Law Enforcement Agency Drives Increase in Job Applicants with Location-Based Targeting from Simpli.fi

National Hiring Crisis

Law enforcement agencies across the nation are grappling with a shortage of job applicants. According to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, 78% of agencies reported having difficulty in recruiting qualified candidates with 75% of agencies reporting that recruiting is more difficult today than it was five years ago. With increased competition for qualified candidates, advertisers focused on hiring first responders are seeking digital advertising solutions with precise targeting and granular attribution to gain an edge. Recently, a large law enforcement agency partnered with Simpli.fi to maximize relevance with their target audience and increase applicants with a 12-month programmatic campaign.

After a successful recruitment campaign in 2022, the agency tapped Simpli.fi again in 2023 to continue hiring efforts during a national shortage of first responders. Together, Simpli.fi and the client developed a comprehensive programmatic strategy to target relevant job seekers using a mix of Simpli.fi’s targeting and omnichannel solutions. Overall, the agency wanted to maximize the number of online applications submitted and track foot traffic to their testing center.

Finding Candidates Through Geo-Targeted Solutions

First, the advertiser leveraged Simpli.fi’s addressable programmatic solution to precisely reach their target market at the household-level. They used Simpli.fi’s Addressable Audience Curation tool to build a custom audience based on location data and by choosing from more than 3,000 demographic variables. The advertiser chose the following criteria to identify over 2 million households across seven states and three city metros:

• Adults 25-54 with Some College Education within West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland as well as the Atlanta and DC metros
• Individuals working in Civil Service and/or Military Personnel within the DC and Baltimore metros

Simpli.fi’s Addressable Geo-Fencing solution then matched the addresses to the exact shape and size of the property using GPS and plat line data, creating a custom-shaped target fence around each automatically. The advertiser served users a variety of CTV, pre-roll, and display ads throughout their households. With the help of Simpli.fi’s cross-device matching capabilities, the law enforcement agency was able to track online conversions, regardless of the device on which the ad was served, including from those served on the big screen in the living room.

In order to reach additional candidates, the law enforcement agency also implemented Geo-Fencing to target users who had attended any of the advertiser’s six specified events or visited more than 54 locations including competitor agencies, community colleges, and military bases. Simpli.fi’s system then built target fences around each location to capture visitors and then serve them ads for up to 30 days after they visited the site.

Reaching Job Seekers Based on Online Behavior

The law enforcement agency also deployed Simpli.fi’s Keyword Search Retargeting to reach users who indicated interest in careers in law enforcement or employment opportunities based on their online searches. Simpli.fi implemented 586 keywords including officer, military, government career, and more to serve display ads to those actively looking for career-related material online. The advertiser also used Site Retargeting to re-engage users who previously visited their website but did not complete a job application.

Implementing a Blended Media Mix

In addition, the advertiser recognized the importance of integrating tactics that would serve ads to users as they browsed through their favorite content sources such as podcasts, social media platforms, and websites. The law enforcement agency leveraged Simpli.fi’s Native creative paired with contextual targeting to showcase their recruitment messaging while delivering ads alongside relevant content without disrupting the user experience. The campaign targeted users who were in 11 states; however, mid-flight campaign optimizations led to the majority of the impressions being served within nine states including New York, Pennsylvania, and more. The Simpli.fi team also targeted users who were actively engaging with content related to news, movies, music and audio, food and drink, and television.

Next, the advertiser worked with Simpli.fi to execute a geo-targeted programmatic audio strategy to reach an audience of highly engaged users. The Simpli.fi team optimized the campaign to target their Addressable Geo-Fencing audiences as well as individuals listening to streaming audio within 242 regions and cities across the eastern U.S. After users were captured within the determined geo-targeted areas, the advertiser served the users audio companion ads to leverage display ads running alongside the audio advertisement.

Lastly, the agency leveraged Simpli.fi’s Managed-Service offering for running ads via Meta on both Facebook and Instagram. The Simpli.fi team then tracked users across these various tactics to determine if they applied for a job online or visited the agency’s testing center in person.

Attributing Online and Offline Conversions

In order to measure overall performance, Simpli.fi set up the campaign to track both online and offline actions:

1. Online visits to the submission webpage after completing a job application
2. In-person visits to the agency’s testing center

By placing Simpli.fi’s pixel on the submission webpage, the team was able to track the number of users who visited their website and applied for a job after being served an ad.

The team also drew Conversion Zones around the advertiser’s testing center to track users after they submitted an online application. Therefore, when a user visited the location after being served an ad, they counted as an offline conversion. Simpli.fi’s detailed reporting attributed conversions based on geo-fence, creative type, and even location down to the ZIP+4 level. Due to the granularity of insights, the team could see which elements were driving the most actions and optimize accordingly to drive better results.

Simpli.fi Increases Overall Job Applicants

By the end of the 12-month flight, the campaign achieved over 34,000 clicks and generated 2,462 total conversions across both in-person and online actions. In addition, Simpli.fi’s world-class Client Success Team and machine learning technology consistently optimized the campaign throughout the year to produce stronger results. Thanks to these optimizations, the Native campaign alone had an eCPM of $4.85, which led to almost a million additional impressions being served. Overall, Simpli.fi proved to be the number one lead gen source for the law enforcement agency. Due to the campaign’s success, the advertiser plans to continue working with Simpli.fi to drive down the cost of acquiring new employees.