How Radio Tries to Take Down Billboard Recruitment Ads

Out of Home Sales Expert Kevin Gephart

Radio industry publication, Radio Ink, on Aug 14, 2024, published this from Chris Stonick a 30-year Radio Recruiting Ad Consultant:

Want to destroy the idea of billboard recruitment? Me too, so I do it all the time.  According to billboard experts, you should have no more than seven words on a billboard.   I can’t write a great ad in seven words or less. Radio allows you to tell a story… or stories!  With the amount of words you can get in one sixty-second radio ad, you’d have to buy 26 billboards back-to-back to back-to-back ETC. This is a powerful mental image! Use it to take down billboards!

With all due respect to Mr. Stonick, trends are like horses, they’re easier to ride when you’re going in the same direction!   Microsoft study of consumer attention spans shows that our collective attention span, on average per person, has decreased by one third in just 13 years (down from 12 seconds to just 8). We now have the attention span of a goldfish! Does the prospective applicant have the attention span for a 175-word radio message?

Radio recruitment ads are also a budget challenge. No advertiser can afford the staggering cost of telling their full story(s) in broadcast or print. Americans sitting around listening to radio for extended periods of time to get “the story” started its decline after the FDR administration. The cost of “telling your full story” to the masses is wasteful, given there are too many people consuming the message who are not in the target market.

Creative directors at some of the largest ad agencies have long known the brilliance of brevity. If an ad concept works on a billboard, it will work anywhere. Successful recruitment advertisers focus on the 7 to 10 words, and the thousand words conveyed by the picture, that will garner web visits, in person visits, job fair attendance, or any applicant activation. The best brand advertising strategists know if they get the consumer to retain the key 7 to 10 words when they run a 30 second radio commercial, they’ve gotten their ad value. Trying to fill 175 words in a radio script is like the nervous, new sales rep that keeps talking to the prospect hoping to hit on the right message. The number of words isn’t the object, the relevance and resonance of the message is. Billboard recruitment advertising amplifies the critical 7 to 10 words plus the thousand words the picture in the ad conveys, to drive response.

If Mr. Stonick (or anyone) is challenged to come up with the compelling 7 to 10 words that will drive immediate applicant response, no worries. There are hundreds of billboard creative directors standing by across the US to help. They, along with billboard company account executives, specialize in helping first time recruiters get results using OOH media. They do it with turnkey, easy to administer, effective, and immediate recruitment campaigns.

With a radio recruitment campaign, you might typically buy a sports station, a soft rock station, a heavy metal station, a hip-hop station, and a country station to reach multiple demographics. Out of home reaches all demographics, psychographics, social-economic groups, and ethnic groups for the same dollar.

Because of the billboard targetability based on location(s), recruiters can attract diversity, equity, and inclusion candidates they so desperately want. It is also tangible proof of a company’s DEI outreach.

Billboard recruitment advertising delivers three audiences for the price of one: the current job seeker, the emerging job seeker (not yet on recruitment websites), and the shadow audience (people who may see the ad and refer it to someone they know).

Because billboard messaging is 24/7, it reaches candidates who work all shifts, including somebody who potentially wants to get off third shift to work daytime hours.

It’s no wonder why during a missing persons crisis, when the recruitment message is most critical, finding the missing, organizations overwhelmingly turn to using intrusive billboards. The fact that billboards typically deliver cost per thousand ad impressions (views) (CPM) 2/3 to 3/4 less than radio cost per thousand is why you see more recruitment advertising on billboards. It delivers superior return on investment.

Selling OOH recruitment advertising faster is one of the subjects being taught right now at the OOH Sales Academy.

Now is the time to allocate training investment in your 2025 budget to secure a competitive advantage for your sales reps; enroll them in the next session of the OOH Sales Academy, which begins in early January 2025 and will run for 12 weeks. You can be invoiced in either December or January.

Find more information here: OOHSalesFaster.com/sales-academy/ or call me at 612-387-5349.  Email is KevinJgephart@gmail.com.

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2 Comments

  1. With services like Spotify and Xm satellite streaming services being available on many car stereos that are standard issue on new vehicles and most people use these services. Especially the coveted 18 to 35 year old demographic. I have not listened to a broadcast radio station in probably ten years. I find it odd that you see radio stations advertising o billboards from time to time but I have never heard a billboard company advertise on a radio station.

  2. My first job in billboard advertising came from a billboard recruitment ad. My first job in radio advertising came from college on campus recruitment. I don’t like to negatively sell either medium, but radio’s fragmentation is hard to ignore. Billboards are the oldest form of advertising and the only medium all others use to promote themselves. Ever see a radio show advertised on a billboard? Yes. Ever hear a radio ad for a billboard company? Nope.