With 95% of today’s drivers now owning a smartphone and 65% using social media to find their next job, digital advertising offers an enormous advantage in locating and recruiting your target drivers. Google and Facebook ads are an excellent way to build awareness for your driver recruiting campaign.
There are two distinct platforms in which to reach these drivers: Social Media advertising and Google Advertising. Each platform is different in its advertiser-user relationship, and both can be combined to form a diverse driver hire strategy, but do you know how to utilize each one for the best results?
What is Facebook Advertising?
With 80% of drivers now using social media, advertising on Facebook offers an opportunity to reach a clear majority of drivers for your truck driver recruiting. Just how big is Facebook? As the largest social media platform with over 3.05 billion monthly active users and a trillion page views a month, Facebook offers a potential reach of 71% of the internet.
Advertisements for driver hire on Facebook appear within the Facebook newsfeed, and in between Facebook stories. These ads are triggered by factors, including the audience’s online behaviors and interests, geographic location, and other identifiable factors making Facebook Ads perfect for truck driver recruiting.
Advantages of Facebook
1. Detailed Audiences options
Facebook’s targeting options allow advertisers to target specific audiences based on online interests and behaviors. Create Custom Audiences that match your ideal driver – effortlessly advertise to drivers within a specific radius or use your current driver email list to create a “Lookalike Audience” of drivers. If you don’t have a driver email list learn more about KJ Media’s email database of over 250,000 drivers. Advertisers can also target current followers and use messaging to encourage sharing the job posting with the truck driver in their life.
2. Highly visual Ads
Facebook ads are designed to blend into the user’s newsfeed and resemble native content. Facebook ads feature a picture which is more visually appealing to viewers and encourage engagement versus the traditional text ad offered by Google’s platform. Ads that use photos resonating with drivers typically outperform ads that rely on simple text.
What are Google Ads?
Google Ads is a search network, including Google’s search engine and affiliate advertising network with over 8.5 billion daily searches, 250 billion searches a month and a potential reach of 90% of internet users. Over 95% of truckers now have a smartphone, meaning the internet and Google are right in their pockets – ideal for truck driver recruiting. Advertisements on Google Ads appear in the first three spots on the search results page and are triggered by the keywords searchers input in the search bar. The advertiser bids on specific keywords to help trigger their ad for the desired keyword.
Advantages of Google Ads
1. Largest available audience online
With a potential reach of over 90% of the internet, Google Ads offers the largest online reach of any digital advertising platform for driver hire. Google’s search network boasts over 99,000 search queries per second. With those kinds of numbers and strategically selected keywords, get your job opportunity out in front of numerous truckers.
2. Quality and Relevance of ad
Google’s algorithm determines ad appearance by the quality and relevancy of the ad text. The more relevant the words are to the matching keyword, the more favorable Google AdSense will view the ad.
What’s the Difference: Passive vs Active
The biggest difference between the two advertising networks is how the ads are triggered. On Facebook, advertisements are triggered by the user’s online behaviors and interests, while Google Ads are initiated by the keywords searched.
Google advertising relies on the user actively searching for exactly one of the keywords you have bid on, while advertising on social media, such as Facebook, allows your company to passively appear in front of potential customers, constantly increasing brand awareness.
For example, a nation-wide trucking company is looking to hire line haulers for their Atlanta-Nashville route. They use Facebook advertising to target users that live within an ideal 75 miles of Atlanta and have “Truck Driving” listed in their previous jobs – this strategy ensures that only local drivers with relevant experience see the ad and are more likely to respond – decreasing their Cost-per-Conversion and increasing their overall number of driver applicants. They use Google Ads to target drivers searching for “Truck driving jobs Atlanta, GA” or “Atlanta, GA truck driving”.
With these differences, Facebook advertising directs potential drivers to the advertiser while Google Ads helps the advertiser find potential drivers, ultimately improving their driver hire success rate.
Optimization is essential
Regardless of whether you sway towards Facebook, Google, or a combination – regularly assessing and optimizing your digital ads is essential. Use A/B testing to experiment with different ad copy, images, or calls to action to determine which elements are most effective in generating leads. Additionally, leverage the data provided by Google and Facebook analytics to identify trends, demographics, and behaviors of potential candidates, allowing you to refine and adjust your ad strategy for maximum impact. By continuously refining your digital ads, you can attract the right candidates and ultimately improve your truck driver recruitment efforts.
Are you interested in utilizing Digital Advertising to find new drivers for your company? KJ Media can help you find your ideal driver- Cnotact us today.
