in 2019 we designed, built and marketed a saas that let us job seekers apply everywhere with a single application. here is what building product and marketing together taught us.
in 2019, a fresh graduate in the us looking for a first job had a tedious routine: find a listing, open the portal, re-type the same profile, upload the same resume, answer the same questions, repeat on the next portal. the client's idea was simple to say and hard to build: one application that reaches every job portal, on the applicant's behalf.
this was before ai made automated applications ordinary. there was no model to lean on. there was product design, engineering, and a marketing problem nobody had solved yet: how do you explain a category that does not exist?
why product and marketing were one team
we designed and built the portal, shaped the brand and positioning, ran paid acquisition for us job seekers, and built the onboarding and retention loops. because one team owned all four, every marketing insight landed in the product the same week, and every product change could be tested in the ads.
“when the people writing the ads also own the onboarding, the promise in the ad and the experience after the click stop drifting apart.”
selling a category that did not exist yet
you cannot run search ads for something nobody searches for. the positioning had to start from the pain people already felt, the hours lost re-typing the same profile, and only then introduce the product as the obvious answer. the brand had to feel trustworthy enough that a nervous graduate would hand over their resume.
retention is part of acquisition
a job seeker who signs up and never comes back is a cost, not a user. the onboarding and retention loops, the nudges that kept people applying, mattered as much as any campaign, because they decided whether acquired users turned into a product that worked.
what it taught us
- the best growth lever is usually inside the product, not the ad account
- positioning a new category starts with a pain people already name in their own words
- one team across product, brand and growth moves faster than four handoffs
- automation that saves people time is a promise you have to keep after the click
founder of rapchik media. 8+ years scaling 30+ brands across india and the us, from agri-drones to a us job portal. strategy and execution, same brain.
