I’ll start off my post with a question. Can anyone tell a different between Rogers and Bell ads? I could until today. While watching TV I happened to catch one of Rogers/Bell spots. I didn’t pay that much attention to it as I was walking away to grab a cup of tea. However, I did catch a few seconds of the visuals (the blue and red couch) and heard the whole voiceover. But as I returned to the living room, it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure who the ad was for. Was it a Rogers ad or a Bell ad?
A little bit of a background for my international readers and friends. Here in Canada, the dominant telecommunications companies are Rogers and Bell, and some would argue Telus belongs up there as well. Both Rogers and Bell compete with one another head-to-head on services such as internet, wireless service, home phone, and TV. In the past few weeks Rogers and Bell have been running ads indirectly referring to one another via imagery why one is better than the other. But somehow the ads from both camps are starting to look almost identical. Even their websites are taking on the same imagery and color schemes.
According to The Toronto Star article Good News For Us in Rogers, Bell Phone Fight both companies are ‘waging a war for your business’ as they get ready for new service providers to enter the market later this year. Having almost identical ads doesn’t help either camp, unless the campaigns are aiming to confuse everyone.
While job hunting through the latter part of ‘08 and some of ‘09, I came across this article: Use Facebook Ads to Make Employers Hunt You Down. A good friend of mine and a fellow blogger Andrew Kinnear sent it to me via StumbleUpon. After reading it and studying each case I decided to launch my own experiment. In addition to using the Facebook ads as an avenue for employers to hunt me down, I also wanted to find networking opportunities.
Using the techniques and strategy described in the article I ran two Facebook ads. I hyperlinked the ads to a page on my site that clearly spelt out what I was trying to achieve with my Facebook ad experiment. In the copy I thanked the visitor for clicking on my ad, provided a very brief description of who I am and what type of work I was looking for. Also, I provided a link to my LinkedIn profile. As a call to action, I asked the visitor to provide me with a lead to a job opening or a simple networking opportunity with someone at their organization by filling out a contact form.
Facebook Ads allows you to specifically target a group of people that you intend your message to reach. I decided to target Facebook members that are employed by one of the companies that I always wanted to work for. Below are examples of ads I ran and the results. Each ad ran for a week.
As you can see, Ad01 produced better results (CTR%) than Ad02. My friend Andrew Kinnear hypothesized that audience was more drawn to my casual profile than a corporate look because they identified it as being more realistic and authentic; whereas the corporate look in Ad02 looks like a stock photo.
(Fill the black spaces with the company name of your choice.)
Also, when I ran a second Facebook Ads experiment targeting a number of organizations in the same industry with a generic message, the response and results were not impressive at all. As you can see below the CTR% was only .23, even with low impressions.
I was extremely surprised with the results (from Ad01 and Ad02). I received a handful of emails, some of which led to introductions to a recruiter, other people in the organization, and having my resume passed around within.
Some of the folks that helped me out I’ve connected with on LinkedIn and still stay in touch with them today. Although I did not find work with my target company, I was able to use this experiment as an interesting topic of conversation during my hiring interviews and networking meetings. I was even called into an interview because the hiring manager was extremely interested in hearing about my job hunt tactitcs. What made the experiment a success was (a) targeting the right demographic, (b) creating a targeted message, (c) genuine appeal for help, and (d) authenticity. At the end of the day I was able to find work at another great company that I admire for innovation, great business sense, and people centric culture.
