Yoh uses multichannel campaign to reach target.(Yoh Services a staffing agency)

Byline: Roger Slavens

Philadelphia-based Yoh Services provides temporary and managed staffing, talent outsourcing and payroll services to the human resources industry, specifically targeting highly skilled fields such as technology, health care and engineering. Yoh serves more than 1,100 customers in North America and Europe from its network of 80-plus offices and generated more than $415 million in sales in 2005.

Yoh recognizes that HR executives aren't its only primary targets. "HR execs are the lead decision-makers when it comes to human resource outsourcing," said said Jim Lanzalotto, VP-strategy and marketing. "But when you are trying to sell skill-specific staffing services, HR execs are only the gatekeepers, while hiring managers-the CTO, the IT manager, the engineering department head-make the final decisions."

The challenge for Yoh has been to design a multifaceted marketing program that leverages HR's critical role in both selling situations.

Researching these audiences has given Yoh greater insight in how to do this. The company identified HR executives as the lead enterprisewide

influencers and gatekeepers for its services, and found that 72% of them were the primary decision-makers in selecting and working with talent providers. More important, Yoh discovered that 61.5% like to learn about suppliers from the business media, and 56.4% get staffing information via Web content sites.

The quality of candidates, service delivery and price were the hottest selling buttons for these execs, according to Yoh's research. Yoh used these findings to fuel its rebranding effort, relaunching as Yoh HR Services in April 2005. The main objectives of the rebranding were to position Yoh as the first talent outsourcing option for customers, support field efforts to exceed sales goals and increase Yoh's influence with national account programs, Lanzalotto said.