Many employers use social media campaigns to reach latent jobseekers and entice them to apply. The former often works quite well, but 9 times out of 10, the applications fall through. A waste of your advertising budget! By collecting leads directly in your social media campaigns, you can turn the tide. In this blog, we will show you 3 ways to link lead generation to your recruitment campaigns, so you get more candidates out of your euros.
Reach and clicks, but no applications
Chances are that you use social media campaigns for recruitment purposes sometimes (or perhaps very often). This is because social media allows you to target and reach even those who are not actively looking for a job. It is a great recruitment channel, but unfortunately most social media recruitment campaigns do not generate dozens of applications. If only they would!
In many cases, you see that the reach is decent and the click-through to the work-at site is good, but then... dead silence. No responses are coming in! This low conversion can be due to many factors, but the current low willingness to apply always plays a role. Few people still feel like going through a traditional application process where they have to respond with a CV and cover letter. They may be interested in the vacancy, but have no time to polish up their CV or are not keen on entering a long-winded application process.
And so they leave the job page again. Without you knowing who they are. Without you having the chance to convince them after all. If you could get these candidates out of anonymity... That changes things. Good news: you can!
By adding a lead generation layer to your social media campaigns, you offer candidates an easy, quick and approachable way to respond. Asking a question or expressing interest is suddenly a snap for a potential candidate. This removes a lot of barriers and ensures that you do get responses to your vacancies. You can then always ask for the CV or assess the match in interviews. At least you have made the first contact and that is the most important step!
3 ways to use lead generation to strengthen your social media campaigns
How exactly does that work in practice? We would like to show you with a few examples.
WhatsApp ads campaigns
In many recruitment campaigns on social media, people choose to have the ads link to the work at site or the job page. Logical choice, but then you still need to convert that traffic on your work-by site and that is often not so simple. By letting candidates start a WhatsApp conversation immediately when they click on your ad, you establish contact in a very accessible way. This is very nice for candidates. They don't have to leave all kinds of details right away, but can first ask some questions and get a first impression of the employer. From that WhatsApp contact, you can further enthuse these potential candidates and dispel any doubts, so that a little later they can sit down with you to talk about that particular vacancy.
Lead forms on Meta and Linkedin
Another option for lead generation in your social media recruitment campaigns is to use lead forms. When someone clicks on a lead ad, they are not redirected to your work-at-home site, but a form opens directly on the platform. You decide which data are requested (the less, the better!) and many standard info, such as name and e-mail address, are already pre-filled by the platform. The potential candidate then only has to complete and check this and send the form with one click. You can then contact this candidate to discuss the vacancy further.
WhatsApp pop-up on your work-at-home site
Sometimes it may feel a bit short-sighted to let potential candidates respond directly to an ad, for instance if you are approaching a target group that actually wants a lot of information (blue profile) or if the vacancy requires a bit more explanation. In such a case, you can choose to have ads redirect to your work-at-home site and then improve conversion there. You do this with a WhatsApp pop-up that starts the conversation, for instance after someone has spent 2 minutes on a job page or has looked at more than 5 different web pages on your site. Then you know there is interest and exactly those people you want to get in touch with.
A WhatsApp button is then the easiest way. Just sending an app feels non-committal and is a snap, making potential candidates much more likely to do this than applying for a job regularly. Then, in the follow-up contact, you can further enthuse the candidate and invite them for an interview.
Lead generation in social media campaigns in practice
Many of our clients use one or more of the above ways to increase the conversion rate of their social media campaigns. And rightly so, because it generates many more responses. Construction company Dura Vermeer, for instance, received 1,800 messages from potential candidates in 6 months and managed to get 600 prospective candidates out of anonymity with WhatsApp. A stunning result!
"Working with MrWork 's Leads module makes it even more accessible for candidates to approach us. The lines of communication have become significantly shorter. We can point candidates directly to open vacancies, our job alert and our social media channels and we see that it also results in a higher conversion of applications. We are very happy with our choice of MrWork's Leads module, it only makes our work easier and more fun".
Esther van Bellen, Recruitment & Labour Market Communications Advisor at Haaglanden Medical Centre
Centralise and automate lead tracking
We hear you thinking: 1,800 posts? How on earth do you answer them all? That's something where recruitment marketing automation is invaluable. With smart software, you centralise all the 1-to-1 contact in one place. No loose Excel files with the leads from lead forms on Meta and Linkedin and here and there WhatsApp conversations on recruiters' phones that then get lost in all the other chats. By bundling all contacts in one dashboard, you create overview and don't lose sight of any talent.
You can also use automated welcome messages, interest questions and qualification questions to follow up leads. This way, you link a candidate directly to the right person and get the cherry on the cake automatically. Recruiters focus on the best-suited candidates and the software does the rest for you.
By the way, it is not only nice for the recruitment team to work with recruitment marketing automation for lead follow-up. A quick and neat follow-up is also a must for your employer image. Candidates who respond via Skype or a lead form and then don't hear from you again or only get a message back after a week, have long since given up. And they often share such a negative experience with others. So lead follow-up is something you want to get right!
In our blog you can read more about following up recruitment leads quickly and easily.
Strengthen your social media recruitment campaigns with lead generation
A lead generation layer over your social media campaigns for recruitment is the way to get more out of your campaigns. After all, you get more responses for the same advertising budget. With recruitment marketing automation software, setting up this lead generation layer is a piece of cake and following up leads is not a time-consuming task either. Nothing but profit!
