With the lines between PR, marketing and digital campaigns becoming increasingly blurred, we have found that creating and implementing an integrated strategy is the key to truly successful brand elevation, lead generation and recruitment.
Having selected DUO as its PR partner in February 2016, redPanda Software, a custom enterprise software development company, with both local and international clients in the retail and financial industries, set the challenge of attracting talented developers for its fast-growing team.
Challenge
redPanda Software had recently signed a significant contract with one of the largest UK-based retail groups. This brought with it exceptional opportunity for business expansion, but also required a fast injection of new talent into the team in order to ensure the project’s success.
With the continuing skills shortage in South Africa, finding experienced and highly skilled developers was - and remains - a big challenge, with many local businesses competing for the same talent.
The recruitment challenge was to hire a new team of 9 senior resources within a 6-month period - a big ask by any standards.
Solution
In order to have the best chance of meeting this target, DUO recommended an integrated approach, including both traditional PR and digital elements.
DUO had already spent a few months building the redPanda Software brand in the media through thought leadership articles, press releases and media interviews. These efforts would continue throughout the recruitment drive to further entrench the brand in the market, while also incorporating other aspects to hone in on attracting new staff.
After investigating a number of options, the primary platform selected for a digital campaign was MyBroadband, due to its wide reach as well as the relevance of its readership. With the support of the experienced MyBroadband team, a comprehensive strategy was implemented that included editorial focusing on aspects of the business that would resonate with potential staff, videos that provided personal and compelling messages, and a visually appealing and eye-catching adverts with a hard call-to-action inviting potential candidates to apply for available positions.
To ensure potential candidates found the relevant information, a campaign-specific landing page was created on the redPanda Software website that provided the key information relating to the available positions. A contact form was also included to allow candidates to immediately and easily apply to join the redPanda Software team.
Results
Within the first month, our choice of platform for this campaign proved to be the right one. The editorial published with the intention of driving interest and engagement with the redPanda Software brand exceeded all expectations.
On average, the articles received more than 2 600 views each (well above the overall MyBroadband average of 500). The videos published achieved an even higher level of exposure with nearly 3 000 views each.
In addition, the redPanda Software banner advert garnered nearly double the average click-through rate (CTR) of adverts on the selected platform.
This campaign drove unmatched traffic to the company website, with a clear spike in views of the Careers page. While this, in itself, was an exciting success, the true measure of effectiveness of the campaign was in both the number and quality of successful candidates employed.
Highlights
Managing to find candidates in a significantly more cost-effective way than traditional recruitment was a real highlight of this campaign, but even more so was the calibre of candidate that we were able to target and attract through careful messaging, data analysis and campaign refinement.
In addition, seeing the effectiveness of digital marketing in close partnership with PR was something quite special - with all components of brand elevation and marketing working towards the common goal, we surpassed all client, and our own expectations of what is possible.
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