Measuring ROI in Recruitment Marketing

How do you know if your marketing is working? 

Measuring your return on investment (ROI) is the most effective way to find out if your marketing efforts are performing properly. 

But how do you do that? 

On Episode 15 of The Skill Point Podcast we spoke to Matt Comber, the CEO at SourceFlow, to find out more about measuring your ROI in marketing. We took a deep dive into why ROI is important, why you need a strategy and what metrics you should be tracking. 

Read on to learn all about measuring ROI in recruitment marketing!

Start with a Strategy

Measuring stuff is useless if you don’t have a plan for what to do with all that information. Setting goals is the first step to measuring your ROI. Matt said that ‘whether it’s retention, views or revenue, you’ve got to always start with the goal.’ It’s helpful to benchmark where you are now and set tangible targets for where you want to end up. That’s what enables you to see whether your marketing is successful or not. 

Matt also said that ‘measuring the ROI takes a lot of the emotion out of the decision making process. A lot of applications does not equal lots of revenue. Let’s find out why.’ This granular level of analysis shows which areas of your marketing are succeeding and which are draining your time, money and resources. It also gives you concrete evidence of how your marketing is performing, which is invaluable in meetings with senior stakeholders. 

Assess your Sources

The second thing to consider when you’re measuring your ROI is your sources. Tools like Google Analytics can be used to see where your clients and candidates are coming from, such as social media, organic search or paid ads. 

If you’ve got the capabilities on your website, it’s also helpful to track which pages people are spending time on before converting. Matt recommended taking primary sources like social media into account as well as secondary sources such as your website during your conversion funnel. That allows you to see which channels are working and which ones need to be adjusted to encourage conversions. 

‘You should be able to show me the return on investment from an event that we ran,’ said Matt. ‘It comes down to knowing where you want to be, where you are, and which tools you need to have in place to pull the right data out to get you there.’ That data allows you to visualise how effective your marketing is by measuring the conversion rates of each campaign, touchpoint or event.

Consider Self-Reported Attribution 

One way to make sure you’re accurately assessing where your leads are coming from is through a self-reported attribution form. This is a simple field at the end of your sign-up form that asks ‘How did you hear about us?’. You can use drop-down menus or text boxes to make the process easier for leads, but this is one of the most fail-safe ways of tracking when people first become aware of your company. You can then use that data to see how you’re performing. 

Track your Conversions 

In the recruitment industry it’s easy to focus on tracking successful applicant conversions. However, an often overlooked metric is your rate of client onboarding. Marketing often plays a key role in gaining new clients, by producing collateral such as visual branding, written content and practical salary guides. Businesses need to look at a holistic view of their company and ask ‘What’s my best candidate source, what’s my best client source and what’s our best piece of content for demand and lead generation?’, then use those points to measure conversions. 

Measure your ROI

Whatever your goals are, once you’ve set up a system to track and report your conversion rate, you can measure your ROI. For example, you can divide the amount of money you’ve made from new contracts by the amount you spent on the marketing campaign that your client passed through before converting. A standard formula for calculating ROI is this: 

A more marketing specific formula is: 

This should be calculated on a regular basis, such as once a month, to ensure that your marketing is still effective. 

Want to know more? 

Listen to Episode 15 of The Skill Point Podcast here.