Recruitment Marketing:
A Smart, Low-Cost Boost to Your Hiring Strategy
Key Takeways
• SHRM reports the top hiring challenges include fewer applications, heavy competition, and increased ghosting.
• Skilled trades and industrial manufacturing are among the most difficult roles to fill.
• Recruitment marketing works best when combined with targeted headhunting to engage high-quality candidates directly.
• Advance Recruitment provides custom hiring reports, campaign strategy, and proactive outreach to improve hiring outcomes.
• Compared to staffing firms or job boards, recruitment marketing is more affordable and delivers better long-term results.
Recruitment is getting harder. Whether you’re a healthcare system trying to staff clinical roles, a school district looking for teachers, or a manufacturer in need of skilled labor, talent is tough to come by.
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently surveyed hiring managers to better understand their challenges in sourcing the right talent. The organization found:
Among organizations experiencing recruitment difficulties in the last 12 months, the top three challenges include a lower number of applications (60%), competition from other employers (55%), and an increase in candidate ‘ghosting’ (46%).
SHRM also found that positions in the skilled trades, such as industrial manufacturing, were the third-most difficult positions to fill in 2024.
While some organizations are investing in tools to speed up hiring and streamline recruiter workflows, there’s a big opportunity that often gets overlooked: recruitment marketing.
What Is Recruitment Marketing?
Recruitment marketing is the use of paid media to reach prospective job candidates. Unlike job boards or staffing firms, which focus only on active applicants, recruitment marketing targets both active and passive candidates with messaging that builds awareness and drives interest over time.
It’s not a replacement for job postings or talent acquisition. Instead, it’s a cost-effective complement that helps you reach the right people before they’re actively looking and before your competitors get to them.
A Funnel, Not a Funnel Vision
The hiring process works like a funnel. At the top, people are just becoming aware of your brand and workplace culture. In the middle, they’re beginning to consider new opportunities and gather information. At the bottom, they’re ready to apply and engage.
Recruitment marketing fills the top and middle of the funnel. It builds visibility, strengthens your employer brand, and increases consideration among candidates who might not even know your organization is hiring. Then, when those candidates are ready to take action, they’re more likely to apply or respond to outreach.
This is especially important in competitive markets where brand visibility and perception can make or break your ability to attract quality hires.
The High-Volume Problem
While in some ways a high volume of candidates is positive, it also brings challenges to talent-acquisition work. How do recruiters efficiently find candidates who have the skills, knowledge, and motivations that match their company’s needs?
“While in some ways a high volume of candidates is positive, it also brings challenges to talent-acquisition work. How do recruiters efficiently find candidates who have the skills, knowledge, and motivations that match their company’s needs?” says LinkedIn VP of Global Talent Acquisition Erin Scruggs.
Recruitment marketing supports that shift by attracting candidates who are more informed, more aligned with your brand, and more likely to be a long-term fit.
How Advance Recruitment Uses Targeted Headhunting
Recruitment marketing is powerful on its own, but when paired with targeted headhunting, it becomes even more effective, especially for hard-to-fill roles.
At Advance Recruitment, we use the same talent-mapping strategies and intelligence that our sister brand, AMG Defense Tech, leverages in highly specialized markets. That means our clients benefit from proactive, precision-based outreach to high-quality candidates who may not be actively applying anywhere.
We start by using detailed market intelligence reports customized to your specific roles, location, and industry to understand where the talent is, what motivates them, and how to reach them. Then we:
This combination of recruitment marketing and direct headhunting means you’re not waiting on the right candidate to find you. You’re already reaching out to them with a message and experience that sets your brand apart.
It Works and It’s Affordable
Recruitment marketing gives you more control over your message, your targeting, and your spend. You decide the roles or departments to prioritize, the audience segments to reach, and the budget to allocate. You can scale efforts seasonally, optimize based on performance, and measure results along the way.
Compared to traditional recruiting tools or staffing agencies, recruitment marketing is often more affordable and just as effective, especially when it’s integrated with your overall hiring strategy.
Where We Come In
At Advance Recruitment, we help clients create recruitment marketing strategies that work. That includes:
