Tag: best

The Best Truck Driver Recruiting Strategy

Posted on by Jake Peters

As a small to midsize carrier you more than likely have grown accustomed to the fact that large carriers have their pick of the litter. Small to midsize carriers are forced to fight over the remaining drivers. What if I told you it did not have to be that way? In order to compete with the large carriers you need to implement the best truck driver recruiting strategies:

Guerilla Driver Recruitment

What is Guerilla Driver Recruitment?

No, guerilla driver recruitment is not the act of training great apes to get their CDL A license.

Guerilla recruiting stems from the term ‘guerilla marketing’ coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book Guerilla Marketing. Guerilla marketing is a marketing strategy that relies on surprise/unconventional interactions with potential customers to promote a company.

Traditionally, guerilla marketing campaigns have a smaller budget and focus on a smaller set of people than widespread media campaigns.

Building off this, guerilla recruiting is the truck driver recruiting strategy that involves your company surprising potential drivers with unconventional interactions that leave a positive impression.

Guerilla driver recruiting requires a smaller budget than traditional widespread recruitment efforts common amongst large carriers.

Guerilla Recruiting

Why is it Such an Effective Driver Recruitment Strategy?

Executed properly, guerilla driver recruiting efforts will spread via word of mouth which reaches a broader audience for free. Ideally, the truck drivers you interact with will be so pleasantly surprised that when they see their driver friends the first thing they will say is,

“You are never going to guess what happened to me today…”

Drivers are naturally hesitant to truck company advertising; however, they are far more receptive when learning about a company for the first time from one of their peers. Word of mouth will encourage drivers to search for your company and interact with your driver recruiting website.

In addition to word of mouth, guerilla driver recruiting campaigns have the possibility to go viral. A viral campaign will boost your company brand and have drivers talking about your company all over social media. Social media, particularly Facebook, is one of the best places to recruit truck drivers.

How to Execute a Guerilla Driver Recruiting Campaign

Guerilla driver recruitment campaigns require an immense amount of insight and creativity. Before you can catch truck drivers off guard with a surprise interaction, you need to understand how recruiters typically reach truck drivers. Ask yourself:

Where are drivers expecting to see recruiting campaigns?

The answer to that question will tell exactly where to NOT promote your company. For example, drivers are expecting to see your job ad in trucking Facebook groups, so posting within groups cannot be a part of your guerilla recruiting strategy.

However, are drivers expecting you to direct message them with a $20 Amazon gift card? Probably not.

If you google ‘guerilla marketing’ or ‘guerilla recruiting’ you will come across extravagant examples from companies going over the top. You do not need to do this. Extravagance makes execution much more difficult.

K-I-S-S. Keep It Simple Stupid.

Hand drawing a business concept about the process from vision through strategy and execution to success.

In order to execute a guerilla driver recruiting campaign you need to figure out a simple way to reach drivers in an unexpected way. Examples can include sending gift cards, providing food at truck stops, and much more. The possibilities are limitless.

Large carriers have recruiting budgets that allow them to reach any driver they want whenever they want. In order to compete with them small to midsize carriers need to be creative and use their smaller budgets to pleasantly surprise drivers. Guerilla driver recruitment is the best truck driver recruiting strategy because it enables smaller companies to compete with the big ones.

Guide to Best Places to Recruit Truck Drivers in 2020

Posted on by Jake Peters

In March of 2020, the way that carriers recruited CDL drivers was completely upended. No longer can you rely on in-person recruiting strategies. If you are unfamiliar with digital truck driver recruiting it can be daunting to begin; however, it is now necessary. Here is the guide to the best places to recruit truck drivers in 2020.

  1. Search Engine Optimization
  2. Social Media
  3. Paid Media
  4. Geofencing
  5. Job Boards/Aggregator Sites

The internet is the best place to recruit truck drivers in 2020

Search Engine Optimization To Rank High

The absolute best place to recruit truck drivers is in the exact moment they search for a job. If your company’s website is properly optimized, your recruitment landing page will rank for high volume keyphrases.

An example of a high volume keyphrase is, “best trucking companies to work for.” That keyphrase is searched on Google 1,900 times each month according to Ubersuggest.

Optimizing your site to rank for high volume keyphrases will drive visitors to your company’s website that have the intention of applying to work for you.

SEO strategy to recruit truck drivers

Social Media Marketing for Trucking Companies

Truck drivers love social media. They are particularly fond of Facebook, and specifically Facebook’s group feature.

As the recruiter, you need to be super active within these trucking Facebook groups. Post your job openings, but also take the time to interact with the drivers. Answer their questions, comment on their posts, post trucking memes, etc. Doing this will establish yourself as someone that is more than a truck driver recruiter in the group.

In addition to being active within the group, you must be advertising on social media. Paying to promote your company on social media will keep you on the mind of drivers in your target demographic.

As the drivers in your target demographic begin to think about switching companies, they will think about switching to YOUR company.

Paid Media Keeps You on Drivers’ Minds

Digital driver recruitment is a complicated process that requires multiple moving parts. It is common for CDL driver recruiters to grow frustrated with paid advertising.

The reason recruiters get frustrated with paid media is because paid media does not generate large numbers of applications… directly.

Pay-per-click advertising is crucial to truck driver recruiting in 2020. While it is not directly generating applications, paid media keeps your company on the mind of truck drivers.

Paid media tools like remarketing keep your company in front of the eyes of drivers in your target demographic. When these drivers begin to research new companies to work for, they will immediately research your company.

Paid media that keeps your company on the mind of drivers

Geofencing For Effective Recruitment

Utilizing geofencing for truck driver recruitment is one of the most cost efficient recruitment strategies out there. There are very few driver recruitment strategies that guarantee your ad-spend is not wasted on uninterested eyes.

The most important thing that geofencing does is allow you to avoid wasting ad dollars on people outside the trucking industry or drivers outside your hiring radius.

Place geofences around events and locations you know for truckers will be at and your company will be exposed to all the drivers there.

For example, companies often place geofences around CDL training schools, driver recruitment events, rival company lots, and truck stops.

Job Boards/Aggregator Sites 

Job boards and aggregator sites are still one of the best places to recruit truck drivers. Drivers are going to these websites specifically to search for a new job.

You have to get your job position in front of drivers actively seeking a new position.

However, job boards and aggregator websites are more complicated than they appear. First time digital recruiters often make the mistake of blindly purchasing ad space on these sites and not thinking twice about it.

When you use these websites you have to be constantly monitoring which sites are performing the best. After analyzing the data, allocate your recruiting spend to the sites performing the best and take away money from the poor performing site. How sites perform varies from month to month so it is important to constantly monitor them.

Job board dart board

The internet is clearly the best place to recruit truck drivers in 2020. In person recruiting tactics are now severely limited and truck drivers are online now more than ever. For recruiters that are just starting digital driver recruitment, it is important to remember that each recruitment channel coincides with the others. No channel is going to be effective without the help from other channels.

5 Tips for the Best Trucking Website Design

Posted on by Jake Peters

Having a strong trucking website design is mandatory for recruiting quality truck drivers and generating business. Your company’s website is the first interaction drivers and customers have with your company. First impressions matter! Follow these 5 tips to ensure that your company has the best trucking website design.

Top 5 Tips for the Best Trucking Website Design

  1. Avoid Clutter

  2. Repeat Your Main Message

  3. CTAs Throughout Your Website

  4. Mobile First Design

  5. Easy to Digest Content

magnifying glass searching for the best trucking web design

You Must Avoid Clutter!

Keep it simple stupid. Nothing turns away site visitors like a cluttered home page. Visitors should be able to instantly know your company’s main mission. Sometimes your mission may be hiring drivers, other times it is promoting business.

You only have 50 milliseconds to nail your first impression with site visitors.

Site visitors will be able to process your message better the less they have to read, click on, or watch. Images and videos are excellent pieces of content, but not when they are overwhelming.

Each page of your site should have only a couple high end images and any videos need to serve a purpose. Do not put videos on your site for the sake of having a video.

Having a strong heading structure will make it so that visitors will be able to skim any writing on your website and understand the gist of what you are saying.

Be Redundant… Tastefully

Your main goal is displayed loud and proud on your home page. Now what?

As visitors interact with your website and scroll through different pages they will forget about that main goal.

For example, if your main goal is to recruit more drivers you would say that right on the homepage for drivers to see. Then as the drivers click through your site to learn more about your company they will forget to to apply by the time something else grabs their attention.

This can be avoided if you are strategically redundant.

Each page of your website needs to have a call back to your main goal. This will ensure that site visitors do not forget about that goal and they will be far more likely to act in favor of that goal.

Calls to Action Littered Everywhere 

Call to action symbol

The call to action is where you reach your handout and invite the site visitor to act in a way that benefits your main goal.

Most websites have a call to action at the top of each page, which is good but not best. In order to maximize on your website, you need to sprinkle your CTAs throughout your site.

Spreading CTAs throughout the pages on your site gives the site visitor more opportunities to act. Placing only one CTA at the top of a page is asking for the site visitor to act before you have convinced them to do so.

However, having CTAs littered throughout allows the site visitor to click on the CTA the moment they are convinced to do so. They do not have to scroll throughout the site to find the CTA again.

Mobile First Design

The majority of people that visit your site will be doing so on their mobile device. Studies have found that in the second quarter of 2020, mobile devices (excluding tablets) accounted for 51.53% of global website traffic.

Mobile users on the web have become so prominent that Google now crawls your site for mobile usability first before desktop usability.

Your website must be designed to be easily navigable from a smartphone. Doing so will make your site more accessible which increases the amount of traffic you receive. More traffic leads to more driver applications and more business.

Easy to Digest Content

Content is king. It is the best way for carriers to build relationships with potential drivers and customers.

The reason that people visit your website is because they have questions about your company that they want answered. Easy to digest content is the best way for your company to answer those questions.

Plus, well curated content will be shared on social media platforms and generate awareness for your company.

Your website should be filled with short videos, well written blog content, and info graphics.

Content is King

The website is oftentimes your first impression, and the first impression is the most important. Having the best trucking website design compared to your competition will lead to your company hiring more drivers and booking more business.