UK employment laws keep getting more complex, and the cost of hiring keeps rising, especially for small and mid-sized businesses. The demand for HR help has grown over the years in the UK. This blog is for HR consultancies, outsourced HR providers and HR software vendors who want to utilise this demand to build a qualified funnel of leads for their agency. HR leads behave in a different way than the consumers of other businesses because their decisions involve several people and the risk is particularly high. If they work with the wrong agency, it can cost them their entire hiring cycle, and they might need to spend more resources and hire another person for the role.
Who Actually Buys Hr Services?
You can only target the right audience for your HR leads once you know what your ideal kind looks like.
First up in terms of business size, the most suitable leads for HR agencies are the small to medium-sized businesses that have outgrown doing HR on the side but still cannot afford or cannot hire a full in-house team. The number of employees for these businesses differs a lot, but it starts at around 10 to 15 employees and up to a few hundred. If a business has a couple of hundred employees, they likely build their own HR functions. Ideally, the target audience for an HR outsourcing agency lies within the band mentioned to find their best customers.
In terms of sector, the strongest buyers of HR outsourcing services are businesses where people management is high risk or high volume. These include:
- General care
- Health care
- Hospitality
- Construction
- Retail
- Logistics
- Professional services
These are the sectors that hire lots of staff throughout the year, also face high turnover, and have shift patterns for their employees and need a good HR system.
In terms of role, HR buying is never a single decision but the complete leadership. The main takeaway here is that you are selling to a group, not a single person, and they’re cautious because HR decisions affect the whole organisation. The more trustworthy you can make yourself seem, the lower the risk of them hiring you, and the less work they have to do.
Spot the Trigger Events That Create HR Leads in Businesses
Most businesses do not look for HR help if their internal system is working well and hiring relevant people. A specific event takes place that pushes them to outsource their HR to another agency, and that’s when they start looking for a service provider. Instead of waiting for the relevant leads to reach out to you, you can target the triggers and reach the ready buyers yourself.
Crossing a minimum headcount for hiring
This is the point where the owner stops going through the resumes themselves and starts looking for an HR outsourcing service. The threshold for this is around 10 to 15 employees. When the headcount reaches above that, it becomes difficult to handle the holiday contracts, policies, absences, and the overall team operations through a single desk. It is the best lead that you can find because even before they know you can offer a solution to them for their problems.
A grievance that ends badly
Another trigger that causes businesses to start looking for a proper HR process is a grievance that ends badly. These triggers are urgent, and they require a prompt solution, so that’s when you can reach out to such businesses and provide them a solution to that specific problem.
Business scaling
A business hiring people, whether that’s new leadership, interns, or expanding into a new team, needs contracts, onboarding, and policies to keep up with the need. Growth creates HR work that can overwhelm a small team, and that’s why the business starts looking for outsourcing support.
Company restructure or relocation
Most businesses know that they cannot restructure and relocate safely without also replacing their staff, whether that’s upscaling or downscaling. Each involves complex processes, and they’re also time-limited, so any trigger that is dealing with a deadline is a high-intent lead, and it’s worth reaching out to them.
New employment legislation
UK employment laws change often, and for a small business that hires employees off of an informal HR system, it can be overwhelming to keep track of them. A shift in the rules or rise in employer costs keeps a business owner on the go about whether their HR policies align with them or not. These businesses need an HR agency that handles all these tasks so they don’t have to worry about whether their system is legally compliant.
HR Lead Generation Channels
Smart HR outsourcing agencies combine multiple channels and build a new generation strategy instead of relying on only one. They separate the services based on the channel and build specific landing pages to organise traffic and get relevant enquiries.
SEO and Compliance Content
HR buyers research before they buy any service, and much of that is about whether their practices are relevant and legally compliant. If your website, blog content, and case studies are already ranking at the top of SERPs, then you are positioned as a trustworthy source before they even make contact. SEO is a slow channel to build, but it requires minimal investment, and it suits HR businesses especially because trust is important in this sector.
LinkedIn-based outreach
HR and business decision-makers are mostly active on LinkedIn, and it is the best outreach channel for HR outsourcing agencies. Lead with publishing useful content that answers business queries, establish human outreach, and build actual connections with decision-makers on LinkedIn. This builds the credibility that HR buyers search for in a provider before even reaching out to them.
Webinars and content production
Conduct webinars on live HR topics, recent UK employment law updates, current trends in the workforce, and tips about managing the HR department for specific business industries. They work well because HR professionals attend them to stay up to date with the current information, so the attendance provides a strong signal. Producing useful content through your website is also a way to reach qualified audiences, whether that’s your live audience or they’re finding you online for the first time.
Email marketing
Email marketing keeps you at the top of buyers’ lists during a long buying cycle. HR buyers might be in touch with multiple HR outsourcing agencies. It is not because they do not trust you enough. It’s because it’s a norm to reach out to multiple providers at the start and get a quote from each. Doing a long buying cycle maintains a steady stream of useful updates specific to the business sector and company size until they’re ready to make their decision.
Outbound lead generation
Cold calling has earned a difficult reputation, but it still works when your message is specific for a consumer. Do not approach cold calling with an unfamiliar approach. Research the business that fits your niche and add personalisation, a clear reason for contacting the business, and a request to be connected to the decision-maker. These factors separate which outreach calls are ignored and which are actually listened to.
Learn more about inbound vs outbound lead generation and combine both in your lead generation strategies.
Partnerships
Partnerships are a great way to get the best HR leads because they come from advisors who accompany the decision-makers. They already have a trusted position in the eyes of the decision-maker, and these are accountants and business advisors. They’re the first to know when a client is growing and struggling with hiring staff, and so a referral relationship will become a steady source of form leads.
Buying qualified leads
Instead of implementing all the channels one by one and keeping track of each, you can also buy leads directly on a pay-per-lead basis. Do not fall into the trap of the lists and lists of general leads that are volume sold to multiple providers in the same agency. Start working with customer acquisition platforms that fill your pipeline with intention and qualified leads according to your requirements.
How To Qualify An HR Lead
Not every lead that gets to your lead form requires a full pitch or a simple free lead magnet. HR proposals take time; the sales cycle is long, so when you qualify your leads early, it saves your time later in the process. Otherwise, your sales team would have to chase the leads, and qualifying them later slows down the whole pipeline.
- Head count: Qualify how many employees are currently working in the company that is looking to outsource its HR. This tells you whether they are in the range where it’s suitable to outsource HR or whether software is actually suitable to their needs. If it’s a five-person firm, then you could rule out that it would be a relevant lead for you as compared to a twenty-person firm, which would be relevant.
- Current setup: Qualify initially whether they are doing HR themselves or are looking to switch from a previous HR outsourced agency to yours. Both are different types of leads and require different strategies to approach.
- Trigger: If a lead is just reviewing options, then it might mean they’re not ready to commit to actually outsourcing their HR yet. As compared to another business that actually has a current reason to act on their intent, such as looking to hire new employees, having recently hired employees, looking to scale their operations and more.
- The decision maker: Rule out whether you’re in contact with the decision maker who can sign and review your proposal and who else is involved in the decision process. If you’re not in contact with the right person, then your outreach efforts might just go unnoticed.
- Budget fit: Do they have a budget available to actually support the service that they need? A business in need of a comprehensive HR cover but has a mismatched budget is not an ideal lead for a business and can result in miscommunication later, so qualify the budget politely and in the early stages of lead qualification.
Build Your Own Pipeline With Qualified Leads From Prointeractive
Most HR businesses try to set up a complete lead generation strategy with every channel, including SEO, content, LinkedIn, webinars, email marketing, referrals, partnerships, and in-house.
It requires a hefty investment once it’s running, but just starting the processes is not enough. It takes continuous effort and time to mature, and HR already has long buying cycles. If you’re not converting your leads at the same time, you might not have the capacity to keep your lead generation funnel running.
That is why, instead of purchasing bulk leads that require volume calling or that are unqualified and are sold here by competitors as well, it’s much better to work with a customer acquisition platform that operates on a pay-per-lead model.
A PPC lead generation model does not charge you for every click that your ad gets. Instead, you pay only for relevant queries and high-intent, high-quality leads. ProInteractive also works on the same exact basis. It provides you with qualified UK leads with clear pricing so you can track your cost easily without exceeding your marketing budget.
If you’re looking for HR help and want to capture businesses looking for HR help without building a marketing team of your own, then get in contact with ProInteractive today about HR leads that fit your ideal client requirements.
FAQs
It is a process through which agencies that outsource HR services or software for businesses capture high-intent search queries so that they can win them as clients. It is different from general B2B lead generation because HR buyers hand over a complete organisational department to another business, and the decisions involve multiple stakeholders instead of just the business owner.
Small to medium-sized businesses that are not capable of doing HR in-house but also cannot set up a complete HR team benefit from outsourcing their HR services. The strongest sectors that operate on this model are:
- Care
- Hospitality
- Construction
- Retail
- Professional Services
Five events might generate the most demand for HR help. These include an employee headcount of 15+, a grievance, rapid downsizing or upscaling, restructuring, relocation, and updated employment legislation in the UK.
SEO, producing useful content, and building trust relationships on LinkedIn are the best channels for HR leads to capture and to nourish them. The reason is that these channels allow you to build trust and credibility before a client even makes contact with you and help you stand out from other HR outsourced agencies, consultancies, and software vendors in the UK.
