Why one business revamped its brand to turbocharge recruitment

The care sector was facing a recruitment crisis in 2021, fuelled by the impact of Brexit and Covid. While care home provider Anchor had an established corporate brand aimed at the over-55s, its staff came from a younger demographic with different values and communication preferences.

The time had come for a new employer value proposition. Developed in collaboration with That Little Agency, the team set out to increase Anchor’s brand awareness as an employer, reduce the volume of irrelevant applications and ramp up traffic to its careers website.

Anchor started by defining the five core pillars of its revamped employer brand, which were run through focus groups. The design team created recruitment-specific brand guidelines and branding, which the newly appointed recruitment marketing manager used to update all jobseeker touchpoints.

Moving from agency to in-house for organic social, Anchor created a monthly content calendar for its Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, experimenting with channels like Facebook Live. The business coupled paid social with Google search to target workers in retail, customer service and hospitality roles facing redundancy post-lockdown.

Active jobseekers were targeted with PPC, display advertising, boosted job board listings and Facebook advertising, while the brand opted for programmatic ads to attract passive jobseekers.

From April 2021 to March 2022, Anchor received an additional 5,521 applications from marketing sources alone, with traffic to the careers site up 28.7%. Crucially, the care home group averaged a 5.4% engagement rate for LinkedIn recruitment content and 1.4% engagement on Facebook, results which helped Anchor scoop the Marketing Week Award for Brand Innovation.