Social Success with Anchor Jobs

20 January 2019

The strategy


Anchor Jobs are the largest not-for-profit care provider in England, their strategy involved using click-to-Messenger ads to make it simpler and more efficient for candidates to apply for jobs, which resulted in a 1.7X increase in average monthly job applications.
Anchor Jobs strive to make a difference to people's lives and have been operating for over 50 years. As there will be 1.7 million more adults who require social care over the next 15 years, Anchor Jobs needed to attract new and younger staff. To achieve this, their goal was to build brand awareness and encourage people to apply for jobs.
Their solution was to reach their audience through click-to-messenger adverts in a variety of formats to encourage prospective clients to start a conversation. Alongside this, they also created a bot that enabled users to ask a series of questions, helping them to establish which role they were interested in, whether the job location was within a commutable distance and whether they had the required experience. The bot also took note of users contact details, which enabled the team at Anchor Jobs to follow up with the individual and place them within a suitable role.
Anchor Jobs also used automatic placements to reach an audience across multiple channels, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Core audience targeting also enabled the campaign reach those who were most likely to be interested (e.g people already working in the care industry), alongside Lookalike Audiences that were used to reach new people who were likely to be interested in the business (based on their similarity to Anchor Jobs’ best existing customers).

The Result


Anchor Jobs’ Messenger campaign has resulted in an increase in applicant numbers at a lower cost per applicant. The ongoing campaign, which began in July 2017, has so far resulted in:



        • 23% conversion rate (for job applicants)







        • 1.7X increase in average monthly job applications





    • 68% lower cost per applicant



Chris Wray, Head of Recruitment at Anchor Jobs said: “Facebook and the technology behind the bot for Messenger have enabled us to take a far more integrated approach to our recruitment marketing campaigns. We now engage new audiences in innovative ways and continue to reduce our cost per hire”.


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