How To Advertise to Truck Drivers

Advertising to truck drivers is much different today than it was ten years ago. It is even much more different today than it was ten months ago thanks to the changes forced by COVID-19. Now more than ever you need to rely on digital services to reach truckers. Follow this guide and you will know how to advertise to truck drivers.

All successful for advertising campaigns reach drivers at the minimum of five touch points. Before launching your campaign you must strategize for how to establish each touch point. Below are the five touch points that Driveteks recommends you use in your campaign.

Social Media Marketing

Person uses phone to respond to social media marketing

Truck drivers love social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram keep drivers connected to their loved ones during long trips on the road. Because of this, social media is the best way to reach drivers.

According to Conversionia, Facebook is a top three performing cost-per-hire strategy.

Content is king when it comes to social media. You need to be posting content that engages drivers multiple times a week on your company’s page and within groups. Doing this will build your brand and generate awareness around your company. Images and videos tend to be the most effective at spurring engagement.

In addition to posting content you need to be running a paid advertising campaign. Hiring a professional driver recruitment agency to handle your Facebook ads will make sure your company gets seen by the drivers you want. Facebook is constantly updating its algorithms and advertising standards so it is highly recommended you employ a professional to do your ads.

Job Boards 

Job boards can be one of the top sources of driver applicants. The drivers are on that site specifically to look for a new job. However, job boards are highly competitive and the costs have risen through the roof.

Despite high levels of competition and prices job boards need to be a part of your advertising strategy. In order to succeed to focus on three key areas:

  • Succinct and enticing job description
  • Well built recruitment landing page linked in the description
  • Constant monitoring of board performance

Drivers on job boards are going to be scanning tens of job descriptions at a time. You need to do a good job of keeping your description short and enticing. If your description is written well, it should encourage drivers to click on your recruitment landing page and learn more about your company.

The most important part of advertising on job boards is monitoring which job boards are performing the best each month. Doing this will enable you to allocate ad spend to the boards performing and not waste money on underperforming sites.

Email/Text Campaigns

Email and text campaigns are an amazing way to communicate with drivers that have expressed interest in working for your company. The only way you are able to collect contact information from drivers is when they submit an application on your website/recruitment landing page.

Advertising to truck drivers through email/text is an excellent way to share your company’s voice. You will be able to share informative content, invite them to visit your website, and stay in touch with drivers.

In order to set up an Email or messaging campaign you need to use a tool such as MailChimp. MailChimp makes it easy to design visually appealing emails that can be sent out to every driver email you have collected with the click of a button.

Geofencing For Driver Recruitment

Geofencing is a location based advertisement strategy. It works by setting up a “geofence”, a virtual perimeter around the outside of a geographic area. Anyone who enters the perimeter receives the targeted ads.

A truck company advertising agency will know exactly where to place geofences so that the only people seeing your ads are truck drivers. No more wasting ad spend on ads that are being seen by people who are not truck drivers.

Common places companies like to place geofences are around truck stops, driver schools, truck driver conventions, and competitor truck lots.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click advertising is the best way to stay on the mind of drivers. Your company will be in front of the eyes of drivers every time they open their internet browser.

Sometimes there is a false conception that paid media is going to directly generate more applications. That is not necessarily the case. Paid media indirectly generates applications.

Paid media is effective at keeping your company on the mind of drivers. Drivers will not click on these ads very often and apply. But, when the drivers are ready to start looking for a new job the first company they look up will be your company.

Illustration that depicts where people see pay per click advertising.

In order to successfully advertise to truck drivers you need to be able to reach them at a minimum of five times. The five touch points recommended in this article all complement each other and will spur the number driver applicants your company receives.