Influencer marketing is starting to become widespread: a lot of big brands love to use influential bloggers, vloggers, Instagrammers and Snapchatters to promote their products and services. Followers look up to influencers, who are both their idol and the boy/girl next door.
The loyal following has a connection of trust with the influencer. That’s how an influencer can really add star power to your campaign by promoting a brand actively, or becoming a brand ambassador. Consumers do not only trust influencers – also their recommendations. This technique is applicable everywhere, and therefore also in recruitment.
New applications of influencer marketing
Like I said: nothing new under the sun. A lot of researches have by this time proven that influencer marketing works. The ROI’s are higher than those of traditional marketing campaigns, which means that less budget can be transferred into more results. Because more brands start working with influencer marketing, the market has matured: influencer marketing is no longer just 16 year old girls trying on make-up in their bedroom. Don’t get me wrong: this still happens, but there is interest for influencer marketing from a wide array of branches. Insurance companies, real estate, telecom, and, for example, B2B.
Recruitment
And there we have arrived at the main question of this article: what can influencer marketing do for recruitment? By popular demand and requests from several recruiters we decided to dive into this topic. The advantages of influencers for recruitment are their reach, young target audience and their direct and engaged connection with their followers. These advantages will be highlighted one by one in this article. We’ll finish with an example – where a Swiss logistics company is pioneering in influencer marketing for recruitment.
Huge reach
Jobbird, Monsterboard, Vacaturesite, all names of websites you probably recognize. As soon as you start looking for job offers you’ll see advertising and retargeting campaigns all over. Budgets of websites with job offers don’t stop there – you’ll also see and hear their commercials on television and radio. You would think that people will organically find these websites, as they are actively looking for jobs. Right?
Nope. As early as in 2002 Emerce published an article on the declining popularity of these kinds of websites. Moreover, last year, DutchCowboys published another article on the exact same topic. What does that say? The current way of presenting and finding job offers is in bad shape. Influencers, on the other hand, have a huge reach of people who actively and voluntarily consume their content. They don’t post commercial videos, but personal content that is willingly consumed by their followers. People even look forward to new content! Moreover, influencers have target audiences in all different niches: travelbloggers can be relevant for the travel-industry, fashionbloggers for the fashion-industry, and for example lifestylebloggers for virtually any industry. Bear in mind that influencers also specialize within a niche: for everything from leisure to jobs to interests, a blogger can be found. By working with influencers for your recruitment you can reach a lot of people, and if you’d like, a very specific crowd. That’s how you will get your message across to relevant consumers.
Young Target Audience
Two things are certain in this world: there are a lot of jobs, and a lot of people struggling to find a job. This can be noticed in many ways: there are not enough people with practical hands-on education, and a lot jobs in that field, and for university graduates it’s the other way around. Whether your company is looking for welders or data mining experts, it’s the most important thing to attract young people. These millennials are the young, creative and smart employees who are crafty and capable to deal with modern-day technology. However, the word “millennials” is often followed by an explanation why they are so difficult to reach online. The young target audience blocks advertisements and has lost trust in companies. They are, however, exactly the audience that consumes influencer content. If an influencer, that they trust, promotes a message in an authentic and organic fashion they will embrace that. That’s how influencers can help businesses reach this target audience, and get them on board. It’s not just broad though: they can also help you recruit very specific candidates.
Engaged and direct
Okay, let’s summarize: influencers have access to a huge, young target audience that’s virtually impossible to reach online. Big advantages if you ask me, but these advantages are nothing compared to the main advantage of influencer marketing: the how. As skilled content-creators that know their target audience to the bone, influencers can make content fit with their target audience with mesmerizing precision. If you think about it, a vacancy that is posted online is pretty boring content. On top of that, everyone knows that the standard words in a vacancy are not always true – this Fisherman’s Friend commercial pictures that in a great way. “Young, dynamic and creative workspace.” Yeah right.
Influencer content is anything but static and boring. Influencers do not only share content, they share experiences with their followers. They really get the feeling that they live the influencer’s life for a second or two. A great example for this case comes all the way from Switzerland. The Swiss company Login is one of the biggest logistics and transportation-companies in Switzerland, and exploits the railway as well. The company teamed up with Rash Junior, a Swiss Instagrammer with over 80K followers. 80K followers might not rock you right now, but considering the Swiss market he is in fact one of the biggest online personalities. Login co-produced a series of video’s with Rash about different jobs within the company. He went to take a look at the IT-department, the workshop and he joined the conductors for their daily routine.
He seems to be having a good time, what probably leads to a lot of new employees for Login. When you take a look at this content and keep in mind that his target audience consists mainly of people who are still in school, and consider that there are influencers for all groups in society, you can image what this campaigns’ effect is. The cool, tough Rash takes a look at different departments within Login, and a lot of his followers probably thought “Hey! That job is not all that bad!”
Conclusion
Influencers can serve as a crafty tool for recruitment, and will definitely live up to that. That makes recruitment one of the applications that shows the true potential of influencer marketing. When you stop reviewing influencer marketing as a trend, or only effective for a certain niche or audience, you’ll see that influencer marketing is not a trend – it’s a paradigm shift within marketing. Influencer marketing is applicable for any company, in all industries and markets. The only question is: how are you going to apply it?
