Report

Optimum Talent Inc.

Developed by: Power Consulting Team

Table of Contents

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 1.1. Key Findings 3 1.2. Key Recommendations 3 2. INTRODUCTION 3 2.1. The purpose of the plan 3 2.2. Background information 3 3. SITUATION ANALYSIS 3 3.1. 5C Analysis 3 3.2. SWOT Analysis 3 3.3. Website report card 3 3.4. Conclusions 3 4. OBJECTIVES 3 4.1. Profit 3 4.2. Sales 3 4.3. Customer acquisition and conversion 3 4.4. Traffic 3 4.5. Website visibility / Promotion Objectives 3 4.6. Other Objectives 3 5. STRATEGY 3 5.1. Market segments and target market 3 5.2. Positioning 3 5.3. Competitive Strategy 3 5.4. SWOT Strategies 3 5.5. Product / Market Strategies 3 5.6. Revenue Model 3 5.7. Summary: Keys to Success 3 6. TACTICS 3 6.1. Online marketing mix 3 6.2. Improving website content, structure and functionality 3 6.3. Search engine optimization 3 6.4. Online advertising 3 6.5. social media marketing 3 6.6. E-Mail marketing 3 6.7. Mobile Marketing 3 6.8. Other tactics 3 7. ACTION (Implementation) 3 7.1. Skills, Structures and Systems 3 7.2. Budget 3 7.3. Action Plan (Activity Schedule) 3 8. EVALUATION AND CONTROL 3 8.1. Process 3 8.2. Key Performance Indicators 3

Describe your key findings and recommendations regarding digital marketing. Write a short overview of your plan. This is best done at the end, once you are clear on your approach.

The role of the executive summary is to provide enough detail to interest busy senior executives and encourage them to buy into the digital marketing plan and how it can benefit the business.

It should be concise - ideally a page in length - easy to understand, and interesting without using hype. It's advisable to write this section of your plan after you have completed the rest.

The summary should outline the following:

· your business environment

· the key issues that have emerged from your situation analysis

· the key objectives of your digital marketing plan

· the strategies and tactics to be used

The main purpose of the digital marketing plan is to improve overall business for Optimum Talent. In order for the organization to be successful it must not only focus on offline marketing activities, but extend their reach and effectiveness of the marketing plan by having an online marketing strategy as well.

In the case of Optimum Talent, the company has seen many transformations over the past two years, by acquiring an executive and professional search company as well as the Vancouver office of their former national career transition partner, Toombs Inc. Optimum Talent is headquartered in Montreal and the brand awareness, particularly in a very competitive Vancouver market, is quite low. Optimum Talent is able to provide services across the entire spectrum of talent management and even current clientele are unaware of the entire portfolio of offerings.

Through a digital marketing plan, Optimum Talent will be able to identify and reach out to specific target markets through proper digital media channels in order to increase profits and customer conversions on the company website, as well as promote brand awareness.

2.2. background information

Optimum Talent is the largest privately-owned integrated talent management (human resources consulting) firm in Canada. The national headquarters are located in Montreal and there are 15 offices across the country. With over 40 years in the career transition and outplacement industry. it has expanded its services to include leadership development, coaching, and career assessments. In 2016, Optimum Talent acquired an executive and professional search firm headquartered in Edmonton, called Conroy Ross Partners, to complete the goal of being a fully integrated talent management consulting firm.

The company is a full-service HR consulting firm that works with individuals and companies to support their “people” strategies. Services are customized based on the unique needs of the organizations, whether they are in the process of undergoing a complete reorganization or merger & acquisition that will potentially lead to job loss due to redundancy, or they are a firm experiencing exponential growth, and everything in between. Due to the customization required, services are not sold online. However, Optimum Talent’s website must be rich in content to explain its capabilities in serving the customer, the personal relevance to that organization, and must act like a virtual “salesperson” to encourage a prospect to contact the company to learn more about the service offerings.

Key services are grouped in three areas: Executive/Professional Search, Career Management & Career Transition (Outplacement), and Leadership Development/Coaching/Assessment.

Optimum Talent’s target market are individuals within a company that are mandated with making key “people” decisions that positively impact the organization and position the company as one of the best places to work for.

Although it is a national company, with a national marketing strategy, the Vancouver office, in particular, is interested in expanding their online presence in a very competitive local market. When the office was acquired by Optimum Talent, there was no specific announcement to the local market to state that Toombs in Vancouver was no longer, and it was now called Optimum Talent. And on top of that they now provide executive/professional search, a service that was not offered before. The office has hired an outside consultant to assist but they are very interested in using our ideas to contribute to their local digital marketing strategy. The team we will be presenting to is Terri Phipps, SVP & Market Leader; Angelique Meyer, VP, Leadership, Assessment & Development; and Faris Khalifeh, External Business Coach.

Currently, the overall marketing strategy focuses on the following:

· PRICE: competitive pricing in all three areas of the business. Customized program options for leadership & development are created based on budget and customer needs and goals. Volume pricing and new customer discounts are available for career transition programs. Executive & professional search is offered at a range of between 25% to 30% of a successfully placed candidate’s total salary

· PRODUCT: Optimum Talent services are similar to their competitors, however, there is a trend to move to a more online experience for customers, particularly within career transition (outplacement). They have decided to remain high-touch, supported by technology, as the value of a more personal service to people that have just lost their jobs far outweighs a more technical, and lower priced, product offering. That said, a virtual program is available for a very low price if that is what the customer prefers. Focus is on differentiators of their product versus competitors. These include:

· focus on neuromanagement (defined as: “a scientific approach to management that explores economic, managerial, and behavioural issues through the lens of mental processes and brain activity (reaction)” - Optimum Talent website)

· high-touch approach

· proprietary behavioural assessment called “SuccessFinder”

· PROMOTION: Current promotion activities include:

· mass emails to current clients

· sharing company blogs through social media

· speaking engagements at high profile events,

· participation in HR conferences

· publishing and sharing white papers

· guest writing for industry periodicals

· individual and corporate memberships in industry organizations

· lunch seminars with in-house guest speaker on subjects around neuromanagement

· complementary “termination” workshops (how to prepare for terminating employment)

· PLACE: Optimum Talent operates out of 15 offices in major metropolitan hubs across Canada in which to provide in-person services. The organizations is also a member of an international partnership group, Career Star Group, that has 800 offices in 75 countries around the world, which enables it to provide services globally through these partners

· PEOPLE: The company’s people are selectively chosen for their proven expertise and success in:

· working with individuals that have experienced job displacement/termination of employment

· creating and facilitating leadership development and executive coaching programs

· conducting and successfully placing successful professionals into key executive roles

· PROCESS: there is a standard thorough and mindful approach to all three service areas of the business within Optimum Talent. Timelines can be adjusted based on the needs of the customer. Although there are standard processes, each customer’s needs are unique so the company must be flexible to alter the process as deemed necessary to meet and/or exceed the identified goals.

· PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: Optimum Talent is a service organization so how they conduct business with each of their customers is key to their success. The company realizes the importance of an exceptional customer experience, as the impacts of their services strongly impact the lives of the people they work with. The customers, in turn, will also act as promoters of Optimum Talent’s business by referring them to friends, former co-workers, or even to the general public through social media.

Make sure to draw important conclusions from the situation analysis.

CUSTOMERS:

Optimum Talent works in the “people” industry so customers will be those who would be interested in using the company’s services to support and enhance their employee development strategies. These include:

· Senior HR Professionals

· CEOs and owners of medium-to-large size businesses

· Any company executives/professionals who are responsible for making people strategy decisions (i.e. department and/or division heads)

· Individuals that have experienced job loss and have been offered money from their companies to purchase career transition services or are willing to purchase services for themselves if a program wasn’t provided by their previous employer

The talent management industry centres around “people” management and thus involves people making decisions based on emotion. Thus, it is key that in order to be successful in this business, you must have developed relationships with key decision-makers. The industry is very competitive and there are many practitioners offering similar services. The relationship factor will make the difference between people choosing to do business with you and not.

CONTEXT:

Leadership development in an organization is a “hot commodity”. Regardless of where someone is at on their career path, everyone is keen to develop their skill and grow within an organization. Companies realize that growth opportunities for their employees not only benefits the organization but contributes to increase engagement and lower turnover. Many younger employees are demanding opportunities to develop, or they will consider looking elsewhere in order to do so.

There is also a trend for work to be conducted in project teams, particularly as globalization increases and teams are spread out over several countries. Team development is key to understand the goals of the project and to have the right people in place to achieve these goals.

Optimum Talent is well-positioned in this area to provide excellent support and coaching to all individuals within the leadership development program. They have taken a unique position of developing individuals by using neuromanagement and the understanding of events on the human brain to produce a more effective outcome.

Technology is affecting all areas of the talent management industry. In career transition/outplacement, there is a push to offering employees a more virtual or online experience as opposed to a traditional high-touch approach. Although more cost-effective, this has backlashed on several companies that have moved more quickly into an online approach resulting in business being lost to those companies that still want to offer their former employees high-touch service. They see the value in a face-to-face approach in what is a very emotional time in someone’s career.

That said, customer companies do demand more focus on technology within traditional career transition programs. Outplacement companies have responded by offering an online career portal (online workplace that supports job search activities of people looking for work), LinkedIn groups, even an app that people going through the program can access on their smartphones or tablets.

Economic pressures do affect companies’ decisions on whether or not to use an external HR services company or to do everything in-house. As a result, service companies offer services that are “ad-hoc” and that can enhance an in-house program or are forced to offer, for example, a career transition program at a very low price. Those companies that are in the outplacement industry often cite this as a “race to the bottom” for pricing, but the market must respond to what the customer wants. Optimum Talent does offer a low-price model but will highlight the pros and cons of each choice.

COMPETITION:

Competition within the talent management space is fierce, and those companies within this space have to work hard to stay three steps ahead of their professional rivals. Not only are there large companies that offer these services on the global stage, there is very strong competition on a local basis from smaller companies and, in the case of leadership development, individual practitioners with expertise in coaching and career assessment.

Optimum Talent’s main competitors in the career transition area are LHH Knightsbridge and Right Management, globally; CareerJoy and RiseSmart nationally, and Toombs Inc. (Calgary/Edmonton), and LoganHR (Vancouver), locally. There are a number of smaller local companies across the country as well, but these are the main ones that have been identified.

Competition is extremely high in executive search with all the long-established and big players having a strong presence in Vancouver. The largest are Boyden, Korn Ferry, Pinton Forrest Madden (PFM) Partners, Caldwell Partners, and most recently, David Aplin Executive Recruiters. Optimum Talent has only a small search team in each office other than in Edmonton, the former Conroy Ross’ head office. Therefore, resources are small and they are having a hard time competing against the Big 4. Also, the fee structure is either “retained” (pay three set payments over the period of the search) or “contained” (pay a small deposit at the beginning of the search then the remainder when the successful candidate is placed). A retained fee structure is normal practice for executive search, and big companies with large budgets are fine with this plan. However, the big search companies have already developed strong relationships with these larger companies, and small to mid-size companies would rather pay a “contingency” fee (search is conducted by many different search firms and the company who places the successful candidate will get the fee.

COMPANY:

Optimum Talent has the benefit of having 40 years of experience has a career transition/outplacement service provider. The brand has a strong presence in eastern Canada, primarily in Toronto and Montreal (where the headquarters are located). From their roots in career transition, they have naturally expanded their services to include, leadership development, coaching, and executive and professional search to complete their integrated talent management service portfolio. This allows the company to truly partner with customer organizations and have the resources at hand to be able to provide the customized service that is so much in demand. If Optimum Talent has to undertake large projects, it can pull the necessary resources from the other offices in order to accommodate. For large global projects, their partnership with Career Star Group allows them to provide local service and expertise that better enables people within those countries to find other roles or grow their teams.

COLLABORATORS:

Optimum Talent has the advantage of working with a number of professionals across all areas of their business. In the case of leadership development, they are able to pull from a pool of identified subject matter experts outside of the company that not only readily assist in the project, but are great promoters of the organization. With their global partnership in Career Star Group, they are able to offer services worldwide, if required, to their customer base and can also benefit from referred business from the other partners.

STRENGTHS:

WEAKNESSES:

OPPORTUNITIES:

THREATS:

From the 5C Analysis and SWOT Analysis, it seems that Optimum Talent has strong potential to use its strengths to take advantages of opportunities in the local market to increase brand awareness and reputation. Optimum Talent should use their main key differentiators: neuromanagement approach, SuccessFinder behaviour assessment, individual support, Canadian-owned, and Executive Career Transition, in their marketing strategy to show the value to their prospects, and current customers, of their service offerings versus the competitions. Neuromanagement, in particular, is an approach that is becoming quite popular and, as they are the first talent management to focus on this area, Optimum Talent should really promote their position as a thought leader in the industry.

Executive search is having a difficult time breaking into the local market. The advantage is does have is being one service area of a fully integrated talent management company. Therefore, cross-selling between the other areas is key to working with companies that are already familiar with the Optimum Talent brand and may be more willing to try a new service area based on the relationship with the company.

Ultimately, Optimum Talent should take advantage of any opportunity to spotlight their expertise on the public stage. Participation on panels at events as subject matter experts, contributing articles to industry periodicals, and above all, increasing their presence online through social media channels will raise brand awareness exponentially, attract new customers, and ultimately increase profits.

Answer the second of the three central strategic planning questions: WHERE DO WE WANT TO BE? In this section you are supposed to set specific, measurable, achievable relevant and timely (i.e. S.M.A.R.T.) objectives for your online marketing. Set your goals for different time periods.

Make sure to align your objectives: start with the desired key end-goals, such as specific increase in profit and sales, then work "backwards" and figure out how many online customers do you need in order to achieve your sales and profit targets. How much extra traffic on your site do you need in order to get target number of online customers? What level of website visibility and promotion will bring you the target traffic?

Optimum talent has a long history of providing personalized consulting services. Optimum talent provides benefits from national and international presence. Not only through location office in Canada, but with the international alliances through career management and global coaching partnership with offices located in more than 30 countries around the world. In order to meet most of talent management needs Optimum talents have access to a network of more than 150 professionals with career management and career transition. They make profit large group of executive coaches. Optimum talent has a vision to be the recognized Canadian National Leader of high-quality integrated talent management solutions.

For now we are only consider their business in Vancouver area. The profit in the customized program of Leadership and Organizational Development are created based on budget and customer needs and goals. Which is a little bit hard to measure. Profit from Executive search is between 25% to 30% of a successfully placed candidate’s total salary.

They want to strike an optimal balance between our pricing/costing model and organizational performance and profitability. Profit from Executive and professional search is between 25% to 30% of a successfully placed candidate’s total salary. To increase their profit by $1,000,000 per year, they might need to increase sales by $4,000,000 (25% profit margin ).

The main product was designed to serve the clients, engage with candidates and communities to create a lasting and positive impact. Optimum talent Optimum talent has experts in three distinct field:

· Career Management and Career transition (Outplacement)

· Executive Search

· Leadership assessment, Coaching and Organizational Development

Building a career assessment system from the ground up is a project of a lifetime. Optimum talent take the science of assessment to a new level to meet customers’ diverse management needs.

In the next three years, Optimum talent would keep the existing three program and combined with talent development program to make a integrated talent management solutions into four distinct pillars all under one roof to build better pathfinder career system.

Optimum talent is working on both individual optimization and organization enhancing. They have help the clients who just lost their job to find a new job that fit them based on character analysis, ability test and planning future career development; They training client to manage their business in the reasonable way with help them to hire best employee and effective career transition that enhance employer's brand.

In the future, Optimum talent will be able to acquiring some client from student who just graduate from college and university, to help them positioning themselves and avoid some of the career risks. In addition, Optimum talent is able to absorbing client from small business owner by Neuroplasticity theory based coaching program. Small business owners are relatively easy to encounter failures due to low budget and limited experience. With Neuroplasticity theory, Optimum talent believes people can rewire brain at any time, no matter how old is everybody have the chance to change.

In the next year, official website still is the great way to acquiring clients. Suppose that average order from the site is $500, Optimum talent will need around 8000 new customer per year ($4,000,000/$500).

Let estimate the current traffic of site is 100,000 with average order amount of $500, the current total sales is $600,000 and the current sales per visitor is $6. The expected conversion rate is 1.20%. The objective should be 666,666 website visits (8000/0.012). Across industries, the average landing page conversion rate was 2.35%, yet the top 25% are converting at 5.31% or higher. If Optimum talent want to achieve conversion rate 2.3% next step, they should improve their total order from 1200 to 2300, meanwhile new total sales reach $1,150,200, so the new sales per visitor is $11.50.

The official website of Optimum talent currently has the traffic rank 4,545,442 in the world and 99,884 in Canada. Compare with the competitors LHH Knightsbridge and Right Management, Optimum talent has better popularity in Canada. Also there were 13,500 and 659,000 links from Google and Bing. 8 times the website have been mentioned in social media during last month

In order to achieve the goal, they should keep working to improve at least 10,000 ranking, post more ads to increase the links from Google to reach at least 500,000, it’s much lesser than the links from Bing. At the sametime need more social attention to expand influence, the objective number of social media mentioned is set as 50 per month.

· To attract, develop and retain a community of passionate professionals that are best-in-class.

· To complete our coast-to-coast market position as either the number one or number two player in each and every market that we operate in.

· To develop a full suite of product offerings within our areas of expertise to better serve our clients as their trusted advisor.

· To strike an optimal balance between our pricing/costing model and organizational performance and profitability.

· To be recognized as the Canadian thought leader in talent management.

Answer the last of the three central strategic planning questions: HOW WILL WE GET THERE? Make sure to have a clear idea HOW you plan to create and sustain a competitive advantage and achieve your goals in the long run. Remember STP approach here (Segmenting-Targeting-Positioning). Describe different market segments and choose your target market segment(s). Figure out your current and desired positioning (branding) strategy. Describe your marketing competitive strategy (cost leadership, differentiation, focus or hybrid). Then conduct SWOT strategy matrix in order to brainstorm a wide list of possible strategic options. Proceed with analyzing different product/market strategies and revenue models. Finally, and most importantly, draw final conclusions in term of your keys to online success, i.e. keys to create and sustain competitive advantage

A target market refers to the group of potential customers at whom a company’s marketing is being directed. The target market is the group of customers that a company will try to reach out to in the form of advertising, because they are the people most likely to purchase the service from the company sells. Optimum talent are looking for the client live in GVA who want a better personal ability or better job within the short term training and lower cost. Optimum’s service now is more likely to focus on high level organization management. The client from higher level organization position represent higher training expenses and inflexible schedule, at same time image of the brand recognition and influence are the impenetrable barrier around while Optimum talent trying to attract customer.

In this section you should focus on WHAT actions you need to take to successfully implement your strategy.

Describe your online marketing mix (4Ps), and how it needs to change to successfully compete online: for example, you might want to market new products, open new distribution channels, or try new pricing models.

Think how you want to improve the content, structure and functionality of your website. Create web site map, website wireframe, and visual layout of your future site. Describe in more detail how you will promote your site. To improve clarity, make sure to use visuals such as SEO tables, screen shots of recommended PPC campaign setup, etc.

Describe how you will put this plan into action. What kind of skills (job titles), organizational structures and systems do you need in place? What budget do you need for various activities described in the previous section? What time frame do you need for each activity? Who will be responsible to conduct each activity and / or to supervise the implementation? To improve clarity, make sure to use visuals (e.g. Gantt charts or tables).

Describe how you will track your performance over time in order to establish if you are making progress as planned. Describe the process: what will be measured, how and when.

Create measurable KPIs (key performance indicators) to align against objectives and stay on track. Consider KPIs that relate to your key objectives and tactic, such as for example your monthly website traffic, sales, conversion, number of new customers per month, number of new social media connections per month, monthly advertising cost against allocated budget, and similar.

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