The labor shortage that is currently prevailing in The United States runs through numerous sectors, and many companies have great difficulties finding qualified employees. The high number of registered unemployed – over 6 million (as of 08/2022) – does not change the fact that there is a lack of staff and skilled workers.
Nevertheless, there are certainly opportunities for you to reach qualified and motivated people and get them enthusiastic about your company; the online marketing area in particular offers some sustainable and promising solutions on the subject of “human resources and recruitment”.
One of these solutions is Google Ads. With an efficient, technically optimally designed recruitment advertisement, you can noticeably boost success in recruiting workers. In our blog article, we would now like to show you how to use this valuable marketing tool correctly.
Recruitment Ads: Use the right keywords
The first step, which is also one of the most important, is finding the right search terms, commonly referred to as keywords in online marketing parlance. These keywords are later stored in the Google Ads account for the ad placement. You should chose your keywords wisely and accurately, then you reduce your wastage to a minimum.
What does that mean specifically? It means that you should use the search terms that have the highest priority at the beginning of your Google Ads serving. For example, if you are looking for a software developer, you should enter the keyword “software developer job” and similar search terms in your Google Ads campaign.
But now to the question of how you can find the keywords that are relevant to you. There are various tools specifically for keyword research. At Kapwa Marketing, we like to use the Google Ads Keyword Planner. This also provides an initial estimate of the CPC bids, i.e. the approximate cost per click on your ad. Other keyword tools that are also available are, for example, Ahrefs, SEMRUSH, Keywordtool.io or Google Trends.
Create a landing page: Your landing page should be search engine and user-friendly
Once the relevant keywords for your recruitment ads have been determined, it is time to create a search engine friendly landing page. Search engine friendly means that your main keywords with priority 1 definitely appear in the h1 (first and largest heading of your landing page) and in one or – even better – two of your h2’s (subheadings). A user-friendly landing page is optimized for mobile devices, technically flawlessly programmed (W3C conform), has fast loading times and legible, appealing texts.
It goes without saying that search engine friendliness is essential when it comes to good organic search engine rankings. But it is also important for another reason: because it can bring you lower click prices and a high quality factor with Google Ads. This is exactly why we, as an agency for online marketing, rely on both: on the one hand on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and on the other hand on SEA (Search Engine Advertising). These two areas are in any case closely linked.
Here are a few more helpful tips for designing a professional, appealing, and search engine friendly landing page for recruiting purposes:
- Describe in detail why your company is an attractive place to work for qualified and motivated people.
- Explain the benefits applicants have when they apply to you.
- List as many good characteristics and values of your company as possible.
- Use beautiful and authentic images in WebP format. Ideally, you should also place an image video on your landing page.
- Explain which skills and qualifications the applicants should have if they want to work in your company.
- Provide a professional, easy-to-use application form with an upload function for the application documents.
- If there are several synonymous terms for the same position, then create a separate landing page for each term. Each of them should be optimized for a suitable cluster of terms, and you should always avoid duplicate content.
A concrete example for the last point:
Butcher (m / f / d) can just as easily be a meat cutter (m / f / d). According to keyword analysis, people search for both terms in combination with “jobs”. It therefore makes sense to create a landing page for both keywords: one for the job title butcher (m / f / d) and one for the term meat cutter (m / f / d).
Effective recruiting measure: Designing creative Google Ads
Once a high-quality landing page has been created for each keyword cluster, you can move on to designing your Google Ads. It’s about creating imaginative, personable and creative content. We recommend that you run responsive search ads and search campaigns aimed at placing ads in the normal Google search engine (google.com, google.co.uk, google.co.in, google.com.au etc.).
It will certainly be easier to create recruitment ads in your Google Ads account the more effort and quality has gone into the landing pages already built, because much of the content created can now be reused.
All the benefits, values and other content that you formulated for your landing page are now the foundation for your assets (headlines and descriptions) of the corresponding responsive search ad.
Useful and appealing assets can be, for example:
- Modern corporate culture
- Meaningful and varied tasks
- Possibility of a 4-day week
- Tolerant error culture
- fair wages
- Permanent employment contracts
- Pleasant working atmosphere
- career opportunities
- etc.
Of course, you should only use an asset if it really corresponds to reality. The basis of your recruitment ads should therefore be a well thought-out (digital) corporate strategy and corporate philosophy. Before you promote certain assets, you should be clear about the values you represent with your company.
How well are your recruitment ads doing? Checking the performance in the Google Ads account
Are your Google Ads campaigns and ads ready? Then the ads can start running. Before you activate your ads, however, you should make sure that all campaign settings, such as budget, location, bid strategy or language, meet your expectations and wishes.
After that, you should regularly check the performance of your recruitment ads, especially in the first few days. Review key reports regularly so you can optimize your campaigns and ads early on.
Some of the reports to look at include:
- The report on the actual search terms of the respective Responsive Search Ad (RSA) / Google Ad.
- The report on your RSA’s assets and ad combinations.
- The report on metrics such as impressions, clicks or click-through rate (CTR)
- The conversion report (how many applications have been received, what are the costs per application, what is the conversion rate, etc.)
- The ad performance report (ad relevance, quality score, user experience with the landing page, etc.)
Please Note: You can only access the conversion report if you have previously implemented professional conversion tracking. This tracking measures the applications you receive. Feel free to contact us if you don’t know how to do this. We’ll be happy to make you a fair offer and, if you like it, set up the appropriate conversion tracking. You shouldn’t run your ads without conversion tracking – that would be like fishing in a murky environment.
Our conclusion on Google Ads for Recruiting
We, the team at Kapwa Marketing, believe that using effective Google Ads as a recruiting measure can be very helpful. If your ads are creative and likeable, and they lead to professionally made, search engine and user friendly landing pages, they bring you promising applications from suitable skilled workers in a timely manner at a reasonable cost per application.
Feel free to contact us if you’re having trouble creating quality recruitment ads. We offer you a free and non-binding initial consultation, where we will explain in detail what we can do together with you so that you receive suitable applications promptly with the help of Google Ads.
The featured image was made by Eric Prouzet and can be found on Unsplash.