“People at different stages of their lives · questions they encounter using that particular...
Transcript of “People at different stages of their lives · questions they encounter using that particular...
“People at different stages of their lives are doing different things, and they’re all
using Google.”
Susan Wojcicki
It’s a rare group of businesses that are so integral to the fabric
of society that their names become commonly-used verbs.
For a time, Xerox managed it. FedEx is still used as a verb from
time to time. But since the dawn of the modern web, Google
has been the most obvious example.
It’s not just a powerful web platform, it’s an activity.
Of course, Google is also an extremely integral part of the
recruitment landscape. Nowadays, when businesses worry
about SEO (search engine optimization), they’re almost always
worrying about Google in particular. When you optimize your
career site or your job landing page for web searches, you’re
essentially trying to keep up with Google’s efforts to deliver
relevant content to its users. Given that, it’s a little strange that
more recruiters don’t utilize Google Ads to attract potential
job candidates.
Perhaps the problem is that recruiters find the platform
daunting. This would be more than understandable, given
that it is both different in kind and in some ways markedly more
complex than the types of social media advertising options
that many recruiters are familiar with.
18-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
65+
Unknown
Demographics
ALL DEMOGRAPHICS >
0 5 10
Age Clicks Devices
DEVICES >
Mobile Phones Tablets Computers
Cost
Impressions
Clicks
Clicks
36
Impressions Avg. CPC
11.7K £0.62
Cost
£22.39
4
2
09 Jul 2018 7 Aug 2018
0
300
600
The amount of research and planning that can go into an
Google Ads campaign before you even start to construct your
advertisement can seem overwhelming from the outside, and
there is no automatic guarantee of a positive ROI.
On the other hand, maybe recruiters simply don’t realize that
Google Ads is an option, or think of it as a platform better
suited to traditional sales and marketing than recruitment
marketing. Over the course of the next 10 or so pages, we
hope to dispel this myth and the myth above by providing a
thorough breakdown of what Google Ads is, how it works, and
how it can be used in a recruitment marketing context. You’ll
gain insight into the different methods that can be leveraged
for attracting passive and active job candidates, and we’ll
walk you through some of the nuances of targeting your ads
to your employee personas and tracking your impressions,
clicks, and applications.
For many or most of you, Google is already an indispensable
tool in your daily job duties, with the power to connect you to
the knowledge, information, and resources that you need for
continued success.
In this eBook, we’ll show you how to turn that power on its
head, helping to ensure that potential job applicants are
connecting with you, your company, and your employer brand.
In this way, you’ll be able to expand your footprint beyond
social media and into other parts of the web, where you can
express your brand narrative in bold new terms. For some of
you, this will be unfamiliar territory, but that should only make
it more exciting!
What You’ll Learn
1. What is Google Ads?
2. How to Use Sponsored Search Results for Recruitment
3. Employer Branding with the Google Display Network
4. The Nitty Gritty: Tracking and Metrics
5. Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices
6. Conclusion
1. What is Google Ads?
Okay, let’s start with the basics. What is Google Ads? Essentially,
Ads it Google’s advertising platform, through which businesses
can place two distinct types of ads. Actually, it’s three if you
count YouTube ads, which are run through Google’s system, but
we’ll leave those alone for now. The first type, for our purposes,
is sponsored posts within Google search results. If you’ve ever
performed a Google search (and we know you have!), you’ve
probably seen these sponsored results at the top and bottom
of the list.
Except for the “Sponsored” icon that appears alongside
them, they look like normal posts, featuring a headline, a URL,
and link description that gives users a sense of what they can
expect if they click.
Given all the talk about maximizing SEO out there, the value of
appearing in a Google search should be basically self-evident
from a business perspective. It increases the likelihood that users
will find your site, utilize whatever resources you provide, and
engage with your brand in a meaningful way. With any luck, this
will result in more people buying your products or (more relevantly
for us) entering your recruitment funnel. Most businesses try to
accomplish this through SEO best-practices, but Google Ads’
search ads offer you a chance to “skip the line,” so to speak.
The second option available to Google Ads users is the Google
Display Network (GDN). This refers to all of the sites across
the web that manage their advertising through Google,
most of which will feature a rotation of banner ads placed by
advertisers like yourself. These, too, you’ve no doubt seen as
you’ve browsed your favorite websites.
AD
Unlike search ads, GDN offers you the opportunity to utilize
images as well as text, meaning that you can show off your
employer brand in a unique, dynamic way that catches the
attention of your future applicants.
While the process of targeting, budgeting, and tracking is
fundamentally similar to what it is in search ads, the differences
in format mean that these display ads require a wholly distinct
mindset and approach.
Because these two options are so different, we’ll be covering
the ins and outs of each one in separate sections below. In
this way, you should be able to gain a holistic overview of the
options that this platform affords to recruitment marketers.
Next page: How to Use Sponsored Search Results for Recruitment
2. How to Use Sponsored Search Results for Recruitment
To start with, let’s tackle Google’s sponsored search ads. Again,
these are more or less what they sound like: for appropriate
search queries, Google will display a result from your company
at the top (or bottom) of the page.
How does this work in a practical sense? Essentially, you
choose a set of search keywords that reflect your recruiting
goals (more on this in a minute), and then you set a budget
that includes the amount you’re willing to “bid” for each click.
When someone searches for one of your terms, Google picks
a few ads to display at the top of the search based on the
bids and relevance scores (more on that in a minute) of the
various advertisers who list that
search term. These ads are
structured to look just like normal
search results, except that
they are labeled as sponsored
posts. Notably, though you’re
constantly “bidding” for
individual searches, Google
doesn’t actually charge you until
someone interacts with your ad.
Now, we know what you’re thinking. “Sponsored ads in Google
search results? No one clicks on those!” This is a common
misconception. In point of fact, these sponsored posts often
receive a lot of attention. For searches relating to online retail,
for instance, people are actually more likely to click on the
sponsored results than the organic ones. This is an extreme
example, but it should give some indication that people are,
in fact, willing to click on these results. The trick, then, is to
make sure that your post is high quality and highly relevant to
your target audience.
Choosing the Right Search Terms
Let’s say you’ve decided to run a recruitment ad campaign
through Google Ads. What’s the first step you need to take?
Deciding on your search
terms. This, after all, is going to
determine who sees your ads.
This can be trickier for building
up a recruitment pipeline than
for traditional sales, but the
same principles apply. To begin
with, think about your employee
personas. What are their web
browsing habits? What search
Search recruitment
candidates
EMPLOYEEKEYWORD
R E L E V A N T
TERM
S
AD
S
PIPE
LIN
EG
QS
terms are they using regularly and which of those terms are
most relevant to your business? You can use Google’s free
Keyword Planner tool to visualize the relative search volumes
and competition levels for any given keyword, and in this way
you can figure out the best terms to use.
Crucially, active and passive job
seekers will likely encounter you
on this platform through fairly
different search terms. Thus, if
you’re hiring developers who are
fluent in Haskell, you might expect
active job seekers to search for
something like “developer jobs
Haskell,” while your passive job
candidates might be searching
more generally to resolve
questions they encounter
using that particular language
(“Haskell type errors,” e.g.). Since
Google determines which ads
to show in large part based on
the relevance of your ad to the
search term (also known as your Google Quality Score, or GQS),
it may be easier to reach active job candidates with posts
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linking straight to job ads. Passive candidates, on the other
hand, might be more inclined to click on a link that sends them
to some educational content, like a blog post or a whitepaper.
Once you’ve sat down and thought about your employee
personas and their search habits, it’s time to narrow down some
actual search terms. Again, you’ll want to research the relative
search volumes of the terms you’re picking, to make sure that
you’re setting yourself up to reach a sufficiently broad audience
(while also making sure that your bids aren’t competing with those
of too many other companies for the same space). You’ll also
have to decide whether you want to bid on “broad matches” (i.e.
search terms that Google identifies as fulfilling the same intention
on the users’ part as the search terms you’ve designated), or
“phrase matches” (in which you bid only on searches that utilize
the exact phrases you designate). Broad matches can help you
to get in front of a wider audience, but they contain a higher risk
that you’ll pay for ads that don’t reach your target personas.
Google’s default is to charge you for broad matches, and,
again, it does have its advantages. But if you don’t want to
rely on phrase matches, we recommend using “broad match
modifier” to gain more control over what search terms you’re
bidding on. In this way, you can be sure that you’re content is
being shown primarily to your target personas.
Constructing Your Ad
At this point, the only thing left to do is construct the ad itself.
This is an especially crucial part of the process because the
way your ad is put together will have a big impact on its GQR,
and therefore on your ability to reach your desired candidates.
Much like a normal search result, your ad will include a link
and a short link description. This description is one of the first
things Google uses to determine the relevance of your post.
If your metadescription actually uses the search term that
you’re bidding on, it’s more likely to rise to the top of the pile
(and, thus, to the top of the search results).
For your this kind of post, you’ll
have space for up to three 30
character headlines and two 90
character descriptions, in addition
to your display link and some 15
character “paths” (non-URL links
to specific parts of your website).
Use this space to give your
prospective applicants a quick
idea of your EVP and employer
brand, and give them a direct call-to-action so that they know
what steps to take next. Because of the severe space constraints,
30 CARACTERHEADLINE390 characterdescriptions
15 character “paths” 2
DISPLAY LINK
full sentences might not be your friends. Consider using short
phrases will little in the way of cliche or filler, so that your ad stands
out enough to paint a quick picture of your business as a place
of employment. Again, make sure there is alignment between
your chosen keywords and the text of your ad. This way, you’ll get
your employer brand in front of more potential applicants, and
hopefully build up your talent pipeline in the process.
As to the links themselves: they should redirect to a landing
page that’s specific to whatever you’re posting on. Google
will crawl the text of this page as well, so the better optimized
it is for the search term the higher your quality score will be.
Since this is where Google makes its money off of you, there’s
also a real incentive to make this page as impactful as possible.
Just like the text of the ad, your landing page should have a
clear call-to-action, whether for an online job application, a
recruitment newsletter sign-up, or anything else that will help
you meet your recruitment goals.
There are a handful of formatting options available for these
ads (in some cases, for instance, you can add a phone number
to the listing), but the general rule of providing relevant, easy-
to-navigate content at each level will continue to apply in all
cases. By following this general rule, you can set yourself up
for continued success in attracting candidates on Google.
3. Employer Branding with the Google Display Network
Google search ads already have the potential to expose your
brand to a large audience, but they are far from being the final
word on Google’s advertising possibilities. Search ads can be
powerful, but, simply put, Google display ads are ubiquitous.
They appear on more than 2 million sites across the web, and
an estimated 90% of internet users are likely to encounter at
least some display ads as they go about their daily business.
Since these ads are often displayed as banners on other people’s
websites, you might worry that they will go largely unnoticed.
And while it’s true that they’re not always as visible as other
types of ads, this is actually an advantage in some ways.
Because advertisers pay by the click, rather than
by the impression, it’s possible to spread awareness
of your employer brand in a cost effective way.
After all, clicks may be the goal, but even those
who don’t click are seeing your messaging and
encountering your employer brand—meaning
that they might be more inclined to engage next
time they see an advertisement of yours.
The Basics
Okay, let’s get reoriented. From a design perspective, and
even from a strategic perspective, GDN ads are fairly
dissimilar from sponsored search results. From a logistical
perspective, however, they’re not too different. You’ll still use
the Google Ads platform to set a budget and designate a
target audience. These things will still reflect the realities of
your recruitment advertising budget and the nature of your
candidate personas, respectively. You’ll be able to track your
metrics and KPIs in more or less the same way using the same
portal as you would use for search ads. More than that, the
mindset (you might even say the philosophy) for these two
distinct types of ads will remain fairly similar: try to reach your
candidate personas where they already spend their time. The
goal and platform are the same, but the specifics are different.
Different how? We’re glad you asked.
Crafting Your Ad
One of the major practical differences between Google’s
sponsored search ads and its display network ads is that
instead of conveying your message and embodying your
employer brand with nothing but text, you’re able to use visual
content in addition to text and links. What does this mean for
you as a recruiter?
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It means that it’s time to get creative! Ads with attractive or
eye-catching visuals tend to perform better than ads that rely
solely on text—so think of these ads as a chance to express your
visual brand in its most vibrant and interesting form. Remember,
your visual content should be reflective of the story you’re
trying to tell about your company as a place of employment.
This might mean showing pictures of your team engaged in
their daily work, or an image of one of your employees being
presented with an award (if your EVP is partially based around
gaining recognition in your field). This content should reflect
what you know about your candidate personas, but it should
also be a clear manifestation of your EVP.
Managing Your Placement
Just as Display Network ads have their own format that’s
distinct from that of the search ads, they also offer you a
different set of options for targeting your audience and placing
your ads. Here, Google gives you the option of:
z either targeting users by specified topics and interests,
z or managing your ad placement by specifying which
particular web domains you’d like your ads to appear on.
This second option might sound like it’s a lot
more work, but it gives you a level of control over
how you’re spending your ad budget that can
be crucial to recruiting success. Once you’ve
gotten a handle on your candidate personas
(both active and passive), spend some time
researching their web habits and picking out
five to 10 websites where either group would
be likely to spend their time, then concentrate
your efforts on those sites. As you track your progress, you
can determine which, if any, sites are not yielding the desired
results and switch them out.
You may have already gotten a sense in the preceding
paragraphs of why this particular ad format might be useful
for going after passive candidates (namely that you don’t
have to pay for what could prove to be valuable impressions).
Again, these passive job seekers might not click on your content
the first time they see it, but if you’re successfully conveying your
employer brand and your employee value proposition (EVP)
with your ads, even these candidates will begin to associate
your brand with your business’ unique culture, mission, and
values. The key here is to make sure that your messaging for
these two groups is properly segmented.
z For active job seekers, you’ll want your ads to link directly
to landing pages for individual job postings;
z For passive job seekers, you might be better off linking to
a blog, or a newsletter sign-up—something that entices
them into the top level of your recruitment funnel.
Next page: The Nitty Gritty: Tracking and Metrics
4. The Nitty Gritty: Tracking and Metrics
This is where it really gets fun.
Once you’ve got your campaign up and running, Google Ads
offers a wide variety of metrics that you can define and track
in order to measure the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.
These can be whatever KPIs are most valuable to your
business, whether that means cost-per-click, cost-per-apply,
advertising ROI, or any of a host of other possible metrics.
By monitoring these as you run your campaign, you can be
sure that you’re getting enough out of your ad campaign to
justify the cost, and you can make adjustments as needed to
improve your recruiting efforts. Though Google does offer a lot
of mission critical data through its performance tracking, it can
come at somewhat of a high level of complexity. Once you’ve
found a way to cut through that complexity, however, it can
be an invaluable tool as you continue to drive up applications
and grow your talent pool.
So, ask yourself: what are the most
important metrics for your recruiting
efforts? If you’re just trying to grow
your talent pipeline, you might be
looking to track your click-rate and
conversion-rate on ads that link users to a newsletter or
e-mail sign up, as well as tracking the number of impressions
you’re receiving. If you’re trying to increase your apply rate,
you might be more interested in simply tracking the number
of applications you’ve received via your ads.
As you continue to use the platform over time, you might keep
tabs on your cost per click for each ad that you’re running, to
see if it’s trending up or down over time. If it’s on the rise (or
was high to begin with) for certain ads, you may want to revisit
them or even take them out of rotation. After all, once your
recruitment-specific KPIs have been defined, you can easily
assess which of your ads are best supporting your goals and
focus more of your budget on those, potentially improving
your ROI in the process.
Of course, tracking your progress
and success is a vital part of
any recruitment marketing
campaign, but with Google
Ads it is especially crucial. As
you might have figured out by
reading about the platform
above, success on Google Ads
tends to be a function of trial
18-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
65+
Unknown
Demographics
ALL DEMOGRAPHICS >
0 5 10
Age Clicks Devices
DEVICES >
Mobile Phones Tablets Computers
Cost
Impressions
Clicks
Clicks
36
Impressions Avg. CPC
11.7K £0.62
Cost
£22.39
4
2
09 Jul 2018 7 Aug 2018
0
300
600
and error. These ads can be tricky to get right on the first
try, and they can easily become costly corporate albatrosses.
One of the best ways to ensure that this doesn’t happen is
to enable Google’s conversion tracking functionality on your
website. By embedding a few lines of code into the web
pages on your site that signal conversions (the “thank you”
page after an application is submitted or after someone has
signed up for a recruitment newsletter, for example), Google
can help you figure out which ads and which individual clicks
are driving the most helpful traffic and creating the kinds of
conversions that you’re looking for.
With these capabilities in place, it’ll be much easier to determine
your Google Ads ROI and address any issues that may crop
up. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to implement this kind
of tracking, and the result is often less efficient recruitment
advertising efforts.
Next page: Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices
5. Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices
Now that we’ve covered the two different types of Google
Ads advertisements, it’s time to give a quick rundown of some
of the strategies and best practices that you might employ in
order to maximize the exposure and impact of your employer
brand across the web. Some of these will be more relevant
to one form of advertisement than the other, but all should
help guide you as you get deeper into the weeds with this
unique platform. As you go through, you might find that we’re
really just expanding on ideas that have already appeared
throughout this guide, but in each case we think the specifics
bear a little extra elaboration.
Optimize Your Cost per Click
Google Ads sometimes gets a bad rap because it’s perceived as
being too expensive, but if you’re cautious about managing your
cost per click that doesn’t have to be the case. Now, because
Google Ads is already used by a number of large companies
(who are able to leverage large recruitment advertising budgets),
some of the more popular keywords can cost several dollars per
click, which many smaller businesses may not be able to afford.
One way to circumvent this issue is to choose less competitive
keywords, but sometimes there’s only so much wiggle room for
your search terms. To determine
how much you can really afford
to spend per click, you’ll need
to consider the expected ROI of
each visitor to your landing page.
Again, this is a little more complex
in recruitment than it would be in
traditional sales, but if you have
a sense of how much each hire
is worth to you, compared with
how many applicants per hire you usually get and how many
applications you get per click, then you can determine the
maximum price you can pay per click before your expected ROI
turns negative. Once you’ve got this number in mind, it’s time to
start taking additional steps to keep your cost per click down
while still reaching an impactful number of users. What steps,
exactly? Taking extreme care with how you’re defining your
search terms and targeting your audience; and making sure
your content is as relevant to the search terms (and the needs
of the searchers) as possible. Speaking of which:
Don’t Neglect Your Landing Pages
Getting a handle on your optimum cost per click is a good way
to make sure that your budget and your recruitment goals are
$
appropriately aligned. But, again, the amount that you bid on
each search or display ad is not the only determining factor in
who sees your ads. Google is also interested in showing people
content that they’re likely to find helpful. How do they do that?
By checking the relevance not just of the contents of your ad,
but of the landing page that the ad redirects to. This means
that even if your bid for a particular search term is relatively high,
Google can still penalize you for linking to a landing page that’s
not relevant to the search term. How do you avoid this fate?
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First of all, you should make sure that the text of the landing page
includes the appropriate keywords, and that, in general, it speaks
to the search term. This means that if you’re targeting active
job seekers (with, say, “developer jobs Python” as your search
term), your landing page should include the words “developer,”
“job,” and “Python,” in addition to being fairly explicit about the
fact that you are, in fact, offering a job for developers working in
Python. Not only will this help Google to show your ads to more
people, it will help prospective recruits to orient themselves after
they’ve been redirected, so that they don’t get confused about
what steps to take next and drop out of the application process.
For passive job seekers, who might, for instance, be trying to
find information to solve a coding problem, make sure that your
landing page contains the information that they need—plus a
way to enter your recruitment funnel!
Utilize Remarketing Campaigns
In addition to offering you fairly granular options about where
your content is being displayed, Google also offers a robust
set of targeting options for delineating the audience to which
your content will be shown. One of the most powerful tools
that Google Ads offers for targeting is remarketing, in which
your ads are only shown users who have already visited your
website or interacted with your brand in some way. Because
these people have already displayed the first signs of interest
in your brand, they’re much more likely to be receptive to your
messaging in the future. Again, if you adopt this strategy you
can tailor your content accordingly: if you’re a tech startup,
for instance, your second touch recruitment campaign might
assume some familiarity with your employer brand and
leverage that familiarity into something bold, like a link to a
coding challenge or an invitation to contribute to a piece of
open source software.
Next page: Conclusion
6. Conclusion
So far, the power of Google shows no signs of diminishing.
And the more powerful Google is as a means of connecting
people to the content they need and want, the more powerful
Google Ads can be as a tool for getting impressions, leads, and
conversions at all stages of the recruitment process. Because
Google Ads offers such a wide array of possible formats and
placement options, businesses that utilize it for recruitment
marketing have a lot of latitude and room for creativity as they
craft and refine their campaigns—creativity which prospective
candidates will reward with their attention and interest.
Remember, as you develop your Google Ads strategy it will be
important to segment your active and passive candidates into
distinct audiences with distinct targeted messaging. Google
gives users the control to do this on an extremely granular level,
and while that level of control can seem daunting, it’s also a
key value added proposition. Make sure that you’re creating
content that Google will deem to be high quality and highly
relevant to the users that are being targeted (i.e. make sure
you have a landing page that relates to your keywords, etc.).
In this way, you’ll keep your cost per click down and thereby
improve your recruitment advertising ROI.
We know that recruitment marketing campaigns often
center on social media, but Google Ads can be an important
complement to those efforts (especially if you can incorporate
some remarketing into your strategy), and thus an important
part of any employer branding strategy.
Hopefully, this guide has given you the tools and know-how
to dive into Google’s platform, and the confidence to do so
with creativity, inspiration, and style!
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