Insurance Leaders: STOP burning your money on Facebook ads for recruitment.

?? STOP wasting money on social media job ads to recruit agents! ??

There, I said it.

STOP bleeding money on social media ads to recruit agents.

I know you're exhausted (mentally, physically, and financially!) from engaging social media agencies trying to figure out how to recruit Millennials and Gen Zs.

It's the last thing you should be doing - and I mean that literally - it should be the last step in the recruitment acquisition process. There are so many other things that need to be aligned before you even focus on running ads and sadly - most digital marketing agencies don't want you to know about this when you engage them.

The problem with running ads to recruit is that while you can get a number of leads, they don't matter if they are poor quality i.e. they are not

"Ready to join"

Because dealing with low quality leads means you will get 'ghosted' (they stop responding to your texts).

They not only waste your money, they waste your time and efforts

Plus for those who do turn up, you realise you have to waste a lot of time calling and filtering spams and people who don't really know what they signed up for. They have a ton of objections and despite your assurances, they end the meeting with

"Let me think about it"

You're already stretched for time as a leader, and dealing with poor quality leads will just waste your time further and frustrate you like crazy. It makes you wonder why things aren't working despite engaging a digital marketing agency in this space - who usually promise the world and under-deliver in the end.

Secondly, with low quality leads, you probably will realise that you need to be extremely persuasive with every single lead on why it is a good idea to join your agency. So instead of you qualifying your leads and picking the best candidate to join your agency, the roles get reversed!

You end up spending too much time qualifying yourself and your agency to your leads in telling them why they should join your agency. It makes you look desperate, and that's not how any leader should look like to a candidate.

This is energy draining, unsustainable and a complete waste of time, money and other valuable resources.

You can always generate low quality leads by running ads. This is how it becomes a numbers game. After doing enough appointment setting, follow ups, and meetings, you end up getting rejected 90% of the time.

So...what should you do instead?

If you have been able to generate enough leads from ads but realise that conversion is a real pain in the ass, then you need to work on your agency branding (if you're a director or AD) or your personal branding (if you're a manager / aspiring manager)

Here are some tips to get you started.

1. Focus on your building your agency brand before you invest in ads.

Why? Because

Branding makes your Marketing effective

Marketing with bad branding means you will constantly struggle to make your brand resonate with candidates. Your cost of acquisition of each appointment will keep rising and won't be as effective as you'd like plus it leaves a big hole in your pocket.

The same marketing campaign with good branding means it gets a lot easier for you convert candidates into new recruits, retain them as brand ambassadors, and become strong advocates of the industry when your agency branding is well-put together

Know what your candidates want in terms of a career

2. Understand what Millennial / Gen Z candidates are 1) moving away from (pain) and 2) moving towards (pleasure).

Spending ads to do recruitment can only work if you've fully understood what candidates are looking for. Because here's the reality..

The candidates that you are looking for, aren't looking for you

Typically, there are 2 distinctive types of candidates

1. Young graduates
2. Mid-Career Switchers

Guess what, these 2 demographics primarily fall under the Gen Z and Millennial category, and they don't want the same things as their parents did. If you don't understand what the candidates are looking for in terms of a career, you won't be able to attract the right profile of candidates to your interviews. In other words, no matter how much you spend on ads, it won't appeal to them if you don't understand their psychology.

The younger generation - the Millennials & Gen Zs - have a consumer mindset to joining organisations. They want to know everything they can about your agency and why it is a good choice for them to consider.

They will Google you, check you out on your website and social media profiles, and do their full research before they decide to join.

That's why you need to have your agency brand shine when they're doing their research. This is why conversion is so hard despite generating leads through ads

Running an ad merely plants a seed in your candidate's mind - to join you in insurance.

It is the research that they do after they see your ad that convinces them that your agency is the best agency to join.

Most insurance leaders pay lots of money to spend on ads and website but they don't know what exactly motivates the younger generation in terms of a career. They don't address the the issues that's already on their minds.

Have a candidate journey fully mapped out

Ads may be your starting point to get recruitment appointments, but you need to map out the entire candidate journey from the point they see the ad to the point they fix an appointment. You have to remember, for the younger generation, before they decide to fix an appointment, they will look you up online.

Because

Your first impression is no longer made in person; it is made online

Sadly - most agencies start off with the ad but do nothing about their websites and social media pages. You need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Who are you targeting? Young Graduates or Mid-Career Switchers or both?
2. What is the intention of the ad?
3. What do you want them to do after filling in the form on the ad?
4. What do you want your candidates to see, think and do throughout the process?

Lastly, make sure all of your social media, websites and tech apps are aligned, in-sync, and works well organically, you can then look into running ads.

The content you showcase on your website or social media profiles must have content that builds desire within the candidate to join you. It has to answer the undercurrent questions in their minds. When your website and social media pages fail to showcase key credibility boosters, you end up paying a lot for ads with a low return on investment.

Is that what you engaged a digital marketing agency for?

Running ads is only a small portion of the bigger issue at hand.

To get started, ask yourself if you have the following credibility boosters on your agency's website.

1. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) by candidates about the insurance career
2. Testimonials of agents who joined (mid-career switchers and young graduates)
3. Your (Director's) failure resume (and how you succeeded despite your failures)

Bonus - If you have a founder's story, make it into a branded video like mine below

Fun fact: I got my founder's story done by the National Integration Council (Prime Minister's Office) while getting paid as an "actor" to feature in it. It has over 900,000+ views on YouTube.

If you've been through the heartache of bleeding dollars on your ads with low ROI, you know how it feels like.

When you don't control your marketing, you don't control your results

Stop the ads immediately, start working on your agency branding, and see the difference in the quality of candidates you attract once invest in agency branding.

This does 3 things

1) You save a LOT of your hard earned money in the long term

2) You don't have to rely on ad campaigns to recruit anymore i.e. your recruitment leads don't stop even when your ad campaigns stop

3) Recruitment stops being harder than sales i.e. you will start noticing that you are setting more appointments with candidates who are eager and ready to join you.

Best of luck!

Vivek

P.S. - If you would like to know the different aspects to branding your agency, click this link: https://attractiveagency.scoreapp.com/