I never thought I'd see the day, but pursuant to yesterday's front page article in the Marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal (hooray for So Young Park!!), I finally broke ten thousand downloads of my vCard. If you're keeping score at home, that's 455 downloads per month for the last 22 months. And counting.
How does your target customer buy?
When I became a recruiter in 2004, I realized pretty quickly that the first place a needy client looks for a marketing headhunter is in their own (or a friend's) Outlook database. The second place they look is Google. Pee in the corners of those places and you have a pretty good shot at getting some business when a client's need arises. When I launched Marketing Headhunter.com in July 2005, it seemed like common sense to enable vCard downloads from my blog.
So what does this mean?
It means that there are 10,018 people whose Outlook databases list me as a "marketing headhunter." I'm on their short list, and the beauty of it all is that each individual made a personal decision to download my vCard. I didn't hold a gun to their heads; It was their idea. Now, for the rest of my career as a marketing recruiter, if I convert just 2% of those people into paying clients, ... Well, you get the point.
A Target-rich Environment
Another great thing about my industry is that every contact is BOTH a hiring manager and a candidate. In fact, I have represented many VP-level candidates who lost painfully close executive searches and went on to use me as client-side hiring managers. In other words, they morphed from candidates into clients. Talk about no hard feelings! That's a pretty high complement, in my book. My thanks to them for their professionalism and continued confidence in me.
Bottom line: If you have a blog -- and who doesn't? -- you really owe it to yourself to enable your blog readers to download your contact information off your website. All you have to lose is business.
