Effective marketing of employment information to immigrants requires knowing where immigrants look for such information. This presentation offers some insight into such resources and the factors that influence immigrants’ search habits.
We have concluded that more research in this area needs to be undertaken in order to improve how employment opportunities are marketed to skilled immigrants.
Effective marketing of employment information to immigrants requires knowledge of about where immigrants look for information. We looked for research in this area and there is not much. I will share with you the little information that we found. We hoped to find gaps between where immigrants look for information and the channels that have actually been used to channel employment information to immigrants.
In this regard we gathered information around: Where immigrants look for employment information? Which immigrant demographics are aware of employment information available? Which immigrant communities go where for employment information? How has employment information been channeled to immigrants? And what are the promising practices?
In terms of where immigrants get their information: The LSIC results here suggest that close to 70% of new immigrants got their employment information from friends relatives and household members.
More recent information was from Skills for Change an agency that provides employment support services to immigrants. They asked their clients how they heard about their services and found that 51% of their 14 000 + clients had heard about them from a friend, a result still consistent with the LSIC finding. This is the most recent information we have about where immigrants get their employment information from.
More recent information shows that immigrants get a lot of their information from websites. Although there is an obvious selection bias with this data in the sense that all people surveyed were users of a website responding to a survey on the website, the results show a significant number of respondents got their settlement information from websites.
Asked why they preferred using websites , 78% said websites were faster and Reliable.
CIC carried out a Learn Speak Live (LSL) campaign earlier this year( March to May 2010). It incorporated a lot of evaluation components to gage the effectiveness of different approaches of the campaign. Effectiveness was measured by asking callers to disclose their source of information about learn speak live. During the campaign LSL experienced a spike in hits to 1.3 million page clicks. 5 phone numbers were used with the advertising: one for all TV/Radio ads One for all print advertising (mainly newspaper and magazine) And 3 for regional advertising (one each for Peel, Toronto and York), which includes transit advertising and the online promotion. Effectiveness of Advertising Channels: Newspaper/Magazine: 38% Metro paper (expensive but most cost-effective with bulk). No calls from Magazines (Canadian Newcomer and Canadian Immigrant magazines) but their online advertising did work (see below). 12% other papers but surprisingly, not many calls from ethnic papers (maybe not enough advertising there.) With papers, calls mainly came in on behalf of someone else. 14% Bus (outside) 13% Subway platforms 8% billboards 6% bus shelters 5% online, including PSAs (Canadian Newcomer Magazine Online and Google, mainly) 4% TV/radio
To effectively reach immigrants with employment information, one needs to understand immigrant demographics. There is not a lot of information about these demographic preferences. But the information in this slide raises critical questions like: How do we channel information so that the older and less educated can be made aware of it? Why are male immigrants more informed about employment information than the female immigrants? How can employment information be targeted at the under employed immigrants? Or should they be targeted with employment information? We do not have answers to these questions but having the answers could be useful in targeting employment information to the demographic groups that need it most.
Settlement.org Tabulated the age groups of people using the website. 87% of the users were between the ages of 25 and 54, which is also the working age.
47% of the users had been in Canada for more than 5 years. Newer immigrants still trusted information from family and friends. Information in other parts of the settlement.org survey shows that 12% of the respondents were outside of Canada. That tells us that websites are also good for marketing information to immigrants before they arrive in Canada.
It is also important to understand media habits of immigrant communities in order to effectively channel information to them through the media. In-language media is very useful to reach the Chinese and South Asian communities. But it would be important to also know the media habits of all immigrant communities. Habits vary from one community to another and we do not have all that information. 66% of newcomers (5 years or less) use the internet. When we include immigrants who have lived in Canada for the past 10 years, the rate increases to 78%. This is another piece of information that says immigrants increasingly look for information from the interment the longer they live in Canada.
TV could be a viable channel for targeting employment to Chinese and south Asian immigrant communities. But this result could vary from community to community. A more complete picture of this variability would be useful if we had all the information.
The NewBridger is the only example we found of an internet-based social network of immigrants. This is a moderated email network of Chinese immigrants exchanging information on various topics of common interest to the community. The study found it very useful in providing Chinese immigrants with useful settlement information.
This graph shows the percentages of various settlement information found in media content by type of media. For example: Ethnic media carried 5% employment information Mainstream media carried about 13% employment information Neighbourhood media carried about 12% employment information Employment content was channeled mainly through Mainstream and Neibourhood (local geographical area) media. Very little employment content was channeled through ethnic media (a more trusted channel).
This graph shows the percentages of various settlement information found in media content by media technology. For example: TV contained less than 5% employment information Radio contained 5% employment information Newspapers contained slightly more than 5% employment information. Internet contained 8% employment information Most employment information was channeled through websites. Where language problems exist, this can become a barrier as mentioned in (R J Sparks Consulting Inc. and WGW Services Ltd. Sponsored by COSTI Immigrant Services, 2001:25). However as we have seen, more recent statistics show that 78% of new immigrants use the internet. Therefore the internet is a good tool for channeling employment information to immigrants.
This study shows an example of a mismatch between where immigrants look for employment information and where this information could actually be found. Whereas immigrants went to ethnic media to look for employment information, the information had been channeled through mainstream media.
The Jangles Productions campaign is one of the examples we found where multi-media and multilingual marketing of settlement services was very successful. All three services promoted saw significant growth in clientele over the 6 moth promotion. Jangles was contracted to use a multimedia approach to promote 3 settlement services: OCASI’s website settlement.org (A comprehensive website for newcomer information) Newcomer Information Centres (3 Toronto, 2 Mississauga, 2 Brampton, 1 Caledon, 1 Oakville and 1 Ottawa) Findhelp Information Services 211 Toronto & 211 Peel (24/7 multi-language phone referral services) The campaign consisted of: Producing and placing ads in 22 ethnic publications Placing ads on the websites of 14 of the 22 ethnic publications contracted Producing, translating and distributing brochures throughout the GTA and in the Ottawa area where the ethnic publications are circulated and where the targeted newcomer communities live This ambitious approach worked: all 3 services saw significantly increased traffic. There were more than 6.4 million impressions from the combined circulation figures of all 22 ethnic publications over the six month period The 10 Newcomer Information Centres (NIC) posted significant increases For March/10 the Toronto sites were the highest on record for new clients served The Ottawa site saw a 100% increase in new and repeat clients for December/09. The six NIC sites operated by Centre for Education and Training (CET) showed dramatic increases of over 100% in October/09 and 110% in November/09 compared to the year before. Findhelp information Services 211 Toronto posted an 18% increase in monthly calls in March/10 compared to February/10 211 Peel indicated a 110% increase in November/09 compared to November/08 OCASI’s website www.settlement.org showed a 40% increase in unique users (first time users) in March/10 compared to December/09
Settlement.org and inmylanguage.org Marketing is done through OMNI TV, video ads and on TTC platform visual displays – proved very effective website hits were at their highest this January aafter the promotion was launched.
Even though most of these new initiatives have not yet been formally evaluated, anecdotal evidence suggests that they are very promising. A coordinated approach to these promising initiatives could be more effective in bringing employment information to where immigrants are.
In conclusion, more work is needed to shed light on sources of information for various immigrant demographic and ethnic groups. A key consideration for the Communications and Marketing working group could be undertaking comprehensive research into these matters as a joint initiative. References: Statistics Canada: LSIC, 2003, page 40 Skills for Change Annual Report 2009/10 The role of internet-based social support networks in immigrant settlement – a case study of the NewBridger, Julie Xiaoping Lin et al, 2010 Settlement Programming throuogh the media, Karim H. Karim, Mahmoud Eid and Boulou Ebanda de B’beri, 2007 Recent Immigrants’ Awareness of, Access to, Use of and Satisfaction with Settlement services in the York Region, Lucia Lo et al, 2010 CERIS working paper number 79 Settlement in the workplace, the settlement needs of employed newcomers, an exploratory study, R J Sparks Consulting Inc. and WGW Services, sponsored by COSTI Immigrant Services, 2001 Diversity Initiative, March 2008 Findings of the settlement.org evaluation survey, Arnold love, June 15, 2010 http://www.yorku.ca/tiedi/doc/AnalyticalReport7.pdf