by Mitch Rudolph, Avionté

Love it or hate it, marketing is one of the core functions of every staffing and recruitment firm but it’s often the department with the least amount of dedicated resources, especially with the planetary crisis of COVID-19.

When you’re short on budget, staff or resources, your options for expensive marketing tools are thin. The good news? There are quite a bit of amazing and free marketing tools that you can deploy for your 2020 marketing initiatives.

Here’s our list of six powerful (and free) recruitment marketing tools that you can start using today to help your business grow.

1. Google Analytics

This website analytics power tool is one of your best friends in recruitment marketing. The best part? It’s 100 percent free and even offers complimentary training programs. If you haven’t already, be sure to download Google Analytics and dive into the beginner’s course to get the basics down. 

2. Google Trends

Surprise! Another Google tool. This time we’re looking at Google Trends, which analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. In a nutshell, Google Trends helps recruiters (among many things) determine:

• What job titles are higher searched (copywriter vs content specialist)
• Which states have a higher concentration of job search (are people more interested in copywriter jobs in Georgia vs Minnesota)

3. Drift

Recruitment chatbots are a phenomenal way to connect with candidates, streamline the recruiting process and drive engagement on your website. Drift is a chatbot tool that’s easy to install (just a copy and paste of code to your website) and allows you to interact with website visitors – all in real time. The best part is that you can start Drift for free.

4. Canva

Canva is a fantastic free design tool that’s super easy to use and even better for making quick advertisements. Best part? You don’t need graphic design experience to make masterfully crafted ads.

5. Facebook Insights

This free tool is something you probably already have (assuming you have a business Facebook account). Insights is simply a platform where you can monitor your competitor’s social presence, create Facebook ads, and get basic analytics on your social posts. It’s easy to use and helps track ROI on social advertising.

6. Soapbox

Soapbox is a free webcam recording tool that makes it easy to record, edit and share personalized videos in minutes. With Soapbox, you can effortlessly send candidates, customers or coworkers a custom video in minutes. This tool works wonders for leaving video “voicemails.”

7. Web Dev

This free tool powered by the folks at Google gives your website a quick snapshot of how well it’s performing. Using four areas of measurement, Web Dev uncovers how well your website supports its users and offers suggestions to improve its overall performance. The only caveat is you’ll need a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to fix the addressed problems.

The four areas of measurement include:

• Performance – Includes site speed, loading time and more.
• Accessibility – How accessible your website is according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
• Performance – Looks for everything from HTTPS usage to correct image aspect ratios.
• SEO – Makes sure your website has everything Google needs to crawl your website effectively.

Go to web.dev and plug in your website to get a near instant view of how it stacks up.

All of these free recruitment marketing tools can be used individually or collectively for powerful marketing results. If you’re familiar with Avengers Endgame or Infinity war, think of these marketing tools as infinity stones. Once you’ve collected them all, you’re virtually invincible in your marketing efforts.