billboard.md

Summary

The billboard is extremely simple. No images included, just the message.

Location

I want a few things out a location:

• The billboard itself (regardless of what's on it) stands out, so people will be more likely to notice
  • Digital boards are therefore a plus
• High traffic area
  • Ideally commute traffic. If I knew more about people's working patterns in SF, I would want to pick a place that has more technology companies, since they are probably more likely to become clients.
• Thriving, attractive surroundings, since we don't want to be associated with things that are broken-down or languishing

Measurement

Combine a few methods:

• Observe what lift you see in any stage of your funnel from a time period before the ad is placed through some time period after the ad is taken down for various geographic groups. Compare the growth in interest for the area targeted vs. the area without the ad.
• Include a "how did you first hear about us" simple question for new clients signing up, which includes the billboard. If you have already been running this for a while, you should have an estimate of how often people fill this out. That will give a good base for scaling up the number of people who came through the billboard.

Compare the incremental clients you estimate you have gained to the value of those clients. See the brainstorm section for more details.

Brainstorming the project

General

Who am I trying to reach? There are two types of people I might want to reach:

1. potential new talent (currently developer and designers),
2. clients.

Clients line up better with our goal of increasing revenue, and all the toptal material I've seen, including (unexpectedly) the "developers" page, is focused more on bringing in clients. I conclude we are going to be more successful crafting our message for the clients. Developers and designers will still see our ad and so we'll build awareness among them regardless. Maybe something in the pitch will include the fact that we only hire the best of the best and that will plant a seed in their minds.

So who are these clients? Our goal is to get revenue. We get revenue through clients. A client is a person who hires talent through our company. This person has to make the decision to hire through us. There are two requirements:

1. They have to have the authority to authorize that spending.
2. They have to want to hire our people.

The differential impact that our billboard can have is that it is seen by either (1) this person, or (2) someone who sends the message along to this person. It also builds brand, which has a harder impact to measure, since the desired effect (new client) may happen years later. They will have somewhat different goals.

1. Wants to get the project they own completed successfully and in a timely manner, with as little cost as possible. They want this because it's either their company or they are responsible for a portion of the business, and will be rewarded if their project succeeds.
2. Wants to help this other person succeed. When they give #1 what they want, they will be rewarded.

Either way, the idea is that this billboard says something that makes the potential client want to hire our people.

The potential client has not worked with us before. Someone who has worked with us before will make their decision based on the strength of our previous interaction. We are focusing only on acquisition.

What are their needs?

Some research on our current customers might help here, through either a focus group or surveys. Either way, we would want to ask

• what led them to us in the first place
• what they hoped to get from us

Not relevant to this line of questioning, but I would also be interested to learn:

• how they would rate the individual developers/designers they worked with, including feedback that we can pass on
• how likely they are to recommend us to their friends/colleagues

My hypothesis is that the person making the hire/no hire decision has a project that is high value and not going as they hoped. I'll break this down by three types of clients:

1. Enterprise. This person is high up in the organization, or they would not have the authority to start working with us.
2. They have developers, but sometimes work gets into such a bureaucratic tangle that the owner fears the project will fail.
3. They usually use contractors. Something has gone wrong and they want to try another source of talent. They are probably judging that their old soultion is not good enough and want to get something better.
4. Mid-size. The company has some developers, but hi-tech is not their main product, or growing pains have caused some slowdown in work and they want to boost something up.
5. Small/startup. A project outisde of the current employees' comfort zone has come up. They don't want to let it slow their business down.

In each situation, the prospective client knows they need to try something else and when they decide to go with us, they will want to have the ammunition to convince others that it's the right decision.

What would you put on the billboard? Make a mockup of the billboard, include the copy that you would put there.

We have landed on the major points we want to come across in our billboard:

• You are in a make-or-break situation
• You have to try something new because the old approach isn't working
• Toptal can deliver your project
• You will look like a genius for thinking of hiring our talent

Where would you put the billboard? Why?

I want a few things out a location:

• The billboard itself (regardless of what's on it) stands out, so people will be more likely to notice
  • Digital boards are therefore a plus
• High traffic area
  • Ideally commute traffic. If I knew more about people's working patterns in SF, I would want to pick a place that has more technology companies, since they are probably more likely to become clients.
• Thriving, attractive surroundings, since we don't want to be associated with things that are broken-down or languishing

I am following up with Clear Channel to see what billboards they have available in SF. If I can get a straight response, I'll be able to put some more thought into exact location.

Cost considerations

• Cost of fabricating one ad is likely a fairly minor portion of our budget, I have seen figures around $1k.
• When we actually make the contract for a billboard, many companies will only let us sign up for multiple spots. It may quickly become cost-prohibitive if we sign must sign up for 20 billboards.
• The billboard market seems fairly fractured. I couldn't get a great sense of individual locations that I could buy even after an hour of online searching. There are many different players to consult and it seems none gives information online.
• Cost should be compared to the expected value we get from buying the placement. An ad that costs 1/10 as much and gives 1/5 as many clients is a better deal.
• We need to conscious of time. We are not trying to run an ad campaign for a year. We are trying to test this, learn, continue to learn if it's valuable, and potentially move on if it isn't.

How would you decide whether the billboard was successful? What would you measure? How would you track results?

Ideally, to measure the differential impact of the billboard, we would be able to run a controlled test, where some people see the billboard, and some people who are the same in every other way do not, and we know who belongs to each category. Obviously this is not possible.

Here are a few alternatives:

• Attempt to spatially target some portion of people (e.g. downtown SF) while excluding another portion that is somewhat comparable (e.g. South SF). Observe what lift you see in any stage of your funnel from a time period before the ad is placed through some time period after the ad is taken down for both groups. Compare the growth in interest for the area targeted vs. the area without the ad.
• Include a "how did you first hear about us" simple question for new clients signing up, which includes the billboard.
• Include something that incentivises prospective clients to give some information from the billboard when they sign up. For example, a discount code.
• Combination of these

One important assumption is that when someone registers with us, we are able to know their location. If there is an address that the client fills in, that will probably do the trick.

Valuation

Once you have measured, it's a simple matter of determining whether the clients you obtained were worth the cost of the campaign. I would want to assign some value to our new clients based on what we know about our current clients, and their similarity to them. If we have good assumptions around the number of jobs, number of contractors/job, length of job, price we charge/time, and our revenue margin, it's a simple calculation: our revenue = number of jobs * number of contractors/job * length of job * price/time * our revenue margin.