Helped Leroy Merlin hire trainee managers in 30 cities across Russia

Context and task

Leroy Merlin was launching the “Retail Arena” internship program: hire 500 specialists in 30 cities in a month and a half. And not “interns” in the usual sense — they needed experienced directors from different fields, ready to go through the program and head up divisions in retail.

Tight deadlines, a big budget, and regular HR channels cannot raise a wave like that in six weeks. They brought us in to close the hiring with social media advertising.

What we did

Testing channels instead of betting on one. Launched promotion of the announcements on VK, Facebook and Instagram with the “Website traffic” objective. By the first week it was clear: only VK and Instagram delivered results — we dropped Facebook and stopped burning budget on it.

A problem that surfaced during preparation: a “landing page” with no form. The program page did not collect contacts — it simply sent people on to Leroy Merlin’s external HR site. The client could not give access to the leads, nor report their number promptly. There was nothing to optimize for.

Our solution: on the bridge site retailarena.ru we installed the social network pixels and Yandex Metrica, set up a goal on the click-through from the landing page to the external HR site — “Started an application” — and built audiences on it. After the first data came in, we fixed the conversion from “started” to “submitted an application”: it barely changed, and we used it to calculate cost per lead without having the client’s data.

The analytics funnel. We updated the data with the client every day and watched at which stage conversion changed.

Formats and creatives. One announcement is not enough — we used “Post with a button” promo posts: higher click-through, cheaper clicks. In total we launched about 60 banners with different texts, label colors, formats and messages.

The “Post with a button” format: click-through rate higher than a regular announcement, cheaper clicks.

The most clickable image was the girl with a laptop — that is the one we scaled.

Shifting budget between platforms. On Instagram we switched on conversion optimization for the “Started an application” goal almost immediately — for the first two weeks target actions came in cheap, then the cost started creeping up. We moved the budget to VK and left Instagram for retargeting only: showing ads to people who had visited the site but not submitted an application.

On VK a simple follow-up funnel worked — post No. 2 was shown to those who had already seen the first post or the promo. This produced the cheapest target action. We additionally segmented audiences by position, profession and education.

Post No. 2 was shown to those who had seen the first post — the cheapest target action in the project.

A few days before the end of the campaign we switched on a countdown — “N days left until the program closes”:

The last days of enrollment: “N days left until the program closes”.

Small cities: targeting did not work — offline did. At first we assumed segmentation by city would fill the vacancies evenly. It did not: in small cities there simply is not enough audience volume, and standard targeting tools run idle. We restructured: a week before an offline event we launched ads with a lead form on social networks, the client called people and invited them to the meeting. A lead came out 3 times cheaper than through the site.

Email campaigns. Emails were built in Tilda and sent via Unisender. The channel is often neglected, but here it delivered the highest conversion to target action of all.

Email campaigns delivered the highest conversion to target action of all the campaign’s channels.

Results

• About 4,900 leads in a month and a half across 30 cities — the client hired the required number of managers.
• Budget — $64,451, CPL — $13.15.
• A lead through offline events — 3 times cheaper than a lead through the site.
• The project won Tagline Award 2019 gold for “Best HR Campaign in Social Media” and bronze for “Best HR Campaign”.

Insights

• VK delivered target hires the cheapest; Instagram conversion optimization lives ~2 weeks, then the cost rises — budget has to be moved in time.
• In small cities targeting cannot gather an audience — offline events with contact collection close vacancies three times cheaper.
• Email campaigns are an underrated channel: the highest conversion to target action in the campaign.
• If the client has a “landing page” with no form and no access to leads — pixels on a bridge site and a goal on the click-through let you build a funnel without their data.