Company name: Ravio
Industry: HR tech
Funding stage: Series A
Project date: 2023 to present

Ravio is an HR tech startup, founded in 2022. Ravio’s software provides compensation benchmarking data as well as compensation management tools.

Building brand visibility and driving inbound leads from scratch as an unknown startup is always a challenge. For Ravio, content has played a huge part in that.

I joined the team in May 2023 to lay the foundations for the content marketing function that would turn Ravio into a go-to trusted resource for People and Reward Leaders, building an audience and driving revenue through inbound leads.

Implementing a foundational content strategy

With the dual goals of brand awareness and lead generation in mind, I put in place a foundational content strategy.

This initial content strategy included:

• Audience analysis: Absorbing as much customer insight as possible through listening to sales calls, scouring through customer feedback, and reading threads in HR communities, to figure our who our target audience are, what channels they hang out in, what content formats they engage with, and what pain points they need support with.

• Brand differentiation: Identifying what sets Ravio apart as a brand and the unique angles and insights that content could harness.

• Content pillars: Determining which topic areas were the most important to demonstrate expertise within.

• Content cadence: Establishing a consistent schedule for publishing content across core formats – 1 blog per week, 1 data report (and brand campaign) every six months.

Testing and learning to figure out what works

From there it was a case of getting stuck into content production to put that strategy into action and figure out what would drive progress towards the goals of raising brand awareness and influencing revenue. 

It quickly became clear that Ravio had two major differentiators in terms of offering the target audience real value through content: data stories and a network of experts.

Differentiator 1: Data stories

In terms of data stories, the compensation database at the heart of Ravio’s software provides unique insights and trends that can be surfaced through content. 

Those data stories were harnessed in two ways.

Firstly, through data-led blogs on specific pain points for the audience of People and Reward Leaders, such as:

• How do you know if your organisation structure is too top heavy?

• What should the vesting schedule be for employee equity?

• Remote vs hybrid vs in-office: how do you decide the right working model as a startup?

These insights helped to raise awareness of Ravio’s product and to cement us as an expert brand and go-to resource.

Secondly, through original research reports as big brand campaign moments.

I produced the first Ravio Compensation Trends report which was released in October 2023, using Ravio’s compensation data coupled with an audience survey to identify key trends to support People and Reward Leaders with compensation planning for the year ahead.

“Your comp report is brilliant and well timed! Great format, trends, and insights. Huge well done on making yourselves stand out.”

Tech Startup CPO, previous roles at Personio and Wise

The initial launch campaign was a great success for brand visibility, with PR coverage by tech media outlets like Sifted and Tech.eu, industry leaders organically sharing the insights via LinkedIn, and organic traffic finding the report through SEO optimisation of the landing page.

Whilst primarily a brand awareness campaign, the Compensation Trends report has also been a key driver of revenue. Many People and Reward Leaders heard of Ravio for the first time through downloading the report, generating new warm leads for the sales team. The report has created 21 new deals and £94,000 of revenue (so far) since publication.

Following this success, the Compensation Trends report is now an annual campaign, and we also produced a themed Pay Equity report in 2024 exploring data on the gender pay gap and the representation of women in the tech industry. 

Differentiator 2: Expert insights

Partnerships have been a priority at Ravio from the very beginning, meaning that Ravio has built a strong network of partners who are People and Reward experts.

Harnessing subject matter experts to share their experiences and offer best practice guidance is a great way to increase the quality of content, and Ravio’s partner network meant that this was a clear way to differentiate Ravio’s content. 

This was done through identifying audience pain points, and then interviewing subject matter experts to share their viewpoint and advice on that problem area through blog content.

Examples include:

• How to address salary band outliers – ft. Isha Smith, Global Head of Rewards at Soundcloud

• The pros and cons of pay for performance – ft Global Rewards Consultants Rob Green and Figen Zaim

• How to facilitate a calibration session successfully – ft. Vaso Parisinou, CPO at Ravio, and Noor van Boven, CEO at Invested.

Many of these subject experts also have goals of building their own personal brands, so we also found success with them organically sharing the content they feature in as an expert in their own LinkedIn network following publication, as well as working with compensation influencers on bespoke content – something that helped Ravio’s branded content to reach new audiences through a trusted voice.

Using SEO to build brand visibility

The early blog content I produced for Ravio wasn’t built with SEO as a focus, but despite this it started to gain traffic from organic search, suggesting that SEO could be a strong distribution channel for Ravio’s content.

I harnessed this in two ways.

Firstly, top-of-funnel educational content clusters targeting keywords for topics relating to compensation. 

One example is an equity compensation cluster which centred around the pillar page: The complete guide to equity compensation for startups – with cluster content including:

• How Ravio calculates equity benchmarks using the Black-Scholes Model

• What’s the most common vesting schedule?

• Should you grant equity to all employees?

• What is an equity refresh grant?

Secondly, conversion blogs targeting high intent bottom-of-funnel keywords to ensure that People and Reward Leaders looking for a compensation solution were well aware of Ravio. 

This includes:

• Software listicles – The best (and worst) tools for salary benchmarking

• Competitor alternatives – 11 Radford alternatives for compensation management

• Old world vs new world – Why salary surveys are an unreliable data source

These conversion blogs have been crucial for influencing revenue through ranking highly for bottom of funnel keywords, as well as providing sales enablement support to the commercial team.

Scaling what works and continuing to experiment

Now that we have a good idea of what’s working well for Ravio’s content goals, my next step is to double down on what works to scale impact, whilst continuing to test new ideas, formats, and channels to find new paths.

That looks like:

• Using expert-led pain point content as the core focus and using this to build a community of Reward Leaders through new formats – regular webinar discussions with expert speakers, experts sharing Ravio insights via LinkedIn, video clips of expert advice, and so on.

• Kicking-off a storytelling series to share how different companies are approaching compensation in interesting and insightful ways.
• Continuing with regular original research reports harnessing Ravio’s compensation database, but also exploring possible ways to scale this – for instance through a regularly updated compensation trends index hosted on the Ravio website. 
• Maximising SEO performance through targeted keywords, an ongoing programme of content refreshes, and testing new tactics such as internationalisation or a library of tools and templates.

This is an ongoing content project – follow along through Ravio’s LinkedIn (or mine!) to see what’s next.