Reach the right people. Not just more people.
Carl Bloom Associates develops targeted digital advertising strategies for organizations that need to reach specific, sometimes hard-to-reach audiences and drive measurable results. The case study below highlights a twelve-month recruitment marketing campaign for City Year, designed to meet the challenging goal of filling positions across 29 markets.
Hard-to-Reach Audiences. Measurable Results.
Some audiences are simply harder to reach than others. They may be younger, more specific, or spread across platforms. Without the right targeting, ad dollars can quickly shift toward people who are easier to reach but less likely to be a good fit.
That’s the work we do. We build the strategy, choose the platforms, focus the targeting, and show exactly how your budget was allocated.
City Year Recruitment Marketing
The Challenge
If your organization recruits in one or many geographic markets, you may already have experienced the challenges of finding the right people.
Every year, City Year recruits thousands of young adults to serve in schools in 29 markets nationwide. But some markets have always been harder to fill than others. What works in one city may not work in another.
Year after year, at the close of its big recruitment campaigns, City Year found that nine markets still struggled to recruit enough people.
With Carl Bloom Associates’ digital expertise, that number dropped to just two by the end of the most recent twelve-month campaign. A 78% decrease.
9 hard-to-fill markets went down to 2.
A 78% decrease.
Reach the Right People
For City Year, reaching more people wasn’t enough. CBA needed to reach people qualified to serve.
CBA used advanced audience development tools to keep recruitment advertising focused on 18- to 24-year-olds, rather than letting ad platforms shift spending toward older audiences that may be easier to reach.
That audience-development capability became a key differentiator during City Year’s agency selection process.
Allison Monro
City Year, SVP, Marketing and Digital Strategy
Spend Smarter
CBA doesn’t build campaigns around a single advertising platform. We look for the best places to reach the right audience at the right cost.
For City Year, that meant expanding beyond Meta to TikTok and Snapchat.
The difference was significant and allowed City Year to reach more of its target audience with its media budget.
~$8 CPM
on the initial Meta campaign
~$4 CPM
on TikTok and Snapchat
We Don’t Just Report. We Act on Data.
CBA tracks performance by market to see where recruitment is strong and where it needs more support. We adjust targeting, media, and spending based on what the data is telling us, instead of treating every market the same.
We don’t wait until the campaign is over to tell a client what worked. We watch performance and make changes while there is still time for those changes to matter.
That’s the kind of partnership we build: identify the opportunity, make the change, measure the impact, and keep moving toward the goal.
Allison Monro
City Year, SVP, Marketing and Digital Strategy
The Results
- 29 markets managed nationally
- 9 down to 2 hard-to-fill markets
- 78% reduction in markets missing recruitment goals
And a digital recruitment program built to keep learning, improving, and growing.
What We Do
Recruitment marketing, start to finish.
We plan the program, build the creative, buy the media, and watch the results market by market.
You get real digital expertise without adding headcount, plus a partner who moves budget toward what’s working while there’s still time to improve results.
Whether you need to lift applications in a few tough markets or run a coordinated national campaign, that’s the work we do.
And beyond recruitment, the same approach drives our fundraising and membership work. The audience and strategy change. The discipline doesn’t, and the results speak for themselves.
What's Your Challenging Digital Marketing Goal?
Maybe it’s one hard-to-fill market. Maybe it’s a demographic that keeps slipping out of your targeting. Maybe you simply aren’t getting enough qualified responses for what you’re spending.
Start with a free digital audit. We’ll review your advertising, whether it’s up and running or just getting started, and show you where the biggest gains can come from.
Prefer to talk first?
If you’d rather discuss your marketing goals and challenges with us directly, schedule a brief call.