The digital marketing that drove a push for 200% revenue growth

Feeling the limits of Indeed recruitment, with no way forward in sight

―First, could you tell us your position and team, and your goals there?

I am Mikio Yoshizawa, head of the ITCE Department in the HR Value Division and also head of the Recruitment Department at Enrise Corporation. The ITCE Department supports young people who want to become engineers without prior experience in finding jobs and changing careers, and supports companies in hiring young IT engineers. The business started two and a half years ago and has grown steadily. This year, because of COVID-19, we were holding steady, but for this term we have set a target of 200% year-on-year revenue growth and want to expand the business rapidly.

―What challenges did you have before coming to us?

The challenge was attracting aspiring IT engineers. From 2019 we mainly used Indeed to gather people wanting to become engineers. Some things went well at first, but as we continued acquiring through Indeed, the results gradually fell short and we found ourselves struggling. We could just about gather entries, but the conversion rates to the next steps in the flow, interviews and enrolment, would not rise as we wanted.

The reason was that many applicants from Indeed did not amount to valid applications, for example:
・Many were in an older age group that this service cannot support
・The service was not fully understood, so they applied under a misunderstanding
・They simply could not be contacted
and so on.

Furthermore, from 2020 more companies began using Indeed, the cost of acquisition rose, and I came to feel strongly that we needed a new acquisition method. We also tried other methods such as affiliate marketing, but did not get the results we wanted and could not find a fundamental solution. So we consulted various advertising agencies and marketing support companies, but could not find an approach that worked, did not know what to do, and were at something of a dead end.

Concrete proposals based on a track record gave a clear picture of “200% revenue growth”

Could you tell us why you chose us?

I had actually known Mr Imamura, the representative, since before he started his company. I heard that he had set up a consultancy using social media and digital marketing, and talking to him was how it began. When I actually consulted him, unlike other marketing support companies, he did not stop at superficial marketing but made proposals looking at the business as a whole, and I felt that NowVillage was not just an advertising agency but a partner who would think about our business growth with us and act on it. Also, as background, they had a real track record of attracting inexperienced aspiring IT engineers, and the fact that they advised us based on actual experience was persuasive.

Changes on the ground brought by “execution faster than expected” and “steady results”

Once the consulting started, what specific measures did you take?

We asked for support from December 2020. First, they carefully interviewed us to understand our current challenges more accurately. That time was very valuable to us; it became an opportunity to look at our own situation objectively again, and led the whole team to a shared understanding of “what the bottleneck is right now”.
After that, things moved very quickly. Creating a new landing page, opening social media accounts, drawing up strategies for each type of ad placement, implementing them and designing the PDCA cycle: the measures got under way overwhelmingly faster and in finer detail than if we had acted on our own.

Please tell us about the quantitative results of our measures.

It has only been a short time since the new measures were implemented, but the effect is already visible. New channels are now bringing in aspiring IT engineers from exactly the segment we had been looking for. What’s more, applications have improved in number, quality and cost alike. Measuring the final effect will still take time, but I have a strong sense that “good results will come”.

Have our measures changed the atmosphere or culture within your company?

Besides the results above, I feel the atmosphere in the company has changed too. Our consultant, Ryo Aoki, faces the results sincerely, and I feel this has changed our staff’s attitude to their work as well. When we were not getting the results we wanted and could see no light, each person’s workload grew and things sometimes became tense internally, but now I feel we are becoming an organisation where each person thinks about “what can I do” to deliver results, and acts on it.

A trustworthy partner who lives up to “high expectations”

―Is there anything memorable from working with us?

We basically run the PDCA cycle with meetings about once every two weeks, but at critical moments they propose, without a moment’s delay, meetings on two consecutive days (early in the morning, at that). Rather than acting as a passive vendor, they propose what is needed to get results, so we trust them a great deal.

―Please tell us about the current situation and what you expect from us in future.

Various measures using social media and digital marketing are under way, so I’d be delighted if, within this fiscal year, we end up saying, “The classroom is full and we can’t fit anyone else in. Let’s open another one!”

―What do you think sets us apart?

With outside consultants or advertising agencies, my impression is that if you say one thing you only get one thing back, but with Mr Aoki, you say one thing and he gives back ten, which is a great help. In that sense, rather than responding with “That’s outside our scope” or “We can’t do that”, whatever we say he approaches it by thinking “what can we do to make it happen”, which we appreciate. On top of that, another major characteristic is that he gives advice such as “you’d better drop that measure” that is not self-serving.

―What kind of companies would you recommend our service to?

I can recommend them to anyone, but especially to:
・Companies looking for a marketing partner who will work alongside them with a management perspective
・Companies that want to redesign their marketing strategy from the ground up
・Companies sensing a slowdown in their existing methods or growth curve and searching for their next move
I recommend them to companies like these.