In the first part of this series, we shared how to be more strategic with your employer branding channels and content. Now, we’ll show you how to use analytics to evolve and maximize your efforts. Being a lean team or having limited resources doesn’t need to hold you back if you have the correct information.
Rather than trying to keep up with all the more prominent brands you likely admire and aspire to be, it’s essential to recognize what works for one employer brand might not work for yours. Their audience might be different, their corporate brand might be giving them a boost, or they have resources you don’t. At the end of the day, you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. The important thing is not to get distracted by chasing the next shiny thing that doesn’t serve you or your brand.
Of course, it’s great to see what other brands are doing and what’s trending in the industry. But it’s important to look inward to see what impacts your brand most and where you’re in your employer branding journey. With that insight, you’ll eliminate the busy work and deadweight that holds you back so you can double down on the things that work or pivot to things that will in the future.
Let’s shift our focus on the power data and how to use it.
Analytics: How to Pull Relevant Data
Data might not be the most exciting part of the role for some of us, but it’s necessary to quickly learn and adjust our strategies so we don’t waste our precious resources. Depending on your goals and your available tools, you can approach analytics in a few ways. To keep it simple, I recommend pulling data to understand how your brand is doing overall and pulling more specific data to help with your strategic efforts.
Assessing your overall brand can involve looking at your website traffic, application numbers, referral sources, social media engagement, email open rates, reviews on sites like Glassdoor, etc. This is a high-level view of your brand awareness.
If you want to drill down further, consider looking at things like what content performs best on different channels, which topics people seem to engage most with, if your PPC campaigns are cost-effective, which links people click on in your email newsletters, which pages people review on your career site, if the volume of applicants is quality or not, and listen/video completion rates on your video or audio content.
Consider which metrics are most important and determine if you have the tools to help you pull clean data.
To get you started, here are some tools you can use:
- Google Analytics: website traffic; referral sources; page views; demographics
- Social Media: engagement rates; followers (though this is a vanity metric); content performance; ad performance
- Surveys/Reputation Sites: new hire surveys; employee surveys; feedback/reviews from sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, Comparably, and Blind
- ATS: referral sources; quality of candidates; candidate demographic (e.g., which roles get good flow vs. which struggle; experience level or location of candidates)
- CRM/Email Marketing: engagement rates; open rates; CTRs; content performance; A/B testing
- Ads/Sponsored Jobs: CTRs; CPC; content performance; A/B testing
- Third-party Job Boards: traffic; engagement; CTRs; content performance; candidate demographics
- Employee Advocacy Platforms: employee shares; engagement rates; reach/impressions; CTRs
Once you determine which data makes the most sense for your brand, you can review this over time to identify trends, get a deeper understanding of your target audience(s), and understand how different things perform.
Testing: Using Iterative Improvements to Adapt Your Strategy
There’s a reason growth or experimental marketing exists. Because investing time, money, and resources to launch a big initiative only to watch it flop sucks. That hits us harder for employer branders because our budgets and resources are typically peanuts compared to a traditional marketing team’s. This is why regular testing helps. Your analytics will not just give you a big-picture view. They can also help you evaluate micro tests that build upon that data so you can make more informed decisions.
A/B test visuals or headlines on ads. Consider writing more extended social media captions or keep them short but leverage more video/audio. Test out the time of day to send out that email newsletter. See if your audience responds better to written vs. video content. Understand if your content gets more reach from a brand account or employee advocacy.
You can test many things, and the approach can be quick and painless. So, before investing months in your next initiative, carve out time to do these quick tests to gain valuable insights. Committing to doing this regularly will also allow you to notice when trends change so you can evolve in real time.
Knowing When To Lean In and When To Cut Back
American author William Faulkner once said, “You must kill your darlings.” He meant you may have to eliminate parts you like to optimize the story. It’s about understanding how to optimize your efforts. Data and testing let you know what needs tweaking and more testing and what you need to eliminate. If the math doesn’t work, then you know it’s got to get the boot.
This can be the hardest part because you might discover that the thing you absolutely love to do isn’t working. It’s hard to let that go, but remember, the point of this exercise is to discover how you can make the most impact without completely overwhelming yourself and burning through your resources. As you let things go to focus more on the ones that matter, you’ll see those gains that will keep you motivated and successful.
In conclusion, focusing on the correct data and continuously testing and refining your strategies can significantly enhance your employer branding efforts, even with limited resources. Doing so will streamline your efforts and achieve more meaningful and sustained success in your employer branding journey.