Pay Per Click: Using Adwords effectively for recruitment websites

Using Google AdWords for your recruitment campaigns? Here are some basic tips in the article below. Use it as a checklist, to review what you are doing with our Google AdWords campaigns…

Why Use PPC?
When thinking about your online marketing portfolio have you ever considered Paid Search or “Pay Per Click” (PPC)? With the ever increasing competition to get you site on the first page of Google, Yahoo or Live Search for phrases like ‘architecture jobs’, ‘sales jobs’ or ‘marketing jobs’ PPC may seem like an attractive option; you can determine which keywords you want your PPC Ad to appear on, when and where you want your Ad to show and how much you want to spend per month with instant results. By following a few key guidelines you can really maximize the potential of your PPC campaign by generating quality CV’s at a low cost and low risk. You can also add tracking code so that the ROI from your PPC campaign is easily calculated, making PPC an effective and measurable marketing tool for your recruitment website.
Save money by spending time setting up your Campaign
Setting up a PPC campaign is easy but there are pitfalls to avoid. Too many people make the mistake of just adding the keywords and leaving the campaign to run ending up with a huge credit card bill and not much else to report. Remember that Google makes a substantial part of its revenue through Adwords!
So where do you start?
Thinking about your budget is a good place to start. The more money you spend, the more keywords you can bid on and therefore the more CV’s you can get. Once you have decided on your budget set your daily budget limit accordingly otherwise you could see a huge bill at the end of the month!
Writing a good Ad
Once you have decided on your budget you can start looking at what your target jobseekers or clients might search for e.g. “architecture jobs”, “social care recruitment”, “project manager jobs in London”; this will form your list of target keywords. Now you can start writing your Ad. Here the fun starts; you have got only 95 character spaces to create a compelling Ad that is going to entice a jobseeker to click on it – and not on your competitors! There are a few key rules to remember when writing your Ad:
• Make sure the keyword appears in the Ad; the words go bold and the job seeker will see that your site is relevant.
• Be creative in your writing; “apply for 100’s constructions jobs” sounds more enticing than “construction recruitment agency”.
• But also be specific; if you’re only recruiting for graduate positions you don’t want a senior professional clicking though as they are not going to apply for a job and you’ve just used up some of your budget.
• If you’re targeting a specific geographical area e.g. “surveying jobs in London” then say it. It means you’ll save money by only generating a targeted audience to your site.
• Give a call to action e.g. Submit your CV, Apply today! – this is ultimately what the jobseeker wants.
• Create multiple Ads, i.e. create a different Ad campaign for each of your sectors; if you’re a technical recruiter create an Ad campaign for architecture, another one for construction and so on.
And once a job seeker has clicked on the Ad think about where they end up…
• If your Ad is about engineering jobs, the jobseeker is expecting to find engineering jobs, so link your Ad through to the engineering jobs page not the home page.
…and what you want them to do when they get there
• Make sure that there are clear calls to action; register for a job / contact you / submit their CV so the chance of getting that CV is high.
How to make your money go further
It is worth checking your account settings before you set your new PPC campaign live. Think about when jobseekers are most likely to be searching for jobs; it is unlikely that at 4am you’re going to get many serious applications and if Monday to Friday is prime job seeking time do you want your ads appearing on Saturday? Also think about where you want your Ad’s to be displayed. By switching off the content network you can then focus on the real traffic and significantly decrease your susceptibility to click fraud. And if you want your job to display at or near the top of the sponsored listings alter you position preference so that you’re Ad’s display in the top 5.
Tracking / Reviewing / Testing / Tweaking
So how successful was your Ad? By adding the tracking code to the goal pages on your site e.g. your registration thank you page, you can determine how many CV’s you generated from your PPC campaign and the cost of each CV. Calculating your PPC ROI from there is very easy.
Feeling creative? Have another look at your Ad results, from here you can see which ads are generating a high number of jobseekers to the site or in technical jargon a high “click through rate“ (CTR) and which Ads are being displayed a lot (have a high number of “impressions”), but are not being clicked on. You can then try different Ad campaigns under the same keywords to see which one generates a higher CTR, or remove ones which are not generating much traffic. Through a bit of trial and error and monitoring your PPC performance you can tweak your campaign to have a higher spend in areas where you have the most jobs and on the best traffic converting key phrases. Linking Adwords into Google Analytics will give you even more data to play with.
With a bit of patience and tweaking your PPC campaign can be an effective marketing tool for your recruitment website, generating instant results at a high ROI which is all completely measurable and can be tailored to any budget.