👨💼 Idea Report: Employee Referral Software
This idea is unlike others that I’ve published on this newsletter.
I say this because the decision to use this product is at the department level and the decision to even consider this strategy is at the CXO level.
So growing this product will be a little different from let’s say a typical CRM software.
This idea has been tried by a lot of companies to varying degrees of success but there still seems to be a lot of opportunity around it - I’m talking about employee referral management software.
Here are the supposed funding figures and revenue of some of the players (Source:Owler).
The first one is employeereferrals.com and this is their US traffic according to third-party sources.
That’s quite low.
Given that they have raised over USD 12 million in funding (according to Crunchbase), there is good reason to believe that there are still untapped opportunities in this space.
To that effect, without any further adieu, let’s get started.
Domain Names
I recently published a list of 10000 .com domain names.
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You can register any of those listed domains for this idea for less than $10 at Bluehost [Affiliate Partner].
SEO Keywords
One of the biggest opportunities in this space is that none of the players I looked at had good brandable names.
So if you were to start, then I would pick a name that is memorable along with the suffix of “refer” or “referral”. This is an easy kill because getting brand searches will help your SERP traffic both in terms of organic and paid avenues.
So pick a name and keep it at the forefront on all your marketing channels for at least the first couple of years.
This means adding your brand name to things like:
Email Signatures
Social Images
Public Profiles
Blog Assets
PR Assets
With that out of the way, you’ll also need to rank for a few intent keywords.
And as usual, I’ve got that covered.
To know how to implement the attached worksheet, refer to my earlier reports.
Download list of intent-based and context-based keywords
Content Ideas (Strategy is more like it)
Unlike other reports, this domain seems to be very content poor.
By that, I mean the content marketing of existing players are below par.
One of the reasons for this could be fewer high intent keywords in the employee referral space but that is not to say there are no opportunities (there are some really good ones).
Which is naturally great for a new company that knows what it is doing.
Here are some content strategies that I would suggest. Ideally, you pick one and build content around that theme:
Recruiter productivity (tutorials around automations etc using third-party tools and your tool)
Employee Diversity (probably the easiest since you’ll get a lot of people willing to contribute content who want to build a reputation that they care and you can pitch “how referrals promote diversity” through your content)
HR best practices (arguably the hardest since there is a lot of competition but it will get you decent traffic to the top of your sales funnel)
I would personally recommend focussing on employee diversity. Here are some angles that you can use to create content:
Gender equality in the workplace
Making workplace inclusive to minorities
Successful case studies around workplace diversity
By taking this route, you are opening up a lot of opportunities to drive content engagement. The first thing I would do is find corporate executives who are looking to signal their workplace virtues.
This is fairly straightforward.
Search for “diversity initiatives” on LinkedIn & select “posts” in content types.
Identify people who have posted favourable content and filter out anyone who is not a VP or above.
Connect and send them a personalised message on the lines of - Would you be open to collaborate on a report/blog series on diversity.
Pick a topic and get them to contribute.
Publish it on your site/blog and ask them to promote.
It is hard to get SEO traffic on these posts since they might not necessarily rank for high-intent keywords but it will get decent traction on social sites like LinkedIn.
Plus, the contributors are incentivised to push this content on their end as well.
Having said this.. there is an even easier way to create consistent content with the diversity angle - Publishing a list of diversity champions (Created by XYZ Referral Software)
Instead of you knocking on people’s profiles, reverse everything.
A lot of attention seeking executives on sites like LinkedIn will bend over backwards to get on a list like this. Here are the steps:
Launch the nominations for this list by asking junior level managers to nominate their company’s diversity leader. These junior managers need to be on their company leadership’s good books, so they will nominate.
Reach out to the person with multiple nominations from an organisation and tell them that they are nominated.
Ask them to write a post about diversity initiatives they took in their organisation (Plug your tool here). Publish this on your blog.
Pick 25 people who get the most nominations and ask the nominees to share it extensively on social media to get votes from their peer network.
Publish the final list and give the nominees assets to share on social media. Have your brand prominently displayed on the digital assets.
Get the nominees of the current quarter to nominate diversity champions they know for the next quarter’s list.
This strategy can be milked for at least 2-3 years.
Apart from this, you can occasionally write about recruiter productivity and HR best practices but don’t make that a focus if you are going with the diversity angle.
Quora Q&A Opportunities
This topic is pretty popular in Quora circles, so you can focus on this platform if the other content initiatives are taking longer than expected.
One suggestion from my end on this would be to try and create a personal brand on Quora and then push answers.
There is real value in gaining followers on Quora, so you can brand your profile as Co-founder, XYZReferralSoftware.com to get some direct traffic.
Download list of Quora Q&A Opportunities
Influencer Marketing
I believe for this product, you are better off reaching out to LinkedIn influencers who are HR managers or thought leaders.
You can start by giving them free access and asking them to review your product.
But this is one side of the equation, the other side is cracking the diversity crowd.
That is to say, go after people in-charge of diversity in the HR departments. They are usually pretty receptive to initiatives.
In this case, don’t make a sales pitch for the product but rather pitch it on the lines of - “Building a bias free referral software” or “Diversity-first hiring software” and ask them for feedback.
After they give you feedback, follow up to see if they could introduce you to other diversity professionals. This pitch loop will sustain itself for a while, so nudge them towards a sale only when you feel they are familiar with your product.
Once you have decent name recognition, you can go after YouTube influencers in the HR training space. You can choose from the lot depending on your target geography or industry.
So that’s it for this report. I’ve intentionally not shared any growth hacks in this email.
I’ll reserve that for people who are actually serious about pursuing the idea.
So if you are pursuing this idea and want some growth hacks for it, reply back to this email with some proof of it. It could be something as simple as you buying a relevant domain or something a little more advanced like sharing the list of members in your founding team that’ll be working on this project.
On the other hand, if you are a paid subscriber, just send me an email and we’ll schedule a call.
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