How to Design a Targeted Recruitment Ad Series
Of my own accord, I independently created these project pieces to test my professional skills and expand my knowledge and experience. I was not hired or paid to complete this work.
As a component of a three-fold project I created to build and keep a solid team, I designed a strategic recruitment campaign to attract quality applicants.
What: Temple Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee roaster and chain of cafes based out of Sacramento, California. They’re known best for upholding high-quality standards, their coffee-knowledgeable staff, and their farm-to-cup, ethically sourced offerings.
Why: Like many players in the service industry, Temple Coffee Roasters has been hit hard by the growing labor shortage as a result of the pandemic. While the demand for a good cup of joe has not declined, Temple Coffee Roasters struggles to recruit and retain cafe team members to serve its product.
The problem: Quality employees are in demand now more than ever, and the only way service-based businesses like Temple Coffee can compete is to pivot their recruitment efforts to capture and keep the interest of quality team members.
The solution: I developed a targeted marketing strategy and accompanying ad series that wouldn’t just find its way in front of the eyes of anyone, but would reach the specific kind of applicant Temple Coffee is seeking.
PART 1: DEFINE AUDIENCE
The first and most important step of any marketing effort is defining the audience. Temple Coffee describes its desired applicant (or in this context, target audience) as someone who:
Is passionate for all things specialty coffee
Has drive to create exceptional experiences for our guests
Is able to thrive as part of a small team in a fast-paced environment
With this in mind, I worked to refine this definition even further. Based on trends identified in satisfied Yelp and Google reviews, the applicant pool ought to include people who are:
Kind
Helpful
Attentive
Charismatic
Sociable
Consistent
Approachable
Organized in their workflow
I took these details to create an avatar of a targeted applicant, personifying this collection of qualities in order to enhance the marketing strategy I would create.
Meet Cody.
Cody is 25, kind hearted, initiates friendly back-and-forths with strangers, and is seeking a job that’s buzzing with activity (and hopefully caffeine).
He’s curious about the specialty coffee scene and loves trying new offerings from local shops. He’s not an expert, but he would be interested to learn what factors make a good cup good and a bad cup bad–mostly so he can impress his next coffee date with his knowledge.
On the weekends, Cody enjoys heading up to Tahoe to ride mountain bikes with friends and coming back to Sacramento to hit up his favorite brewery. The most important thing to him is investing in his circle of peers, so a healthy, fun workplace dynamic is a must.
PART 2: AD SET
Ad #1:
Copy: You’re meant for something more than a mediocre job. Our fast-paced, tight-knit team is looking for someone like you. Make a move and apply today.
Target: Applicants with an adventurous edge that are looking for something more than a 9-5 job.
Thoughts: The intention of this ad is to go outside the box of just coffee-related visuals in the cafe’s Instagram feed. Associating the feelings elicited by an image of an epic view and refreshing outdoors, this ad suggests maybe there’s more to this “coffee job” than meets the eye. Maybe it’s exciting.
Cody’s love of active hobbies would make him a perfect target for a visual like this, hopefully stopping him in his scrolling, inspiring him to read the copy, and giving him the itch to make an adventurous career move.
Ad #2:
Copy: Could be you, but you haven’t joined our team yet! We invest a month’s worth of top-notch training into our baristas because you’re more than a staff member; you’re a coffee professional. Apply today!
Target: Applicants looking for a job with scalable room for growth.
Thoughts: This ad works to challenge the stereotype that service industry positions are dead-end jobs with nowhere to advance. Temple Coffee is renowned in the coffee community for taking the training of their baristas very seriously and they require more from their staff than the average coffee house. An ad like this is meant to appeal specifically to a growth-oriented applicant eager to put in the work to refine their coffee craft and excited that Temple Coffee offers a path to doing so.
Cody’s interested in coffee, but before he disqualifies himself because he has no previous barista experience, this ad will show him Temple Coffee’s thorough training program has him covered.
Ad #3:
Copy: There’s room for everybody’s mug at our table and a spot saved just for you! Join our team of grind geeks, extraction nerds, and coffee connoisseurs. Apply today!
Target: Applicants seeking a place to belong among a tight-knit, diverse team.
Thoughts: This “coffee wheel” not only touches on the varying ways we all like our coffee, but communicates a message of diversity among a group as well. This ad is intended to attract the applicant looking to find more than a job–they want a team to belong in.
Cody’s highest priority is the relationships in his life. In order to market a position to him he’d find enticing, I wanted to include an ad that touched on the comradery and belonging found in the workplace.
PART 3: AD SET UP
Here’s a quick demonstration of how I set up one of these ads using Meta for Business–the all-in-one tool for creating ads across Facebook’s family of apps.
A video walk-through of how to carry out a targeted ad series through Meta for Business. Clicking here will make the video play.