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Do Paid Social Ads Work Better Than Job Boards?

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Do Paid Social Ads Work Better Than Job Boards?

What works best when it comes to advertising your open positions – job boards or paid social media?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Most likely, the best solution for you is a combination of the two, along with other recruitment marketing tactics. But you should never disregard social media ads as an effective means of getting your job posts to the right candidates, at the right time and in the right places.

Every social channel is different.

Pay-per-click advertising, influencer-generated content and display ads are all examples of paid social media. And every channel is different; for example, Twitter offers short-form content and Instagram focuses heavily on visuals.

Just as every channel is unique, so is every business. But as general rules of thumb, you should always:

  • Set an objective for your paid media strategy. You can then use various filters, settings and other criteria to narrow down your audience, for instance, by their age group, interests, and current occupations.
  • Different social media ad platforms have their own conversion tools, but the goal is the same: get candidates to share their contact information or resume with you. And ultimately: apply for your job!

Paid social media can be highly cost effective.

The pay-to-play model that characterizes paid social media makes these channels flexible enough to target the specific passive and active candidates you want to attract. Social media ads are priced based on the length of a campaign and the potential number of impressions you’re working towards. So, you can track your ads using a cost-per-acquisition metric. (Hint: Always be sure to measure and compare ad and platform performance!)

  • Social media ads can start at a very low price point because of the bidding model and lottery system used by various platforms. This makes it easier to set limits and stay within your budget.

Consider which platforms to use.

Each social media platform has unique features, but there are some characteristics of converting paid ads, which you should keep in mind. They include visual content, easy access to lead capture forms, and enough space for enticing ad copy. Consider:

  • Facebook: Using Facebook Targeted Ads, bids are placed into a lottery for a chance to be displayed to a specific audience. Facebook ads can narrow an audience down to just a few hundred people based on geography, interests, demographics and more. Facebook also provides analytics, which are helpful for experimenting with such variables as post time and content type.
  • Twitter: On Twitter, paid ads tend to look very similar to regular tweets. This means more people tend to read them, since they’re not so blatant. Twitter has 192 million monetizable daily users, and when you use their Ad software, you can target your ads to specific demographics.
  • Instagram: This is an extremely popular place to be, especially among younger candidates. And since Facebook owns Instagram, you’ll be running your ads concurrently on both platforms.
  • LinkedIn: Last but not least, LinkedIn remains the leader in networking and other business connections. And the app’s paid ads let you reach top professionals in virtually every industry to promote your open positions.

Social media doesn’t cancel out the need for job boards and other advertising – or the remaining aspects of your recruitment marketing strategy. For additional guidance on plans going forward for your company, contact Haley Marketing today.

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