Online marketing: measuring isn’t always knowing

You want to get your vacancies out there. They might be looking great on your website’s jobs page… but there’s no traffic to those pages.

A fairly simple way is to distribute them via paid online marketing through the ‘right’ social media channel to the ‘right’ target group. And ‘right’ is in quotation marks here because its definition depends 100% on your company and sector. For example, TikTok isn’t the first choice for recruiting experienced engineers. Let’s say LinkedIn then, just to be a bit more specific.

A channel like LinkedIn doesn’t just give us the ability to target your audience very specifically. In the backend of this platform, we also have access to the campaign figures. Those numbers also tell us exactly what our investment is yielding. How often has the ad been seen? Are they clicking through?

Online marketing = testing and trying

For example, we could create two different target groups to analyze which one works best. Or we could create two different visuals for the ad. A different text. A different call to action. All to end up with that one ad that works best. And in this case, working means: generating traffic to your vacancy page at the lowest possible price. Without that data, it’s just guesswork.

At the same time, we need to broaden the definition of working.

What happens on that vacancy page is also important. And measurable. Because the ultimate goal of your campaign is more and better applicants. Right? Now, suppose we see a spike in the number of visitors. From five per week to fifty. But the number of applications remains at the same level. What then? What is your next move based on those figures?

Tracking numbers and drawing conclusions

A first reflex is to look at the website itself. The place where we send potential applicants… but fail to convert them into an application.

• What does the online application procedure look like? Is it a tangle of steps that makes even the most motivated applicant drop out?
• What about our image as an employer? Why does a future employee choose us? And not someone else?
• Purely at the job level: how well-structured is the vacancy? Is it specific and complete? Does the text make you want to click that apply button?

We could make this list many times longer. But the conclusion is: it’s about looking at your website through the eyes of your applicant. Data tells us that ‘something’ is going wrong here, but not ‘what’. To find out that ‘what’, you need insight into your target group and a dose of common sense. Plus marketing knowledge to then link the right next step to it.

But what if your website is doing exactly what it should? Let’s rewind. We see that traffic is coming through to your website.

Yet the number of applications remains stagnant. Then the conclusion could be that there is ‘something’ up with your website. But any good marketer will also look critically at their own work. There are two important parts to this campaign. Not just the website, but also the social campaign generating the traffic. Maybe there’s something wrong with the target group alignment on LinkedIn. Maybe it’s not the right social media channel after all. Or maybe we need to sharpen the message even further.

Measurability offers many opportunities. If you know what you need to know. And you always do that in function of the goal you want to achieve.

Data helps us as marketers to do better. Provided we manage to draw the right conclusions from those figures. To then link the right actions to them. For that, besides graphs, pie charts, and all kinds of tools, three things are essential:

1. Knowledge of the client and the sector in which they operate.
2. Knowledge of the client’s customer/applicant.
3. A dose of healthy common sense and marketing savvy.