Cost per application cut to a quarter and sessions up tenfold, breaking the dependence on job boards | Dimple Inc.

■ Company profile Dimple Inc. Website: https://www.dimples.co.jp/ Industry: temporary staffing, recruitment, contracted work, outsourcing Employees: 4,883 (as of December 2025) Services: web marketing support (web advertising management, SEO article production, website renewal)

Dimple Inc. (founded 1991, Kita-ku, Osaka), under the vision of “widening the stage for people who can make others happy with a smile”, provides temporary staffing, recruitment, contracted work and outsourcing, mainly for shopping centres and department stores across Japan. With customer-facing sales and reception roles for people in their 20s and 30s as its main target, it provides high-quality matching between job seekers and companies. ▶ Dimple’s job, career-change and staffing site for sales and reception roles

https://youtu.be/et2eRVivUK0?si=nMeyizmHngISyYjY

Challenges before: acquisition concentrated in certain channels, and the walls of in-house operation and an ageing site

While aiming to grow acquisition in its staffing and recruitment business, the company found it difficult to design an overall plan: among many options such as web advertising and SEO, which targets to focus on and how to allocate budget and resources. It also faced specific hurdles in individual measures, such as the following. ・SEO not yet started, and the wall in front of doing it in-house At the time almost no SEO had been done and there was little knowledge in-house, so writing articles internally was difficult. When they had outsourced in the past, the work had not reached the quality they wanted, and they felt anxious about the gap in content volume compared with competitor sites. ・Rising cost per application in web advertising Applications came mainly from job sites such as Indeed, and they were looking to strengthen web acquisition through their own channels. However, their own ad campaigns at the time had a much higher cost per application than the job sites. ・An ageing job site and UI/UX issues Seven years had passed since the last site renewal, and the dated design and difficult search were problems. The application form also had many fields, which made users likely to drop off, and improving this was urgent.

NowVillage’s support: three approaches covering strategy design, creative and site improvements

After attending a seminar on growing acquisition in the recruitment business, the company chose NowVillage. They valued our ability to support web advertising, SEO, article production and site renewal across the board and end to end, and we began working side by side.

① “SEO partnership support” using a strategic map

To identify keywords that reach users in their 20s and 30s seeking customer service, sales and reception roles, we carried out a market and competitor analysis. We proposed a “four-quadrant keyword map” visualising likelihood of conversion and search volume, and aligned with Dimple on which areas to target. We also built the workflow through to article publication together, and alongside producing articles on their behalf, thoroughly shared our know-how so their team members could run it themselves.

② “Web advertising management” starting from the creative 

We fully reviewed and optimised the channel and budget allocation of the advertising budget entrusted to us. At first NowVillage produced creative that would resonate with the target and ran the PDCA cycle, but once an in-house designer joined the company, we advised on banner design and copy based on the latest trends and the user’s perspective, backing up a smooth in-house operation.

③ “Job site renewal” aimed at maximising the application rate 

We renewed the design to match the sensibilities of the main target audience and greatly improved usability, such as searching by location. To realise their designer’s strong commitment to “cuteness and appearance”, we patiently worked through fine adjustments down to individual colour codes. We also optimised the application form fields that had been a bottleneck, improving the design so users can apply without hesitation. ▶ The renewed job, career-change and staffing site for sales and reception roles

Results: a self-running team and outstanding cost performance

Through SEO and web advertising support and the site renewal, the company has seen concrete results such as the following. ・SEO results The number of published articles and sessions grew about tenfold. Beyond expanding organic traffic, the articles also work as content assets for other channels such as email newsletters and LINE, and conversions have risen steadily. Fortnightly reporting deepened SEO knowledge in-house, and a structure is now in place that runs smoothly on both fronts, outsourced and in-house. ・Web advertising results Through precise channel allocation and creative improvements, cost per application was cut to about a quarter of the original level. It is now established as a strong acquisition channel of the company’s own, not reliant on job sites alone. ・Site renewal results The refined design has been very well received inside and outside the company as “easier to read and cuter”. A dramatic UX improvement to the application form achieved a substantial increase in the application rate (CVR).

A comment from Dimple Inc.

“The person in charge at NowVillage got really deeply involved in supporting us, right down to keyword selection and our regular meetings. Thanks to them working alongside us so attentively, producing articles in-house has gone surprisingly smoothly. We now have a two-track structure of outsourcing to NowVillage and producing in-house, and I feel both are working well because of that careful support at the start.

Even when our requests were still vague, they properly grasped our intent and rebuilt it into a strategy, so I highly recommend them to companies starting from zero that don’t know where to begin with digital marketing. We have fully cleared our first challenge of strengthening acquisition through web advertising and SEO, so from now on we want to focus on ‘improving yield’ to turn the applications we gather into effective results (interviews and placements), and on re-engaging existing user data, and aim for further growth.”

The partner behind the acquisition: NowVillage Inc.

NowVillage Inc. is a marketing support company that provides cross-functional support covering web advertising, SEO, website production, and the implementation and operation of tools such as HubSpot. We are not a vendor that simply carries out measures on your behalf and stops there. We want to be a “running partner” that provides knowledge and systems from behind, so that our clients, who are the main players, can attract customers and generate sales through their own efforts. Through strategy proposals based on accurate data analysis and feedback on creative that captures the latest trends, we communicate carefully and closely, like a member of your team, and work alongside you to solve your challenges. “We’re struggling with how to allocate our digital marketing budget” “We want to renew our website, but don’t know where to start” If that sounds like you, please feel free to talk to NowVillage. We will give your concerns and challenges our full and sincere attention.