A powerful campaign to recruit healthcare workers

Challenge
In Vermont, the 60+ population is the fastest-growing demographic group. Demand for skilled healthcare professionals in senior services is already great and will continue to increase. Yet there’s a severe workforce shortage across the healthcare industry. Innovative and novel ways are needed for health care organizations to find qualified workers.

Senior Solutions is the Area Agency on Aging (AAA) organization in southeastern Vermont.
AAAs help older adults live independently in their communities through a variety of services, from care providers and wellness programs to Meals on Wheels, Medicare counseling, and more.

Senior Solutions was struggling to find care providers—what if they could actually develop and train skilled workers?

Funded by a Vermont Home and Community-Based Services grant, Senior Solutions partnered with the Community College of Vermont (CCV) to promote the school’s two Human Services programs designed to teach the skills needed for people to become care providers. The programs were a 6-week online entry-level career pathway and a 2-semester certification program. The project had two objectives: raise awareness and drive enrollment.

Insight
We’d worked previously with a coalition of AAAs on a Covid-19 vaccination campaign, as well as a rebrand of the AAA in northwestern Vermont, so we knew this landscape well. We settled on two primary audiences for the skills-development campaign: young people just out of high school or college and interested in a path to fulfilling employment, and also retirees who were looking for a second career.

The job of care provider isn’t as lucrative as the role of physician. But it’s a career that people feel personally called to. Caregivers are directly involved with patients. The job takes heart, empathy, and compassion.

So we designed a campaign for those two audiences that gets to the emotional aspects of doing this work and how fulfilling it is.

Campaign
We built an integrated campaign to promote these training programs to a wide regional audience. The goal was not just to develop employees for one agency, but for all five AAAss across the state.

Because we were focusing on younger and older people largely located in rural areas, our communication strategy included a variety of channels to make sure we reached audiences wherever they consume information. Targeting rural and older demographics called for traditional media like print advertising, and broadcast TV. To reach younger people, we leveraged social media, Google paid search and display ads, and streaming channels.

Messaging focused on the transformative potential of a career in senior care, highlighting compassion, professional growth, community impact, flexibility, and job security. Because the two CCV programs are easily accessible, we emphasized the online learning and short time to completion to encourage people to learn more and enroll.

Prominently featured on the MoreThanAJobVT website we created for the campaign is a high-quality video we also created that spotlights a caregiver talking about why a career with seniors means so much to her. It showcases the joy inherent in working with seniors. The website is the campaign hub; all other digital and print elements directed people there.

Results
The initial phase of the campaign ran from mid-August 2024 to mid-January 2025.* It not only achieved its objectives but also significantly outperformed industry benchmarks for digital performance (see below). Most importantly, enrollment rose by 28%, and applications increased by 24% compared to the same period the previous year. These results underscore the campaign’s effectiveness in driving strong awareness, fostering meaningful engagement, and making efficient use of the budget.

*A second phase was launched to coincide with the spring 2025 application window and ends June 30, 2025. More on that later.

Initial phase metrics:

Paid search:
Total Impressions: 113,473
Total Clicks: 10,735
Average Daily Clicks: 72.53
Click-Through Rate (CTR): 9.46% (healthcare industry standard: 3.27%)
Average Cost Per Click (CPC): $0.89
Total Conversions: 6,113
Average Daily Conversions: 41.30
Conversion Rate: 56.94% (healthcare industry standard: 3.36%)
Cost Per Conversion: $1.56

Display ads:
Total Impressions: 324,141
Total Clicks: 19,740
Average Daily Clicks: 133.38 clicks/day
Click-Through Rate (CTR): 6.09% (healthcare industry standard: 0.59%)
Average Cost Per Click (CPC): $0.27
Total Conversions: 6,259
Average Daily Conversions: 42.29 conversions/day
Conversion Rate: 31.71% (healthcare industry standard: 0.82%)
Cost Per Conversion: $0.87

Looking to develop a recruitment or marketing campaign that delivers results—creatively, efficiently, and with impact? Interested in learning more about how we can help? Let’s start a conversation.

Tenth Crow Creative is a brand marketing agency that creates, aligns, and promotes messaging for health and wellness organizations. Through insightful branding and compelling marketing campaigns, we help these essential organizations find their identities and effectively communicate to their stakeholders so they can fulfill their missions.