Social media advertising is a powerful tool to get your recruitment message in front of new candidates and clients, and there’s a good chance your competitors are already experimenting with it.
But when comparing platforms like Meta’s Facebook or Instagram, and a more professional network such as LinkedIn, which one are you meant to choose?
Today, we’re diving into the differences between Meta ads and LinkedIn, the benefits of each, and where to get started.
In this article:
What are Meta Ads?
What are LinkedIn ads?
Does social media advertising work?
LinkedIn vs. Meta ads – the benefits of each
How to choose which advertising platform to use for your agency
Not sure you want to do it yourself? Give the experts a call
Understanding social media advertising
What are Meta ads?
Meta ads are a type of digital ad which is served to Meta users – that is, mainly Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.
They come in a variety of formats (videos, images, carousels, catalogues and more), and can be targeted to specific user demographics, locations and interests. When set up, your message is delivered alongside users’ content feeds, articles and stories, increasing brand awareness or attracting clicks as users go about their regular social media scrolling.
What are LinkedIn ads?
LinkedIn advertising is designed to help users reach business users with their ad message, serving promotions in a variety of formats to the largest professional network in the world.
Formats include sponsored content, boosted posts, sponsored InMail messages and simple text ads. Here you’re able to target users with highly granular audience segmentation, fine-tuning your campaign to reach only the people most likely to be interested.
Does social media advertising work?
The short answer is yes, generally social media advertising is considered an effective digital marketing channel for pretty much anybody – recruiters also.
For example, in a report from Wpromote, social media was found to be the top revenue-driving channel for B2B businesses compared to other digital marketing channels, particularly good at driving both brand awareness and new leads.
Learn more: Why Content Marketing Funnels Are Essential For Recruiters
LinkedIn vs. Meta ads – the benefits of each
While both LinkedIn and Meta are solid advertising platforms with a lot of opportunities for Australian recruiters, there are different benefits to advertising on each - based on their individual strengths. Often you would choose one or the other, unless you had a larger budget which could accommodate both.
We’ll come back to figuring out which is right for you later, for now let’s look at the pros of each.
Benefits of Meta advertising for recruiters
Large audience network: Meta is an enormous platform - in Australia alone there are over 20 million Facebook users. When it comes to getting the word out about your recruitment agency, you won’t find a bigger social media advertising opportunity.
Typically lower cost: Meta ads are considered pretty cost-effective compared to other social platforms, able to reach more people with a bit less budget.
Lots of creative control: Meta offers a lot of creative options and control for its ads, which means you can test and experiment with a wider variety of ad types and styles to see which is the most effective for your recruiter brand.
Benefits of LinkedIn advertising for recruiters
Highly granular audience targeting: Because LinkedIn tracks not only who people are, but what they do, where they work and what they like, you can get really nuanced in your targeting approach – able to really explicitly tell the platform to whom you want to deliver your ads.
Dedicated professional network: LinkedIn is a social platform with a purpose. It is a massive professional network (about 15 million users in Australia) where people go to connect with other professionals, share business insights and discuss their industries. When you’re trying to reach a higher-level business audience – such as new clients – you’re better guaranteed to find them on LinkedIn. Depending on your recruitment niche, of course.
Higher-quality leads: Because of the better targeting and overall business focus of the platform, LinkedIn tends to provide higher-quality leads than Meta.
How to choose which advertising platform to use for your agency
To quote Madox Sto Tomas, our paid media lead here at Three Sixty, “LinkedIn is a sniper rifle, Meta is a shotgun.”
Meta’s broad audience and extensive creative control allows you to go wide with your campaign. You’ll experiment with different creative messaging and audience groups to see who you can hit in a very large market.
LinkedIn, meanwhile, is more about going narrow – targeting your focus, honing a specific message, and reaching a deliberate group of people.
Picking the right platform for your recruitment advertising needs is about understanding who you want to target, and why. If you need to raise awareness with a large group of people, or you’re just starting out for the first time and want to keep that budget under control, Meta is probably right for you. But, if you know your message and you know your audience and now you want to drive high-quality leads (such as new client interest), LinkedIn might be more effective.
A note about industry specialisations
Your unique industry niche may also dictate where you should advertise, based on where your audience likes to hang out. Before spending any money on social media ads, make sure you’ve deep-dived into your target audience and identified the most likely platform to catch their attention on.
You may find that your clients or candidates don’t quite fit the general mould we’ve described in this article, in which case you’d adjust your strategy to suit. Not sure how to do this? Give us a call and we can help.
By way of a rough guide:
Sector | For candidates | For clients |
Hospitality, events and hotels | Meta | |
Industrial and mining | Meta | |
Healthcare | Meta | |
Tech | ||
Professional services | ||
Education | Meta | |
Construction | Meta | |
Retail | Meta | |
Government |
Where to start with Meta ads as a recruiter
We asked Madox for his advice on starting Meta advertising for the first time, and he gave us these three recommendations:
1. Start with organic
"You have to start by establishing regular organic activity within the page you want to advertise on,” he said. “The credibility of a page is becoming a big factor not only organically, but now on the paid side too.”
He explained that users want to know that the ads they’re clicking on come from a real business, and one way to establish that is to ensure you have a good presence already on your chosen platform. That way, when people research who you are, they’ll see that not only are you real, but other users already trust your business.
Learn more: Why Multichannel Marketing Is Essential For Your Recruitment Agency
2. Differentiate yourself
“Next would look into your USPs and really differentiate yourself,” Madox continued. “A large audience on Meta means there’s lots of competition as well."
Basically, there’s a lot of noise on Facebook and Instagram. You can still get great results from these platforms, but you’re battling a lot of other organisations to do so. Getting really clear on your unique value and upping your recruitment branding game will go far to helping you cut through the chatter.
3. Test test test
“Lastly, really invest a lot in testing. Because Meta’s algorithm is more nuanced with its creative choices, your creative will do about 80% of the work.”
Madox went on to say that you shouldn’t be afraid to advertise untested creative ideas, or package your agency in a different way to other platforms. It all generates insights, and those insights could go on to help you fine-tune your message and supercharge your reach.
You won’t know what works until you try.
Where to start with LinkedIn ads as a recruiter
Next we talked to Madox about LinkedIn, and how a strategy here might differ from advertising on Meta.
1. Don’t start on LinkedIn
“In my experience, people tend to have already figured out their target audience by the time they come to LinkedIn,” he said. “LinkedIn offers an opportunity to go really deep, it’s so much more calculated, whereas on Meta you just try something and hope it sticks.”
From a performance standpoint, it’s often best to start with Meta. Eventually you get into LinkedIn once you’re really solid on your branding, and you know what you want to achieve. It's a more expensive platform on which to test ideas.
Is it ever OK to start on LinkedIn? If you’ve done a lot of audience research, your marketing message is fairly mature already and you have a slightly larger budget, you could trial LinkedIn and see how you go.
2. Clean up your contact lists
"LinkedIn validates your existing contact lists within the platform, so having a robust list and ensuring it’s free of spam and errors really helps a campaign get easy wins. Having that list is essential compared to, say, Meta, where it’s not really a huge deal.”
3. Try different messaging
You might not do as much creative testing on LinkedIn compared to Meta, but there are still opportunities to test.
One great area of opportunity is to experiment with different messaging using conversation ads. These ads allow you to build automated mini-conversations within LinkedIn Messaging, which creates a choose-your-own-path style of ad served straight to people's inboxes. Even subtle tweaks in your wording choices can generate quite different results, giving you room to play and find out what the best message is for your audience.
“That’s not something you can do on Meta, so people often gravitate to that approach.”
Not sure you want to do it yourself? Give the experts a call
Madox and the team here at Three Sixty are experts in both digital marketing and recruitment. We know what recruiters need to succeed online, and we can help you with both the creative and tech side of social media advertising.
Save yourself the time and outsource it to someone who can get you results. Contact us today for a no-obligations consultation call and let’s see what we can do for you.
