80,000 Hours | Jessica Wu

Note: These ideas are the result of a brainstorm on some of the larger and more high-impact areas of your marketing strategy. They are not fully fleshed out or organised in a systematic manner. Some may already be in consideration or implementation, so forgive any repetition!

I. Exploring LinkedIn as a platform for advertising and ABM outreach

I haven’t seen LinkedIn listed in the marketing examples provided, but I believe it can be a potentially transformative platform for 80,000 Hours. LinkedIn allows for much more precise targeting for your use case, and it may be one of the best ways to reach your primary group of professionals, students, and graduates seeking placement. They are already in a career-focused and job-seeking mindset, and likely much more receptive to the 80,000 Hours mission.

Accuracy of Targeting: For example, target all ‘mid-senior level’ employees working at [all or select] AI companies on LinkedIn, or [defined list of] top-tier consulting companies, to export an audience. You can make this broader or narrower as you see fit (at the extreme end, you can get down to 1-to-1 marketing, i.e. targeting a specific person, or a campaign for one specific company), and I would A/B test different audience combinations/parameter and sizes, optimising between reach vs. accuracy to see what works best! Truly a ripe opportunity for experimentation.
Cross-Platform Targeting: It’s easy to integrate LinkedIn audiences with your existing Facebook and Google campaigns to improve the accuracy of our targeting across all platforms. For example, you can use the data from LinkedIn to create Facebook custom audiences and reach the same people on their personal social platforms with extremely high accuracy.
Direct Outreach: Consider direct LinkedIn outreach to high-potential individuals (a good place to start are those in your CRM who are already highly engaged with the site and your direct marketing). Offer them something compelling, such as 1-on-1 coaching, a free book, or a career guide, testing which drives the best conversion rates (you may already have a hunch what currently works best from other channels). This process can be almost completely automated using lead gen tools, but it can deliver a steady volume of high-quality, relevant, and engaged leads who are already further down the funnel (or we can help them accelerate that journey)
ABM (Account-Based Marketing): What I’ve outlined above is fundamentally an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) approach, which is often the gold standard for B2B marketing and targeting. This would be a uniquely interesting method to adapt for 80,000 Hours’ unique needs, and I would love to pilot this. Some segmentation ideas: focus on your most engaged users from your CRM as described above; or by high-potential industries (identified in your research) like management consulting, investment banking, and top tech companies. We don’t need highly customised content or robust campaigns per audience to start; even a more generic message described in ‘Direct Outreach’ paired with a compelling ‘offer’ can be very effective, using just the basic version of LinkedIn Sales Navigator as a starting point.

Note: We don’t need any fancy software to start; but ideally, we need to ensure that our CRM is robust and accurate enough to support this if it scales. There are also many helpful tools (e.g. Apollo.io, Demandbase, Lusha etc.) – and many with fairly low (and free!) costs to start.

II. Refreshing your existing targeting strategy and approach

I’ve already highlighted how LinkedIn can be transformative, but it’s very worthwhile to revisit and reevaluate targeting with a somewhat regular cadence. The effectiveness of targeting hinges on its accuracy and relevancy. I view targeting as the foundation that directly informs content strategy, so it’s essential to start with a clear understanding of the ‘who’. How many different campaigns, or audience segments, are you running simultaneously? Do you segment primarily by content or audience? Consider if this setup effectively reaches your intended audiences. Here are some ideas to consider:

Targeting by Age and Life Stage: Do you have content strategies specifically organised specifically tailored to different age groups, speaking to life stage? (i.e. for younger audiences - choosing a major or exploring first job options. For mid-career professionals, focus on the potential for significant impact through career shifts, or adopting “Earning to Give.” etc.). This is a fairly easy way to test the efficacy of these audiences too and if the content resonates.

There may be an opportunity to look at broadening demographics, particularly with younger audiences. Some of the content can be made more accessible to high school and early college students. Simplify the language without diluting the core message, help them think critically about their career choices early on. The immediate impact may be more nebulous and challenging to measure, but we should consider this from a long-term perspective.
Targeting by Discipline and Industry: I see there are different ad campaigns targeted towards different skills (communication skills, engineering)? How effective have these campaigns been vs. something a bit more high-level or other calls to action and forms of content? Have they shown different results when you optimise for traffic or conversion? What does the research say in terms of which industries are most receptive to the advice (if significant plan changes are still the primary KPI)? If they are not as effective (particularly if we evaluate against an ABM approach for instance), have we looked at reappropriating these campaigns particularly for mid-funnel engagement or re-engagement?
Targeting by School: Oxford obviously biases significantly. Have we looked at dedicated outreach expanding to other top universities, especially in new regions (US, Canada, Europe)? I would focus on those with strong programs in economics, business, and computer science, particularly those we have connections with, to tap into new talent pools. I would wager a lower friction approach to target universities is through relevant student groups and clubs, instead of the institution itself. We could offer tailored webinars, speaker events, or specialized 1-on1 coaching for high-potential clubs and programs (e.g. one focused on global affairs and public policy).

It is also useful to explore a path with the school directly – i.e. through career centres and career counselling programs. Have we considered partnering with high school and university career counselors and providing free resources and toolkits – especially in regions with mandatory career courses? It’s possible we look at community partnerships (student-led advocacy or creating an 80,000 Hours volunteer program representative) to accomplish this. This level of targeting is a bit more complex and requires a more hands-on approach, and is likely most scalable by semi-automating outreach through ABM.
Targeting by Life Moments: People are often more open to career changes during major life transitions – some that instantly come to mind include applying for higher education, experiencing recent redundancy (highly relevant with many tech layoffs), or taking a gap year or students entering Quebec’s CEGEP program (a mandatory career year between secondary school and undergraduate studies). Content tailored to these transitions can be particularly compelling (e.g. help in writing college applications). This approach opens up opportunities to collaborate with organisations that specialise in these areas to produce better content, or potentially form new partnerships. It’s also important to leverage seasonality in our campaign calendar to best optimise budget, focusing on months with higher rates of change or aligning with recruitment seasons for internships and co-ops, when people are more receptive to making impactful change. LinkedIn also offers easy segmentation for this strategy, allowing us to target ‘active job seekers’.

Final note on targeting: Ensure that you are utilising your CRM. One of the most effective methods to target is by leveraging your first-party audiences and this also opens up the opportunity to use the data to create lookalike and custom audiences – great for scale and extending reach on many platforms.

III. Some notes on your content strategy

It is exceptionally rare to find an organization with such a wealth of quality content and research as 80,000 Hours! Most organisations and businesses struggle with the complete opposite problem: having resources and expertise to scale but lacking content expertise or authoritative knowledge. I think this is a great problem to have (at the very least, refreshing for a marketer). I believe your main challenge lies in finding the right balance between maintaining the intellectual rigor that you currently have, while increasing accessibility and appeal.

Content accessibility – simplify and shorten: this is probably the single most important change you can make, and appears it is already on your roadmap as you’ve expressed intent to hire a Head of Video to make your long-form content more accessible for wider appeal. Consider distilling the career guide into a more accessible version (is there a reason that you are no longer promoting the interactive career recommender or the problem quiz?) Create shorter, more digestible formats for broader appeal, and continue experimenting with this approach (in both creativity and content matter, marry this with some of the new ideas optimising targeting).
Expand to new channels: Continue experimenting on new channels like TikTok. I would also explore advertising on Reddit, where there are already existing likeminded communities.
Revisit case studies & success stories: The approach here should mirror the overall content strategy of simplification again. I found some examples of this in your marketing and on the site, but this is a particular area that can be very impactful and needs a bit more finesse. Repurpose the text-driven success stories into short, visual case studies, such as quick-read articles, Instagram reels, or short YouTube videos. Add humanity into telling these stories, this is something that I find a bit lacking.
Website landing page conversion optimisation: While the website is rich and robust in information, consider simplifying navigation and optimising the homepage for conversion (as well as doing an audit of your various landing pages). Highlight the most compelling offers, such as the book giveaway, prominently on the top of the homepage. Perhaps there is a reason you’ve chosen not to lead with this. I’ve optimised nearly 100 landing pages, and there are some very simple changes that can make the presentation much stronger (and this we can A/B test).
Sharpening the positioning, again for simplicity: The current content is strong; however, there may be room to refine the voice and positioning, making it more accessible, a tad more simple, and a bit more ‘human’ as I’ve alluded to earlier, without compromising on your values and maintaining the depth of the content. This is particularly important when we address the journey and positioning of EA to newcomers, in which I believe it may be necessary to create an entirely different content workflow in the CRM.

A helpful way for ideating content strategy is also to utilise SEO keyword data to shape both targeting and content strategies - user intent and volume is important, and this can be a key part in researching and validating a new approach!

These ideas serve as a starting point, each of which can be expanded and refined based on further research, testing, and feedback.