaboration with Marian Jarzak, Employer Branding Enthusiast from Berlin and author of the Talent Crush blog.

In case you’re new to joining us, each month we curate must-reads concerning an important topic.

The February topic of Try Catch Essentials is Employer Branding.

Try Catch Essentials are:

For HR leaders, recruiters, founders and hiring managers
Handpicked essential reading on important topics in HR and Tech
Sent to you in 4 easily-digestible issues per month

Last week, we covered the basics of understanding what Employer/Employee Value Proposition (EVP) entails, which is an important first step to defining an Employer Brand Strategy, something Marian is very excited about.

This week we’re covering Employer Brand Touchpoints (EBTs), defined concisely as: the points of interaction and observation as experienced in the employee’s relationship to the employer.

Marian and I consider EBTs as an incredibly intersectional topic - as is also the case for employer branding in general - and which makes it difficult to define in a single category.

We have identified that understanding Marketing Attribution Models is fundamental to grasping the concept that the work of employer branding can hardly be attributed to a single touchpoint.

Organizations need to uncover the diversity of EBTs and the associated attribution which provide the best candidate experience and invest resources accordingly.

Read on to learn about Marketing Attribution Models and read Marian’s insights of how to apply these practices to more accurately consider aspects of Employee Experience (EX) and Employer Branding.

As always, we’d ♥️ it if you’d share this newsletter to people in your network and teams. After reading this issue, you can access our archive of back-issues here to load up on reasons to convince your team to subscribe.

📥 If you have even a small contribution to this month’s topic, or want to learn more from Marian’s insights, we’re just a reply button click away.

Marketing Attribution and EBTs

Marketing Attribution Models are designed to determine which touchpoints are deserving of the most attention from the marketing budget of an organization based on trackable instances.

Taken from the Essential Read:

Marketing attribution is the way in which marketers assess the value or ROI of the channels that connect them to potential customers. In other words, it’s the means by which the customer came to know and buy your product or service.

From an employer brand perspective, we substitute the employee for the customer.

Just like the difficulties Digital Marketeers face today, those concerned with EBTs and EX have similar strife - because there is such a range of channels and messaging involved in attracting employees, keeping track of which are the most effective ROI is nuanced.

Similar principles behind these models apply to the Employer Brand attribution, below are examples of attribution models which are explained in-depth in the Essential Read:

First-touch attribution
Last-touch attribution
Multi-source attribution
Weighted multi-source attribution

If single-source attribution model (usually first/last-touch) is used, then all credit is attributed to a single touchpoint of the attraction phase of employee acquisition.

Exploring a U-shaped Attribution Model

Marian suggests that grasping the distribution of the multi-source U-shape model (not clearly mentioned in the Essential Read, so we’ll explain briefly here) is the most useful in understanding the gist of attribution modeling.

In the U-shape model, credit is attributed to the first-touch the employee has with the employer brand (brand awareness) and also attributed to the last interaction before a hire is made (employee conversion); thus providing a dual-case for the investment allocation of the employer branding budget as a result of demonstrated ROI.

As an example, a post about a company newsletter is shared on LinkedIn (first-touch), this leads a candidate to subscribe to the newsletter or read company reviews or reach out to former employees or investigate the website, et cetera.

The candidate eventually emails the employer an open application on the company’s website (last-touch) - The Employer Brand Manager could then make a case for the first-touch and last-touch as deserving lion’s share of the budget.

More complex modes are always possible: such as weighting the attribution models or using algorithms to divide percentages of attribution - the goal is to uncover which model best represents the best possible use of Employer Brand spend on pathways demonstrating the best ROI on employee attraction.

Dive into or brush up your understanding of Marketing Attribution Models below to more deftly apply the concepts to an Employer Branding perspective. 👇

The Essential Reads

Everything You Wanted to Know About Marketing Attribution Models (but were Afraid to Ask) | Salesforce Blog

Claimed to be one of the most read posts on Salesforce’s blog, it goes to show that individuals are seeking more information about attribution models. While it’s not an especially vague concept, it does require a respectable amount of explanation to understand the conceptual differences between models. Again, note that we’re are linking to this explanation because we believe that it’s fundamental to understanding Employer Brand Touchpoints. Useful associated learning.

www.salesforce.com • Share

The Additional Reads

Defining Your Employee Experience (part 2): The Touchpoints | Duperrin

Written by Bertrand Duperrin in 2016, he details an interesting strategy of defining EX touchpoints into categories and exploring the intersection of EX and EBT. An interesting consideration using design thinking philosophy to learn from the perspective of employees. Useful categorization.

www.duperrin.com • Share

Six Stages to Success with the Employee Lifecycle | 6q

Miles Burke, Founder of 6q - an employee engagement survey system, writes a lengthy blog detailing his and others’ recommendations to keep in mind when considering the Employee lifecycle. Keeping the lifecycle in perspective adds another layer to the consideration of EBT. Useful thought processes.

inside.6q.io • Share

Listen Up

The Employer Branding Podcast | Link Humans

Jörgen Sundberg, CEO of London-based Link Humans hosts a 20-minute, interview format podcast where he tackles a range of Employer brand topics. Many of the episodes are remixed as blog posts on Undercover Recruiter if you’d rather read them. Useful passive learning.

linkhumans.com • Share

Next Up

We’ll be in your inbox again next Friday morning at 9:10 discussing Employee Experience.

We’ll explore the key elements of the employee experience and how using design thinking, employers and employer brand managers can design better experiences for those work for the employer and also to authentically display these positive experiences to attract potential employees.

Stay Connected

We’d love to hear your feedback about this topic and others: hit reply or send an email to kerry@trycatch.tech, we reply to every message.

See you Friday!

~ Marian & Kerry

PS, if you’re in Amsterdam in March, join us and your fellow Amsterdam techies for a game of boules, click here for tickets!

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By Kerry from Try Catch

Try Catch Essentials:

- For HR leaders, recruiters, founders and hiring managers
- Handpicked essential reading on important topics in HR and Tech
- Sent to you in 4 easily-digestible issues per month

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