Deborah Daily, co-owner of Buckaroo Marketing writes in Inside Indiana Business about how marketing and branding can be used to help solve for hiring challenges.
She recounts efforts by two clients to attract key workers. The first was a firm with low turnover seeking to fill technical roles due to growth. The key to attracting new workers in this environment, was to focus on the firm’s culture, she writes.
Her firm designed a campaign to use the correct channels—in this case radio—to reach prospective employees who were most likely on the road during the day. The 30-second radio commercials, which ran over a six-week period, resulted in several qualified candidates and four new hires, which came at a cost less than half what they had paid in the past using recruiters. The ads also had another benefit—the name recognition created some interest in the company for prospective clients as website traffic jumped 96% during that time frame. There were no other campaigns at the time driving people to the site.
The second client faced challenges finding assemblers, welders, and machinists. Buckaroo Marketing took a similar approach for this client, but felt the correct medium was Facebook advertising for its message. The firm got about a dozen qualified applicants in the first two days of the campaign. And, as a result, the firm asked Buckaroo to develop a similar campaign to attract mechanical engineers.
While the use of unique media channels was an important factor in the success of the two firms’ efforts, Daily contends that “an even bigger contributor to the results was that our approach was built upon branding.” She says as they developed the campaigns’ messaging, they focused on the reasons current employees chose to remain in their roles. “Yes, the pay was competitive, but in conversations with line employees over the years, we’ve heard an appreciation for both companies’ cultures,” she writes. “In particular, the companies have strong commitments to employees’ families and the communities they call home, and that message resonates with the types of people who applied.”
She notes that promoting the firms’ culture wasn’t a “gimmick,” but rather a key ingredient to the campaigns’ success.
