Challenge
At the height of the economic meltdown of 2009, Hudson North America restructured its sales teams to focus on local geographies and industry specializations. With this restructure came a laser focus on new business development within our most profitable businesses. Our websites were not reflective of the new business structure, nor the solutions that could help customers in the market environment. The sites were built without Search Engine Optimization in mind, and therefore did not rank for phrases that could generate inbound leads. Our online presence needed a facelift to drive new business, fast.

Strategy
With a limited budget and timeframe to market what is 4 separate lines of business, we developed a microsite template that could serve the needs of 4 distinctly different market segments. We retained an SEO consulting firm to advise us during content development to ensure that pages focused on new business keywords, and were coded with search crawlers in mind.

Over a 4 month span, we revised or developed the content for 4 microsites, each dedicated to attracting new business to our service offerings. I focused the information architecture and creative on the best sales asset that we had – our case studies. By showcasing real solutions to past client problems, I hoped to build immediate trust with our audience.

Please visit the websites online to see more of our evolving client acquisition strategy.

• Hudson Legal
• Hudson RPO
• Hudson IT
• Hudson Financial Solutions

Results
The effort resulted in a dramatic increase in Search Engine presence. Traffic to our sites from search engines increased 40-60% over prior year.

A 30% increase of new leads came in from our websites over the prior year. Even though true ROI calculations and additional sales processes to support web leads are in the future, the sites were perceived as a business driver within the company. This set the stage for future investment in technology and marketing to push the sites further.

Challenge
While Hudson maintained a professional informational web presence for many years, 2007 marked the year that social media began to change the expectations of the candidate and client marketplace for recruitment firms. The market, especially candidates, demanded more transparent and direct contact with real people within their potential recruiting partner. Hudson needed to develop a new approach to online interaction that would address this shift in the market.

Strategy
In early 2007, I started an intense research phase into social media to get first hand knowledge of the latest tools. I familiarized myself with WordPress and various social websites like MyBlogLog, Del.icio.us, RSS feeds, Twitter, and Facebook. This resulted in my new personal blog and a blogroll filled with competitive sites that I admire.

With this as a backdrop, I lobbied hard for a blog project. In November of 2007, we brought in an agency to make sure we set the cultural groundwork properly within Hudson, and to have enough resources to complete the project on top of an already heavy load. We chose our IT practice to pilot the program because we felt the target audience was most comfortable with blogs. At the same time our IT recruiters were likely to be the most blog-savvy of our employee population.

Creative Direction
We differentiated the site’s look from the many tech news or gadget blogs out there and, at the same time did not take ourselves too seriously. We ended up with a theme that evoked the balance of work, life, and the technical knowledge it takes for a successful IT career. Rather than align the site with the Hudson domain, we chose a separate URL http://ithirewire.com that would allow for an independent voice from our corporate brand while providing good link building SEO for our corporate websites.

Results
The IT Hire Wire blog launched on July 1, 2008. Since that time it has gained steadily in traffic, comments and candidate leads to recruiters. For recruiters and guest bloggers who contributed content, the blog is highly ranked in Google for their personal brands. The blog is likely to drive future web strategy for the company toward a more customer driven experience, locally and in international markets, specially know that we have learnt about all the benefits of crm, and how it help us optimize customer experience.

Visit the blog at http://ithirewire.com