In driver recruitment, being real gets real results. But it also requires the right story and presentation.
On a recent episode of Taking the Hire Road, Lane Williams, founder and CEO of Fusion Now, joined Leah Shaver, president and CEO at the National Transportation Institute, to talk about driver recruiting trends. Williams highlighted ways companies are standing out by using authenticity to attract the right drivers.
Kansas City, Missouri, based Fusion Now is a digital marketing and recruiting firm that specializes in helping trucking companies connect with drivers. Williams notes that Fusion Now originally focused on the marketing side, helping those companies build a brand to tell their story in order to get open jobs in front of the right driver at the right time.
But marketing success and customer demand revealed the need for a recruiting product that now includes a driver recruiting and compliance suite for trucking companies. Williams is most excited about the synergies that come from a wide-ranging customer base: 80% of Fusion Now’s business is trucking and logistics companies while 20% is in the health care and service industries. “We’re able to pull some interesting ideas and methodologies across multiple different areas … [to help] our clients be creative in their marketing efforts.”
Shaver notes that the marketing industry, especially in regard to the freight industry, has undergone significant changes, with many marketing vendors becoming less niche. “There’s this idea of ‘Whatever you need we can do it’ or ‘We’re not an agency but we can act as your agency,’” said Shaver.
Williams believes part of this change comes from a focus on efficiency and cost savings, which is spurring some vendors to blur the line in the search for finding and reaching drivers.
Build and craft a story to draw attention and promote interest
For Williams, the first step in a marketing approach geared toward finding and recruiting drivers begins with data. “We always start with the data; sometimes people come from scenarios where they have spread their marketing dollars very wide across multiple different areas.”
For those companies that cast a large but shallow net with their marketing dollars, depending on the data, it can have mixed results. Other trucking companies take the “put all your eggs in one basket” approach, and focus on a specific channel. Williams notes that while both approaches can work, you have to break down the results from a historical perspective to see what efforts are giving the best bang for your buck.
The leaner and cost-efficient approach requires a tailored approach to draw attention and promote interest. Williams said recruitment leaders have gone from being unsung heroes of the organization to gaining greater visibility, but overcoming organizational silos remains a challenge.
One way recruiting is gaining traction is through cross-organizational efforts with marketing in the form of better driver communication plans. “We’ve seen a lot of recruiting leaders that have experience in high-volume recruiting efforts building out marketing strategies [and] partnering with people in the industry,” Williams said.
The greater use of data extends into creating profiles of drivers, which then can be used for targeted marketing campaigns. Additionally, the media that drivers consume now leans heavily toward video, which places additional demands on marketing and recruiting departments. Williams talked about how Fusion Now rebranded its design team into a creative studio, which includes designers and video crews.
This approach now extends to TikTok videos, Instagram Reels and image-based branding that is targeted to potential recruits. With the video-based medium, the messaging and storytelling become more important, as younger audiences are focusing on more authentic content.
For the actual copy, Williams highlights a targeted approach compared to using ChatGPT to create social media copy. “It’s very difficult to come up with those organic stories, so it’s really working with our clients to pull those stories out [and] create a tailored and cohesive approach.”
For those without the budget for a video shoot, even a mobile device like an iPhone can be a powerful tool. Williams said a lack of polish is not a deal breaker for drivers, who prefer an organic and raw approach versus using things like AI-generated images. It also makes a much bigger impact. Real images of real people in real trucks resonate better than stock or AI-created photos.
Williams emphasized that getting those real images of an organization’s people and process requires a focused effort. For trucking and transportation companies, which stay perpetually busy, taking that extra time may seem like a hassle, but creating a library of organic images to use in their product and marketing is a great way to showcase their culture to potential recruits.
“Authenticity is everything,” Williams said. “It really starts with the message that you put out in marketing and just being brutally honest in a way that is still digestible for people. I think it’s very important that you tell people where you are, what you have, and I don’t think it’s just a theory.”
To learn more about Fusion Now, visit www.fusionnow.io.
Sponsors: The National Transportation Institute, Career Now Brands, Carrier Intelligence, Infiniti-I, Workhound, Asurint, Arya By Leoforce, Transportation Marketing Group, Seiza, Drive My Way, F| Staff, Trucksafe, Seated Social, Repowr
