You are competing with carriers nationwide to advertise to all of the truck drivers in your hiring pool.
With the widespread adoption of fly-in programs, you are no longer competing against the carriers who have the same hiring area as you.
To stay relevant in this hyper-competitive market, you need to have great advertisements in multiple places where drivers will interact with them. There is no room to waste ad spend.
Here are the 6 best places to advertise for truck drivers:
- Driver Referrals that Spread Word of Mouth
- Facebook Advertising for Driver Recruiting
- Indeed / ZipRecruiter
- Truck Driving Specific Job Boards
- The Truck Driver’s Inbox
- Recruiting Advertisements On Your Trucks
Driver Referrals that Spread Word of Mouth
Did you know that people are 50 times more likely to make a purchase if they receive a recommendation from a person they trust?
Truck drivers trust other truck drivers far more than they trust recruiters.
Implementing a driver referral program is the best way to generate word-of-mouth advertising for your company.
However,
Driver referral programs can be difficult to execute. Your drivers have to enjoy their job and the incentive has to be strong enough to motivate them to refer their peers.
The more drivers dislike working for you, the higher a financial incentive you will need to offer. If you have a job that drivers love, they will refer the job naturally.
Combining a great job with a reasonable incentive is the best way to run a successful referral program.
Facebook Advertising for Driver Recruiting
There is no platform with a larger audience size and amount of driver engagement than Facebook.
Over 96% of all truck drivers have a Facebook account. Plus, 7 out of 10 of those drivers use Facebook daily for an average of 34 minutes a day.
Facebook is one of the best places to advertise for truck drivers if your goal is to reach the maximum number of people and engage with them.
An effective Facebook advertising campaign will attract new drivers to your positions, and engage former leads. Each lead that comes from Facebook is direct.
Unfortunately, driver recruiting campaigns on Facebook can be a challenge due to the limited amount of targeting that can be done. For best results, your company needs to hire a professional to run your campaign.
Indeed / ZipRecruiter
Indeed and ZipRecruiter are the two most widely known job search engines in America.
While neither of these sites has the audience or engagement of Facebook, 100% of the drivers active on these sites are seeking employment.
Also, these boards have many features to help employers create high-quality listings and attract candidates to their job.
For example, Indeed will “match” your company with all of the leads in your hiring area that meet your description. You can then go through the matches and invite them to apply for your job.
Truck Driving Specific Job Boards
The biggest downside to massive job sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter is that trucking is only a small portion of their business model.
On the other hand, truck driving specific job boards focus entirely on coming up with solutions specifically for carriers. In addition to coming up with solutions, they also are incentivized to grow their driver audience as much as possible.
Sites like CDLLife and TruckersReport are great for generating interest in your positions among drivers.
It is recommended you learn the strengths and weaknesses of each truck driving specific board so you can use them as a tool in the recruiting toolbox.
The Truck Driver’s Inbox
It is not enough to have advertisements on the web that drivers come across and submit their information to.
Drivers are blasted with ads nonstop and they often forget which companies they have submitted their information to.
Once you have collected a driver’s contact information, you need to advertise to them in their inbox. The ads should be sent to both their email and text inbox for optimal results.
Doing this will increase touchpoints and keep the driver engaged with your company. If this is done properly, the drivers who apply to your positions will be excited to hear from your recruiters.
Tools like Zapier, MailChimp, and Twilio make email and text drip campaigns simple to run.
Recruiting Advertisements on Your Trucks
Placing an advertisement on your truck is not a new strategy.
For as long as people have been delivering freight with a truck, there have been ads on that truck.
This strategy is so common because of how effective it is. As your truck drives down the highway, it is essentially a rolling billboard. The audience that will interact with this billboard the most are the people who spend the most time on the road.
A.K.A other truck drivers.
If a driver for another company drives behind your truck for five minutes, and you have a recruiting ad on the back of your truck, that advertisement is the only thing they will notice for five minutes.
There is no other place to advertise that will get a driver’s attention for that long.
Here is the tough part,
You need to make an ad that engages and pique’s the driver’s interest. This is not like digital advertisements where the driver is interacting with the ads on their device. They can only see the ad from afar.
Create an ad that highlights the most attractive part of your job offer followed by a strong call-to-action. Keep in mind the text needs to be large enough that someone can read it from a long-distance away.
Conclusion
There is no magic advertising placement that will solve all of your recruiting needs. To have the best results you need to focus on increasing the number of touchpoints your company has with drivers.
Combining the 6 best places to advertise for truck drivers is a great way to start. Doing so will ensure that drivers will become interested in working for your company.
Not sure how to go about combining these advertisements? Fill out the form below to speak with a Meramec Solutions specialist!
