What Talent Acquisition can learn from consumer marketing

How well-known is your organization?  Are you able to attract the top talent you need?

And do you spend extraordinary time and effort to find the right candidates?

If so, you are likely not using targeted marketing and branding techniques. Potential candidates are not likely to be attracted to promotions that are so generic that they could apply to any firm.

Candidates are sophisticated in seeking out information about the corporate culture and often research who works at the organization. We know that they check to see what employees are saying. They look at social media and engage their network to become aware of issues, culture, working style, and even who they will potentially work for. There are no secrets, and open communication is critical to creating trust.

Generic employer branding and recruitment marketing are no longer enough to effectively reach and engage the candidates you need.

Consumer marketing, on the other hand, is a sophisticated business that uses targeted marketing tailored to very specific population segments. It typically focuses on age, gender, education, and net worth to target products or services that appeal to each segment. For example, medications and products for the elderly are shown on television shows that elderly people usually watch. Expensive cars are promoted to people with high net worth and, in the U.S., who live in specific postal zip codes.

So, just as consumer marketing has evolved into hyper-targeted campaigns, your branding and recruitment marketing needs to become more targeted and personalized.

Smart TA teams are learning from product marketers to develop focused campaigns for specific roles, skills, companies, and even individual prospective candidates.

The Limitations of Generic Employer Branding

Most companies’ employer branding efforts revolve around their overall reputation, culture, benefits, and work environment. Job ads go out en masse. Employer branding videos and content highlight what makes the company a great place to work. The focus is on EVPs or employee value propositions, which are usually very broad and generic.

Generic marketing broadcasts the company’s strengths to a wide audience but lacks the precision targeting and impact that recruiters need. After all, a software developer and a finance analyst likely have very different priorities, motivations, and job search behaviours. Serving them both the same broad recruitment marketing messages is a bit like a clothing company using the same ad campaign to market to teenagers and retirees.

Even within a given role like software developer, there can be significant persona differences based on skills, experience levels, locations, employer preferences, and more. A one-size-fits-all recruitment marketing approach falls short.

The Power of Targeted Employer Campaigns

Leading corporate recruiting teams are realizing far better results by developing targeted employer branding and recruitment marketing initiatives tailored for key roles, skills, companies, and even individual passive candidates they want to reach.

Rather than pushing out generic job ads and content, they map out personalized employer value propositions tailored to what specific segments actually want and value. Campaigns are localized and customized based on the target coding languages, companies, locations, and other varying preferences and priorities. The goal is to create highly relevant, personalized touchpoints that meaningfully resonate.

They create personas for each candidate type for hard-to-fill roles. These personas include detailed profiles of that type of candidate, including what interests them or motivates them to apply. A persona is based on research, interviews, and data analysis.

For example, Disney may create hyper-focused recruitment marketing to attract animators specifically skilled in certain techniques, tools, and styles. The marketing would lean into the elements of Disney’s employer brand and work culture that uniquely appeal to that segment and emphasize the cool animation projects they’d get to work on.

You need to collect and analyze data about your potential candidates to do this well. With this data, decisions about new content and areas to focus on can be faster and more effective.

One software company created targeted recruitment campaigns and ads specifically for developers interested in working on cybersecurity products and another campaign for developers interested in computer vision products – with distinct messaging, creativity, and channels for each based on extensive research into those personas. These messages were based on data about what cybersecurity people find interesting, what media they use, and what they do in their free time.

Another company trying to hire data scientists and analysts heavily targeted former employees of specific competitors known to have strong data science teams, as those individuals would require less ramp-up. Their recruitment marketing spoke directly to data scientists currently in those roles and environments about the opportunity to take their skills to the next level.

An employer brand manager interviewed numerous current high-performers to deeply understand what motivated them and what they value most. She packaged up insights into personas and recruitment “hype books” packed with highly relevant employee value propositions, value adds, and reasons why the roles were so compelling. She armed recruiters with persona-specific email templates, video testimonials, events strategies, and more to make personalized outreach maximally relevant and compelling.

Modeling World-Class Consumer Marketing

Nike wouldn’t blast out the same brand advertising to runners, basketball players, and golfers. Their product marketing gets granular with dedicated ad campaigns, content strategies, events, influencers, and more tailored to each specific segment’s unique needs, interests, and behaviours.

Similarly, employer brand and recruitment marketers must get far more targeted and personalized to effectively reach the candidates they want for particular roles and opportunities.

Think of messaging as a journey. For some candidates, it will be the first time they have heard of your organization; others will know some but not a lot, and for others, your firm may be an old story.  But wherever they are, there should be compelling content, videos, and perhaps games or other tools that enlighten, engage, and keep them involved.

Customized campaigns should highlight uniquely relevant aspects of the company, such as roles, projects, benefits, and employee value propositions. Messages, creative channels, events, and outreach should align with segment-specific preferences, motivations, and priorities.

Those who make this shift to smarter, targeted employer marketing are already seeing stronger application rates, better recruiter efficiency, and, ultimately, higher-quality hires. In a fiercely competitive talent market, targeted recruitment marketing is becoming a must-have best practice.

The formula for recruiting success is as follows: Recruiting success = data and analytics + a targeted potential candidate type + targeted content + authentic information.

This post originally appeared in the Future of Talent newsletter and has been republished here with permission.