How Providence slashed hiring costs and drove over 300,000 applications
Problem
With contract labor costs climbing and the healthcare talent market growing more competitive, Providence needed to move beyond traditional recruiting tactics to stay ahead. The organization needed a more efficient way to attract quality candidates at scale.
The goals were clear:
Reduce reliance on costly agency contract labor
Hit a $25 cost-per-acquisition (CPA) target
Build a recruitment marketing strategy that could grow with them across regions and roles
Grow their Talent Network for nurturing leads throughout the year
Solution
Through our partnership, Providence saw a record year for hiring in 2023, with Becker’s reporting that the organization had seen a 15% increase in total fills and a 23% increase in external hires compared with 2022 as of September.
We challenged ourselves to do even better in 2024. We started by helping Providence tell its story more authentically by building an extensive library of hundreds of videos and caregiver testimonials, plus thousands of photos, all capturing real moments from across its seven-state footprint.
These assets powered multi-channel campaigns across:
Search
Google Performance Max
Display
Social
Audio
Video
Each campaign featured tailored messaging, custom landing pages, and continuous optimizations. This approach reduced Providence’s CPA from the $25 target to just $7.68, delivering more than 306,000 candidates in a single year.
YoY increase in conversions with only 8% more spend
35
%
YoY CPA reduction
48
%
Talent Network growth from January to November 2024
“They went from being a nice partner to an integral part of our team. We wouldn’t be able to do what we do today without them.”
Carl Queton, Senior Marketing Strategist, Providence Talent Acquisition
Insights
Authentic content drives better engagement. We developed an extensive content library featuring real caregiver stories, told through videos, imagery, and written profiles. Each story was aligned with Providence’s core values of Belonging, Caring, Growth, and Purpose. This approach created a stronger emotional connection with candidates and consistently outperformed generic ads.
Multi-channel campaigns deliver exponential lift. Paid programmatic video and audio with display, Google, and social created multi-touch experiences that dramatically improved performance. Candidates exposed to multiple channels and campaigns were an average of 9 times more likely to convert than those who saw ads on a single channel. For example, individuals who saw both regional and enterprise-wide campaigns converted at a much higher rate.
Ongoing optimization cuts costs and boosts performance. Automatic and manual optimizations were performed monthly to ensure low-performing creative was retired and replaced with high-performing content. This dropped the average CPA from a goal of $25 to just $7.68 while increasing conversions by 67% from 2023 to 2024.
Regional relevance matters. Localized campaigns delivered standout results across the Providence network. Southern California and Oregon saw tens of thousands of conversions with CPAs as low as $6. This demonstrated the impact of our regionalized creative and targeting strategies tailored to each area’s job market, demographics, and hiring needs.
Content nurtures the talent pipeline. Blog content, video stories, and email newsletters kept passive candidates engaged and informed, helping them feel connected to the brand even before they were ready to apply. In 2024, we grew the Providence Talent Network by 48%.
Let’s build your healthcare recruitment success story.
If you’re looking to reduce recruiting costs and increase your talent pool, let’s talk. Want to dive deeper? Read our blog on the role of content marketing in healthcare talent acquisition.
