Initial Situation & Objectives
Canon Germany planned the Canon Career Day at its headquarters in the Krefeld/Düsseldorf area (North Rhine-Westphalia). To increase participation in the recruiting day, a meta-campaign was designed to specifically target students and young professionals and encourage them to register on the event website.
Every click on “Register now” was a lead and represented a potential event participation.
The regional focus was unique: It not only targeted the immediate HQ area in North Rhine-Westphalia, but also neighboring Dutch cities and university locations such as Venlo, Roermond, Eindhoven, and Tilburg – a deliberately narrow, border-based targeting approach.
Challenge
The biggest challenge lay in precisely defining the target audience:
- Very small, clearly defined geographic areas around the HQ and selected Dutch universities.
- Young talent (18-32 years old) with a career and university focus needed to be reached efficiently and cost-effectively.
- At the same time, it was important to balance reach and relevance in a relatively compact campaign.
Setup
To achieve these goals, the campaign was specifically designed for maximum relevance:
- Creatives & Copywriting: Event-specific messages with a clear call to action (“Register now”) and a focus on the added value of the Career Day (networking, career insights, entry-level opportunities).
- Micro-geo-targeting: Focus on the Düsseldorf area (80 km) and defined university locations in the Netherlands.
- Audience strategy: Combination of Advantage+ Audience to expand reach and fine-grained targeting (students, universities, career topics).
- Technical setup: Optimization for website leads, UTM tracking for clean evaluation and automated placement across all meta channels.
Results
- Impressions: 360.092
- Link-clicks: 3.039
- Landing page views: 1.515
- Leads (click on “Register now”): 289
KPIs at a glance:
- CPL: 9,82 €
- CPC: 0,93 €
- CPM: 7,88 €
- Outlink-CTR: 0,84 %
- LP-view-rate: 49,9 %
- Click-to-lead-rate: 9,5 %
- LP-to-lead-rate: 19,1 %
Interpretation: With a CPL of just €9.82 and just under 300 leads, the campaign performed very efficiently. Particularly strong: a CPC of under €1 and a CPM of under €8 – remarkable given the small, precise geo-clusters.
Success Factors
- Clear message with a strong CTA: Focused on the event with a clear call to action.
- Micro-targeting instead of scattering: Targeted delivery in relevant regions resulted in low CPMs with high local accuracy.
- Combination of Advantage+ and detailed targeting: This enabled us to tap into high-performing niche segments within the core target group.
- Efficient user journey: A prominent CTA and streamlined landing page led to strong conversion rates along the journey (almost 10% from click to lead).
Lessons Learned
- Precision pays off: Recruiting events particularly benefit from tightly defined geospatial targeting and clear target audience signals.
- Relevance over breadth: Local fit keeps costs low and increases lead quality.
- Micrometrics are crucial: Key figures such as landing page views or click-to-lead rate help identify and expand conversion leverage.
Conclusion
With a clear focus on precise micro-targeting, Canon Germany generated 289 leads for Career Day at a CPL of just €9.82 – while maintaining very low traffic costs (CPC: €0.93, CPM: €7.88).
A video about Canon Career Day can be found here: https://www.canon.de/careers/canon-career-day/
