Marketing Should Hold The Keys To Recruitment Sales Strategies - Key Takeaways from Our Manchester Lunch & Learn

On the 9th of July, SourceFlow hosted an energetic and insightful Lunch & Learn event in Manchester, bringing together recruitment marketers, agency leaders, and operations pros from across the UK. The event focused on the evolution of recruitment marketing — and the bold strategies required to lead growth in today’s challenging market.

Here’s a recap of the key takeaways from the day’s expert speakers:

1. Kristie Perrotte – Think Like a CMO, Act Like a Founder  

Kristie is the Founder and Chief Thriver at Thrive Recruitment Marketing, a consultancy that empowers marketing leaders in the recruitment space with strategic coaching and execution support.

Kristie opened the event with a session designed to inspire marketers to step up and speak the language of business. She stressed the importance of aligning with commercial goals—and of measuring marketing's true value in terms of revenue, not reach.

She said:  “They don’t want to know how beautiful the engine is—they want to know if it’s going to get them to their goal, faster.”   

Top tip: Create and revisit a marketing plan monthly, using it to challenge distractions and keep leadership aligned on priorities.

2. Simon Brown – Marketing Runs the Table. Sales Plays on It.  

Simon is the Founder of Richard Knows Best, a consultancy helping recruitment agencies modernise their sales and marketing approach through data, creativity, and common sense.

He challenged the room to ditch outdated BD tactics and shift to a marketing-led growth model. He argued that recruiters must stop seeing marketing as a “colouring-in department” and start investing in it like they would in sales.

He said:  “If recruitment is a marketing job, then marketing is now a tech job. If you don’t understand the tools, you can’t drive the growth.”   

Top tip: Let marketers lead your go-to-market strategy—including CRM usage, tool selection, and cadence-driven outreach.

3. Chelcie Harry & Janine Owen – 10 Questions Recruitment Marketers Want Answers To  

Chelcie is Group Marketing Director at Levin, a global tech recruitment group, Janine is the Founder of JO&Co, a consultancy helping recruitment marketers drive revenue and scale their impact.

Together, they answered the questions every recruitment marketer wants help with—from proving ROI to building influence at board level. Their message was clear: revenue attribution, data storytelling, and knowing your numbers are non-negotiables in modern   recruitment marketing  .

Chelcie said: “The second you move from brand metrics to revenue, you change the conversation.”   

Janine added: “Don’t just report numbers—tell a story. Show where you’re going and what it means for the business.”   

Top tip:   If your CRM is messy or reporting is limited, start small—use a spreadsheet, track leads manually, and focus on demonstrating commercial value.

Our Manchester Lunch & Learn made one thing clear: Recruitment marketing is no longer a support function—it’s the engine of growth for modern agencies. Whether you're scaling content, proving ROI, or driving purpose-led outreach, the marketers who embrace commercial thinking, creativity, and confidence will shape the future of recruitment.

You can check out the slides from the event by clicking right here.

Author: Will Astbury, Global Head of Marketing, SourceFlow
I have worked in recruitment marketing for nearly a decade and now lead strategic growth and communications at SourceFlow. As someone who’s led marketing in the recruitment space, I know how difficult it is to get real-time feedback at scale. That’s exactly what we set out to fix with SourceFlow Engagement.

SourceFlow do WAY more than industry-leading recruitment website design. We build recruitment websites and marketing tools that amplify ROI and provide transparency with state-of-the-art data insights.