It can feel impossible to find the right candidates for your organization, especially when you’re competing for top talent in an extraordinarily competitive market.
Maybe you’re already reaching out on social media, tapping into your employees for referrals, and promoting your open positions through traditional job boards, but nothing seems to stick.
What’s the next step? When you’re looking to slash hiring times and fill empty positions, you need to recruit the right team members—and that’s where geofencing (AKA location-based recruitment marketing) can change the game. Think of geofencing as building a fence around a specific location and only sending your message to prospective candidates within that fence.
Whether you’re hiring logistics managers, HVAC techs, or automotive workers, geofencing can be a strategic marketing tool to attract skilled local candidates in competitive markets. So, what are you waiting for? Here’s how to turn geofencing into an effective recruitment tool for your business.
What Is Geofencing?
Geofencing is a marketing strategy that leverages location-based technology to target local candidates. When you build a geofence, you can target prospective candidates around a specific geographic area. For example, you might run a campaign to advertise open caregiver positions within 10 miles of your physical location.
Geofencing is one of the most powerful recruitment marketing strategies today, and for good reason.
By targeting candidates in a specific location, you can create hyper-targeted messaging for different audience segments.
When you captivate prospective candidates with engaging, ultra-personalized ads, you’ll be one step closer to filling your talent pipeline with top trade talent—and the numbers back this up: 71 percent of consumers prefer personalized ad experiences, while 90 percent of marketers believe that location-based marketing boosts engagement.
How Can Geofencing Upgrade Your Recruitment Strategy?
You already know that blue-collar workers are the backbone of your organization. They’re getting their hands dirty, working with customers, and keeping your business alive. And if you’re like most companies, finding the most qualified people for the job isn’t an easy task—especially when you’re dealing with fierce competition in a tight job market.
So, how can geofencing help you attract local candidates? Here’s why every organization needs an effective location-based recruitment strategy:
- You’ll reach the right people at the right time. Geofencing operates on a virtual barrier system, so you’ll reach prospective candidates as soon as they enter that barrier. This way, you’ll target highly qualified traffic due to their proximity to your organization, and you can tailor your messaging strategy based on specific location factors to drive conversions.
- You can create personalized ad experiences. How can you stop wasting valuable time, money, and resources on advertising? It’s simple: Instead of creating a blanket ad experience for every candidate, target your most qualified candidates with a compelling message. Appeal to their pain points, showcase your brand, and spark their interest with ads that strike an emotional chord.
- You’ll reach candidates when they’re on the go. Your candidates are busy. They’re busy taking care of their families and working—and they don’t have the time to scroll through traditional job boards like Indeed. Instead of waiting for them to browse jobs, you can use advertising to get in front of the right people while they’re browsing the web.
- You can outpace the competition. Want to gain an edge over the competition? With the right strategy, geofencing can be an effective competitive marketing tactic to beat the competition. Think about it: You can build a geofence around your competitors’ business to target nearby candidates. By highlighting your employer brand, you can show them exactly why you’re worth working for over the competition.
How to Set Up Geofencing in Google Ads
Ready to upgrade your recruitment marketing strategy? Geofencing might sound complicated, but it’s not rocket science. In fact, you’ll only need to take a few steps to implement geofencing in your Google Ads campaign. To get started, access your Google Ads account and choose an existing campaign. Then, navigate to Settings, and click Locations.
Once you’ve chosen an existing campaign, it’s time to target a specific geographic area. If you select Advanced Search, you’ll see a separate box with three additional targeting options:
- Add: Add the location to your list of targeted locations.
- Exclude: Stop serving ads to this location.
- Nearby & related locations: Generate a list of nearby locations.
You can choose from multiple options, including Country, State, Zip Code, Radius, and City, to create a geofence for your recruitment campaign. You can also set up geofencing with ads displayed on Google Search results, the display network, and YouTube.
When you’re done building your geofence, Google will display the estimated number of users within the geofenced location that meet your campaign’s other targeting criteria. Here, you’ll want to avoid targeting locations with too few users. At the same time, you don’t want to target broad locations if you’re working with a limited advertising budget.
Attracting Local Candidates With Geofencing
Congratulations! You’ve upgraded your Google Ads campaigns with geofencing—but your hard work isn’t over yet. Now, you need to put the finishing touches on your location-based ads to fuel your business with qualified candidates. Here’s how to optimize your geofencing campaign so you can drive the best results.
1. Build the Right Target Audiences
To maximize the success of your recruitment efforts, you need to target the right audience. When you create your ad and build a virtual geofence for your recruitment campaign, you can also build specific target audiences based on interests, demographics, educational background, and other factors.
How can you effectively narrow down your targeting? Start by researching the people you’re looking to hire. After you’ve done your homework, ask yourself the following questions:
- What are they interested in?
- Where do they spend time?
- What do they look for in a job?
- How can you set your company apart?
Write down everything you know about your ideal candidates before diving into your advertising campaign. When you know how to capture your audience’s attention, you’ll take your recruitment strategy to the next level.
2. Refine Your Location Targeting
If you’re new to Google Ads, geofencing can be tricky. When you’re setting up location-based targeting, there’s one important setting to watch out for. When you navigate to Location options, you can serve ads to prospective candidates based on Presence, Search interest, or Both
If you don’t choose an option, Google will automatically default to Presence and interest.
For some recruiters, this is the way to go. For example, you might serve ads to candidates who don’t live in, but frequent, certain areas.
On the other hand, the default option can also serve ads to prospective candidates who don’t live in your service area. Let’s say you want to target Cleveland residents. If you stick with the default targeting option, you might serve ads to Columbus residents planning a trip to Cleveland (who are researching Cleveland businesses). So, if you’re working with a limited budget, you’ll want to choose the Presence option to target people who live within a specific area.
3. Don’t Forget About Analytics
Once you’ve launched your geofencing campaign, you can just set back and wait for candidates to roll in, right? Not exactly. To drive a steady stream of interested candidates to your company, you’ll need to evaluate your strategy and pay attention to the data. For example, if you want to pinpoint which locations drive the most traffic, you’ll need to check out key metrics, including clicks, impressions, and cost per click (CPC).
If you’re not sure how to take action after reviewing your data, it’s worth investing in some professional help.
An experienced recruitment marketing agency can help you evaluate your PPC campaigns, target the right candidates, and deliver the right message on the right platforms.
Kick Your Recruitment Strategy Into High Gear
With the right recruitment strategy, you can wave goodbye to wasted time, money, and resources. If you want to build an effective recruitment campaign, reach the right candidates, and hire top talent, geofencing is the answer.
If you have any questions about geofencing, we’d be happy to help. Download our internal self-audit and set up a discovery call with our team to amplify your recruitment strategy with location-based marketing.
