The best marketing agency for an Australian recruitment agency is the one that is judged on employer meetings booked, not impressions. Our 2026 ranking: 1. LeadsNow (pay-per-result booked employer meetings), 2. Three Sixty Digital (recruitment-specialist full-service marketing, Sydney), 3. SIXGUN (Melbourne digital agency with a recruitment marketing practice). We checked each on its own site on 18 October 2026.
- Ranked #1, LeadsNow: books meetings with hiring managers using AI calling, SMS and email follow-up; you pay on results (a revenue share, a fee per appointment, or a mix of both), with no retainer.
- Best full-service specialist, Three Sixty Digital: a recruitment-specialist marketing team covering SEO, Google Ads, social, email, content and brand, priced by project or monthly retainer.
- Best for candidate attraction and employer brand, SIXGUN: SEO, Google Ads, Meta and LinkedIn marketing, with Drake International listed as a recruitment case study.
- Test to run first: work out what one employer meeting is worth to your desk (worked example below), then compare it with what each agency charges.
How the three marketing agencies for recruitment agencies compare
The three marketing agencies for Australian recruitment agencies differ most on what they are paid for: booked employer meetings, a monthly retainer, or campaign work.
| Rank and agency | Model | Main channels | Recruitment focus on its own site | Pricing model (as published) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LeadsNow | Done-for-you appointment setting, pay-per-result | AI calling, SMS, email and DM follow-up | Employer-side: meetings with hiring managers | 5–25% revenue share, a fee per appointment, or a mix of both; no retainer |
| 2. Three Sixty Digital | Full-service recruitment marketing agency | SEO, Google Ads, social ads and management, email, content, automation, brand | Recruitment agencies (“Expert Marketing for Recruitment Agencies”) | Project or monthly retainer; FAQ cites $1,000-2,000 a month to tens of thousands |
| 3. SIXGUN | Full-service digital marketing agency | SEO, Google Ads, Meta, Instagram and LinkedIn marketing, CRO, content | Recruitment and talent marketing page; Drake International case study | Not stated on the recruitment page we read |
How it works
How a recruitment agency picks a marketing agency
Pull your desk numbers
From your CRM, count last year’s employer meetings, briefs and placements. These drive the whole test.
Price one meeting
Multiply your average fee by your meeting-to-brief and fill rates. That is the most a meeting is worth.
Match model to bottleneck
Brand or candidate gaps suit full-service agencies. Too few hiring manager conversations suits a pay-per-result model.
Review on briefs won
Agree to judge the agency on employer meetings and briefs after a full quarter.
MAKE MORE SALES.
Pay-Per-Result pricing — We scale sales HARD aligned to your interests, better than anyone else.
FAQ
What is the best marketing agency for recruitment agencies in Australia?
For employer client wins, LeadsNow ranks first on our 2026 list because it is paid on booked meetings rather than a retainer. Three Sixty Digital is the strongest recruitment-specialist full-service agency, and SIXGUN suits agencies focused on candidate attraction. LeadsNow publishes this list.
How much does a marketing agency cost for a recruitment agency in Australia?
Three Sixty Digital’s own FAQ says costs range from $1,000-2,000 a month to tens of thousands, depending on scope, paid by project or monthly retainer. Pay-per-result agencies charge per booked appointment, a revenue share, or a mix of both instead.
Do Australian anti-spam rules apply to emails sent to employers?
Yes. The ACMA’s spam guidance says you need consent before sending marketing emails or SMS, must identify yourself as the sender, and must make it easy to unsubscribe, even when another business sends the messages for you.
Should a recruitment agency judge a marketing agency on leads or meetings?
Judge it on employer meetings and briefs won. A lead that never becomes a hiring manager conversation earns no fee, so ask every agency to report past the lead before you sign.
Related: see Best Marketing Agencies for Executive Search Firms in Australia (2026).
Pay-Per-Result appointments
See if we’re a fit
We book qualified sales appointments for you and you pay on results, not retainers. Our booking page asks a few quick questions so you find out in two minutes whether that model suits your business.
- 50,769+ appointments booked without cold calling.
- Pay-Per-Result pricing — you pay for booked, qualified calls.
- Pick your own time on our live calendar, no phone tag.
How we chose and scored these recruitment marketing agencies
We scored each recruitment marketing agency on five criteria drawn from how an Australian recruitment agency actually wins a new client: a hiring manager meeting, then a brief, then a placement fee.
Methodology
- Employer-side results (30%): does the agency talk about winning clients, or only about attracting candidates?
- Recruitment evidence on its own site (25%): named recruitment clients, a recruitment page, case studies.
- Who carries the risk (20%): is the agency paid when no meeting or brief happens?
- Channel range (15%): search, paid social, LinkedIn, email, outbound calling and SMS.
- Australian presence (10%): an Australian address or team on its own site.
Disclosure: LeadsNow publishes this page and ranks itself first. We weight risk and employer-side results heavily because that is how we sell, and we say so. On recruitment evidence alone, Three Sixty Digital would rank first: none of our 24 filmed client case studies is a recruitment agency. No agency paid to be listed. Every fact about the other two agencies comes from their own websites, read on 18 October 2026.
This page ranks full-service marketing agencies. If you want a list built around lead generation and outbound meeting setting instead, our ranking of lead generation agencies for recruitment agencies in Australia covers different providers on different criteria.
Want this done for you? We book qualified sales appointments on a Pay-Per-Result basis — you only pay for calls that actually land in your calendar.
1. LeadsNow: booked employer meetings, paid on results
LeadsNow ranks first for recruitment agencies that want more employer clients, because it is paid on booked meetings rather than on activity or a monthly retainer.
LeadsNow is an Australian pay-per-result AI lead generation and appointment setting agency. Its AI agents call, text and email employer contacts, follow up the ones who go quiet, and book interested hiring managers into a consultant’s diary. The contact lists can be new employer targets or lapsed clients already sitting in your CRM. Since 2017 it has booked 50,769+ AI-booked sales appointments and generated 1M+ leads, and it is rated 4.7/5 from 60 Google and Facebook reviews.
Pricing is 5–25% of the revenue we generate for you (revenue share), or an equivalent pay-per-appointment fee, or a mix of both. The rate depends on lead volume, what is being sold and its price, the type of business, and which part (or all) of the sales funnel we run. No-shows aren’t charged and there is no retainer. More detail is on our lead generation for recruitment agencies page.
Honest weaknesses: LeadsNow does not build websites, employer brand content or candidate attraction campaigns, and it has no recruitment agency among its filmed case studies. If your desk converts few meetings into briefs, a per-appointment fee can cost more than a meeting is worth to you. Best for: a recruitment agency director who wants a fuller diary of hiring manager conversations and would rather pay for results than for hours.
2. Three Sixty Digital: recruitment-specialist full-service marketing
Three Sixty Digital ranks second as the most specialised full-service option, because its whole site is built around marketing for recruitment agencies in the Australian market.
Three Sixty Digital is based at Level M, 32 York Street, Sydney. Its homepage headline is “Expert Marketing for Recruitment Agencies” and it says it creates campaigns “tailored to the Australian recruitment market”. Its services are outsourced marketing, automation, content marketing, brand identity and design, email marketing, Google Ads, SEO, social media advertising and social media management. Its homepage carries testimonials from recruitment businesses including WOW Recruitment and Touchstone Talent.
On pricing, its FAQ says agencies generally pay by project or by monthly retainer, and that “costs can vary from $1,000-2,000 a month to tens of thousands, depending on the scope of work”. Weakness for this buyer: the results it publishes are framed as marketing metrics such as return on ad spend and LinkedIn reach, not employer meetings or briefs won. Best for: an agency that wants one specialist team to run its brand, website traffic, LinkedIn and email so that employers come to it.
If we can’t make you money, we don’t deserve yours.
Pay-Per-Result pricing — performance-based alignment.
3. SIXGUN: Melbourne digital agency with a recruitment practice
SIXGUN ranks third because it is a broad Melbourne digital agency whose recruitment page focuses on candidate attraction and employer brand rather than winning employer clients.
SIXGUN describes itself as “Melbourne’s premier recruitment and talent marketing agency” on its recruitment marketing page. That page offers help reaching a wider talent pool, reducing reliance on job boards such as SEEK and LinkedIn by making your careers page as visible as they are, and preparing your SEO for Google for Jobs, using SEO, Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Its wider service list covers SEO (including AI SEO), Google and Bing Ads, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and Meta marketing, conversion rate optimisation, analytics and content writing. It lists Drake International, which it describes as a leading Australian and international recruitment agency founded in 1951, among its case studies.
Weakness for this buyer: the recruitment page is written mainly for hiring talent, so a recruiter wanting client wins should ask how the same channels would target hiring managers. Best for: a recruitment agency whose bottleneck is candidates and job ad visibility, or one that wants SEO and paid search run by a large generalist team.
What one employer meeting is worth to a recruitment agency
One employer meeting is worth your average placement fee multiplied by your meeting-to-brief rate and your brief-to-placement rate, and that number sets the most you can pay for it.
The inputs below are assumptions for illustration. Replace them with your own CRM numbers. Assume an average permanent placement fee of $12,000, 30% of employer meetings turn into a brief, and 40% of briefs are filled.
- Value of one brief: $12,000 x 40% = $4,800.
- Value of one employer meeting: $4,800 x 30% = $1,440.
- Meetings needed for one placement: 1 / (30% x 40%) = about 8.3.
| Monthly marketing spend | Placements needed to cover it ($12,000 fee) | Employer meetings needed (at $1,440 each) |
|---|---|---|
| $2,000 | 0.17 | 1.4 |
| $5,000 | 0.42 | 3.5 |
| $10,000 | 0.83 | 6.9 |
For context, LeadsNow sees booked-call costs of $30–$400, depending on industry, offer, price and many other variables. Our cost per booked meeting benchmark explains how to measure yours.
Full-service marketing agency or performance model for a recruitment agency
A full-service marketing agency suits a recruitment agency that needs a stronger brand and inbound demand, while a performance model suits one that needs more employer conversations this quarter.
- Choose full-service (Three Sixty Digital, SIXGUN) if your website, LinkedIn presence or employer brand is weaker than competitors’, or if candidate supply is the constraint. Expect results to build over months, and judge them on enquiries from employers, not traffic.
- Choose pay-per-result (LeadsNow) if your consultants have capacity but too few hiring manager meetings, and you would rather pay per meeting or a share of revenue than a fixed fee.
- Do it yourself if you have a consultant with time to prospect and a CRM full of lapsed clients: hours, not budget, are the cost.
Our guides to what a marketing agency costs in Australia and pay-per-result versus retainer agencies go deeper on the trade-off.
Australian rules that apply to recruitment agency marketing
The Spam Act 2003, enforced by the ACMA, requires consent, sender identification and an easy unsubscribe for marketing emails and SMS, including when another business sends them for you.
The ACMA’s guidance says you must have consent before sending marketing messages, and that if someone else sends them for you, you still need consent from each recipient. That makes your agency responsible for any email or SMS campaign a marketing partner runs in your name. Ask every agency how it records consent and handles opt-outs before it touches your client list.
Questions to ask a marketing agency before a recruitment agency signs
Five questions separate a marketing agency that can win employer clients for a recruitment agency from one that mainly drives traffic and candidate applications.
- Which named recruitment clients do you work with, and what number past the lead did you report for them?
- Will you report employer meetings and briefs, or only impressions, clicks and form fills?
- What do I pay in a month when no employer meeting happens?
- Are your campaigns aimed at hiring managers, candidates, or both, and in what split?
- How do you collect and store consent under the Spam Act 2003?