Employer Branding with
GoDaddy

THE CLIENT

Founded in 1977, GoDaddy is an Internet domain registrar and web hosting company with the purpose of giving people an easy, affordable way to get their ideas online. With millions of customers around the world, they are the world's largest web host by market share and #1 ICANN-accredited domain registrar.

Industry: Internet

Offerings: Domain name registration, website hosting, small business online & marketing solutions, web security, emails, phone numbers

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Growth is a good problem to have, and it’s where GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar and web hosting company, found itself in 2015. They found themselves struggling to hire the number of engineers they needed to support their thriving business.

OUR SOLUTION

Proactive Talent partnered with Head of Global Recruiting, GoDaddy leadership, employees and HR & recruiting stakeholders to develop and execute modern recruitment marketing and employer branding strategies that ensure GoDaddy is well positioned for growth, offering employer branding solutions that told the company story, activated employee advocacy across social channels, and transformed their recruiting and hiring.



ENGAGEMENT OVERVIEW

When Proactive Talent began partnering with GoDaddy, the first step toward overcoming the challenge of hiring engineers was getting to the root of the problem. The symptom was that the desired number of applications were not being received, but the real issue was the lack of employer branding to attract active candidates, pique the interest of passive candidates and start to change old perceptions of them as an employer in the tech space.

To tackle the problem, Proactive Talent created a comprehensive employer branding digital strategy including a tech brand audit and strategy that encompassed internal efforts, social recruiting, digital campaigns, and building brand narrative and content for their career site. Within those channels, Proactive Talent built campaigns to increase visibility and engagement, which led to the end result of a significant increase in applicants, employer brand awareness, and online engagement.

EB DIGITAL AUDIT & COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

We completed a channel and content audit of all internal and external GoDaddy employer brand channels and platforms, including careers and jobs sites, blogs, branded microsites and social media channels. Research was conducted to learn and understand client’s competitors, and delivered recommendations to improve GoDaddy’s employer brand efforts.


GLOBAL EB STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT & EX

We used a data-driven, disciplined approach to developing global employer brand strategy, including:

  • Tech Brand EVP and employer brand narrative development
  • Internal/employee activation and external employer brand campaign ideation
  • Development and execution to launch new EVP
  • Established employer brand KPIs and benchmarks for success



EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY & ACTIVATION

We conceptualized, developed and executed employee advocacy/activation strategies and campaigns to support employer brand goals, such as a Glassdoor employee review initiative to engage employees to tell and share their experience working at GoDaddy on Glassdoor.



In a two-fold strategy to gather existing employee-shared messages and increase employee engagement, Proactive Talent assisted with the creation of GoDaddylife, a channel strategy across social media that represented what it’s like to work at the company through employee stories and content.

@GoDaddylife accounts were created on Instagram and Twitter as well as utilizing a public Facebook group of mostly employees to help amplify and crowdsource content. The #GoDaddylife hashtag was used in employee engagement campaigns, incorporated in executive level and internal communications, and as a result of that, used by employees across all social channels.



EMPLOYER BRAND VIDEOS

We led a large employer brand video project interviewing over 80 employees in 7 major offices across the US. The result was a new company culture video as well as a series of team and office highlights for key hiring teams and locations, authentically telling the company’s story and unique culture.

We also collaborated with GoDaddy's marketing team to create the #GoDaddylife video series on the corporate YouTube channel to feature these videos.


Working with Proactive Talent was a great experience. The work that has come out of this is stellar and the work that will continue to come from this will be awesome. This was spot on and excellent work we could not have done this ourselves. We will continue to engage Proactive Talent as we build our Employment Brand at GoDaddy.

Andrew Carges, VP of Talent Acquisition, GoDaddy

RESULTS

Through all these efforts, Proactive Talent’s partnership helped transform GoDaddy’s employer brand, which led to the success seen in the first year of partnering with the company to reach their recruiting and hiring goals. We also helped educate and train GoDaddy employees as well as onboard a new Head of Employer Branding to take the strategy and execute it over the long term.

The increase in applications that occurred over just one year sums up Proactive Talent effect on GoDaddy’s employer brand.

  • Engineering applications increased by 58%
  • The total number of applications received by GoDaddy increased 20%

Glassdoor was also an essential focus of Proactive Talent’s strategy, and saw significant results.

  • Applications received through Glassdoor nearly tripled
  • Reviews on Glassdoor increased by 48%
  • Glassdoor employer page reviews increased by 28%

All social channels saw an increase in views, engagement and followers.'

  • Twitter: Engagement on the @GoDaddyLife Twitter channel doubled
  • LinkedIn: Engagement on LinkedIn increased 267% over that same period the prior year
  • Instagram: The newly created @GoDaddylife channel on Instagram gained nearly 500 followers in it’s first 6 months
  • Facebook: A GoDaddylife group was created on Facebook where over 500 employees are sharing their experience and contributing content
  • Youtube: The 16 videos on the #GoDaddylife Youtube playlist have incurred a collective 163,000+ views, with more videos still to be released throughout 2017

As evidenced by these results, Proactive Talent helped GoDaddy evolve their employer brand and take their efforts to a new level. The key to success was the employee engagement strategy developed by Proactive Talent. Rather than simply helping GoDaddy tell their story, we developed ways for employees to share and campaigns that encouraged them to do so. Candidates trust employees far more than a corporate voice, which is why the strategy utilized by Proactive Talent was so effective.