Recruiting Session 7:

Hey, guys. It’s Matt. You know, Super Bowl ads like that are certainly a powerful force in advertising. And given their practically galactic costs, you’d think they actually possessed mystical powers.

But the real force and fortune behind these ads is something much more down to earth. It’s viewership. Super Bowl games are among the most watched broadcasts in the United States, and advertisers are willing to pay a premium to be seen by such a large audience.

In this Session and the next, we’re going to focus on where you can advertise jobs to be seen, too. And fortunately, that doesn’t take a Super-Bowl-sized ad or budget. Those might not hurt, but the truth is, it’s rarely the single super promotions that get you known. Instead good advertising, just like good investing, takes time and diversification. You have to put your money into a wide mix of ad placements that might not get the most attention individually, but that together, will reach more of the right drivers at the right times.

Ironically, even Super Bowl advertising proves that the right mix matters more than the single biggest night. And there’s no better example than that Force commercial from Volkswagen. When VW produced it for the 2011 game, they knew the ad had great potential, but were concerned it might get overshadowed by bigger automakers and ad budgets. So, they risked something new for that time in Super Bowl advertising. Instead of relying exclusively on game viewership, they released the ad five days early. And not on TV, but on YouTube.

And a lot of people noticed. The commercial racked up more than 17 million views before kick-off, and went on to be the most watched Super Bowl commercial of all time. And ever since, other companies have used this same mixed approach. Of course, Volkswagen’s success shows they made a commercial worth seeing, but just as important, they let people see it in more than one place and time.

And that’s vital not just for a company like Volkswagen trying to reach automobile drivers, but for carriers trying to reach truck drivers. Research shows that by the time job seekers conclude a search, they’ve checked out an average of 16 different resources for information. The only buying decision with more “touch points” is an automobile.

You certainly can’t control all those touch points in a job search, but the more places and times you put your message out there, the better chance you have of getting a driver’s attention.

So with that goal in mind, we’re going to focus on some of the best and most applicable advertising locations and recommendations. Let’s begin with the oldest of these.

You know, I used to go to Spatula City for all my spatula needs, but now I just go to Amazon.com. And a lot of advertising has gone the same way. With the migration to online formats, we have to ask if there’s still a place for traditional TV, radio, and print ads. And the answer is yes. In fact, in a digital environment, older forms of communication can actually stand out. Just think of what it’s like to receive a handwritten letter or card. You take notice because they’re more rare.

So, we definitely shouldn’t discard traditional ads. But which of them should we use and how much? Those answers will differ for each carrier, but we can get the mix right by keeping three key issues in sight.

First, consider who’s seeing them. Or rather, that you can’t quite know. And that’s because you’re broadcasting. Even print ads that don’t broadcast in the technical sense still distribute messages in a wide, dispersed way. It’s very much a shotgun approach where you aim at a general area, but can’t be sure you’ll hit your target audience.

There’s both a downside and an upside to this. The downside is that you might not reach a single driver looking for a job. But the upside is that you might reach everyone else, including their family and friends, or a driver who isn’t looking today, but will be in the future.

So within your ad mix, you can view traditional ads as ways to build general awareness of your company and jobs, while online ads let you target specific individuals. You need both, and they need each other. As we’ve witnessed, it’s not uncommon to see a spike in online traffic after running a TV or radio campaign.

The second issue to consider is who else your audience is seeing. In other words, your competition. If other carriers aren’t using much traditional advertising in a particular hiring area, you might have a golden opportunity to stand out. On the other hand, if they’re using it a lot, then you might need to run counter-campaigns so they’re not getting all the attention.

The third and final issue to consider with traditional ads is what sort of return you’re seeing on your investment. We’ll discuss ways to track this in an upcoming Session about measuring results, but suffice it to say, traditional ads generally cost more than online alternatives because of higher production costs. That’s especially true for radio and TV. And you pay for the placement whether or not anyone sees or acts on it. So, it’s important to be strategic with the budget, and to know exactly what you’re getting in return.

Now, let’s turn our attention to ways you can get seen online.

When it comes to advertising, don’t throw out your computer. As Ron Swanson discovered, online ads are a powerful way of reaching specific individuals. We’ll look at several different online options, but what they all have in common is that they let you take more of a sharpshooter instead of a shotgun approach. Rather than blasting your message to everyone, you’re targeting people who are looking for driving jobs and in the places where they’re looking.

Let’s start with two highly effective types of general online advertising: search ads and remarketing ads. These work well because they enable a company to connect with someone who’s looking for what they offer or who’s previously visited their website.

Search ads, as the name indicates, show up in online search results. Every major search engine offers this kind of advertising service, but Google Adwords is first among them, so we’ll focus on it.

So, how does Adwords work? Well, it’s an online auction where advertisers bid on keywords that relate to what they’re promoting and what people are searching for. For us, those could be words like “truck driving jobs” or “CDL A drivers.” You choose the words to bid on, how much to bid, and then write ads to go with them.

You’re familiar with these ads. They show up at the top and bottom of Google search results. All the other results in between are organic, meaning no one paid for them. They just relate to the search.

That means your company might already show up in the gazillion results someone gets when they search for a driving job. But unless that person searched for you by name, you’re probably so far down in the list that they’ll never see you. So with Adwords, what you’re bidding to win is prominent placement.

So, how does Google decide which ads win? Well, there’s a lot of technical wizardry going on.

But here’s a little glimpse behind the curtain. Every time someone does a search, Oz the Great and Powerful, I mean, Google checks if advertisers have bid on keywords that are relevant to the search. And if so, it triggers an Adwords auction.

Winning depends on two things. First, how much you’ve bid. But second and more importantly, your quality score, which is how well your ad relates to the search. It’s based not only on your keywords, but also the relevance and quality your ad text and the landing page you’re linking to. Each advertiser’s bid and quality score get multiplied together, and those with the highest numbers win.

So that’s how it works, but how well it works for you depends on what we’ve discussed in previous sessions–particularly, the need to use landing pages, to make those pages and your ads excellent, and to have consistent messages between them. Those are the deciding factors in whether or not your search ads will get seen.

The last point before we move on from search ads is that they they’re budget friendly. You set maximum bids for keywords, but will pay less if your quality score is high. So not only does quality get you seen; it saves you money.

And the only time you pay anything is when someone clicks your ad. That’s right. These ads cost nothing until someone clicks them, which is why they’re known as pay-per-click or cost-per-click ads. You can also maximize the value of each click by narrowing down the time and place the ad can appear. This gives you the best chance and price for reaching the right drivers.

That concludes our discussion of search advertising and this Session. But tune in to the next one where we’ll finish exploring online advertising that can boost the visibility of your jobs. Until then, I’m Matt.