Attracting The Right Candidate Starts With Strong Brand Visibility

About

Rain Bird Corporation has been a leading global manufacturer and provider of irrigation products and services since 1933. More than 130 countries around the world use Rain Bird products in their homes, golf courses, corporate campuses, and other locations.

In early 2020, Rain Bird sought to improve their brand perception to engage and recruit more prospective candidates. The company’s HR department reached out to NetElixir for assistance. Together, we revitalized their Career and Corporate pages, enhanced their blog, and social performance, and highlighted Rain Bird’s focus on sustainability and technological innovation.

Challenge

Rain Bird needed a targeted blog and social strategy that would improve their brand perception and allow them to attract candidates with a high level of experience. To truly entice the right candidate, Rain Bird needed to effectively showcase their tech leadership, sustainability initiatives, and diversity that sets them apart from their competitors.

Solution

Our team quickly coordinated an omnichannel approach between our SEO, Content, and Organic Social experts. First, we ensured a strong SEO foundation for the Corporate and Career pages of Rain Bird’s website. We strategized opportunities for growth through a site audit, which included optimizing current on-page content, checking that all links passed for link equity, and leveraging structured data.

Through our optimization efforts, the session duration, number of sessions, and new users on the blog, Careers, and Corporate pages have grown significantly since July 2020. The Careers page now ranks in the top position for several important keywords, including ‘why work at Rain Bird.’ Rain Bird saw the greatest improvement in organic new users to the corporate page, leading to top-of-funnel users discovering Rain Bird for the first time.

Once Rain Bird’s site had a strong SEO foundation, we built out their content strategy to drive new users to the site and keep them engaged. Over two-thirds of Rain Bird’s blog traffic comes from organic searches, as new users are trying to learn about Rain Bird’s career opportunities and corporate culture. We targeted keywords like ‘work at Rain Bird’ and ‘working at Rain Bird’ within our blogs, adding links to the careers page to easily guide potential candidates to opportunities. Each blog topic provided more insight into working at the company, including department spotlights with employee perspectives. Even blogs that highlighted products included call-outs about joining the team to consistently promote Rain Bird’s career opportunities whenever a new user encounters the brand.

NetElixir coordinated our social strategy on LinkedIn with our blog content. On social, we focused on four themes each month: Tucson (where Rain Bird is headquartered), The Intelligent Use of Water™ (showcasing Rain Bird’s core value of sustainability), an employee-focused post (humanizing Rain Bird to potential candidates), and a technology post (highlighting Rain Bird’s innovation as a tech leader). We used social media to share our blogs, supporting our SEO efforts and reaching a new audience beyond organic search. Overall, we delivered 60+ thoughtfully-crafted social posts for LinkedIn and edited Twitter and Facebook posts.

Achievements

Targeted Potential Employee Candidates Through Content
Through a deep understanding of Rain Bird’s core values, our content experts created and executed thoughtful, empowering brand growth across 24 blogs and 60+ social posts. We consistently engaged new users with content on recurring themes of Rain Bird’s values of tech leadership, Intelligent Use of Water™, and employee appreciation. Each blog in Q3 had a two-minute average session duration.

Boosted Rain Bird’s Ranking Across Critical Keywords
Over two years, our blogs have helped Rain Bird compete with, and eventually outrank, Indeed and Glassdoor for four ‘careers’ keywords. We helped Rain Bird rank in the top position for all but two critical keywords.

Introduced New Users To Rain Bird Via Blogs
Blogs drove a high percentage of new users to the Rain Bird website, while steadily growing in keyword ranking. Five blog URLs rank in SERP positions under ten, increasing brand visibility. As of November 2021, Rain Bird’s blogs rank for 125 keywords, compared to just four in January 2020.

Earned More Engaged Followers With A Consistent and Values-Led Social Strategy
A consistent social schedule that featured posts about four recurring themes each month led to steadily higher engagement on LinkedIn throughout 2021. Our post strategy cycled through content on Tuscon, Intelligent Use of Water™, employee spotlights, and Rain Bird’s latest technological innovation. LinkedIn followers grew by 28% from 2020 to 2021, while comments increased 692%, impressions 243%, and clicks 145%.