Mark Herman

You will be looking to find the balance between "done beats perfect" but also making sure you don't drop the ball on technical stuff. The best approach will be to start and putting your tracking systems in place so you can at least check what is happing on your website (as this will be the at the core of all your recruitment marketing efforts). Make sure you are able to capture all relevant data (visitors, time spent on page, applications, source of visits, etc) and get out the data into a report or spreadsheet where you can do further analysis. Only when this is up and running should you proceed further and add on other tracks. The good news is you can start easily. The bad news is that it will never ever be ready :-)

On top of formats, also think about channels. When using social media, don't just use organic posts. This will obviously cater for the people doing research on your company as they have the time to look for your page and posts. But if you want to reach a new audience (eg potential candidates for one of your vacancies) I think you should seriously considering advertising on social media. This will give you a much wider reach at a reasonable cost (around €6 for 1000 impressions() as well as plenty of targeting possibilities.

Make absolutely sure you take social media channels into your mix to reach passive candidates. This is a radically different approach than 1 to 1 outreach but will ensure you are able to reach a massive amount of people at a relative low cost (about €6 for 1000 impressions if you are focusing on the Meta and TikTok platform - LinkedIn will be significantly more expensive). Although there are quite a bit of restrictions on the Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) vs classical social media advertising (no age targeting, less targeting possibilities, etc) it is still the best way to ensure your brand is visible across a large group. It might mean more work for you and your team but your reach will expand dramatically!

Do not only keep your EVP in mind!!! I know that's the general guideline, but this creates the risk of actually forgetting that you need to convince a candidate... So start thinking about "What's in it for the candidate?" - because that's what the candidate will be looking for and that's the hook you can create to attract their attention (and make them click!). Ideally you find the common ground between EVP and WIIFTC (we need a better abbreviation for that, stat!).

We strongly advice blocking feedback on your social media advertising as the platforms will penalise your ads so they will be shown less (or your price will go up). And when you do get negative feedback, think twice on how you handle this, as there might be consequences for your ads on the potential reach for this campaign. It's better to "hide" comments so they can still be seen by the author of the comment (and their network) but not by people outside of that network.

Don't just test while you are developing your brand identity though. The proof will be in the pudding as you build a brand identity to build your actual brand. So never stop testing when you are live and do some simple A/B testing in your new communication to touch base with your actual audience (not just the test audience provided by eg Usability hub): - is your brand identity clouding your messaging or enhancing it? - is your brand identity flexible enough to be declined in different touch points (even the ones you did not prepare for) Several of the answers can be found by devising a couple of simple A/B tests to learn which variants will perform better - all while keeping this within the standard communication budget!