At Trainual, we're constantly releasing out-of-the-box campaigns and eye-catching social advertisements. You may remember our video ad with cast members from The Office. Or our remix of Montell Jordan's hit song "This is How We Do it." Let's just say we like to stand out.
While campaigns like these garner a lot of engagement and impressions, one thing that we hadn't quite cracked yet was PR. But, like any business diving into the world of earned media and brand awareness, we knew we had one goal in mind — to get some of the biggest publications to cover us. We wanted the Incs and the Entrepreneur Magazines of the world to know who we were.
We figured getting a big story pick up would help us spread the word about our brand and give us a little credibility and social proof.
Well, with every PR win, you need a great hook. We'd pitched reporters for the past couple of years and never really had anything land. We had small coverage here and there about our office moves, prominent new hires, and culture-related stories about our diversity and inclusion efforts. But none of our pitches really seemed to land in an impactful way.
We knew that we needed to approach it differently. We needed something tangible that would stand out. We sat down and thought through some of the unique things that we do as a company. And that's where we landed on our $5k to quit offer.
It's an offer that we make to new employees a couple of weeks after they start. If they feel like after two weeks, Trainual isn't the place for them, they're able to take $5,000 and walk away. No strings attached. To us, it's a great way to make sure that we're building a team of people who actually want to be here. Cool, right?
Well, Stephanie Vozza over at Fast Company thought it was pretty cool too. She interviewed our CEO, Chris Ronzio, and decided to cover the story. Finally! We were so excited.
But it didn't stop there...
Once Fast Company picked up the story, it grew like wildfire. We got coverage from broadcast news stations and publications like CBS Mornings Talk of the Table, People, Entrepreneur, TIME, Business Insider, Forbes, and so many more. The exposure increased our brand search, our social engagement, and even our inbound hiring pipeline.
With this viral performance and these numbers, we far surpassed our PR goals and our brand awareness numbers. We never imagined a story getting picked up like this. But we learned that it's the things that we do at Trainual that make us super unique that are going to get us the furthest. Overall, it was a huge win for us!
