Recruiters are tasked with a seemingly impossible challenge: finding clients and candidates in an increasingly digital world.

While the internet has made it easier than ever to connect with potential customers or employees, it has also made it more difficult to stand out from the competition.

Not to mention, digital marketing for recruiters is challenging. Recruitment agencies and executive search firms face a unique set of challenges:

1. How to attract and convert clients (i.e. job orders)
2. How to keep a steady pipeline of great talent. (i.e. fulfilling those job orders)

It’s like fighting a war on two fronts!

And any recruitment agency cannot afford to lose on either front.

In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the different digital marketing strategies and tactics that recruiters can use to overcome these challenges and find success in their recruitment efforts.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing or online marketing simply refers to all marketing efforts that occur online or on the internet. These include: 

• Search engines
• Social media
• Email
• Website
• Digital communication (text or multimedia messages)

There are many digital tools and channels that a marketer can use to connect with their target audiences or customers.

Just like in traditional media, we can easily divide digital marketing into two camps:

• Interruption marketing or outbound marketing 
• Inbound Marketing

These two are sometimes referred to as PUSH marketing and PULL marketing, respectively. 

Outbound or interruption marketing employs tactics that ‘push’ a marketing message. We’re talking about tactics like contextual ads (you know, that ad you see while you’re watching cat videos on Facebook), paid or rented email lists, paid app reviews, video ads on channels like YouTube, and on the more traditional side of things, telemarketing among others. 

Inbound marketing, or ‘pull’ marketing works differently. Inbound marketing tactics seek to earn their audiences’ attention organically, without interrupting anyone’s path. We’re talking about tactics such as search engine optimization, opt-in email lists, word-of-mouth or referral marketing, videos, and community building among others. 

Inbound marketing largely relies on content to provide value.  

CONSIDER THIS SCENARIO: HOW INBOUND MARKETING WORKS 

Say Sally’s having a difficult time managing her small business tax preparation and filing. Sally turns to Google and searches “accounting and tax services for small businesses”, hoping to find something or someone who can help her out. 

An inbound marketer gets in front of Sally’s attention by optimizing their website for search engines so Sally sees their site first! 

Of course, that’s not enough. 

A savvy inbound marketer will have a ton of resources on their site that can help Sally figure out what to do about her tax prep work — helpful articles, comprehensive guides, templates, pre-filled sample forms, what have you. 

After reading the articles and guides, Sally tries to do the work herself but realizes it’s still too much work for her. Sally then decides to get in touch with the business and ask for their assistance instead. 

Voila! Conversion.

By providing value, inbound marketing seeks to gain goodwill capital with its target audiences. It’s for this reason that it’s also referred to as “attraction” marketing. 

What is digital marketing for recruiters?

Recruiters face a unique challenge. Any recruitment or search firm faces two quandaries: 

1. How do we ensure job orders keep on coming? Clients. Clients. Clients!
2. How do we ensure we can fulfill job orders? Talents. Talents. Talents! 

Needless to say, to keep both acquisition funnels filled and flowing, recruitment agencies need a 360-approach to digital marketing. 

So, what does digital marketing for recruiters look like? 

Digital marketing for recruiters involves using internet-based channels to promote your brand, product, or service.

The set of tools and digital marketing tactics recruiters may use isn’t at all that much different than say, real estate digital marketing — it’s just that the assumptions are different, prospects vary, and the challenges are unique.

Recruiters can use internet marketing, or digital marketing, to promote both their recruiting businesses and open positions for which they are seeking candidates. 

In other words, digital marketing can be used to support client acquisition and talent acquisition. 

Some examples of digital recruitment marketing tactics include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and social media marketing.

Why is digital marketing important for recruiters? 

Traditionally, recruitment has always been outbound — cold calling, cold email outreach, pay-per-click campaigns, and social ads among others. 

With an increasing number of candidates searching for new jobs online, digital marketing recruitment is your key to finding high-quality candidates for all of your current and future openings. 

Some companies believe that you can’t recruit talent online, but it’s quite the opposite. There are millions of searches every day targeting keywords related to job searches.

Benefits of Digital Marketing for Recruiters

1. Specific Targeting

Specific targeting options based on locations, demographics, and interests are available through online marketing platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.

In addition, this ensures that your potential employees will see your job vacancies. For example, if you want recent college graduates, you can target people who have completed their degrees.

2. Ads Tracking

Knowing how your ads are performing is key to understanding if they are working as intended.

You can measure the effectiveness of your ads by adding a UTM code to the end of your URL. The three parameters you can use in the UTM code are campaign name, medium, and source.

3. A/B Testing

You can use the principles of A/B testing to analyze everything. You may perform A/B testing with two or more versions of the ad and then evaluate the results.

To discover which ad performs the best, you may build various advertisements with modifications in necessities, job descriptions, or even titles.

4. Retargeting

You may employ more sophisticated methods, like retargeting, to target the ideal individuals as digital marketing for Recruiters. You can track any applicant that appears on your website’s career page by utilizing retargeting.

To notify these professionals about your job opportunities, you may post them on Google display campaigns, Facebook Sponsored Ads, LinkedIn, or Twitter.

Digital Marketing Strategy and Tactics to Attract Clients

So, how do you approach client acquisition through digital marketing? 

Internet marketing for recruiters can involve numerous online channels. Here are some of the best methods for digital recruitment and online marketing for recruitment agencies.

1. Content Marketing: Using valuable content to attract the right audience

What is content marketing and how can it help you attract new clients? 

The Oxford dictionary defines content marketing as:

“a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.”

The Content Marketing Institute, on the other hand, the leading authority on content marketing defines it as: 

“a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing. Instead of pushing or pitching your services through disruptive ads or cold emails and calls, you are providing truly valuable content to your prospects to help them solve their problems. 

So, instead of talking about your products and services, you talk about things your audience is actually interested in — say, career development for job hunters, or talent acquisition and retention best practices for employers. 

In other words, we use content marketing to attract our prospects and establish trust and goodwill — not, push our messaging down their throats. 

Content marketing works: Greater visibility, better conversion rates

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s Annual Research, ninety-three percent (93%) of B2B marketers use content marketing.

Fun fact: B2B blogs that create education content receive 52% more organic traffic than those that mainly publish content about their company? 🚀 More stats in this B2B Content Marketing Report by @backlinko https://t.co/XwPrIaIvq5 pic.twitter.com/85I97vohxo

— Semrush (@semrush) February 4, 2021

From big brands like Microsoft to small businesses and small shops around the globe, content marketing plays a central role in their overall digital marketing success.

Here’s one example of content marketing in action:

CASE STUDY: HOW THIS EXECUTIVE SEARCH FIRM CONVERTS ITS READERS TO CLIENTS

Central to this executive search firm’s digital marketing strategy is content marketing. Our content strategy is quite simple: create content that’ll help both candidates and clients find answers to their frequently asked questions about job hunting and talent acquisition, respectively. 

The theory is simple: Create value through content to establish trust. 

So, how does content convert prospects into clients? 

Here’s a screenshot of their client’s summary of activities on their website. 

Notice how this billion-dollar tech company started its interaction with our client’s website through a blog post that they visited 7 times on separate occasions. After reading the blog post a couple of times, this company sent an inquiry. 

Our client closed the deal and is now fulfilling the contract.

Read the full case study here. 

Your content marketing strategy can take any form. The sophistication and extent of your strategy entirely depend on your overall business and marketing goals. 

No matter how you approach your content marketing strategy, there are many tactics, tools, content types, and channels available to you. 

For recruiters and recruitment firms such as yourself, here are some content marketing tactics you can use. 

Content Marketing Tactics for Recruitment Firms

1. Publish a blog 
2. Offer free educational resources such as: 
   • Guides and Templates
   • Market Research Data (e.g. salary data, hiring data)
3. Organize a webinar
4. Start a podcast

Content Marketing Statistics 

• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads. (Source: DemandMetric)
• Conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%). (Source: Aberdeen)

2. Search Engine Optimization: Using search engines to get seen and heard

Did you know that roughly 93% of Internet users start their session by visiting a search engine? If your website doesn’t pop up when they look for keywords related to your business, you’re losing out on an immeasurable amount of potential customers.

If you want more leads, a whopping 61% of B2B marketers say that SEO generates the most leads compared to any other marketing tactic.

But what is SEO and what does it entail?

SEO or search engine optimization refers to the process of getting free, organic traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo among others.

How do we do this?

We improve a website’s position in search results pages — the higher a website is listed, the more people will see and click on it. 

Improving a website’s position on search results pages involved a variety of tactics. 

All SEO tactics can be categorized into three buckets: on-Page SEO, off-Page SEO, and technical SEO. 

• On-page SEO refers to the actions you take on your website in order for search engines to comprehend your material better and rank it higher. All of these are on-page SEO, from generating content to optimizing title tags, picture optimization, and so forth.
• Off-page SEO activities are carried out “behind the scenes” of your website. Off-page strategies include link building, guest posting, and citation creation, to name a few.
• Technical SEO includes specific actions you take to ensure search engines can find and index your site.

On-page SEO involves targeting keywords that your audience searches for and improving your website’s quality to encourage search engines to rank it higher.

If you’re a recruiting company, potential clients might be enticed to your business by keywords like “recruiting companies for tech firms”, “recruiting companies in <location>” or “<location> based recruiting companies”. For job candidates, you could target keywords like “software engineer jobs in <city>”.

Of course, the words you select depend on the specific audiences you want to appeal to.

For companies that base their business on locations, Local SEO can be a saving grace. By targeting key phrases related to places, businesses appear as results when people search for similar phrases. For example: “software engineer jobs in Cebu City” and “recruiting companies in Makati City.”

Off-page SEO, on the other hand, refers to tactics that do not involve updating or publishing any content on your website. Off-page tactics include: 

• Brand building
• Citation building
• Link building
• Content marketing
• Guest posting
• Social media, and more

Naturally, if you’re doing content marketing and you’re constantly producing high-quality content, you’ll naturally get backlinks or citations — this is when other publishers or websites link back to your content as a resource. 

SEO’s Guiding Principle: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)

Remember that search engines have one overarching goal: to provide searchers with the most relevant, accurate, and authoritative results possible. 

To do this, search engines rank web pages according to expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. 

So, keep this in mind when you build your website and your content marketing and SEO strategy. 

Your goal is simple: build your website in a way that reflects your expertise, builds trust between you and your audience, and stays relevant to your audience’s interests and needs. 

SEO Statistics 

These are the most interesting SEO stats we think you should know.

• 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. (BrightEdge)
• 0.78% of Google searchers click on results from the 2nd page. (Backlinko)
• 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search. (BrightEdge)
• 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google search, Google Images, and Google Maps. (Sparktoro)
• SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media. (BrightEdge)
• 69.7% of search queries contain four words or more. (Ahrefs)
• 60% of marketers say that inbound (SEO, blog content, etc) is their highest quality source of leads. (HubSpot)
• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate. (HubSpot)

Read more at Ahref’s blog. 

3. Email marketing and retargeting tactics to nurture your audience

Email marketing can help you build a relationship with your audience while also driving traffic to your blog, social media, or anywhere else you’d like folks to visit.  It is an excellent way to build trust with your prospects and grow your recruitment business.

In fact, it is one of the most effective marketing tactics out there. 

Email continues to be the main driver of customer retention and acquisition for small and midsize businesses. 

According to the data, 81% of SMBs still rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel, and 80% for retention (Emarsys, 2018).

But what is email marketing exactly? 

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing as well as digital marketing. With email marketing, you use email to communicate with your prospects either to promote your products and services or to share your expertise — your latest blog posts, for example. 

How can you use email marketing in growing your recruitment business? 

With a comprehensive email marketing strategy, you can use it to continually build your value to your prospects. 

The guiding principle in doing email marketing is quite simple: nurture your email list by constantly adding value. 

Sure, you can send promotional emails every now and then. 

But you don’t want to bombard your email list with a lot of sales content. Nobody wants that.  

How do you provide value to your email list? 

Simple: Provide answers to their questions. Share your expertise and show them how they can solve business problems they’re facing. 

To give you some examples, here are some email campaigns you can do:

• Welcome Email — Sending an email after someone subscribes to your service is important and often overlooked. Your users expect to see a confirmation email in their inbox after they sign up.
• Newsletter — you can curate your latest blog posts and other important company announcements in a weekly or monthly newsletter. 
• Promotional emails — this type of email is all too familiar, we all get this kind of email. But yes, you may send something like this every now and then. 
• Guides, blogs, and other valuable content — you may highlight pillar content you produce such as original research, surveys, or editorial content. This is an excellent way to build your authority. 
• Case studies, testimonials, reviews — social proof is a good way to build trust with your prospects. With an actual customer story, you can nurture and engage existing clients and inspire new ones to convert. 

Ready to get started with email marketing? 

Here are a couple of email marketing tips to get you started.

1. Build your email list through content marketing. The key to building a good email list is to enlist subscribers that are actually interested in hearing from you. You can build your email list by providing value to your website visitors — offer free content (or free something) in exchange for their email address. 
2. Carefully segment your email list by user demographics or as we love to call them  — personas. By now, you must realize how important your buyer personas are, your email list segments must also reflect this. Each persona has a unique set of traits and challenges you must address. 
3. Curate everything you want to share with each segment. Companies hiring tech talents will have a unique set of challenges versus companies hiring healthcare professionals. Your email workflow must reflect these nuances as well. 
4. Send an email only when necessary or when you actually have something to say or share. Automated or not, make sure to stay on a reasonable cadence when sending out emails.

Email marketing can be an extremely useful tool for recruitment businesses of any size – from small businesses to large enterprises. By following the tips above, you can start to create and implement a successful email marketing strategy that will help you to continually build your value to your prospects, and ultimately help you to win more business.

Email Marketing Statistics 

• Email marketing is used by 1 in 2 media planners. It will continue to grow this year with 22% planning to leverage it for the first time. (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021)
• Email marketing revenue is estimated to reach almost 11 billion by the end of 2023. (Statista, 2021)
• There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025. (Statista, 2021)
• More than 306 billion emails are sent and received each day. (Statista, 2021)
• 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers. (Campaign Monitor, 2021)
• 37% of brands are increasing their email budget, and just 1.3% are making cuts. (Litmus, 2021)
• The most effective strategies for email marketing campaigns are subscriber segmentation (78%), message personalization (72%), and email automation campaigns (71%). (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021)
• 33% of marketers send weekly emails and 26% send emails multiple times per month. (Databox, 2022)

Read more at HubSpot’s blog. 

4. Social Media Marketing for Client Acquisition

Social advertising is used by 83% of B2B marketers, and it ranks second to search engines in terms of lead generation.

Social media provides an array of benefits for B2B brands, including the ability to nurture customers and flex industry influence.

B2B social media marketing can certainly be challenging, more so if you feel like you’re promoting a “boring” or difficult product.

Have a clear goal for B2B social media marketing

Businesses of all shapes and sizes should concentrate on creating objectives, but this is especially crucial for B2B enterprises. After all, the competition is fierce, and there are a plethora of marketing methods to choose from. However, you shouldn’t just hang out on social media because it’s popular.

It is important to remember that a B2B social media strategy is quite different from those used by retail or e-commerce businesses. Rather than concentrating on selling, most B2Bs use social media as a way to first promote their content and create awareness of their brand.

According to recent research, the most prominent benefits of B2B content marketing are as follows:

1. Creating brand awareness (86%)
2. Educating audiences (79%)
3. Building credibility and trust (75%)

Now, let’s look at how B2B social media marketing can be used to address each goal.

1. Creating brand awareness

Brand awareness is simply about letting the world know who you are. The tricky part is that are plenty of voices (and noise) in the B2B space. It is easy to get lost. 

As a recruitment firm, you need to spell out exactly who you are and what sets you apart from other recruitment agencies out there. 

A way to do this is to promote bite-sized pieces of content that highlight your employer brand. Don’t fall into the trap of simply sharing job ads and birthday greetings! 

As a guideline, the following questions can help you craft your brand awareness content!

1. What is it like for clients working with you? How do you cater to their needs? 
2. What was the tipping point that convinced your last 10 clients to choose your firm? Are these reasons prominently featured in your recruiting marketing messaging?
3. What are people saying about your company on social media like LinkedIn or Facebook?

2. Providing value by educating your target audience

It is a fact that the B2B buyer’s research process is more extensive than just glancing over a website or pricing page. Most buyers want to verify that the company they are thinking of working with is credible and will do their due diligence through independent research.

If you want to make your audience believe in you, one of the best ways is to teach them. This can be done through a variety of methods like blog posts, e-books, firsthand reports or how-to videos. Your B2B social marketing strategy should always have educational content at its center that people can put into action.

3. Fostering trust

In today’s day and age, it is crucial to build trust with your consumers if you want your B2B brand to succeed.

Customers love being able to read reviews and see awards before they make a purchase, and social media is the perfect platform to showcase this type of content.

Focus on the most B2B-friendly platforms

According to recent research from Content Marketing Institute, a few social media channels work best for B2B companies:

We recommend focusing on one or two networks so you don’t spread yourself too thin.

1. LinkedIn is excellent for business-to-business (B2B) networking because it prioritizes content that furthers thought leaders, fosters employee engagement, and has a dependable advertising system.
2. Twitter is the perfect place to keep up with current trends and engage with customers and industry leaders.
3. The Facebook page is where most B2B marketing focuses on advertisements, but it’s also a good resource for non-promotional employee-centric information.
4. YouTube is a great platform for how-to videos, interviews, presentations, and commercials.
5. Instagram is ideal for visual content (such as infographics and short how-tos) as well as culture-centric material.

The five networks mentioned are the most important for B2B social media marketing, even though Pinterest is rapidly growing as a platform for businesses.

Social Media Marketing Statistics 

• As of January 2022, there are 3.96 billion total social media users across all platforms.
• The average person bounces between seven different social networks per month.
• The amount of time adults use social media across all platforms is now higher than ever — 95 minutes per day.
• TikTok is the fastest-growing social network with a staggering 105% user growth rate in the US over the past two years.
• As of 2022, Facebook usage and activity are down to 33 minutes per day on average (versus 39 minutes daily in 2017).

Read more at SproutSocial’s blog.

Digital Marketing Strategy and Tactics to Attract Candidates 

The fundamentals for attracting candidates are not so much different from strategies for attracting clients.

Sure, priority channels will be different, and some tactics that work for clients might not work for candidates. 

Nevertheless, the principle of marketing remains the same: First, know who your target audience exactly is, where they are lurking, and what makes them tick. 

With only 25% of candidates actively seeking a job, this poses a greater challenge for recruiters and companies trying to fill vacant positions. 

Rather than using ancient recruitment methods, such as newspapers or agencies, digital marketing uses social media and other inbound strategies so that the best talent can find you.

It is for this reason that digital recruitment is also referred to as social recruitment.

As in any digital campaign, your strategies and your messaging must be tailored to the preferences of your target audience — the candidates. 

To properly identify your target market, you need a recruiting strategy that is both broad and deep in scope:

• Broad: Make it easier for job seekers to access your jobs, by locating them on their preferred platforms. Create a presence where potential candidates go when looking for new employment or career opportunities, and offer job listings on popular internet boards such as Monster and CareerBuilder while developing digital assets specifically designed for potential employees (such as LinkedIn company pages).
• Deep: Expand your reach by targeting niche platforms that will help get your brand in front of key individuals who are already looking for their next opportunity. For example, post open positions on sites like Idealist or attract coding Bootcamp graduates on Switchup.

After you identify your target audience, it’s time to start marketing to them.

Long-term versus Short-term Digital Recruitment 

It’s not a new idea to have a talent pool. In fact, it’s best practice for recruitment firms to maintain one.

Though it takes some time, building a relevant and expansive pool of talent is essential for social recruiting.

The job market is constantly changing, and new jobs are created as business methods change. Disruptions like this require a more agile approach to recruitment that can happen quickly.

Long-term digital recruitment takes into account the bigger picture — hiring trends, recurring client needs, seasonal changes, and the business cycle. 

Digital marketing techniques that are particularly well suited to a long-term recruitment marketing campaign include content marketing, search engine optimization, and email advertising.

These strategies are mostly inbound marketing tactics. As with any inbound tactics, your goal is 

to attract, engage, and convert your target audiences over time — the keyword being: ATTRACT. 

Short-term digital recruitment, on the other hand, focuses on quick recruitment wins. Ad hoc campaigns to supplement existing campaigns also fall into this category. 

The best digital marketing methods for a fast ROI are pay-per-click (or search ads), social media ads, email marketing, and referral campaigns.

1. Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimization to attract candidates. 

Content marketing is a type of marketing that involves the use of valuable content to attract and engage a target audience. 

The Content Marketing Institute, the leading authority on content marketing defines it as: 

“a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Candidates have a ton of questions about so many things related to career search and career development. From resume tricks and interview guides to salary negotiations, candidates turn to search engines for advice. 

Needless to say, by providing answers to these questions and helping candidates navigate the challenges of job hunting or career development, you position yourself as an authority and a trusted ally. 

There are plenty of content ideas to attract candidates. Some ideas include: 

1. How-to blogs to navigate the basics of job hunting (e.g. resume tips, interviews tips, negotiations, soft skills, etc)
2. Templates and guides (e.g. resume templates, interview guide questions, job hunting checklists, company research checklists)
3. Market reports and trends analysis (e.g. salary report for various roles, job market trends analysis, etc.)

Content Marketing Tip: Build a talent pool and email list by capturing user emails by offering valuable content in exchange for information such as their email and their professional role. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) often goes hand in hand with content marketing. After all, what’s the use of good content if no one finds it, right? 

SEO is all about building and growing your website and its pages so search engines find it relevant and authoritative enough. It involved keyword research and planning as well as content development. 

Some of the most important areas of your website you should focus SEO efforts on include the following: 

1. Content — when writing your content, write it for humans as well as for search engines. Armed with your keyword research, you should be able to identify the questions candidates are asking the web. Answer these questions thoroughly and you’ll see your content ranking on search engines in no time!
2. Career pages — your career pages must also be visible through search engines. A majority of those who recently applied for jobs used search engines to research opportunities. It’s important that your career pages rank well. Remember that candidates who use search engines are active candidates — there is a clear intent with every search query.

2. Social media marketing and social ads

Social media marketing can be tricky. Everybody is doing it. Hence, it’s easy to get lost in the noise. This does not mean it’s not worth the time and effort. 

Let’s take a quick look at the facts: 

• A whopping 96% of job seekers use social media to help them find a job. (CareerArc)
• According to a study, 49% of people in the workforce follow companies on social media for current job openings. (LinkedIn)
• In a recent survey, it was discovered that 86% of job seekers want to be notified about new employment openings on Facebook. (Link Humans)
• Social media recruiting is on the rise, with 78% of recruiters expecting an increase in activity. (Jobvite)
• According to IBM, one-third of organizations stated social media recruiting efforts are a priority in 2020 and beyond. (Jobvite)
• Between 2017 and 2020, Instagram recruitment increased by more than 200 percent. (Jobvite)
• Forty million people search for jobs on LinkedIn every week. (LinkedIn)

As with any digital marketing effort, you must also know your audience. Who are you trying to reach with your message? 

Each social media platform your goals and objectives for social media marketing. What do you want to achieve? More traffic to your website? More job applications? Brand awareness? 

Keep these in mind when creating content for social media.

Set clear goals per social media channel

Today, 92 percent of companies utilize social media to recruit talent. 

However, there are several different social media networks. Maintaining a strong presence in all of them may be difficult.

This is why it is important to set clear goals per channel. After all, the demographics and behavior of people using each channel vary from each other.  

As a result, you may utilize social media in a variety of ways to support your recruitment strategy, including:

• To learn more about a candidate’s professional experience, use LinkedIn.
• Using Twitter to interact with job candidates and learn more about their passions and interests helps evaluate culture fit.
• To get a sense of how candidates portray themselves to strangers, friends, and family on Facebook, you can use this method.
• Thanks to TikTok and Instagram, promoting jobs has never been easier. Simply use hashtags to reach your target audience and give them a glimpse of what it’s like to work for your company.
• Creating promotional YouTube videos for your company culture and values.

Focus on the right platforms

Okay, but how do you find the right platforms? 

Simple: learn as much as you can about your target candidates. Create a persona that reflects your ideal candidates — demographics, interests, and digital behavior among others. 

For example, if you’re seeking graphic artists, they might focus more on visual platforms like Pinterest or Instagram, whereas executive talents would value LinkedIn.

Tailor-fit your strategy per platform

It’s worth noting that each recruiting platform will necessitate a distinct approach to candidate sourcing.

For example, visual channels like Instagram will require you to use engaging visuals as compared to say, Tiktok, which would require video content instead. 

On Twitter, smart use of hashtags and the occasional quips might be necessary. Hashtags on social allow you to join the right conversations as they function by crowdsourcing content through the platform with the same #hashtag. 

On Facebook, groups and career pages might be worth your time. Active and passive job hunters alike join Facebook groups to stay abreast of new job opportunities. 

Use each platform to the fullest

Each platform has its own set of perks that may assist you in your recruiting efforts. To ensure success on these platforms, take advantage of them to the fullest extent possible.

Facebook Jobs

For those of you who are unaware, Facebook is an excellent place to recruit employees for your organization. In addition to posting job openings on your Business Page, Facebook also has a built-in job board that can be accessed by anyone. If you’re looking to post a job opening on Facebook, simply go to your business page and look under the Jobs bookmark.

For a fee, you can also promote these job listings to appear in the news feeds of people who match your target audience.

LinkedIn People Search

Linkedin is primarily business-oriented in nature. It has powerful sourcing capabilities which give recruiters a significant advantage over other social media platforms. 

Even with a free LinkedIn account, you can enjoy over half of its advanced search capabilities. 

Twitter Advanced Search 

The capabilities of Twitter’s search engine are much more restricted than those of Facebook or LinkedIn, but they can be useful when utilized correctly.

To source candidates on Twitter, you’ll have to find people Tweeting about relevant topics. Here’s when hashtags come in handy. 

You can start by searching for hashtags that are used most in the line of work you’re recruiting for. Then, use these hashtags on Twitter’s advanced search to narrow down your results. 

TikTok Resumes

TikTok is a relatively new platform but it’s currently one of the most popular and used platforms. TikTok is particularly more popular among the younger segment of the population.

In 2021, Tiktok introduced its TikTok Resume feature. While still on its pilot test, this feature allows companies to post job vacancies. Interested candidates on the other hand can submit short video resumes. 

#CareerTok and #TikTokResumes are two hashtags that can be used by organizations to participate in the discussion and post video resumes from talented creators on the platform.

TikTok being TikTok, your call for video resumes must be engaging as well; such is the nature of TikTok content. 

Available for US openings for now.

Use Social media ads for quicker wins

Facebook Lead Forms

As mentioned above, you can boost native social posts on Facebook to increase its reach. Boosting a native post, however, has limitations versus actually running ads using Facebook’s Ads Manager. 

Running a successful ad on Facebook involves three important aspects. To wit: 

1. Choose a clear objective for your campaign.

For recruiting purposes, to optimize either your Cost Per Lead or Cost per Click, select “Collect Leads For Your Business” or “Send People to Your Website.”

2. Find or create an eye-catching visual image.

Choose something that best depicts your organization (e.g., a photograph of your company’s culture).

3. Create click-worthy content or ad copy

Describe the position’s benefits and expectations for the role.

One particular tool on Facebook that works well with recruitment campaigns is the Facebook Leads Form or Facebook Instant Form. 

Facebook Leads Form allows recruiters to collect candidate information right from the platform instead of sending candidates to an external asset like a landing page. 

With Facebook Leads Form, the process is shorter. For users with limited cellular data allowance, completing the entire application process on Facebook is a huge convenience. 

Learn Facebook’s step-by-step guide for creating lead forms. 

LinkedIn Recruitment Ads and Sponsored Content

One of the primary products of LinkedIn is its Job Ads and Sponsored Content feature. 

Job ads on LinkedIn are dynamic ad formats and are shown either on the right rail of the desktop version or on the People Search results page on both desktop and mobile. 

Learn more about LinkedIn’s job ads here. 

3. Career pages and native job boards

Having a career page or a job board on your website offers a number of benefits. 

Career pages and job boards: 

1. Allow you to control the story you tell job seekers. With a career page, you own and control, you can create content that can clearly communicate the value you bring to the table. 
2. Provide candidates with a quick way to browse and apply for jobs. While they are on your website consuming your content, candidates can readily explore your careers page or job board. 
3. Improve your hiring metrics. Career pages have been known to have a positive impact on cost per hire and time to hire. Career pages rank on search engines, too. This allows more applicants to find your career page organically, reducing the need for paid candidate sourcing. 
4. Boost your SEO efforts. Job listings from your job board are also indexed by search engines and job aggregators. With your listings showing up across the web, this contributes to an increase in visibility and traffic to your website as well. 
5. Allow you to track and re-engage visitors to your careers pages. Your career page or job board is built into your company website. Hence, you can track a huge array of visitor statistics such as traffic volume, demographics, and engagement data. If you are using Facebook or LinkedIn’s tracking pixel codes, you can also re-target these visitors using paid ads later on! 

4. Email marketing: Nurture your talent pool by adding value

Part of your long-term strategy should be to maintain a healthy talent pool. Email marketing is one of the primary tools used by marketers. Here’s how you can nurture your talent pool through email marketing:

1. Segment your email list

Email marketing can be more effective when you target a specific group of people. When you segment your email list, you can send more relevant content to each group, which will encourage them to stay connected with your company. You can segment your email list by job title, skills, location, and other factors.

2. Personalize your email

Personalizing your email communications to talents and candidates is a great way to nurture your relationship with them. By addressing them by name and including specific details that are relevant to them, you can show that you care about their career development.

3. Use engaging content

Recruiters can use engaging content when communicating with talents/candidates in order to keep them interested and informed about their career development. This can be done by segmenting the email list, personalizing emails, and using relevant and interesting content.

4. Send relevant and timely content

It’s important to send only relevant and timely content to talents/candidates in order to keep them informed about their career development. Sending irrelevant or outdated information can lead recipients to lose interest in your company.

5. Leverage social media to amplify your email campaign

Leveraging social media to amplify email campaigns is a great way to reach more people with your recruitment messages. By sharing your email content on social media, you can reach a larger audience who may not have been exposed to your messaging otherwise. In addition, social media platforms allow you to share interactive content such as videos, infographics, and images, which can help to engage recipients further.

Final Thoughts

Recruitment companies face a unique challenge in that they need to find clients and candidates at the same time. They need to create compelling content that will attract candidates while also marketing their services to potential clients. Using digital marketing strategies can help recruiters to reach more people and connect with talented candidates.

Having a hard time maintaining a healthy pipeline of clients and candidates? Drop us a line, perhaps we can help.

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