ROI - The key to success in recruitment marketing

What is ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is used to evaluate the profitability of an advertising channel or revenue generating. ROI is a great way of measuring the value and size of an activity, relative to the cost of it.

How is ROI measured?

The formula for calculating ROI (for revenue) is:

Return / cost expressed as a ratio

Example: Candidate placement: £5,000 / Cost of advertising: £350

£5,000 / £350 = £14.20 / 1 (or £14.20 for every £1 spent).

Attribution modelling

Attribution Modelling (AM) and ROI are closely linked. AM involves creating rules that give credit for sales and their conversion paths or touchpoints.

For example, you may have a path that shows candidates that apply for jobs on Indeed, hit the website and then apply for a job. This will apply a conversion % to Indeed candidates against the backdrop of all candidate applications. By mapping out all of your conversion sources by channel i.e. job sites, your own website etc you can build a picture of where you get your candidate/consultant applications or indeed your clients from.

When you combine your attribution model with revenue data, you get a complete end to end picture of ROI.

Why is ROI measurement important in recruitment?

Data is everything in recruitment & Recruitment agencies have a lot of it.

By measuring ROI correctly, agencies can

• See which sources provide the greatest return for the money spent
• See which sources don’t return highly
• See which sources return negatively (i.e. are losing money)
• Trial new sources with confidence
• Generate better candidates that are more likely to place

And so on.

In essence, ROI, AM and source tracking are essential for agencies focused on spending money smartly and growing efficiently.

So why aren’t recruiters tracking ROI?

Simply put, the data that agencies collect isn’t currently ‘translated’ into meaningful data.

To accurately measure ROI requires aggregating multiple data sources and then applying logic over the top that makes the data readable.

Integration, or specifically the lack of integration, between systems is also another key reason why agencies struggle to accurately measure ROI. Multiposters, Job boards, websites, social, CRM & finance packages are examples all systems that need to talk to each other in order to get a full picture of performance.

SourceFlow

SourceFlow is built to monitor sources from job posting, through websites/multiposters etc back into the CRM. The software then follows through to placement (or not) and then gives a performance overview of the different sources, presented as an ROI.

By tracking everything, we can show you (by source) which channels are performing the best for your agency so you can make genuine, non-emotional budgeting decisions.