Employer Branding Campaign - Strengthening Your Own Brand and Attracting Specialists

1. Why are employer branding campaigns important?
2. What goals does an employer branding campaign pursue?
3. 4 tips for implementing a successful employer branding campaign
4. What are employer branding campaigns made of?
5. Possible challenges and stumbling blocks
6. What does an employer branding campaign bring?

Our guest author Antonia Stiehler knows that recruiting skilled workers has become a real challenge for many companies. It is particularly difficult to attract talent from the IT sector in the course of advancing digitization. Here, in addition to the appropriate approach, the choice of suitable candidates in particular decides whether you as a company can decide the "War for IT-Talents" for yourselves.

The balance of power is shifting in the job market: While job seekers are experiencing golden times, the shortage of IT professionals in particular is causing horrendous costs in companies. Many companies are therefore looking for new, innovative ways and ideas to recruit young talent. In this case, Employer branding could be the solution for you.

Why are employer branding campaigns important?

What exactly does employer branding mean? In short, it is the strategy, from the combination of human resources and marketing, with which the organization is positioned as attractively as possible on the market. Its goal is to communicate your own employer brand outwards in such a way that interested parties associate positive associations with your company as a potential employer.

By successfully positioning themselves as an employer, companies create unique selling points and make themselves particularly attractive to their target group. Through the shift from the employer market to the employee market, employees can now choose their employer. Organizations looking for staff must therefore show good reasons why people should specifically choose them.

What goals does an employer branding campaign pursue?

Marketing concepts specifically tailored to the needs of the HR area aim to win new employees and retain existing ones. The core of the whole is to enhance the attractiveness of the company as an employer brand. Concepts should be individually tailored to the organization and correspond to the vision, mission as well as CI and corporate culture.

Once these factors are defined, representable and livable, you can develop and implement appropriate measures. This way a long-term securing of skilled workers can be achieved. You should definitely deal with what you should pay attention to in an employer branding strategy.

4 tips for implementing a successful employer branding campaign

1. Theme idea of your employer branding campaign

Depending on the size and agility of your organization, your employer branding campaigns can vary greatly. In general, you can align yourself with the following points like a red thread.

In the next step, you must of course adapt it individually to the strategy of your company. Your employer branding campaign should be based on a tangible and authentic idea. Authenticity is important for the external representation of your organization and the campaign. Because potential new employees do not want to experience any nasty surprises (nor does your employer himself) when they choose a company. When posting and planning social media posts, social media planning tools can help you.

Possible examples are suitable for posts on social media or in the news area:

• Posts about the preferences and interests of your employees, through which you give them a voice
• Small interviews with the employees of the different departments, through which you give insights into the way of working and tasks in your company. Show what you have to offer
• Information about developments, innovations or benefits of your organization
• Introduction of new team members in combination with welcome greetings - celebrate new people who enrich your community. This creates a feeling of appreciation and potential interested parties can identify and empathize
• Postings on events that show that you also offer joint activities besides work
• Communicate your values: Diversity, equality, tolerance, flexible working models, sustainability. These are topics that virtually all employees are interested in
• Content "out of the line". Come up with something extraordinary that will bring a smile to your followers' faces and encourage them to interact

To get you started, you can find the most important basics on social media for companies on OMR Reviews.

2. Target group of an employer branding campaign

You yourself know best which skills suitable candidates should bring for your position to be filled. It often makes sense to create personas to accurately determine the target group.

Once you have worked out the characteristics of the target group, you can think about how to best reach and address them. Characteristics used to define target groups can be driven locally, demographically or by required skills.

First, ask yourself which position needs to be filled, and determine your needs on that basis. Once it is clear who you are looking for, suitable texts can be written, visual material created, and the appropriate communication platforms selected in follow-up. Because you will reach trainees, school pupils and students in different ways than people with work experience, specialists who are in a secure employment relationship, job seekers or potential employees who are to fill a part-time position.

3. The right channels for employer branding

Choose your communication channels thoughtfully. Where does your audience hang out? Where do the most interactions take place? Possible platforms are: company website, own news section, newsletter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Xing, TikTok, Snapchat or YouTube.

4. Useful tools for implementing employer branding campaigns

A modern website and a career page is an important prerequisite. In addition, a simple and automated application process should be integrated. Create creative online job ads and share them regularly. Also use rating portals like Kununu and Google MyBusiness. Is there a possibility for cooperations with schools, vocational schools or universities? Implement a school marketing that works for your organization.

For our employer branding campaigns we work with the following tools:

• Mailchimp – easy integration into websites and intuitive user interface, the usability is top
• WordPress – Avada is a very extensive template, with which you can represent a lot

• Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom – for image editing and graphic design

• Awardz - suitable for finding possible awards
• Planner in Microsoft Teams - for internal votes and task coordination, who does what by when?
• Microsoft SharePoint - as a common storage place and for the common + simultaneous editing of documents

What are employer branding campaigns made of?

"Fulda, do you've got what it takes?", with this challenge, technically-minded, creative and motivated people from the region were challenged to playfully deal with complex tasks. To strengthen the image and awareness of bytewerk GmbH and establish the company as a desired employer of the region, the "Tekkie Award" was brought to life. This is a creative competition which aims to strengthen digital thinking, arouse enthusiasm for computer science and promote talents of all ages. The reason is obvious: many technically minded and motivated people strengthen our economy.

In the path of digital transformation, companies and IT-experts must work closely together. With our campaign, industry, university and media were brought together and an innovative, hybrid digital campaign was rolled out. Besides bytewerk as organizer, seven industry partners and 7 supporters in the partner network of the Teckie Award participated. These included educational institutions, business development agencies, a media house and sponsors of the city of Fulda.

• Round 1: With successful participation by solving all 8 puzzles on the website of the awards, the participants had the opportunity to qualify for the final.
• Round 2: In the end, the 40 best finalists were invited to us for the final event. Here, 20 more questions had to be answered in the form of a quiz to win the Teckie Award or one of the other valuable prizes. The final event also allowed our partners and supporters to get in touch with the 40 finalists. Many contacts were made in a relaxed environment.

The most important phases of the employer branding campaign:

1. Concept: Idea finding, concept development
2. Establishment of the basics: Creation, programming of the website, naming, conditions of participation & privacy policy, logo development, design of print files, creation of a partner PDF for project presentation, creation of a press release, concept development for technical schools and the University of Fulda, concept development for social media, newsletter creation, brand registration Teckie Award etc.
3. Final Event: Planning & Concept (Location, moderation, digital invitation management, catering etc.), Execution Final Event
4. End of the campaign:Post-processing Tekkie Award
5. Campaign advertising: To generate sustainable reach, you should advertise the award for various recognitions (Human Resources, digital campaign)

To give you a rough idea of how much time we spent on our HR campaign, here is a small overview of the time frame:

• Concept and planning: 6 months
• Partner acquisition: 2 months
• Round 1, the participants could participate online from 01.04.2022 to 31.05.2022
• The final event on-site in the company took place on 10.06.2022 from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Thus, the total duration of the project was approximately 1 year
• Three employees were responsible for the conception and implementation described above.

In advance, you should deal with the measures of employer branding.

Possible challenges and stumbling blocks

When you decide to launch a new employer branding campaign, there are often neither experiences nor reliable forecasts for the success of the project. Possible skepticism must therefore be faced with conviction and courage. If you manage to spread the idea successfully and reach your target group, you can also book unforeseen successes.

What does an employer branding campaign bring?

Traditional fairs or ads on job portals have lost their appeal for many applicants. With your campaign, you can make new apprentices, interns, students and skilled workers aware of you.

This is how you manage to counteract the shortage of skilled workers in the long term and fill open positions. Especially on LinkedIn and Instagram you can expect a strong increase in your followers. The possibly most important factor for successful employer branding is a modern corporate culture. Today, the focus of most modern companies is on decentralised, self-determined decision-making powers and a collaborative leadership style.

Flexible working hours, an open error culture as well as the compatibility of family and profession are important cornerstones for existing and potential new employees to feel appreciated and comfortable in your team. By focusing on employer branding and positioning as an employer brand, you can achieve a significant image boost.

The goal of every organization should be to establish itself as a desired employer for talents and skilled workers and at the same time bind current employees in the long term. There are not too few skilled workers, but too few visible, attractive employers.