Digital Marketing vs. Recruitment Marketing

Remember dating? You’re hanging out with a group of friends and you catch someone’s eye and they seem really cute so you say hello and see where it goes? That’s traditional marketing.

Now think about online dating. Log on, read a profile, swipe left or right, text a whole lot, see where it goes. That’s digital marketing. Weird bathroom selfie? Swipe left. They know the difference between “your” and “you’re?” Definitely swipe right.

Of course it matters when you do meet in person and find out the profile pic is from a decade ago. We’re expecting something that captures our attention online and if it shows up and it isn’t that thing, well…it’s disappointing. Even the best of us have ghosted or blocked after getting way too many “wyd” texts.

Traditional digital marketers know this. Their goal is to capture the attention of prospects through the buyer’s journey and turn them into customers. So they choose the best of what their brand represents, present it to you online, and it delivers. They develop consumer personas, set up consumer segments and nurture campaigns that walk the fine line between being just enough valuable information without being way too much. 

Recruitment Marketing is Kinda Like Dating in 2022

Recruitment marketing works the same way, except your customers are candidates. Job seekers are seeking, you’ve got jobs. Are your candidates going to swipe left or right? How are they going to feel about you when you meet in person? What if you get ghosted for an interview – or for a new hire’s first day? Is it them or is it you?  

In the simplest terms, recruitment marketing is a combo of strategies and tools used by an organization to engage and attract the right job candidates. The goal of recruitment marketing is to promote the value of working for an organization and showcase the positive features of a culture or brand from its employees’ perspective. Instead of developing customer personas, we are creating candidate personas based on our job descriptions and the talent we want to attract. 

Traditional marketers have been in the digital space for years, but because of the rapid acceleration of the online consumer space during the pandemic, being able to create an online experience and presence is now essential to connect with consumers. Recruitment marketers have also been reaching candidates virtually for years, but the pandemic accelerated how rapidly offline activities shifted online, from sourcing to job ads to interviewing.

The Rise of Programmatic Advertising

One example of how recruitment marketing took a page from traditional digital marketing is in advertising. Digital marketing has evolved and replaced the manual work of online advertising with programmatic advertising. Programmatic advertising is the use of automated technology for media buying (the process of buying advertising space), as opposed to traditional (often manual) methods of digital advertising. It’s fast, effective, and allows marketers to adjust campaigns in real-time. And it’s perfect for the recruitment marketing space as a tool to reach more qualified candidates faster and where they live online, freeing up recruitment time for more hands-on tasks.

Just as consumer expectations have changed, so have those of job seekers. It’s a candidate’s market and they want a journey and a good experience, whether you hire them or not, whether they accept your offer or not. You’re not just competing with your competitors; you’re competing with your candidate’s last best experience. Recruitment marketing hangs in the balance of your employer brand and your ability to perfect the candidate experience. So, show off your best qualities as an employer, but don’t be a catfish. 

Recruitment marketing is a lot of things – content, campaigns, segmentation, persona development, candidate targeting, engagement and re-engagement, the candidate funnel, your employer brand and reputation, and data – I know, it’s a lot… but it doesn’t have to be complicated. 

Talentcare’s recruitment marketing solution helps you target qualified job candidates across the internet, optimizes campaign performance on budget and candidate volume goals, and leverages AI to learn and double-down on what works so you can achieve your hiring goals. We’re here to help and we’re fun at parties. Drop us a line or slide into our DMs.