Marketing for staffing agencies

Typical bottlenecks and solutions

1. Orders in, applicants missing

Why: A client company asks at short notice for several forklift drivers for the late shift, and too few are available in the pool. Job boards deliver the same profiles as for every competitor, and skilled manual workers rarely search actively. If you don't fill the positions within a few days, you lose the order to the next staffing agency that can deliver faster.

Solution (Recruiting campaigns (part of Performance Marketing)): We run recruiting campaigns on Meta and TikTok where manual-trade candidates spend their free time, and lead them to a short mobile application without a CV. Each client order gets its own ad group with location, shift and hourly wage, so you can start and pause campaigns as quickly as your orders.

2. Lots of applications, few that fit

Why: As soon as ads are running, applications come in without a driving licence, without a forklift licence or from far outside the place of work. Each of them costs your recruiters a call-back, often several. The real KPI, cost per placement, rises as a result, even though the cost per application looks good in the ad account and the campaign works on paper.

Solution (Funnels & landing pages (part of Performance Marketing)): We build pre-qualification questions into the funnel: availability, willingness to work shifts, certificates and commute. Only suitable applications go immediately, with all details, to your scheduling team or applicant management system; the rest receive a friendly automatic reply. We steer on cost per qualified application, measured up to the first day on assignment.

3. Winning new client companies predictably

Why: Staffing agencies only grow if client orders keep coming in alongside applicants. Sales usually runs via cold calling and existing contacts, and HR managers in production and logistics are hard to reach by phone. Without a predictable flow of staffing requests, utilisation and revenue fluctuate with a few large clients, and every lost client leaves a gap.

Solution (Performance Marketing): We run B2B campaigns on LinkedIn and Google for searches such as temporary staffing or recruitment agency in your region, with a dedicated landing page for staffing requests. Existing clients regularly receive emails about available qualifications and free capacity, so follow-up orders come to you and your sales team works with prepared conversations.

Example calculation: cost per qualified application (method, not a case study)

• Assumption: ad budget per month: €3,000
• Recruiting campaign fee, 1 platform: €1,500
• Assumption: cost per click €1.50 → clicks: 2,000
• Assumption: 5% complete the short application: 100 applications
• Assumption: 30% pass the pre-qualification: 30 qualified
• Cost per qualified application (€4,500 / 30): €150

Method, not a case study: all values above are assumptions for illustration. In the first month we measure cost per click, completion rate and share of qualified applications for your region and type of work. We compare the result with the contribution margin of an assignment. Only then do you decide on more budget.

Service mix

• Recruiting campaigns (part of Performance Marketing): Recruiting campaigns per client order on Meta and TikTok, with place of work, shift and hourly wage directly in the ad.
• Funnels & landing pages (part of Performance Marketing): A short mobile application with pre-qualification that sorts candidates by certificates, availability and commute and hands them over to scheduling.
• Performance Marketing: LinkedIn and Google campaigns for staffing requests from production and logistics companies in your catchment area.
• Email Marketing: Automated email follow-up for candidates in the talent pool and regular capacity mailings to your existing clients.

What we steer by (KPIs)

• Cost per qualified application: shows what a candidate ready for assignment costs, not just a completed form
• Time-to-fill: decides whether you keep the client order or lose it to a competitor
• Start rate: only workers who actually start generate billable hours at the client company
• Contribution margin per assignment: puts campaign costs in relation to the margin from the hours supplied

Timing: Demand peaks occur before the Christmas season in logistics and retail and during harvest time, so we start campaigns six to eight weeks beforehand. At the start of the year, experience shows that more people look for a new job, so more recruiting budget pays off then.

Legal (to be checked by a lawyer)

• We ensure job ads comply with the AGG (German General Equal Treatment Act), with gender-neutral titles such as (m/f/d), no age limits and no phrases such as "young team" that can be indirectly discriminatory.
• We do not target audiences by age, gender or origin, and we follow the advertising platforms' rules for job ads.
• We make sure applicant data is processed in line with the GDPR, with a privacy notice in the form, consent for the talent pool and defined deletion periods.

FAQ

How much does a recruiting campaign for staffing agencies cost? Recruiting campaigns cost from €1,500 net per platform per month, plus ad budget. As ad budget we generally recommend at least €1,500 per month. We bill B2B campaigns for client acquisition as Performance Marketing from €1,500 per platform. The contract term is one month, after which you decide based on the numbers.

Does this also work for manual jobs without a CV? That is exactly where it works. Warehouse, production and driving jobs are rarely filled via job boards, because candidates are not actively searching. Our short application takes a few minutes on a smartphone, asks for the relevant certificates and needs no CV. Your recruiters clarify everything else in the first phone call.

Can the applications be passed to our applicant management system? Yes, via an interface or email forwarding. We clarify beforehand which system you use and pass on, for each application, the answers from the pre-qualification and the campaign source. That way you can later see which ad led to which assignment and which campaign only generates call-backs.

Can we launch campaigns for individual client orders at short notice? Yes. We set up templates for ads, funnel and questions once. For a new order we swap place of work, activity, shift and wage and usually launch the ad group within a few working days, depending on the platform's review. When the order ends, we pause it.