Building a lead generation engine through advertising and a site rebuild | DEiBA Company Inc.

About the client
DEiBA Company Inc.
HP：https://deiba.jp/corporate/
Industry: staffing and recruitment
Employees: staffing and recruitment
What we did: website production / advertising management

DEiBA Company Inc. (founded 2011, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) runs job-hunting events across Japan specialising in group discussions, in the graduate recruitment market.
Through around 70 events a year, it gives students real selection experience and companies contact with strong candidates, and holds a distinctive position in the industry.

The problem: attracting students became harder as the market shifted, and there was little marketing capability internally

DEiBA Company had built a distinctive position in graduate recruitment, running around 70 group-discussion events a year across Japan.

But changes in the economy and the hiring market shifted things in students’ favour, which had a significant effect on how people were attracted to the events.
Announcing an event used to bring students through word of mouth and a reliable turnout. Now scouts arrive while you sit at home, and the bar for spending several hours at an in-person event rises every year. From around 2019 it became harder, and the pandemic made the trend more pronounced.

They wanted to build their own acquisition capability, but no one internally had experience of running advertising or designing marketing strategy.
They wanted to use advertising properly as an acquisition channel but were not sure where to start, and neither the analysis nor the strategy was in place.
With acquisition costs rising across the staffing industry, building the ability to control spend and numbers themselves had become urgent.

What we did: starting with advertising, rebuilding the organisation’s marketing foundation

Against that background, they asked us to run their Google Ads.
But rather than acting simply as an agency, we proposed working alongside them as a partner to their marketing function, supporting the business as a whole, and in practice did the following.

1. The overall approach: working on several fronts

Rather than improving one point through advertising, we supported them from strategy through to production.

• Advertising: strategic management of Google Ads and affiliate advertising
• Website production: a full rebuild of the student landing page and the corporate site
• Strategy: designing the path through their marketing and optimising conversion
• Organisation: setting down and communicating their mission, vision and values

2. Putting the why into words, and building knowledge internally

On advertising, rather than simply running campaigns and reporting results, we made proposals from the point of view of what genuinely matters to DEiBA’s acquisition. Alongside optimising keywords and bidding, we proposed improvements across the whole of marketing: the path after arrival, the conversion points, and the role of each channel.

In weekly reports we shared not only whether numbers rose or fell but why the result came out that way and which hypothesis to test next. By explaining advertising terms plainly, we made sure marketing knowledge accumulated inside the company.
We also took care to explain the terminology around advertising in plain language, so that DEiBA’s understanding deepened.

3. A site rebuild with two faces, for two audiences

For a business whose customers are both students and companies, we reworked and optimised both sites.

	The student site	The corporate site
What we changed	Real event photography Comments from past participants Built around ease of use on a phone	A refreshed design Credibility and track record laid out systematically
What we expected	Making what happens at an event concrete, removing the hesitation before signing up	Becoming a strong sales tool the team can present with confidence

For the student site we renewed the design so that the atmosphere of an event and the benefit of attending come across intuitively. Real event photography and participants’ comments were placed to good effect, so that what the experience is actually like is easy to picture. Built for phone use first, the path through the site is simple, lowering the bar to signing up.

The corporate site had a design seven or eight years old. It leaned strongly towards students and felt dated to send to companies. After the rebuild it carries credibility and track record. The strengths of the events, the benefits and the record of work are laid out systematically, and it has become a site the sales team can present with confidence.

4. Branding that makes the company’s thinking visible

With a change of representative and shifts in the organisation, we also set down their mission, vision and values. That gave them a place to communicate, inside and out, what they are doing the business for and what value they want to deliver.
We added a team page as well, making the people behind the company visible, which strengthened the foundation for organisational branding and shifted how both candidates and existing staff see the company.

Results: a steady acquisition base, and a more data-driven organisation

Through this work, DEiBA Company has seen real change both in how they acquire and in how they decide.

1. A steady acquisition channel

Continual optimisation of the Google Ads structure and keyword strategy grew traffic steadily. Reviewing the campaign structure, refining keywords and optimising bidding brought them to a state where results come reliably.
Beyond raw volume, data has built up on which search intent is closest to a booking and which messages land with students, and Google Ads is now established as a main acquisition channel they can use strategically.

2. A shared language for deciding on data

There has been a significant change internally too. Decisions about acquisition, which used to lean on instinct and experience, are now made on objective data.
Where the bottleneck is and which channel deserves investment can be discussed in numbers, and marketing has become far more repeatable.

3. The rebuilt site: credibility outside, and a shift in thinking inside

The rebuilt website is working on several fronts. Enquiries rose after the corporate site was reworked.

• Outside the company
  The appeal of the events now comes across visually, and enquiries rose after the corporate site was reworked. Its value as a sales and hiring tool is much stronger.
• Inside the company
  Setting down and communicating the mission, vision and values turned attention to what kind of organisation they are and what value they deliver. They now communicate more readily. Candidates and companies have responded, and the branding is paying off.

As a result the website is not simply a place to store information but a base from which DEiBA Company communicates what it stands for. NowVillage continues to work with them, not as an outside supplier but as a partner filling part of the marketing function.

A comment from Mr Shimura, Representative Director of DEiBA Company Inc.

“I felt they understood the staffing industry very well. We did not have to explain everything from first principles; they could talk with us from a shared starting point about how the graduate market is now and how students behave. That speed is worth a lot.

What stood out was that they did not stop at improving surface numbers but made proposals taking the whole business into account. Beyond cost per acquisition and click-through rate, they got into whether this acquisition structure can really grow over the medium and long term, and how it should divide roles with other channels. That raised our own sense of marketing as strategy.

Running Google Ads matters, of course, but I value just as much that they give a view on whether we should be doing something at all. They say clearly what is worth doing and what is not. They are a business partner we can turn to when something comes up, not simply an agency.”

The partner behind the results: NowVillage Inc.

NowVillage Inc. is a marketing partner covering everything from designing marketing strategy through execution to measurement and improvement.
Our strength is working across digital – advertising, SEO, content planning, data analysis and building customer success – and putting the systems, structure and operations in place to match each company’s situation.

This example is a recruitment agency, but the essentials of building awareness and generating leads are the same in any industry.

If you
want to build a marketing foundation from scratch

or are stuck without the know-how internally
please do get in touch.
We can work alongside you from strategy through to day-to-day operation.

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