If you want to recruit drivers, you need to stand out. Fleets across the country are trying to recruit from the same small pool of available drivers. If you’re not differentiating yourself from your competition, you won’t get the applications your fleet needs.
One of the best solutions available to driver recruiters is content. While content creation and distribution often falls in the realm of marketers, it’s a powerful tool that can revolutionize the way you generate applications.
Today, let’s look at the types of content you can create and some examples from your marketing counterparts.
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1. Entertaining Content
When you’re planning your content creation you have to remember your audience. Surveys and research show that company drivers are consuming a lot of entertaining content online.
Blog: The Recruiting Lifecycle in Action, Part 3
You can create entertaining content a number of different ways. You may have the expertise to create a funny YouTube video. Another option is to create a snarky or funny Buzzfeed-like list addressing common problems faced by drivers. This will help you stand out despite massive competition.
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2. User Generated Content
Driver recruiters are facing a tough market. Not only are fewer people entering the profession, but drivers are increasingly becoming frustrated with current conditions. Fortunately, user generated content can also be a solution.
User generated content can help recruiters accomplish a number of different goals. For instance, using this kind of content can help a fleet highlight their drivers and the unique places they go. This can provide employees with the satisfaction of being recognized, and also give your fleet a reputation as a premier employer who respects their drivers.
Everyone likes to feel appreciated, and publicizing your drivers’ stories can endear them to your fleet.
If you’re curious about how marketers are using user generated content, you can find a few examples here.
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3. Educational Content
You may or may not be surprised to know that drivers are very interested in what’s going on in the trucking industry. Research and surveys show that trucking industry news is the top streaming non-musical programming for both owner-operators and company drivers.
This is followed by experts on trucking industry topics/issues.
You can use this information to your advantage. Fleets are often full of trucking industry experts, especially the bigger fleets. These experts are perfect for creating podcasts and videos about changes to the industry. From there you can easily transition to what your fleet is doing to adapt to new changes and regulations.
If you’re interested to see how marketers create educational content, here’s a great example from HubSpot.
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4. Fleet-Centric Content
Driver specific and broader research has shown how important word-of-mouth advertising is. This is especially true for fleets looking to hire both owner-operators and company drivers. However, you can’t rely solely on word-of-mouth to drive applications for your fleet.
You have to supplement word-of-mouth advertising with consistent, engaging content.
Content is a great supplement for word-of-mouth advertising. You want to make sure that prospective hires are hearing about your fleet constantly. With content about your high employee satisfaction or excellent benefits packages, you can ensure your the benefits of joining your fleet are top of mind.
Blog: 3 Rules for Content Marketing Excellence
We also need to take a second here to clarify. It’s important to create content about your fleet, but you also need to make sure you aren’t going overboard. Make sure you’re talking about more than just yourself.
Also, here are some examples of good recruiting content.
Using a mix of different content is key to successfully engaging your audience.
Content marketing is a great tool for driver recruiters. Unfortunately, it’s also underutilized. By investing a little time and resources into your content creation, you can find new and creative ways to recruit drivers and lower your cost-per-hire.
You probably still have a lot of questions about content, especially about distribution. Don’t worry. We’ll be discussing this next week, so make sure to sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss out!
