The Seven Deadly Recruitment PPC Campaign Sins – Part One

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is an important and valuable part of any recruitment strategy. It has a quick turnaround for implementation, and can  help you quickly leap-frog to the top of a Google search results page for terms which may be too competitive for free ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ search exposure. Among other advantages, PPC can help you: 

• Build brand awareness
• Control costs. You only pay for the traffic you get!
• Attract specific talent pools
• Geo-target key hiring regions

Unfortunately, far too many recruitment PPC campaigns stumble right after they obtain that valuable user click. Why? They fall prey to the seven deadly recruitment PPC campaign sins. Read on and discover if you indulge in any of these temptingly attractive bad habits.

 Sin #1: Putting Yourself First

This first sin requires something that sounds deceptively simple: a change in perspective. It’s easy to get stuck looking at things from your own point of view. You know every wonderful detail about your organization, every Employment Branding and Value Proposition nook and cranny. And, frankly, you have seats to fill! But the first thing you have to do is set all that aside. None of that matters. All that matters is what your target audience wants.

Look at it this way: everyone on the web – everyone reading an article, watching a video or clicking on a PPC link has a goal. They went on line specifically to DO SOMETHING and as they go from site to site or search to search, they are quickly scanning what they see on every web page and thinking:

• Is this ONE THING that I am looking for?
• How do I get to ONE THING what I want?
• How can I do the ONE THING I want to do?

 A well-formed recruiting PPC campaign aligns your recruiting goals with the career needs of your audience. If you don’t respect these core user behaviors don’t expect much from your PPC campaigns.

Sin #2: Not Matching User Expectations

 With PPC you have the advantage of knowing exactly what the person is looking for. They have a goal and the search terms they provide allow you to almost read their mind and give them precisely what they want. With a recruiting PPC campaign you do this initially with your ad content – preferably ad content that says the same thing someone typed in when they performed a search.

 Let’s take the search below for example. If I search for’ Nursing Careers’, which of these ads below is most likely to catch my attention? (Note: I’ve consolidated the search results to save on space and make them easier to review.)  

Only three of the eight PPC ads actually say anything about finding a Nursing Job. Two are about Nursing Schools and one requires the searcher to already know that AMEDD is the Army Medical Department if they are going to relate the ad to a Nursing Career. Finally the two ads about “Obama’s Jobs Training” and “Obama Wants You Educated” are wildly unrelated to the search term – from a recruitment perspective, the advertiser is clearly not trying to catch the attention of someone currently looking for nursing career opportunities.

The ads speaking clearly about Nursing Jobs are more likely to catch the attention of the nursing career job seeker. The headlines for these ads closely match the clearly stated needs of the searcher and more likely to get a click.

 Sin #3: Your Home Page Is Your Only Destination

It’s easy to focus on the home page of your career web site as the first place you want to bring a visitor. It’s kind of like the ‘front door’ for your web site and we are conditioned by our physical experience to ‘come in through the front door.’ This obsession to drive traffic to a home page could be considered a manifestation of this real life ingrained habit. So it comes as no surprise that when people are asked: Where do you want your visitors to go? The common answer is ‘my site’s home page.’ But your home page isn’t always the best place to take every visitor.

Why shouldn’t you take someone to your career site home page? Because it’s your welcome mat, your entry point and it doesn’t actually help someone coming from a PPC search. Not in the way they need to be helped. Remember the three questions/needs that are top of mind for your audience.

When they arrive at your page you want the answer to these questions to be very clear. And frankly, since your home page is a ‘welcoming zone’ it is ill-prepared to give such a focused experience to every PPC target audience.

So if you don’t send someone to your home page, where should you send them? I’ll be back next week with the answer to that question and a look at the remaining four Recruitment PPC Campaign Sins.

This post can also be seen at NAS Recruitment, a Recruitment Advertising, Strategy and Branding Agency.