Glints B2B Advertising Teardown
Glints is a web-based expertise recruitment and profession discovery platform with headquarters in Singapore – and it’s one of many quickest rising firms in Southeast Asia.
Based in 2015, the Singapore-based startup has grown at an annual compound charge of 209%.
Glints lately secured one other $50m in funding (taking them to $80m in complete funding) because of their stellar observe report thus far. Right here’s a quick overview of their large success:
- 50,000+ firms have used Glints for hiring
- Practically 4,000,000 younger professionals have used Glints for job looking
- Ranked in prime 20 of Nikkei-FT-Statista Excessive-Development Corporations Asia-Pacific 2021 listing
- Ranked in prime 10 of Straits Instances’ quickest rising firms in Singapore in 2022
So how have they performed it?
We’ve been maintaining a detailed eye on Glints’ development. We’ve spent hours pouring over their advertising and listening to interviews and items on their firm, and we’ve compiled 10 key elements which have led to their large development.
The excellent news? You possibly can replicate most of those in your individual firm. We’ve separated the elements into three sections overlaying Glints’ journey:
- Laying the Basis: 3 enterprise and advertising constructing blocks that laid the muse for his or her success
- Digital Advertising Performs from the Glints Playbook: 4 advertising techniques and campaigns which have been essential to their development
- Efficient Enterprise and Administration Ways: 3 enterprise ideas and management methods which have been central all through their journey
Let’s dive in:
Half 1: Laying the Basis
A Well timed and Nicely-Deliberate Pivot
Within the earliest days of Glints, it was simply an internship matching platform – merely a matchmaking company for interns and startups. This was the preliminary thought.
However the Glints group shortly realised there was way more demand and a a lot greater drawback to be solved in full-on recruitment and placement.
Moderately than falling in love with their preliminary thought, they started speaking to their goal audiences and realized there was a a lot greater drawback on the market. Employers wanted assist with greater than internships. In order that they made the pivot.
“Fall extra in love with the issue and the client than you’re with
your thought or proposed resolution.”
Whenever you’re obsessive about the issue your audience has, the answer will come. Whenever you’re obsessed together with your thought, you’re going to overlook alternatives to enhance your resolution with a view to higher meet the wants of your buyer.
And while you’re obsessive about the issue and the wants of your buyer, you’ll be able to pivot when needed to make sure you’re assembly these wants – and to make sure your organization continues to develop.
Sensible Positioning in a Market Hole
As soon as the Glints group nailed down the issue they wished to unravel, they wanted a solution to innovate and differentiate from comparable job portals and platforms.
In 2015, there have been two major methods to recruit:
- You could possibly rent a headhunter
- You could possibly put up a job and pray the proper particular person applies
However there was nothing in-between the 2 sides of the spectrum. So Glints positioned themselves proper within the center with each a portal and recruitment. They give attention to getting high quality candidates on board earlier than the roles are posted.
This positioning tactic allowed them to face out from the gang and place themselves proper in between two enterprise fashions that had been unlikely to surrender a lot market share.
Getting Particular with a Worthwhile Goal Viewers
Getting crystal clear in your audience is significant. Everybody is aware of that. However what if that concentrate on viewers doesn’t have a lot cash? What if that viewers isn’t worthwhile?
That is the place the Glints group discovered themselves early on. That they had resolution focusing on a well-defined viewers… However that viewers was faculty college students. They didn’t have a lot cash.
“That was a painful lesson that we realized after some time was that college students
didn’t have that a lot cash to pay us, and our actual clients –
after speaking to lots of clients and customers – had been really the employers.”
The scholars who wanted internships had an issue, however they didn’t have cash. The group realised the employers looking for job candidates had the same want – they usually had cash.
So Glints shifted their focus primarily to the employers.
Half II: Digital Advertising Performs from the Glints Playbook
A Prospecting Technique that Landed Some Large Offers
As quickly as Glints made their pivot and narrowed their goal persona, they knew they wanted to deliver on some employers shortly. They did some chilly calling and sat in lots of conferences earlier than realising if they may get conferences with employers who had been already hiring (heat prospects), they may make way more environment friendly use of their time and enhance their shut charge.
They wanted to search out firms who had been hiring, get ahold of the proper folks’s contact info, and outreach successfully to get conferences.
1. Discover Heat Prospects
The place might they discover employers who they may ensure had been seeking to rent?
Job boards.
However as an alternative of manually compiling lists from every job board on the market, they automated the method utilizing a software known as import.io to scrape job boards. They had been then capable of give these vetted lists of heat prospects to a enterprise improvement consultant, saving everybody time and enhancing their shut charge.
2. Acquire Electronic mail Addresses
So that they had the corporate who was hiring, however they didn’t have emails for the proper folks within the firm’s HR division. They wanted another step of their course of to attach the dots.
They determined to utilise Hunter.io to gather electronic mail addresses for the proper touchpoint. Hunter helps you discover skilled electronic mail addresses in seconds – you simply enter an organization title or URL and it’ll pull all recognized electronic mail addresses on the firm.
If you happen to utilise their Google Sheets Add-On, you possibly can have Hunter pull electronic mail addresses for a listing – like Glints was capable of do.
3. Outreach Emails
The final step was outreach emails. Glints wanted to ship efficient emails that will result in booked conferences. These emails wanted to work. They couldn’t actually afford to not. They targeted on doing a number of issues in these emails:
- Utilizing a catchy – however not spammy – topic line (“Can We Assist You Enhance Your Hiring Course of?”)
- Main with a praise (“Congratulations on being listed on [Website]’s prime 10 listing”)
- Utilizing a brief and easy CTA (“I’d love to listen to a bit extra about your hiring course of to see if we’d find a way that will help you out. Simply reply to this electronic mail when you’d be keen to hop on a 15 minute name someday within the subsequent few weeks.”)
This prospecting technique and course of allowed them to shortly and effectively get in contact with heat prospects – saving their gross sales and advertising groups lots of time and sources within the early days. It additionally obtained them conferences with lots of massive firms which helped them achieve critical traction early on.
Tips on how to Prospect Like Glints
- Ask your self, “What actions would possibly my finest clients already be participating in?” For instance, you probably have a software program that integrates with WordPress for faster exports, all your potential clients will probably be utilizing WordPress.
- Is there a listing of those firms someplace on the internet? In our instance, websites like builtwith.com pull softwares totally different firm’s web sites use.
- Scrape the listing. You should use import.io, Shiny Knowledge, or Zen Scrape.
Launching a Profession Discussion board to Get Job Prospects into Ecosystem
After seeing some success, the Glints group realised that not each candidate for a job is in search of jobs. At any given time, solely about 10% of the candidates within the job market are actively trying to find a brand new job.
How might they get these folks into their ecosystem?
They brainstormed and determined to construct a neighborhood to assist younger folks get sensible recommendation on discovering a job, exploring totally different profession paths, and succeeding of their present roles. Oswald describes it as a “Quora for careers.”
This took Glints from being merely a job portal (solely related to job seekers) to a profession discovery platform (related to anybody wanting to reach their profession).
The platform alone ranks on serps for over 1 million key phrases and drives over 5 million guests every month.
Tips on how to Construct a Group for Your Viewers Like Glints
- Is there a subject or subtopics associated to what you are promoting that numerous folks have questions on and need to talk about with others?
- If that’s the case, contemplate constructing a small neighborhood like a Fb Channel or Slack group to check the concept. Utilise your community and social adverts to get folks to affix.
- If you happen to see some success, contemplate placing some extra time, vitality, and cash behind it to include it into your web site as a well-moderated neighborhood discussion board much like Glints.
- Add content material generated by your advertising group to maintain the expertise actually worthwhile for the members.
Priceless, Large Knowledge Lead Magnets that Really Resonate
Whitepaper lead magnets have been round for fairly a while, and have gotten stale for some. Glints wished to faucet into inbound advertising with lead magnets, however puzzled how they may minimize by means of the noise and promote one thing their goal market would really discover worthwhile?
They determined to accomplice with Monk’s Hill Ventures (MHV) to place collectively a deep dive report on wage tendencies throughout Southeast Asia.
What’s sensible about this advertising marketing campaign is the content material appeals to each units of Glints’ audience: employers and people in search of jobs.
They compiled an enormous information (practically 40 pages) that features compensation averages for various roles, a dialogue on the affect of COVID-19, and interviews with plenty of founders on constructing groups and tradition.
They then ran adverts throughout a number of totally different platforms to drive downloads.
What’s one drawback that usually comes with lead magnet campaigns? Plenty of unqualified new leads.
To assist sift by means of the downloaders and decide who may be primed for a gross sales name, Glints added a vital query to the lead type:
This saved their SDR’s tons of time on employers who weren’t but in want of their providers. This marketing campaign was massively profitable for them, and helped them proceed to develop even amidst the COVID pandemic.
Tips on how to Create Superior Lead Magnets Like Glints:
- They carried out an actual examine with a big pattern measurement. They performed a survey with over 175 firms and pulled over 1,000 information factors from Glints’ database.
- They added their very own well-thought perception to complement the information.
- They adopted that up with founder interviews from a few of the firms featured. That is one other layer of added worth that you just couldn’t discover wherever else on the internet.
Half III: Efficient Enterprise and Administration Ways
Dealing Successfully with Setback
If what you are promoting is seeing success and quick development, it’s nearly inevitable that you just’ll hit a setback in some unspecified time in the future. Some firms run into massive roadblocks, and a few run into small ones. Your organization’s success is basically depending on how the management group handles that setback.
Glints was no totally different. In 2017, the Glints founders broke up.
Someplace round 10% of co-founders finish their relationship inside a 12 months of beginning a enterprise and a further 45% breakup inside 4 years. (Supply)
So how did Oswald and the remaining group deal with the breakup and subsequent steps? Oswald highlights a number of key pointers in a latest weblog put up:
- Transfer quick & decisively. “As soon as it was clear that it was higher for the corporate that 1 of the founders step all the way down to make room for extra development, we shortly had the dreaded dialog maturely, and knowledgeable our shareholders for his or her inputs and recommendation. By opening up shortly and truthfully, we had been capable of faucet on their experiences to keep away from making the identical errors.”
- Use each the guts and the top. “We’d not have come thus far if not for one another, and determined that we work on the separation settlement with the precept of equity. Ensuring that on the finish of the day, we will look one another within the eye and confidently say with our hearts we have now been truthful to one another.”
- Concentrate on the massive imaginative and prescient. “On the finish of the day, what issues is the corporate mission and imaginative and prescient. We realised we have now constructed one thing higher than anyone particular person, and did our greatest to make it possible for the corporate will proceed to succeed with or with none of us.”
Whatever the setback, approaching it thoughtfully and with the massive image imaginative and prescient in thoughts will at all times minimise the affect.
Constructing a Group of Leaders
Only a few firms succeed with just one actual chief and a group of followers. The most effective firms increase their flooring by making a group of leaders.
Oswald shared a sentiment he depends on when making a tradition of viral management: “Unlock, don’t encourage.”
Many leaders see motivation as their primary obligation.
“As a substitute of motivating our staff, we unblock them. Our basic assumption isn’t that they want motivation, however they already are (in any other case, they received’t be right here), and all they want is a few help in clearing the trail.”
If you happen to’re struggling to create a tradition of possession and management, contemplate getting out of the way in which and giving your folks some extra autonomy. Most will rise to the event.
Transferring (Actually) into A New Market
A couple of years in the past, Glints realised the Singapore market was a bit too small for his or her development ambitions. They determined to broaden into Indonesia – an enormous market very near Singapore.
Early on, Oswald would journey to Indonesia as soon as each few months and have weekly calls with their nation supervisor in between visits, but it surely simply wasn’t working.
“It was solely till we determined, ‘Okay. This could’t go on anymore. We obtained to maneuver there ourselves.’ So we picked up our luggage, obtained an residence in Indonesia. And the cadence went from weekly calls to only each day and even hourly iterations. And that’s what made an enormous distinction for the enterprise and the enterprise began to take off.
Being on the bottom helps you retain a more in-depth eye on operations, higher advise nation management, and get a greater understanding of the tradition.
Oswald attributes his transfer to Indonesia one of many greatest elements of their development.
Develop Like Glints
Theirs is a narrative of fixing an enormous drawback for his or her audience, pivoting on the proper time, clever positioning, and a handful of efficient advertising methods.
Only a few firms have grown like Glints. We received’t faux you’ll see the very same development by implementing a few of these methods and techniques. However we do hope they stir your creativity and supply perception that may assist what you are promoting take its subsequent step.
*This text has been compiled primarily based on public interviews and analysis on information accessible to the general public. Glints has not endorsed this text in any method.
