Why recruitment marketing campaigns are the key to unlocking your employer brand’s impact

You’ve done the groundwork. You’ve built your employee value proposition (EVP), nailed your messaging, refreshed your careers site, and have creative that you’re genuinely proud of. But something’s missing. The traffic isn’t quite where it should be. Applications are slow. And the question keeps creeping in: why aren’t more people seeing your ads?

It’s a common scenario, 85% of HR professionals say recruitment is becoming more like marketing, yet too many employer brands stop short of activating their message.

And that’s where recruitment marketing campaigns come in. Without them, your brand sits quietly in the background. With them, it gets seen, engaged with, and crucially, drives action.

Recruitment marketing is how you strategically promote your employer brand to the people you want to hire. It’s not just about posting jobs, it’s about building awareness, shaping perception, and making sure the right audiences know who you are, what you stand for, and why they should apply.

At its core, recruitment marketing is about connection. You’ve built a brand that reflects who you are as an employer; now it needs to be seen, remembered, and trusted. Through the right mix of targeting, creative, and media strategy, you can put your brand in front of the right people, at the right time, with the right message.

When we talk about campaigns, we don’t mean a few social posts here and there. We mean multichannel activity across the likes of Meta, Google, LinkedIn and more - built to reach specific audiences, test messaging, and drive real outcomes.

It covers everything from awareness to consideration, from bold, creative content that stops the scroll to messaging that meets people where they are in their decision-making process. It’s trackable, so you can see what’s working, what’s not, and where to optimise.

When we run recruitment marketing campaigns at Wiser, we’re not just chasing impressions for the sake of it. Everything we do is designed to do three key things:

Reach: Your employer brand deserves an audience

No matter how strong your message is, it won’t make an impact if it isn’t seen by the right people, with only 33% of job seekers actively looking for a job, you need to reach the remaining 67% of passive candidates who might be open to the right opportunity if they see it (Glassdoor, 2024).Paid promotion solves this by scaling your brand visibility where it counts.

Using advanced targeting tools, you can deliver your content directly to candidates filtered by job title, location, experience, industry, and even online behaviours. This means you’re not waiting for the right talent to find you; you’re actively reaching them with relevant messaging, increasing the chances they’ll engage.

Why does this matter? Recruitment is often about building familiarity and trust long before a candidate applies. Consistent exposure keeps your brand top of mind and improves candidate quality over time.

Resonance: Make your messaging land

Once you’ve built reach, the next critical question is: are people actually paying attention?

This is where creative strategy becomes vital. Effective employer brand campaigns use tailored messaging and visuals that resonate with distinct audience segments. Early career candidates have different motivations and concerns compared to experienced hires, and what works in one market may fall flat in another. By aligning your content to these nuances, you create relevance, and relevance drives engagement.

But it doesn’t stop there. Launching campaigns is just the beginning. Real-time data lets you track which headlines grab clicks, which visuals hold attention, and how candidates behave once they reach your landing page. Are they bouncing immediately, or are they spending time exploring what you offer?

This insight is invaluable. Your employer brand might sound compelling internally, but until it’s tested in the real world, you won’t truly know how it lands with your audience. Recruitment marketing is an ongoing process of learning and refining, so you can continually optimise messaging that converts interest into applications.

3. Results: Turning attention into action

We don’t just want to be seen. We want people to act.

Recruitment marketing gives you full-funnel visibility – from impression to application (and even hire, if we’re plugged into the right data). That means we can see what’s working and where there’s drop-off. We can tweak, optimise, and improve performance while campaigns are live.

You get tangible results: clicks, traffic, dwell time, applications. And not just any applications – quality ones.

We’ve seen campaigns where the highest-performing channel on impressions isn’t the one that drives conversions. That insight is gold because it tells us how your brand is behaving in the wild and how we can fine-tune your media mix to match business needs. 

You might have the best employer brand in your sector, but without campaigns, it’s not working as hard as it could.

You’re relying on organic reach, which is becoming tougher every year. You’re missing the opportunity to build brand familiarity with passive talent. And you’re not gathering the data needed to make smarter hiring decisions.

Worse still, your competitors are doing all of the above: building awareness, improving recall, and creating talent pipelines before roles even go live.

Totally valid. Recruitment marketing isn’t about throwing money at the problem – it’s about being intentional and strategic. It means knowing exactly who you want to reach, what message will resonate, and what success looks like.

That’s why every campaign we build starts with clear, measurable KPIs. Whether your goal is to increase clicks, drive completed applications, or boost traffic to a refreshed careers site, we use real performance data to guide every decision, from which channels to activate to the creative concepts we develop.

Targeted campaigns mean your budget goes toward reaching the candidates who matter most, reducing wasted impressions and boosting efficiency. Plus, this isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it approach. We review campaign performance weekly, making data-driven tweaks to optimise results and ensure your investment works as hard as possible.

We make every pound work harder - and you can see exactly where it’s going.

A well-defined employer brand is a powerful thing. But until it’s out there – in front of the people who matter – it’s not driving change. According to LinkedIn, companies with strong employer brands reduce cost‑per‑hire by up to 50% and enjoy 28% lower turnover as a result.

Recruitment marketing is how you turn your EB into action. It’s how you scale your message, build awareness, and bring in quality candidates who already know what you stand for. It’s the difference between hiring reactively and building long-term pipeline.

If you’ve made the effort to define who you are as an employer, don’t stop there. Give that story the platform it deserves.

Recruitment marketing isn’t about pushing people to apply. It’s about showing up consistently, building recognition, and making sure your employer brand is felt, not just documented.

And if you need a partner to help you do it? That’s what we’re here for.