In recruitment advertising, a lot of money is spent on things like search engine optimization and marketing, job boards, banner advertising on industry sites, email – etc. Online advertising is key to your ability to drive qualified candidates to your site. Investing in these programs is an important part of your success as it casts a wide net to attract qualified prospects.

Yet too often, the people who come to your site leave without delivering a resume or an application – Statistics tell us that most resume and application activity happens during work hours. So what happens when a boss or coworker walks in, the applicant drops what they are doing and may close the browser.

And what about those who did leave a resume or application? How valuable would it be to have continued dialogue with them after they leave your career site?

Retargeting allows you to recapture their attention, those who applied and those who didn’t, and re-message them by sending them either back to:

• Your Career Website

Or redirecting them to:

• Your Landing Page, where they could be surveyed
• Employee Testimonials, where they could hear from people they would work with if they worked for you
• Videos that could talk about the company and tell a story
• Industry News – maybe something innovative your company was involved with or an award you won

The point is, retargeting allows you to communicate with your candidates the way you would like to – if you had the time.

It gives you the opportunity to make your advertising investment pay off by building a relationship with the skill sets you hire, now and in the future.

There are 3 different types of retargeting. Site, Email and Creative. All of them involve placing a cookie on the computer of the visitor and delivering an ad to them on other websites. Retargeting is critical to your marketing efforts for one primary reason – a candidate who has expressed their interest in you by visiting your web site is more qualified than one who did not visit your web site. Retargeting allow you to focus your ad dollars on these “pre-qualified”, or “filtered” candidates which will improve your ability to attract the talent you want.  Keeping your communication highly relevant by serving ads based on the specific jobs the candidate has reviewed keeps the candidate interested well into the process of sorting resumes and setting up next steps. Your acquisition cost is lowered by targeting only people who have visited your site – 100% target reach.

When your message is served to visitors on lifestyle and information sites chosen by them, your employment brand is associated with their interests and develops a lifestyle affiliation.

Once they leave your site, they are no longer thinking of you – but retargeting allows you to remain top of mind as they move around the net through out the day.

Read more about the details of retargeting at my iOnline Newsletter article. If you have any questions about retargeting, or have experience with it—I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts!