Online Recruitment Marketing Guide: What is Recruitment Marketing?

Your recruitment marketing strategy will likely involve some of the same metrics as your existing Internet marketing strategy, like traffic and conversions. In fact, if you operate on a B2B model and track your leads in the form of lead submissions, the process is very similar – but those leads will come in the form of job applications instead of quote requests or service inquiries.

Table of Contents:
Using the Internet to Attract & Hire Talented Employees

1. What is recruitment marketing?
2. How to create a recruitment marketing strategy
3. Creating recruitment-focused content
4. Recruitment marketing and social media
5. Recruitment lead management

Why does recruitment marketing matter?

In the past, it was enough to submit job openings to local publications and sites with lists of qualifications. You could typically expect to receive plenty of applications from qualified potential employees, and fill your open positions with people from that pool.

Now, recruiting top talent is much more competitive – and recruitment marketing is absolutely necessary. But why is that?

There are two main reasons:

1. Job seekers are looking online

Today, most job-seekers rely on the Internet for the majority of their research. Competitive applicants know that they have many employment opportunities, and it’s easy to explore their options online.

They won’t wait around to hear an ad on the radio for something that catches their interest, and they certainly won’t waste their time browsing the local paper to read about open positions that aren’t relevant to them.

2. It helps you attract the most qualified applicants

If someone searching for a job does happen to see your ad in a newspaper or hear about it on the radio, they may apply even if they aren’t 100% interested in your company – just because it seems like an easy chance.

This means you could wind up with applicants who are only interested in the paycheck, and not truly committed to the job or your company.

When applicants find you online, on the other hand, they’ll typically spend time browsing your site and learning about your company. And when they choose to apply after, you can be sure they’re familiar with the job and what it involves. That means they’re already a better fit.

What does recruitment marketing involve?

Much like a regular marketing strategy, many elements play a role in successful recruitment marketing.

Site content

Content targeted to potential applicants is the most important part of any recruitment marketing strategy.

You need to clearly organize and explain all of your open positions, so potential applicants can easily find and learn about the ones that are relevant to them.

Plus, while a decent salary and benefits used to be enough to draw applicants, many of today’s top candidates want more. They want to work for companies whose values reflect their own, in work environments that match their preferences.

This means that in addition to the job listings themselves, you should have pages relating to your company culture and values that give applicants an idea of what it would be like if they were hired.

Social media

In addition to your site, many job-seekers will check out your social media profiles at some point during the application process.

If they don’t find anything, they’ll most likely just assume that social media isn’t a priority for your company – which won’t necessarily impact their decision to apply.

But if they find active profiles filled with articles about your latest projects and photos of fun events with your employees, they’ll get a better feel for your company as a whole.

Email

Email is an overlooked channel in many marketing strategies, and recruitment marketing is no different.

You can write newsletters targeted to top talent in your industry and use automated email marketing software to follow up with previous applicants whenever you post new job openings on your site.

This ensures that even if you aren’t hiring for a particular applicant’s skill set when they apply, they won’t miss out on later opportunities.

Paid advertisements

Ideally, you’ll build out enough employment-related content on your site that you can attract all the applicants you need through organic search.

That being said, if you’re starting a recruitment marketing strategy with the goal of attracting many applicants within a short period of time, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on major platforms like Google Ads are a great short-term strategy.

Who needs a recruitment marketing strategy?

If your company is considering hiring new employees within the next year, it’s a good idea to create a recruitment marketing strategy as soon as possible.

Even if you aren’t hiring in the near future, having a strategy in place will make the process much easier when you are actively looking for new employees.

The job-focused content on your site will show on search engines in the meantime, and your social media content will showcase your company culture.

So if you want to grow your business, you need a recruitment marketing strategy.

Go Back         Next: How to create a recruitment marketing strategy