How to find an Australian employer and visa sponsor from the other side of the world? In early 2024, I asked myself this question – and launched a rogue LinkedIn campaign to find a visa sponsor. The results: Overwhelmingly positive feedback, valuable leads, and a conversion which would become the impulse for launching my business as a self-employed marketing expert.
„Planning to move to Australia because I'm tired of German beer."
It's early 2024. My wife and I have a goal: to move to Australia. We've been fascinated by the country for some time already, and now want to make our plan reality. The biggest challenge? The visa. Australia is notoriously strict when it comes to awarding those. The list of criteria that an applicant has to meet is long.
But there are chances. For certain professions, it's possible to receive an employer-sponsored visa – a visa which is sponsored by an Australian business, and allows the holder and their partner to live and work in Australia for two years. To qualify, one's profession must be on a specific list. Fortunately, "Marketing Specialist" is on that list. In other words: the path is clear. The only thing missing is the visa.
But how to find a sponsor from across the world? There are plenty of marketing specialists in Australia, even without me. Plus, I've got two handicaps. The first: 15.000 kilometres of distance make in-person interviews kind of tricky. The second: to be allowed to sponsor an employee in the first place, Australian businesses need to register with the government, which is a time- and cost-intensive process.
Briefly put: it's unlikely that I'll find the a business to sponsor me. Which means: I've got to get creative! My choice is to slightly misappropriate LinkedIn's Marketing Suite. It's intended to be used by businesses to run ads. I am planning to use it to run ads for myself as an individual person and potential employee – targeting marketing decision makers in Australian companies.
Budget spent
CTR
Reactions
Client won
To get "Hire this (Ger-)man" off the ground, I first define an outline for the campaign.
Marketing decision makers. I intentionally decide against including HR managers in my targeting because I assume that the campaign's creative approach is lost on them. My hypothesis: in the best case, HR managers will be convinced by my CV – marketing decision makers will be convinced by my CV, AND the creative approach of the campaign. Plus, senior marketing decision makers likely have the necessary hiring power to get me into their team.
Landing Page: I need a campaign landing page where I can outline my intentions with all necessary details, because I need to keep things brief on the ads. So, I set up a landing page on kraatz.digital, which, among others, offers a brief introductory video, a skills overview, FAQs, and a contact form through which my full CV can be downloaded.
LinkedIn Ads: In order to reach my target audience, advertising on LinkedIn is the best choice by far. To utilise LinkedIn's creative possibilities to the fullest extent, I opt to go for Image Ads that link to my landing page on kraatz.digital. Other formats like Message Ads or native Lead Forms make less sense, since they constrict the creative range due to less emphasis on imagery.
LinkedIn Company Page To serve ads on LinkedIn in the first place, I also set up a company page for kraatz digital. Apart from enabling me to run ads, this page is an empty shell with no further purpose.
Not just decision makers. My target audience consists of marketing decision makers, but I intentionally also include marketing experts at lower career levels (from "Manager" upwards). My calculation is that they'll ensure additional engagement for the ads (likes, comments) and thus multiply my reach, without me having to spend extra money for it.
All companies: Initially, I only target companies which are listed as registered visa sponsors on a publicly available list. Since performance turns out to be somewhat lackluster, I then expand targeting so that my campaign includes all Australian companies, regardless of size or sponsor status. This also feeds into my plan to generate additional, unpaid reach through a wider spread.
Professional, personal, entertaining. The campaign messaging must meet several criteria. First, it needs to make clear that I'm a professional marketer with expertise that's relevant for an Australian employer. The first Hire this (Ger-)man ad was 100% tailored to embody this approach – and failed completely.
I realised: being professional along wins no prizes, because an ad that's purely professional doesn't stand out. The second editions of my ad rectified this mistake by having entertaining copy, mentioning slightly dubious reasons behind my plan to migrate to Australia (see Showcase). These ads were the turning point for my campaign and underline once more that humour always makes a difference in marketing, as long as it's used correctly. Also, maybe somewhat less expectedly, it shows that Germans can actually display a sense of humour.
Blending professionalism, entertainment, and a personal touch within the strict confines of a LinkedIn ad was no easy challenge – but I was able to overcome it with my winning ads:
Minimum budget & maximum bid. There are two parameters determining my budget strategy for "Hire this (Ger-)man": First, I want to spend as little money as possible. Second, I have no immediate time constraints. In other words, my campaign can easily run for several weeks or months at a minimum budget. Thus, I set the budget to 10€/day – the permitted minimum on LinkedIn.
To increase efficiency and reduce daily spend further, I also add a manual maximum bid per click of 0,30€, which I adjust upwards slightly over the course of the campaign. Based on my high-quality audience, LinkedIn recommends a per-click bid of 22,83€. At the end of the campaign, my average CPC is 0,54€.
Employer-sponsoredvisa and marketing job in an Australian company, in Australia.
Convince marketing decision makers that hiring me is a good idea despite sponsorship cost and geographic distance.
Convince personally, not just professionally. Adjust tone of voice to resonate with adventurous decision-makers and companies. The CV isn't the only thing that needs to pack a punch – the campaign must also impress.
After launching "Hire this (Ger-)man" as outlined above – including a few creative iterations along the way – it became clear: this campaign was my best shot at securing a visa, and I hit the bullseye. At first, the clearest indicator for this wasn't the performance of my campaign landing page, but rather the audience engagement on the ads.
In terms of likes and comments, my ads started performing better than most organic content pieces on LinkedIn. In my 6+ years as a B2B marketer, I had never seen sponsored content with such a high level of organic engagement – by the end of my campaign, the best performing ad counted 84 reactions, 16 comments (difference to screenshot = my replies), and 2 reposts at an ad spend of 165,19€.
Quantitative performance is one thing, but the qualitative results were the real magic. Almost 100% of all comments were positive – from great feedback for the ads, to best wishes for my endeavour, to specific offers for assistance and chats to discuss opportunities.
Soon, the first landing page conversions followed. Altogether, Hire this (Ger-)man resulted in four conversions, where leads downloaded my CV and left their contact data in exchange. All of them were CMOs or CEOs of start-ups or SMBs (up to 100 employees). Each lead received a follow-up-email with a specific offer to schedule a video chat. One of these four took my offer.
This lead's company panned to enter the German market and was looking for a marketing expert with several years of experience, who is bilingual in English and German, familiar with German markets and customers, to guide the German go-to-market along different tasks from digital marketing to SEO, based at the Melbourne office.
Jackpot? The initial talks were promising. Quickly, it became clear that the company's needs and my marketing experience were a great match. But conducting a job application process across 15.000 kilometers of distance isn't easy, so the mutual evaluation phase understandably required several weeks – longer than most domestic job applications (but not all, as you perhaps have experienced yourself).
Then, it became clear: it's a match indeed. The company wanted to hire me as marketing specialist and act as sponsor for my Australian visa – and I wanted to be sponsored and move to Australia with my wife. But the company wasn't yet registered as a sponsor and this process can take a while, which was the case. By now, it was late 2024. Things were slowly, but steadily moving in the right direction – towards visa approval, contract signing, and migration.
Then, in early 2025, the unexpected happened: due to a change in personal circumstances, my wife and I had to cancel our plans to move to Australia. What would be the consequences for the ongoing hiring and visa process with my potential sponsor, that I had invested so much time and money into over the last months?
Reassessing the situation, I developed a plan B. By that time, I had already played with the thought of going self-employed as a marketing expert for a while. But so far, the final spark to take this step was missing. Until now.
Could this situation harbor that missing spark? Would my sponsor be willing to hire me as an external contractor based in Germany and initiate a project-based long-distance engagement? Would this be the moment that my career as a self-employed marketer began?
This was that moment. I explained the situation to my potential sponsor in depth – and was rewarded with understanding and an interest in my suggested solution. Even if this meant restarting the contract negotiations, both sides were keen to adjust the future engagement to these changed circumstances.
After all contractual details were agreed on, the next step was on me: to set the bureaucratic and legal requirements for my self-employment into motion. On the 1st of June, 2025, it happened – I launched my business kraatz digital and made the next step in my marketing career, as a marketing expert for start-ups and SMBs, working with my first exciting international client right off the bat.
Hire this (Ger-)man had achieved its goal, even if this goal looked a bit different from when I started. At the time of this case study's release in December 2025, the engagement with my Australian client has proven successful: the 2025 market entry was a success and we're currently developing a strategy to double down on Germany in 2026.
Consulting regarding German market conditions, customer needs, and competitors in the client's segment, to ensure an ideal positioning in the market.
Executing profitable digital marketing campaigns for the German market on Facebook, Instagram, and Google, to increase revenue.
Localisation, SEO and UX optimisation of the client's German digital storefront to optimally cater to German customers' needs.
Development of local campaigns that are tailored towards a German audience, including creative concept, content creation, and influencer relations.
Consulting regarding GDPR-compliant setup of business and marketing processes for German and EU markets to ensure that all legal requirements are met.
Conducting focus groups and surveys to gain insights on local customer needs and views regarding the client's products.
If your business is regularly processing personal data in the EU (in other words: do business), but has no company site within the EU, you're obligated to appoint an Article 27 Representative who serves as European point of contact for all GDPR-related requests, lodged, for instance, by regulators, competitors, and customers. The article 27 representative must be located in an EU member state. You can hire me as your article 27 representative.
In some regards (e.g. GDPR), the same rules apply to (almost) all EU countries. In some regards, they don't. One such case: the most popular payment methods in e-commerce. If, for example, you don't offer payment via invoice on your German digital storefront, you'll lose out on business: more than 25% of customers prefer this payment method, while it's irrelevant in other EU countries. Other examples: the payment services iDEAL (Netherlands) and Bancontact (Belgium) are indispensable in their respective countries (iDEAL: 60%, Bancontact: 40% share of e-commerce revenue), but irrelevant anywhere else.
In all EU countries, consumers are awarded a very strong legal right of withdrawal that includes almost all products: within 14 days, they're allowed to withdraw from any order they placed and will be reimbursed their original payment in full. If businesses don't adhere to this law – or simply forget to inform their customers that they adhere to it – immediate consequences follow: all customers who have placed an order with this business up to the moment when it becomes legally compliant are awarded an extended right of return period of 14 days + 12 months (yes, months). The non-compliant business has no option to fight this, and can't even claim compensation for wear and tear on items returned in this period.
Would you like to write the next chapter of this story together? If your business is looking for assistance in one or several of the above mentioned fields and you're in need of an external provider, then let's chat! Just send an initial message through the contact form below and I'll be in touch to schedule a meeting.
Versatile, pragmatic, creative: Fabian Kraatz is the archetypal t-shaped marketer. Since launching his career in 2019, he's steadily built expertise in the topics most important for modern marketing: classic marketing strategy, digital marketing, and SEO. After several successful years as a marketer in different B2B companies, Fabian launched his own business in 2025, using his expertise to help start-up and SMB clients achieve market success. Even though the move to Australia didn't work out for now, Fabian remains a big fan of the country, illustrated by the occasional Aussie cosplay session in the Outback (see image).
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