If you are a recruitment agency owner, you may be conflicted with digital marketing strategies to attract suitable applicants and build brand awareness.
Narrowing down to two options, paid advertising (PPC) and content marketing are proven marketing methods.
First, let’s differentiate the two marketing strategies: content marketing uses relevant and targeted content like blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, etc., to drive inbound traffic to your website. On the other hand, PPC allows you to pay Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other web advertisers every time a candidate clicks your paid job ads.
PPC is the best marketing strategy to help you place on top search engine results immediately. It is beneficial if you are a startup recruitment agency with few clients under your name. Or you need clients or candidates filling up your pipeline fast.
However, when attracting higher-quality job seekers or employers in the long term, content marketing trumps PPC.
If you have to choose one, here are the reasons to favor content marketing:
A. Content Drive Better Leads
The organic search produces the most significant sales volume among online marketing strategies and higher conversion rates than paid ads. Why?
Sure, you can increase your brand awareness and web traffic with PPC, but it can’t help you convert. Applying to recruitment takes more than a job description from a paid job ad to convince candidates to work for your organization.
With everyone searching for answers on the internet, you can design your content based on your applicant’s persona. You can identify common pain points and career challenges to address within your blogs and resources.
When you directly resolve their problem through your content, your candidates will continue coming back for more. When the time comes that you have a job vacancy that matches their skills and work experience, they are more likely to apply for your company than your competitor.
B. Content Establish Trust in the Long-term
By regularly publishing content, candidates and employers will see you as an authoritative figure in your industry.
Just take a look at the top search engine results of recruiters within your niche, and you’ll notice most of them, if not all, have produced comprehensive whitepapers and resources that resulted in credibility and trust within their audiences.
99 Firms shared content marketing stats below to prove how effective this marketing strategy has become
- 61% of consumers have purchased after reading a blog recommendation
- Companies with blogs produce 67% more leads than those without
- 90% of B2B buyers say online content has had an impact on their purchases
- 78% of CMOs see content marketing as the future of marketing
Seeing that you have recruitment content on your website, candidates and employers will trust your expertise and more likely follow you on social media, download your content, subscribe to your newsletter, and select you as their recruiter.
Search engines reward trust and authority too, and with optimized content, you’re well equipped to climb search rankings. Fueling content marketing with SEO best practices pays off dividends over time.
C. Content is More Cost-Effective
There are also costs involved in producing recruitment blogs or whitepapers about talent shortage. If you don’t have an in-house marketing staff, you need to hire a freelance writer or content marketing agency. But unlike PPC, once you write a blog or publish an ebook, you are done spending money.
The magic happens when you promote your content. As you continuously repost and share them in LinkedIn, Twitter, and other relevant online communities, your content becomes more visible in search results. You earn clicks and leads, and then you won’t have to pay for another cent.
From an ROI perspective, content marketing produces three times more leads per dollar than other marketing strategies.
As mentioned earlier, applicants that came from content marketing make good candidates because they came to you for relevant solutions. It is what makes content marketing so cost-effective: it follows the inbound methodology, attracting and engaging the best candidates for your organization, compared to interruptive outbound tactics like PPC.
CONTENT MARKETING SUCCESS STORIES
Utilize content marketing to highlight the daily perks of what it’s like to work at your organization. LinkedIn’s Bring in Your Parent’s Day campaign not only offered potential employees’ glimpse of the company’s culture but also generated publicity for LinkedIn when they decided to roll out the project into a global program.
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You can also take it into the next level by promoting user-generated content. Riding sharing company Lyft’s Facebook page shared a post written by a driver who offered information about what it’s like to drive for Lyft. The post does not only offer valuable information to prospective drivers but at the same time turning passive social media followers to brand advocates.
Conclusion
Though PPC can certainly help you with targeted visibility on short notice, it can’t certainly help you with conversion and customer loyalty.
Content marketing enables you to gain better leads, build trust and cost-effectiveness, which ultimately are essential factors in determining your business’ success in the long term.
Ready to get started with your recruitment content? Let’s talk!