Driver recruiters have a difficult job. They are tasked with recruiting enough drivers to maintain and expand their fleets, despite the worst driver shortage in the history of the trucking industry and record-high turnover rates. To cope, they’ve had to take the gloves off and become really good marketers.
Driver recruiters have to be successful despite a serious industry crisis and there are a few things marketers can learn from them.
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Driver recruiters further refine their audience.
One basic tenet of marketing is that you must reach the right audience. By targeting specific audiences, marketers can tailor their message to be as relevant as possible. But recruiters are forced to take that a step further.
All recruiters know they need to reach drivers. But reaching just any driver won’t cut it. They try to recruit very specific types of drivers, with specific hauls, and CDLs. Creating neatly refined audiences allows driver recruiters to develop campaigns directly targeted to the type of driver they need to recruit.
Marketers should refine their audiences similar to how driver recruiters do. Taking a look at where your revenue is coming from can help you establish exactly who you need to target with your campaigns. You don’t just say “I want to market to the construction industry,” you further define that audience to be as specific as “contractors with 10 or more wheel loaders.”
By developing refined audiences, you waste fewer impressions and improve lead generation.
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Driver recruiters have very specific goals.
Driver recruiters recruit drivers a number of sources. Phone calls, multi-carrier apps, and company-specific apps are all producers of hires. However, they know which lead source results in the lowest cost-per-hire. Those are the ones they build their campaigns around getting.
Marketers need to be aware of how the sales process works for their business. Your sales process plays an important part in developing campaigns that will produce close-able leads. Certain leads may be more profitable for your business than others. For instance, your sales reps may excel at closing a lead by phone call, but are terrible at consultations.
By understanding how your sales process works you can produce leads which are more likely to close and improve your ROI.
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Driver recruiters know what works, and they use it.
Marketers are constantly trying to find the best and most cutting edge way to get their message in front of the right audience, sometimes at the expense of proven methods. For many marketers, it is easy to get lost in the constant march of technological progress.
Driver recruiters, on the other hand, are attuned to what works in their recruiting strategy. They know the best way to get their job postings in front of the drivers they need to hire. Print is still an important part of most driver recruiting strategies because it is an effective way to increase the amount of phone calls. However, they also integrate SEM, social media, signage, events, and a number of other marketing channels, to drive application submissions.
[testimonial author=”Melissa Stephan, Recruiting Manager at Melton Truck Lines”]Most applications come in online, but if you stop the print advertisements then the online applications stop too.[/testimonial]
Driver recruiters are effective marketers. They build integrated campaigns tailored to very defined audiences, with solid goals to benchmark progress. While most marketers may not have to work under the same stressful conditions as driver recruiters, they can learn quite a bit from a powerful recruiting strategy.
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