Staffing agencies are looking for better ways to get more potential hires or clients to not only notice their services, but actually engage with them so that they’ll eventually be led to a partnership. With marketing efforts becoming fiercer by the minute, it’s an enormous challenge for recruitment companies to be on top of the game for their brand to shine through and catch people’s attention.
There’s an advertising method that’s being used by many corporations out there, and it just might have a place in your marketing efforts as a staffing agency. It might worry others a bit, because it involves clicking on your ads. We know how wary netizens are with clicking anything willy-nilly, as scammers and other suspicious figures out there use shady tactics to take advantage of others, but it’s really a brilliant means to drive business to your staffing agency’s job posts or overall services.
It’s called “PPC”, or the “pay-per-click” advertising model. Will this service forward your agency’s cause in the best way possible, or will your target audience feel they were scammed? With an open mind, let’s dissect what PPC is.
What is PPC?
“Pay-per-click” is an advertising model where the advertiser put up their ads on a certain platform, and the platform owners will receive a fixed payment for a certain number of clicks. The ads being posted can be clicked for various purposes: to purchase a product, apply for a job post, or set an appointment with the advertiser to talk about availing services.
Owners of the platform, like maybe another website or a search engine, earn basically on the set clicks for each advertisement. In other words, the platform only gets paid for the number of times the ad is clicked by a site visitor.
You’ve probably seen ads that are used within a PPC campaign. Perhaps you’ve tried to look for cheap hotel bookings or “where to buy the best fried chicken” nearest you. Chances are, there were ads that appeared on the right-hand side of the Google results page, but you totally ignored them. These may have been under a pay-per-view advertising campaign. Search engines are common PPC platforms since they produce a lot of traffic, so it’s no wonder many companies place their ads on sites like Google.
Why are companies drawn to utilize PPC advertising?
The first tell-tale sign of a scam is: it’s too good to be true. This is why many are drawn to scams like a moth to a flame because of the promise of great fortune and lucrative results. In relation to pay-per-click advertising, a staggering 65% of small to midsized businesses surveyed have a PPC campaign.
Are these people being scammed? You be the judge. Take a look at these reasons why companies are utilizing the functionalities of a per-per-click campaign:
It saves a lot of money. In PPC campaigns, you’ll only pay when user actually clicks on your advertisement, and is transported to your own website. This is cost-effective, because compared to other marketing and advertising campaigns where viewers have the tendency to pay no mind to your content, this time you only pay for actual times your content is noticed as measured by the number of people clicking on your ad.
Statistics are easy to gather and measure. Which ads are actually clicked? How much traffic is produced by this single ad? These numbers can be monitored efficiently during a PPC campaign. Having this information ready for evaluation helps you and your staffing agency decide if the chosen platforms for your PPC campaign are the best ones to drive your company goals.
PPC is linked with SEO. In the digital age, search engine optimization (SEO) is at the core of any online marketing strategy. Your website might be the best in every aspect, but these aspects mean nothing if you are not ranking in Google searches.
More often than not, the targets for SEO are usually the same for PPC targets, one goal of which is to raise traffic going in and out of websites. This is where advertiser companies and the chosen platforms for PPC are able to help each other climb the SEO ladder, with the use of keywords that help them rank well.
Take note that SEO and PPC are heavily driven by keywords. Certain keywords lead users to click on PPC advertisements, and when a platform is rich with these keywords—coupled with user interaction through clicks—the host website gets a good reputation from Google. It’s then considered a “healthy” website, which your company should be backlinking to through your advertisements.
Using PPC is almost as simple as flicking a switch. Don’t get us wrong; setting up a PPC campaign still requires keen collaboration with your host platform. However, if you wish to halt the campaign, monitoring of clicks per advertisement will just be stopped.
The downside here is that there will be a significant dive in statistics, but at least you’ll be well-informed why, and you’re still in control. You as the advertiser have a better say on how much you’ll be willing to spend for this PPC campaign, as you can control the monitoring of clicks.
What’s the verdict? Is PPC a scam?
While scams frustrate and trick you, we are confident that won’t be the case with PPC. We believe it’s an effective means of driving traffic towards your services, the way any marketing tool should. However, any tool, if improperly used, won’t yield the desired outcomes it says it will, like when scammers tell you one thing then deliver another. To make PPC function properly, avoid these mistakes:
Users are not sent to the right locations. “Apply for this job now!” But when the eager applicant clicks on the link, they go to the homepage of your staffing agency, or “Contact Us” details. Instead of a landing page wherein they can upload their resume or put in contact details, they are forcefully led to a pitch for your agency.
This is a common error in PPC campaigns. The intention for the clicked link is not met, which is frustrating to the user. Work well with your host platform to make sure that links are working, and they are as it says on the website. It’s also imperative to test these ads first, and the links they lead to.
Monitoring was not done properly, or not done at all. PPC campaigns are not for you to set and forget. Like many marketing campaigns, some level of monitoring is still necessary to see if the clicks you pay for are indeed doing the right job. Ad placements, keywords used, and other factors related to PPC ads can be tweaked along the way, to make sure you are truly getting bang for your buck.
Not being specific with ads groups. Don’t fall into the error of cramming all possible target groups into one website. Chances are your ads will lose their relevance because it’s difficult to identify to whom they are targeted. Many effective PPC campaigns consist of a number of small ad groups for better targeting.
LET ALLIED BE YOUR PARTNER IN EXECUTING MARKETING CAMPAIGNS THAT WORK!
With the correct pay-per-click strategy, your staffing agency will get a lot of traffic going through your website. But to get more input on what other marketing techniques will work for you, why not talk to us here at Allied Insights? We can provide you with marketing tactics based on what your organization needs, and growth marketing delivery from field specialists.
We’re a marketing delivery agency built for staffing agencies like you, and that’s no scam. Contact us now.
