Recruitment marketing for whichever side is currently scarce.
Recruitment is two markets that have to balance. Some months the difficulty is finding clients with roles; other months roles are plentiful and candidates are the constraint. An agency running one fixed campaign is always half wrong.
The fee per placement also changes the arithmetic completely. A single placement can be worth several thousand, which means an acquisition cost that would be absurd for most businesses is comfortable here — and almost no Irish agency spends accordingly.
Everything, from the ad to the booked call.
Client-side campaigns
Aimed at employers with a vacancy and no time, particularly in sectors where you place well.
Candidate-side campaigns
For the roles where candidates are the bottleneck. Frequently the harder and more valuable side.
Sector specialisation
Generalist recruitment advertising performs poorly. Campaigns built around the two or three sectors you genuinely own work far better.
Placement-value-aware bidding
Budgets set against the fee a placement produces rather than against a generic cost-per-lead benchmark.
The weekly report
Enquiries and applications, reported separately by side of the market.
The form asks first, so your phone rings second.
Every campaign sends the click to a lead form that asks the qualifying questions before the enquiry reaches you. For recruitment agencies, that means:
- 01Are you hiring or looking for a role?
- 02Which sector?
- 03Is this permanent or contract?
- 04What is the timeline?
Then one number every Friday: spend, leads, cost per lead and what we are changing next week.
qualified leads per month for a Dublin trades business
cost per lead on a live trades campaign
Every figure comes from a client we can put you in touch with. We do not name clients in ads or on this page. See more on the results page.
Work out what a placement is worth first
A permanent placement fee is typically a meaningful percentage of salary, which puts it in the thousands.
Judged against that, an acquisition cost of a few hundred euro for a client with a live vacancy is comfortable. Agencies that benchmark against generic cost-per-lead figures systematically underspend and lose to those that do not.
Advertise the scarce side, and change it
The constraint moves. Some quarters it is roles, others it is candidates, and it differs by sector within the same agency.
Campaigns should shift with it rather than running fixed all year. That is a monthly decision, and making it deliberately is worth more than any change to the ads themselves.
€1,500 a month. Everything included.
Meta advertising fully managed, lead forms that qualify, social media fully run, all creative every month and the Friday report. Google Ads managed on top: €2,000 a month. No setup fee, no contract, month to month. Advertising spend is paid directly to the platforms and stays in your control.
Every county in Ireland.
Campaigns are built around the towns you actually cover, not a county name. Counties where we see the most demand for recruitment agencies:
Straight answers.
Which side should we advertise to?
Whichever is currently scarce, and that changes. Running both fixed all year wastes half the budget on the side you already have covered.
Is LinkedIn essential?
For candidate attraction in professional sectors, largely yes. For client acquisition it is one channel among several and dearer than search.
Does generalist recruitment advertise well?
Poorly. Specialisation is what makes campaigns efficient — an employer looking for a specific skill wants a specialist, not a general agency.
What about job boards?
A different spend with a different purpose. This is about generating client relationships and candidate registrations that you own.
What does it cost?
€1,500 a month with everything included, or €2,000 with Google Ads managed on top.
Find out what you're missing.
A free growth audit of your Google map results, reviews, website and the ads running in your county. Sent as a PDF within 24 hours. No call needed.