Did you have a chance to attend our recent webinar,”2020 Recruiting and Retention Annual Report”? We received more questions than we had time to answer in the allotted time frame, so our presenters on the webinar, Wendy Bartz, Scott Dismuke, and Steve Sichterman, answered them below in this Q&A-style blog post.
If you weren’t able to join the live webinar, don’t worry – you can watch it on-demand anytime!
Question: Can we elaborate on the top funneling approach?
Answer: Marketing is set up like a funnel. The top of the funnel is the Awareness phase, next down is the Consideration phase and finally the Conversion phase. Awareness is broad messaging inviting potential prospects into your Brand Consideration narrows down messaging to share different opportunities and target proven, interested prospects. Conversion is exact target/messaging to the prospect with the job opportunity they’re interested in.
Question: When remarketing is talked about, is that referring to something like a drip campaign that remarkets to leads that you couldn't contact the first time around for example?
Answer: Drip Marketing is definity a part of a remarketing campaign, however there is more to it than that. Traditional drip marketing is a series of emails that are trying to encourage the prospect to give you more information (a full app). Remarketing uses awareness campaigns to educate the prospect about your company, the culture, and the position available. Then moves them down the lead funnel
Question: We're trying something new and it is less stressful for our drivers. We pay salary because we have extended wait times for many of our customers. The miles rate just wasn't working for us. Are other companies going to hourly or salary positions too?
Answer: Now more than ever there have been many ways of experimenting with pay packages to better attract candidates and ensure they’re being compensated fairly for the work they’re doing. There are pluses and minuses to all types - whether it’s salary, per-mile, per-hour, a percentage of revenue generated, or some combination of all the above. A great resource for driver compensation and benchmarking is through the National Transportation Institute (NTI) and their website www.driverwages.com.
Question: What are your thoughts with Facebook Ads and iOS updates?
Answer: Facebook has changed a number of its rules to fall in line with not only iOS updates but also because of government pressure. Currently you can not target based on a number of things including city and zip code. Facebook feels that this could be used as a discriminatory practice.
That being said, Facebook is still an effective means of advertising and should definitely be part of your strategy.
Question: As COVID lifts do we expect the market for drivers to loosen up?
Answer: No. The number of drivers that left the industry in conjunction with the explosion of local delivery jobs being driven by e-commerce will continue to create strong headwinds for the foreseeable future.
Question: How have healthcare benefits played into this since COVID?
Answer: Yes, we have seen drivers become more hesitant to move because of wait times on insurance when they go to a new company. Some companies are developing solutions to bridge the waiting period gap for them.
Question: Any ideas on how to get upper management on board? I feel this is the biggest obstacle for us. We are stuck in "that is the way we have always done it".
Answer: Information is the key. The more information that you can give them about what is going on in the driver hiring market and how it has changed the better. You need to open the lines of communication at your company and position yourself as a subject matter expert in driver recruiting and hiring.
Question: Do you find that unemployment benefit extensions and the stimulus packages have hindered the hiring process and people looking for work?
Answer: It is my belief that it has hurt. Currently in this country we have roughly 7 million open jobs, yet unemployment has been rising (at a slower pace now than last year).
Question: How much should you spend on branding?
Answer: Generally 10% of your budget is our recommendation. It is important that you have the right KPIs in place for each stage of the funnel. For branding your KPIs should be impressions, clicks, click through rate, new sessions/returning sessions. CPC and traffic locations.
Question: Though this question doesn't relate directly to recruiting/retention, it is quite obvious that higher pay for drivers means higher rates to move freight. How is this being sold to customers and what kinds of rate increases (% wise) are being seen in the market overall?
Answer: We do have clients that are talking to their shippers about the driver market and increased cost in driver acquisition. I can not speak to how successful they are.
Question: Everything you talked about regarding marketing and the top funnel etc, I have been advocating for at least 2 years. This is an ongoing battle for me because the person I report to won't accept this, mainly due to the lack of advertising knowledge and current practices. They think I can call up an advertiser and demand they send me leads because that's what they did 20 years ago. Do you have any presentations that explain this?
Answer: Yes, Conversion Interactive Agency can help you with that. Please feel free to reach out to us.
Stay up to date on CDL trucking trends! Be sure to check out the DriverReach blog for other relevant articles and head over to our webinars page for an up-to-date list of upcoming events and on-demand recordings.
Listen to Taking the Hire Road podcast, hosted by Jeremy Reymer and in collaboration with FreightWaves, for timely conversations with industry experts. For more information, or to join a live group demo, visit www.driverreach.com/livedemo