Advertising on Facebook & Instagram: reach the masses

One way to advertise on Facebook and Instagram is through job marketing. In our previous blog we looked at the concept of job marketing. With job marketing campaigns, you launch your digital recruitment ad through the online channels where your target group spends its time. In the upcoming blog series, we’ll highlight one channel at a time and go deeper into the pros and cons of that channel within the job marketing mix. We kick off with the mother of all social media: Facebook, including its now fully grown little brother Instagram.

Facebook & Instagram

Why advertise on Facebook and Instagram? It’s probably good to briefly explain why both channels are mentioned in the same breath. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion. After this acquisition, Facebook integrated Instagram into its own advertising tool: Facebook Business Manager. Every campaign, including a job marketing campaign, is built with this professional tool. So in principle you develop a job marketing campaign for both Facebook and Instagram, unless you explicitly exclude one of the two channels.

Recommended channels for job marketing campaigns

For a job marketing campaign, we advise using both channels. That’s because our advertising specialists optimise for the number of applicants. In practice, this means you pay for the number of applications that come in. For this reason, you can use both Facebook and Instagram in a job marketing campaign with practically no risk, and decide which of the two offers the most value based on the number of applicants per platform.

Advantages of advertising on Facebook & Instagram

What are the advantages of using Facebook and Instagram in a job marketing campaign? Facebook is still the social medium with the most accounts in the Netherlands. Combined with Instagram, the counter now stands at more than 15 million unique accounts. Because Facebook more or less invented online advertising, the tool in which job marketing campaigns can be built (Facebook Business Manager) is the most advanced. You can select lots of options here, and so target very specifically. Want to reach only master’s students in the north of the Netherlands, for example? No problem. Or perhaps you’d rather get noticed by people over 65 who used to work in the medical sector. That’s possible with Facebook Business Manager too.

Advertising channels for baby boomers

And while we’re on the subject of the over-65s: Facebook is ideal if you want to show your vacancies to baby boomers. Besides acquiring Instagram, Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014. So you could, for example, run a job marketing campaign by advertising on Facebook and Instagram, and then let candidates communicate directly with your recruiters via WhatsApp. It’s safe to say that Facebook Business Manager currently offers the most versatile and all-encompassing advertising package.

Disadvantages of advertising on Facebook & Instagram

Of course, there are also some drawbacks to Facebook and Instagram if you want to run your job marketing campaigns through these channels. While baby boomers are still loyal Facebook fans, the younger generations have long since deleted the app from their phones. They use apps such as TikTok and Snapchat. Instagram is of course still popular with this target group, but it’s definitely something to bear in mind when selecting your ideal channel mix for a job marketing campaign. Advertising on Instagram and Facebook also means you reach a huge audience. So in a job marketing campaign, you’ll also get candidates who aren’t qualified for the job in question.

Quantity vs. quality

Especially for vacancies where you’re looking for highly educated candidates, Facebook and Instagram can sometimes lead to lots of quantity but little quality. Much to the frustration of recruitment consultants, because they spend a lot of time screening and qualifying all the incoming applicants. That’s exactly why we usually offer campaigns on Facebook and Instagram in combination with an interim recruiter from Pro Contact.