There are over 34 million Facebook users in the UK, so it’s a great choice of social network for recruitment companies to speak to job hunters in their catchment areas and spread awareness of their current positions.
However, the Facebook Newsfeed has become a competitive space and businesses are seeing their posting activity reach less people, due to the sheer volume of other companies using the network.
Facebook offers some very interesting advertising options, where your sponsored content sits within the Facebook Newsfeed of a target audience that you have selected. You have probably seen these in your own Newsfeed; a subtle grey label indicates them with the word ‘Sponsored’. You can use Facebook advertising to achieve a number of business objectives; to increase website traffic, to encourage onsite job applications, to increase Facebook Page likes or just likes and comments on a particular post.
Choosing your audience
Your target audience, which you choose to serve the advertisements to, could be based on any piece of information, which a user has chosen to include in their profile on Facebook. Information such as location, demographic, job title, and industry are all available.
Facebook is adding more targeting all the time, so you can begin to get more creative with the options available to you. You could target users who like popular recruitment sites such as Monster and Reed, as this means they are likely to be job hunting. You could also target people who work at a specific company (if the company is large enough).
In the example, we targeted people living in Birmingham and the 20km radius, aged between 20 and 50 who years old who work in Management, Sales, Retail or Temporary and Seasonal industries, who also like Jobsite or Monster. The size of the target group who fit this demographic on Facebook is 3,200 people.
Designing your adverts
The adverts are straightforward to setup and are completely designed by you. You can choose the image and copy that go with the advert, so whether you are looking to advertise a specific position, or just general spread awareness of your company and services, you can decide the best creative to accompany your promotion.
The Facebook advertisement example from Smarta, a business advice service, shows that bright colours and images with people in them are eye-catching and can generate clicks.
How much does it cost?
The great part about Facebook advertising is that you completely control the budget yourself. You can choose to spend £20 or perhaps a larger budget of £2,500 – it’s up to you. Obviously the more money you spend, the more chance your adverts will be shown to a larger amount of people in your target audience, and you will see much better results. We suggest you start off with at least £200 to really see some results and gather some learnings around who tends to click.
We offer advice on social media advertising, and have run successful Facebook advertising campaigns on behalf of our clients before. Get in touch for more information on how Fifteen Ten could help you.
