From Distrifood (week 43 edition, October 28, 2017), written by Peter Garstenveld

'We can reach people who have been to the supermarket. In this way, supermarkets can act much more effectively in the field of recruitment'

So says Melvin Woudenberg, project manager at Social Brothers. Social Brothers specializes in data-driven marketing. Woudenberg: 'Based on activity on various (social) media and applications, we can monitor their interests, user behavior and demo/geographical data. This allows us to form a clear picture of the target group.' According to Woudenberg, this is also the core of modern recruitment: 'Come with targeted advertisements so that more young people respond.'

That seems easier said than done. Explain.

'Suppose I am a retailer and I am looking for staff. The traditional way of recruitment would consist of offline/online media with general expressions to reach as many people as possible. What we mean by data-driven recruitment is that, for example, we focus specifically on potential staff who live within cycling distance and who have already visited the store. By doing a test, it is possible to see how different advertisements and target groups score per store, and in the future it is possible to use those high-scoring points more efficiently. For example, an advertisement via Facebook, aimed at 16-year-old students, living within a radius of 5 kilometers, who are interested in fruit and have already been to Aldi at least 2 times in the past week. This target group will be very small, but the most effective based on data. This is the core of data-driven marketing.'

That sounds too good to be true.

'That's not the whole story, as a company you have to have your recruitment branding in order. First of all, you need to know very well what you want to convey to young people as a brand. Look at the AH campaign, they are not looking for stock fillers but heroes for their customers. Young people have to think, that's what I want to be part of.' If you know who you want to be, you then have to set up a number of things properly online. It makes no sense to use your general facebook page to put out advertisements with vacancies. People click through from your ad to the general Facebook page. The content on this page is not suitable for this purpose. It is better to show a young person how great it is to work at Albert Heijn instead of finding out that the Hamster Weeks have started again. So you have to set up a separate page. A good example of this is 'Working at Albert Heijn'. You can fill these with relevant content such as from vloggers, the so-called 'influencers'. Let it run for a day. Young people want to be associated with these people and this creates more bonding. Finally, when your brand stands out and your content is successful and people eventually want to apply for a job, you have to ensure that the threshold to do this is as low as possible. Each step must be properly analyzed. Thinking out-of-the-box can work to your advantage here, because why shouldn't a job application be sent via Facebook Messenger, for example?'

Some supermarkets put a curbside sign on the sidewalk.

'Which can. And with that you attract attention in the neighborhood, but with a sidewalk sign you have no call-to-action, no button to press and apply immediately. This is a missed opportunity. Nevertheless, it is always good for extra branding, especially because the costs are low.'

Is Facebook the right medium for young people?

'Previous campaigns have shown that Facebook is still one of the best media for advertising. This has to do with the fact that Instagram is the younger brother of Facebook, and is still growing strongly. There are fewer advertising opportunities, less data available, and call-to-action options leading to an external app/source are limited. We also see that the costs are higher with Instagram compared to Facebook.'

Do young people have no problem with you aiming so precisely that you seem to know everything about them?

'The target group 15 to 20 years old is used to it. He rather says 'don't bother me with an ad with blue shoes when you know I always buy green ones'. We notice that older target groups in particular come up with reactions of 'how do you know all that about me'. There the irritation is greater. Take us: Social Brothers employs 20 people and our average age is 23 years. We understand the younger target group.'