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Missed our last feature article? The Document Quietly Protecting Your Business

Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:

After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.

The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.

“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”

Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.

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You have a position open. The qualified candidate you actually want is employed somewhere else, paid decently, treated reasonably, and not reading job postings. The conventional hiring playbook can’t reach them, because job postings reach the people who are looking. Your best hire isn’t one of them.

So, the task isn’t hiring, it’s recruiting. The two require different tools, different time, and different money. Here is what to actually do.

Most small-business referral bonuses fail because they’re too small to change behavior. A $250 bonus tells your team you don’t really mean it. A $3,000 bonus tells them you’re serious.

The benchmark for an SMB referral bonus is roughly two to three percent of the new hire’s first-year compensation. For a $60,000 role, that’s $1,200 to $1,800. For a $90,000 role, that’s $1,800 to $2,700. Compare that to what a recruiting agency charges for the same hire, which is typically twenty to thirty percent of first-year pay, and the referral bonus is the cheapest hire you’ll ever make.

Structure matters as much as size. Pay half when the new hire starts and the other half after ninety days of employment. That single change does two things: it filters out referrals made just to collect cash, and it gives the referrer a stake in the new hire’s first three months on the job. Tell your team about the program in a one-page email, repeat it in person at the next staff meeting, and post the open roles where they’ll see them daily.

The single highest-leverage habit a small business owner can build is keeping a running list of ten people you would hire on the spot if they were available. You probably already know who four or five of them are. The other five take thirty minutes a week to find. The list exists so that when a key employee gives notice, you don’t start the search from zero. (Our prior article, What to Do When a Key Employee Gives Notice, covers the rest of that moment.)

Where to look. Suppliers and vendors who interact with your industry see good people every week and remember them. Trade associations and certification boards publish member directories. LinkedIn lets you search by job title and geography for free. Industry-specific Slack groups, Reddit communities, and the small online forums where your trade talks shop are where reputations travel. Former customers who worked at competitors. Former employees who left for understandable reasons and are now in a different season of life.

The cadence is once per quarter. Send each person on the list a short note, no ask attached. “I came across the article you wrote on inventory turn last month. Smart take on the seasonal piece. Nice work.” That’s the entire note. Three sentences, twenty words, two minutes to write. Do that ten times a quarter and you’ve built a pipeline of forty warm relationships in a year. When one of them is ready to consider a move, you’re the call they take, because you’re the only person who has talked to them outside the context of needing something.

Active candidates read postings to find work. Passive candidates read postings to decide whether the role is worth disrupting their life for. The two read the same words differently, and most postings are written for the first audience and ignored by the second.

Five changes flip a posting from “we’ll take whoever applies” to “this is worth a look.” First, name the salary range, with a real number, not “competitive.” Hiding the pay tells passives you have something to hide. Second, replace the duties list with what the role offers them, not what they’ll do for you. Growth, autonomy, the specific problem they’ll get to solve, the customers they’ll work with. Third, name the decision-maker. “You’ll work directly with the owner” beats “you’ll report to leadership.” Fourth, commit to a short pipeline, two weeks from first conversation to offer. A passive candidate will not endure your six-week, five-round process; they have a job. Fifth, say why the role is open. “We’re growing and adding a second person on the team” reads honestly. Silence on this point reads like the last person quit and you haven’t asked yourself why.

Pick three people from the list of ten. If you don’t have ten yet, write down the four you can name right now and find one more by the end of the week. Send each of the three a short note today. Set a calendar reminder for ninety days from now to send another.

Then revise the open posting against the five changes above and tell your team about the new referral bonus before you leave the office.

The hire you need is already working somewhere. Your job is to be the call they take (or make) when they’re ready to leave.

The Co. Letter is informational and is not legal, financial, or HR advice. Consult your own advisors for your situation.

Have an interesting business question and need a free bit of advice? Send your question to [email protected]. No confidential info, please!