It’s no secret that 2020 and 2021 were especially challenging years for hospital systems across the country. The demand for nurses, respiratory therapists, lab technicians, and other healthcare professionals was at an all-time high. So, when Cape Fear Valley Health (CFVH), a leading healthcare system in Fayetteville, North Carolina, reached out for support with their recruitment efforts, our integrated team jumped on the opportunity to help.

With eight hospitals serving seven counties in and around the Fayetteville area, we knew this recruitment campaign had the potential to make a serious impact in CFVH’s communities. To ensure maximum reach and conversions, we developed a strategy for an integrated campaign that leveraged a wide range of tactics and touchpoints, including:

• Five unique landing pages for CFVH’s high-priority positions
• Paid search
• Digital video
• Display + geofencing
• Paid social
• Direct mail
• Email

Our mission was to create a campaign that stood out and made an impact on potential candidates in a market that was oversaturated with open positions and healthcare marketing. To accomplish this, we created a series of landing pages that positioned CFVH as an industry leader offering unique opportunities for growth and career development.

Each element of these landing pages (including the copy, layout, colors, icons, CTAs, and photography) was specifically designed to create a seamless user experience that helped candidates connect to the hospital system’s mission, understand the benefits of employment at CFVH, and make applying as simple as possible.

For the media portion of the campaign, we focused our efforts on nursing recruitment, CFVH’s top priority. By using a combination of paid search, digital video, display, and social, we were able to capture leads from both organic traffic and targeted candidates. This collection of tactics also allowed us to focus on different aspects of what made CFVH so appealing. For some tactics, we centered our language around the sign-on bonus for nurses. For others, we leaned into the emotional appeal of serving Fayetteville and the surrounding areas.

This campaign also featured a direct mail with two sends, as well as two emails. Additionally, analytics played a key role in tracking performance across all tactics throughout the course of the campaign. The data we collected from each tactic provided valuable insights into areas of optimization and helped inform our approach to recruitment as we prepared to relaunch the campaign in 2022.

The Cape Fear Valley Health recruitment campaign, which ran from March to December in 2021, exceeded the client’s expectations and helped CFVH reach their recruitment goals for the year. In Q1 of 2021, CFVH had 264 nursing vacancies. By the end of the campaign, Cape Fear had more nursing hires than previous years, topping out at more than 600. Additionally, each tactic within the campaign performed well above industry benchmarks, inspiring the hospital system to resume the campaign in 2022.

• Increased new hires by 37%
• 4.9 million total impressions
• 17,950 total conversions
• 36.64% CVR
• 45.04% open rate for email
• 28.84% click through rate for email
• 86,305 total landing page views

*New hire stat was a result of Infinity’s campaign and internal efforts