Seduce and retain clients with storytelling

Whether your recruitment agency has 50 or 5000 candidates, success stands or falls with recruiting clients. Storytelling is one of the best ways to find new clients. In this article we already told you how to seduce candidates through storytelling, but how do you do this with clients?

By communicating a story in an original way as an organization, you make yourself unique. This allows you to address clients who may never heard of you. Storytelling is a powerful tool to put your company on the map. It contributes to building your employer brand. But in order to bind clients to you, it is important to focus on corporate storytelling.

Help your brand move forward

Corporate storytelling is often seen as more difficult than storytelling to candidates. It often remains with an “about us” section on the website. According to the University of Hamburg, the goal of corporate storytelling is to bring coherence and advance the brand identity and development of your organization.

So it is important to know exactly how to start. In general, storytelling stands or falls with a theme that suits your company – the foundation for your organizational story. Think carefully about what makes your recruitment agency so unique. Think of the bond you have built with candidates, the personal touch that clients can identify with or the general atmosphere in your office.

The four principles of storytelling

In an earlier article, we told you the four basics of storytelling. Although in that article we focused on storytelling to candidates, these basic principles also apply to storytelling for clients:

1. Personal connection
   By telling about your experiences with other clients, you give potential clients a look behind the scenes. You make a personal connection with them, which will probably convince them to work with you.
2. Tension & conflict
   Translate practical experiences into compelling stories. Describe the problems your customers have and tap into examples you see with potential customers. End your story in one sentence by telling what you ultimately solved the customer’s problem with.
3. Characters
   Characters give a face to your story. Characters ensure that your potential client can identify with the story. Introduce your colleagues to the client, so that they know the faces behind your company, but current clients can also form a character.
4. Ambiance
   The first 3 elements give body to your story, but the atmosphere and setting around it complete your story. By sketching a picture of the atmosphere in the office, you give the reader the feeling that they are already part of your organization.

Get started

Real customer stories and concrete and sincere recommendations make a positive contribution to the employer brand of your organization. Seducing and retaining clients starts with creating a clear and unambiguous story. Preferably add a theme and just start writing. See what is already in space and where there is already room for a story.

Your story is there, you know how and to whom you want to tell it. But how do you ensure that your story ends up with the person you want to reach? You start by determining which channel you want to use. Do you opt for text only, image, or a combination? Storytelling is all about experience. So make sure you think carefully about which resources you are going to use and especially how you are going to use them. Which platform you choose depends on where your target audience is located. There are several options online. But also remember here: where is my target group? For example, LinkedIn works very well in the B2B market.

Storytelling for clients is only effective if you keep sharing your story continuously. Customer cases are a good example of continuing to share your story. So keep immersing yourself in customer stories and translate this into targeted content.