Getting Employer Branding right in China – 5 tips
Attracting and retaining talent in China is one of the biggest challenges here. Anyone in HR or recruiting is well used to receiving resumes where the candidate has spent exactly 1 year at each company, rotating and changing jobs every season.
Multinationals know that a strong Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and Employer Branding will help their company stand out and attract talent. Here are a few things to watch out for from our experience on making Employer Branding succeed in China:
- Make sure your EVP actually matches what you have to offer, and is not just a fancy sentence or meaningless poster. If it mentions “for the glory of the people” that is a hint you might want to rethink it.
- Was your EVP truly localized with China in mind or is it just a global translation? Does it resonate locally? You should test this thoroughly and work on it with input from all stakeholders: managers, HR, communications, employees and job seekers.
- Are the employer values communicated throughout the organization? In a recent study more than half of the CEOs across a broad reach of industries did not know that their own company had an EVP. We call this kind of alignment Strategy Fluency TM . Is there a program setup to teach the EVP and cascade the information to different departments?
- Is there a set of templates and rules to follow for internal communications materials? We’ve seen a lot of “freestyling” here in China with every department developing their own newsletters, posters and WeChat social media accounts – all with different styles, fonts, graphics and images. It makes for a confusing mess.
- EVPs benefit the bottom line. Companies without a strong EVP are more likely to have to pay a premium to attract talent. You can make this case when the financial controllers start to question the worthiness of the program. This is especially true in China where we often see HR departments starved of funding that is outside of pure channel recruitment.
The best way to succeed with your EVP is to develop a strong local version that actually means something – without losing all of the advantages you have built from the global headquarters.
At the end of the day all of this should make your company sound like a great place to work, and truly attract the types of people that will thrive in your organization and help it succeed.
Contact Brandigo to find out more about how we help organizations develop EVP and internal communication programs through our proven methodology and talented team!New Paragraph
In this episode... Steven and Casey discuss: Why genuine connection can be more powerful than transactional B2B marketing How podcasts can build brand, create demand and strengthen customer relationships Why marketing technology and automation should never replace understanding your customer How AI is increasing content noise – and making human connection even more valuable Why global marketers need to keep challenging what they think they know about their customers Do you really know your customer? Technology gives marketers more opportunities than ever to automate, measure and optimise what they do. Casey experienced that transformation first-hand through marketing automation, gaining the ability to demonstrate how marketing activity contributed to leads, customers and revenue. But more technology doesn't automatically mean better marketing. Casey found that many companies were using only a fraction of the capabilities of the technology they had purchased. Worse, marketers could become so focused on platforms, features and automation that they lost sight of the person they were actually trying to reach. The same problem applies to content. Whether a 17-page report has been painstakingly written by an expensive expert or generated in seconds using AI, the fundamental question remains the same: What question does this answer for your buyer? From go to market to connect to market This becomes particularly important for global marketers. Pain and intent may be universal, but the people experiencing them – and the way they choose to solve their problems – can be very different across markets, cultures and generations. A buyer persona created ten years ago may bear little resemblance to the person making the same purchasing decision today. And a persona developed for one market can't simply be assumed to work everywhere else. Casey's answer is deceptively simple: keep talking to people. For him, this is another reason podcasting has become such a powerful marketing tool. It creates a consistent reason for marketers and business leaders to have meaningful conversations with the people they want to understand. It also sits behind his latest concept, Connect to Market . Rather than simply taking a product to a market, Casey argues that businesses should think more deliberately about how they connect with the people within it – through podcasts, communities, partnerships and other human-first approaches. As AI makes it easier to create more content, more quickly, those genuine human connections may become more important rather than less. Because amid all the automation, algorithms and AI-generated noise, great marketing still begins with understanding another person. Resources mentioned in this episode: Casey Cheshire on LinkedIn Ringmaster Ringmaster on LinkedIn Marketing Automation Unleashed The Hard Corps Marketing Show Sponsor for this episode... This episode is brought to you by Brandigo China . We are an independent marketing and communications agency based in Shanghai, China with 20 years of on-the-ground experience in China. At Brandigo China , we work with multinational clients to support their marketing and business growth efforts in China. We are experts in insight strategy, content marketing, marketing-led business growth campaigns and all things China-based marketing. Go to Brandigo China to learn more and contact us with questions at [email protected] .
Marc Rust of Consequently Creative joins the Radical Global Marketing Podcast to explore brand-led growth, business transformation, creativity and AI.
B2B Marketing in China Is Getting Wildly Complicated - insider tips for marketers entering or in China.
