HR Marketing Success Story: TruStar Solutions Creates A Media Frenzy With HR
TruStar’s Matt Pitchford with his family
The Mission
Last May, TruStar Solutions (then IIRC) hired Matt Pitchford as their Communication Manager and secret weapon. His mission: Pitchford had exactly twelve months to achieve measurable progress towards driving greater marketplace awareness and stimulating new business.
Drilled down funds coupled with mediocre name recognition forced Pitchford to approach marketing with an avant-garde attitude, meaning that he needed to concoct a formula to attain media exposure in multiple venues with nominal resources. His tactics have been wildly successful for TruStar, evoking the muscle of guerilla warfare with the acumen of the Aikido martial art form. TruStar hits hard and often in innovative market arenas, but the clear differentiator in TruStar’s success is their ability to use their audience’s energy and momentum as an advantage.
Course of Attack
Pitchford unleashed a concise recipe of distributing monthly press releases, planting bylined articles, and pursuing speaking opportunities at industry events. Initially he focused on many smaller venues with the ultimate goal of expansion to the larger, more influential publications and tradeshows when the time was right. Pitchford selected HR Marketer as his ally in the endeavor.
Just one year later, TruStar has enjoyed 11 speaking opps, 74 press release hits, 12 media interviews with their CEO, 37 by-lined article placements, and saved over 40-hours of research work per week thanks to HR Marketer.
The Solution
Pitchford relies on HR Marketer to produce and manage each of his media triumphs. In the beginning, he utilized HR Marketer to determine which publications and events best suited TruStar’s niche, weeding through selected targets and executing on his findings.
“Having a limited PR staff makes it crucial to follow up with only the most essential opportunities,” says Pitchford. “If your story ideas, articles, press releases and speaking abstracts aren’t on target, they will never get a second glance.”
Advice from the Master
Pitchford credits his victory to one simple concept: He views tools, like HR Marketer, as treasure chests of opportunity awaiting the appropriate human intervention.
“How you use the data is integral to whether you swim or sink,” he posits, saying that blasting press releases to a generic, predefined list will only have minimal results. “The solution truly is only as successful as the user.”
Pitchford encourages anyone seeking to make a splash really tailor each campaign to a specific audience. Other suggestions…
Tips
- Research and then respect each journalist’s preferences
- Release regularly, but vary announcement topics
- Always copywrite subject lines and introductions
- Never send attachments
- Follow up by phone selectively
- Leverage successes in multiple venues like trade pubs, speaking opps and press releases
- Reassess previous wins as potential future opportunities
Featured HR Marketer Success
“I found Recruiter.com through HR Marketer and contacted the editor. He told me about Recruiter.com’s Top 100 list of most influential people in HR,” Pitchford recalls.
At the time TruStar was wooing future employee Dave Sabol. Pitchford recognized that Sabol would be an excellent candidate for the Top 100 list; he also hoped to leverage a fantastic new hire with exposure from Recruiter.com. To make the most of the opportunity, TruStar issued a powerful news release that meshed both events, “TruStar Solutions Hires One of HR's Most Influential People of 2002”.
Then in June 2003, Pitchford uncovered the Human Capital’s list of Future HR Leaders in HR Marketer and nominated Sabol. Once again Sabol won the award and attained industry-wide recognition for himself and TruStar.
What’s New for TruStar?
In September 2003 TruStar will launch HireYield, a pay-as-you-go recruitment tool that combines web-based background check and resume narrowing technology with ranking software. HireYield has already brought one client’s cost-per-hire down from $16,000 to a remarkable $3,700 per hire and dropped their recruiting cycle time from 90 to 54 days in only six months of usage! How will HR Marketer help with the HireYield product launch?
- Reach HR contacts in new verticals like restaurants and hotels, retail and healthcare
- Educate journalists on new technology and emerging trends
- Leverage gaps between industry niches to rework past stories and re-pitch!
Growing Together
Although Pitchford has effectively augmented exposure for TruStar, he still uses HR Marketer as a conduit to uncover and administrate best-suited media opportunities. But with a year of success under his belt, Pitchford is discovering how to make HR Marketer serve TruStar’s unique and evolving needs. He recognizes that his hard work pursuing and receiving coverage in smaller publications has generated interest from the key, higher-tier publications and associations.
“Major pubs at the SHRM conference in Atlanta wanted a piece of our time, thanks to recent success with the smaller guys,” Pitchford confides.
With so many victories to account for, Pitchford recently expanded TruStar’s use of HR Marketer features to include tracking progress of budgets and leads.
“The product is a different animal a year into the game,” Pitchford relates. “As our ability and requirements have matured, HR Marketer has grown right along with us.”
For more information about TruStar Solutions visit:
http://www.trustarsolutions.com
Or check out a recent Case Study featuring TruStar: http://www.hrmarketer.com/home/index.htm