Never hide 🫀🩻🔬 EBH

By deciding what you aren't and what you won't do

Reminder, I’m doing a webinar with Greetr on the intersection of employer branding and candidate experience on Thursday.

Stop using your marketing to hide. That’s what you’re doing when you build messaging that seems to anyone. You’re terrified that you won’t be heard, appreciated, and valued by your actual target audience, so you cast the net wide and find it comes up empty.

Your brand message should clarify who you are, your position, what you stand for, and what you offer.

It should create clarity and confidence because you know who you are, and what you care about, and doesn’t smack of trying to be all things to all people.

For example, instead of just asking:

• What are we going to say?

• What are my competitors doing?

• What tactics should we focus on?

• Who are the people we seek to serve?

• What channels should we spend time on?

• Where are my competitors investing their cash?

Also ask yourself:

• What are we not going to say?

• What are my competitors not doing?

• What tactics should we not focus on?

• Who are the people we won’t seek to serve?

• What channels should we not spend time on?

• Where are my competitors not investing their cash?

Defining what you aren’t going to do has a few obvious benefits.

First, it clears the decks. It gives you the permission to stop doing stuff that isn’t working, to evaluate in the cold light f day the things that drive value and the things that are… politically expedient to do. Or the things that seemed like a good idea at the time. Or the channels that have just gone rotten (I’m looking at you, Twitter).

Clearing things out gives you space to invent the new. You can’t look at your challenges with a new perspective if you’re too busy spinning all these plates.

But by focusing, you limit your choices. I know that sounds like a bad thing, but it isn’t. It’s a smart response to the “blank sheet of paper” problem. When you have too many options, your brain is always thinking about the paths you didn’t take, the choices you didn’t make. When you limit yourself, you’re deciding to walk in one direction. Imagine how far you’re going to get when you’re always walking in that direction than if you’re spending time darting off onto other pathways, doubling back to reconsider, or stopping to re-litigate decisions you already made.

Because when there are a hundred ways to solve the problem, there’s almost never a “right answer.” You could make any answer work if you commit to it, if you push in the same direction and commit to that direction.

Strategy is what you don’t do, the opportunities you chose to ignore.

Let what you chose not to do reveal who you are and what makes you great.

So define what you are going to not do and you’ll see how quickly great ideas start coming to you.

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What’s coming up for the newsletter?

I’ve had this project in my head for a while now and I’ve decided now is the right time to bring it to life. For the foreseeable future, I’m going to try and define the laws of employer brand. Monday and Wednesday issues of the newsletter will focus on one law with Friday being my usual list of links and other interesting things. Think of this as watching the draft my next book be put together in public.

If your EB work feels like you’re taking a scattershot approach, you need to get back to the basics, the fundamentals.

It’s time to learn the laws.

***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***

-James Ellis [LinkedIn] [Website]

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