What made the Manpower PEAK campaign so successful?

Five factors: advertising on social media where competitors weren't present, creating content-style ads instead of traditional job postings, tight geographic and behavioural targeting with aggressive retargeting, reducing the application form to 3 fields, and optimising creative and budget allocation in real-time rather than weekly.

What is a good cost per lead in recruitment marketing?

Industry benchmarks vary by role and market, but in the UK, £5–15 per application is typical for competitive roles like drivers and warehouse operatives. The Manpower PEAK campaign achieved £1.13 per lead by using social channels, removing application friction, and heavy retargeting.

How do you reduce cost per lead in recruitment campaigns?

The highest-impact change is reducing the application form to the minimum required fields. Every additional field is a drop-off point. Moving from 15 fields to 3 can triple completion rates. Beyond that: advertise where competitors aren't, use content-style creative, retarget anyone who shows interest, and optimise daily rather than weekly.

How does this campaign relate to 60?

60 was built on the same principles that made campaigns like this work: speed, specificity, systematic follow-up, and friction removal. The difference is that the Manpower campaign required a team executing manually. 60 automates those principles for sales teams so one person can operate with the consistency of a full team.

Can these principles apply outside recruitment?

Yes. The 5 principles - go where competition isn't, make it feel like content, remove friction, follow up with anyone who shows interest, optimise in hours not weeks - apply to any high-volume marketing or sales motion: cold outreach, lead generation, event campaigns, product launches.

4,300 Leads in 2 Weeks: A Campaign Teardown

The brief was three words: "As many as possible."

Manpower, one of the world's largest recruitment companies, needed drivers, warehouse operatives, and HGV drivers for their end-of-year PEAK campaign. The seasonal hiring window was narrow. The ad spend budget was £5,000. The expectation was volume.

Manpower runs PEAK campaigns every year to staff up for the Q4 logistics surge: Christmas deliveries, warehouse throughput, seasonal transport demand. They need thousands of people, fast, across multiple locations.

The challenge: everyone in recruitment is hiring for the same roles at the same time. Drivers and warehouse ops are the most competitive candidate markets in the UK during Q4. The big job boards charge premium rates. The candidates have options. And the window to reach them before a competitor does is measured in days, not weeks.

Previous campaigns had delivered decent results at typical recruitment marketing costs: £5–15 per application depending on the channel and the role. At £10 per application, a £5K ad spend gets you 500 applicants. Respectable. Not transformational.

We needed to break that economics entirely.

4,300 Leads in 2 Weeks: How We Did It

The Context

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