Keyword Advertising - Cost-Per-Click Text Ads Drive Traffic Directly To Your Own Site

By Mike Temkin, Vice President of Strategic Planning and Development, Shaker Recruitment Advertising and Communications

ìShaker builds and manages keyword campaigns for a growing number of clients.î

This is the fourth and final article in a series that will identify whatís ahead in recruitment for the coming year. Whatís Ahead will examine the state of the economy, evolving technologies, strategic planning, and how these issues affect and influence recruitment.

Across industries, the employment marketplace is becoming more competitive. If your recruitment challenges require that you become more aggressive in attracting applicant flow, then you should consider an advertising strategy that enables prospective candidates to see your message above any other job board postings that would compete for applicant attention. You need to have your message where the candidates begin their Internet job search, or where they go to find information about their vocational interests.

While many job seekers go directly to specific job boards and use their search engines to find job opportunities, most Internet users start surfing on search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Your company can now sponsor a text link that goes from a search engine directly to the appropriate page of the employment area of your companyís Web site, or to a micro site with employment information. And you only pay for the sponsorship of the link when a person actually clicks the link and goes to your site.

Shaker builds and manages keyword campaigns for a growing number of clients. For this type of campaign, we build a list of keyword terms appropriate for a clientís employment initiatives, and then we manage a bidding process to secure ad text visibility when a job seeker types in the keyword term. The cost for each term fluctuates on a bidding process depending on the demand for the keyword and the number of times a keyword is entered into a search engine or on a participating network site.

For example, a job seeker goes to a search engine and types in a phrase such as ìpharmaceutical sales jobs in Minneapolis.î When the prospect searches with those words, a brief summary of the employment opportunity will appear at the top of the results list or at the side. If the user clicks on that link to go to the clientís Web site, only then is the client charged the bid amount for the placement.

These cost-per-click text ads not only appear on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Ask.com, but also on job board aggregators such as indeed.com and oodle.com; portals such as AOL and MSN; and news and information sites such as NYTimes.com, cnn.com, iVillage.com and espn.com. The text ads also appear on blogs such as (for pharmaceutical sales jobs) pharmaceuticalsalesjobsblog.com.

There are advantages to having job postings on widely recognized, highly-respected Web sites such as Monster, CareerBuilder and Hot Jobs, as well as geo-targeted and skill set niche sites. Those Web sites have allocated huge marketing budgets to build user recognition and increase the potential for qualified traffic. In fact, in many cases they are using these same keyword advertising techniques to drive traffic to their job boards.

On career boards, your companyís postings receive high traffic flow generated by those sites, as well as the goodwill and implied endorsement from being associated with those well-known brand names. If your company is not well-known, you receive the added value of being seen by job seekers attracted to the job board by the well-known, major companies who have also posted on job boards. Very similar to small companies that benefit from being next to big companies at Job Fairs, by sharing the attendance attracted partially by the reputation and recognition of the well-known companies.

Keyword advertising can be the key to extending the power and value of recruitment advertising for your company, with plenty of potential rewards and very little risk. Have your Shaker Account Executive set up a meeting or conference call with a Shaker Innovative Media Ser vices (IMS) expert so that you can explore the opportunities available to you through Cost- Per-Click Keyword Advertising.

For more information on behavioral marketing and strategic innovative media placement, ask your Shaker Account Executive to arrange a meeting with a representative from our Innovative Media Services Department (IMS), or contact Mike Temkin at mike.temkin@shaker.com.

Recruitment Advertising Employment Conference - David Hurst, Founder of Onrec.com, explains the background to the Online Recruitment HR Conference and Expo, being held on 12-13th September, 2006, Chicago, Illinois