Revenue development is an ongoing concern for any online newspaper or digital media company. With the digital shift, the entire business model for publishing is changing, and success requires alacrity and flexibility. Many publishers choose to add a custom job board to their local newspaper site or trade publication site as a promising revenue stream, and the more they know about the employers they want to advertise on the job board, the better these sites are poised for success.

Richard Clark, VP of Inside Sales for the Northeast Tennessee Media Group, recently gave a RealMatch webinar about best practices for recruitment advertising. He offered many valuable lessons and insights about recruitment advertising today. Here are some of the highlights.

SEE ALSO: 5 Recruitment Advertising Tricks that Put Your Job Board at the Top of the Heap

Do Your Homework Before Contacting Employers

Cold calls shouldn’t really be ”cold.” Before speaking with the hiring managers or HR people at an employer you would like to list on your job board, you should get to know as much about them as possible. Much of this research can be done online, but there are personal things you can do to greatly improve your strategic position. For example, Clark suggests getting involved with your local chapter of the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM). By attending their meetings and understanding what local employers want and need, you are better positioned to offer them actual solutions to actual problems rather than a ”canned” sales pitch.

Know Their Other Options and What They Like About Them

Learn what employers in your trade or in your area already do as far as recruitment advertising. Do they use LinkedIn? Do they buy print classifieds? Which job boards do the use already? Once you know what they’re already doing, you can make the best possible case for why your job board is the one they should be using. For example, with RealMatch, Total Talent Reach is a great solution to the problem of knowing exactly where jobs are listed, how many times they’re clicked on, and where job board traffic comes from.

Learn What Competitors Are Doing and Their Costs

When you know what CareerBuilder or Indeed does with employer ads, you can then offer reasons why your job board is preferable. Analytics and statistics on listings, resume matches, how many times ads are viewed, and how many times ads are clicked give employers the facts they need to make an informed decision. Clark says that HR managers and hiring managers deal with facts, rules, and regulations all day long, and they make their recruitment advertising decisions based on facts and figures, rather than emotion. Therefore, you need to be prepared with the relevant numbers and statistics.

Practice, Practice, Practice

It may sound elementary, but practicing your presentation before you go out in the field is critical. If you’re going to be calling a local employer, practice over the phone with someone playing the role of that employer. You don’t want to have a script, because canned presentations turn people off. But you do want to have a sheet of talking points in front of you so that you’re prepared. When you make the actual call, of course you want them to buy, but at the very least you want to be able to send the employer your media kit and schedule a time for a follow-up call.

A Dedicated Recruitment Rep Is a Smart Investment

Clark says that having a dedicated recruitment advertising rep is a worthwhile investment. With digital publications, most people wear several hats, particularly during the first few years. But when you have someone whose job it is to follow recruitment advertising, learn about employers, and convince them that recruitment advertising on your site is preferable to their current strategy, you stand the best chances of landing those lucrative employer contracts for job board advertising. Your dedicated recruitment advertising rep is the person who can put your solutions in front of employers, and employers don’t want a sales pitch, they want a defined solution to a defined need.

Recruitment advertising can be a promising revenue stream for digital publishers and media companies in an era when the publishing business model is still being upended. When you invest in recruitment advertising by identifying problems and offering solutions, and when you learn about the employers you want to list on your job site, you can develop this revenue stream alongside others, providing a more stable financial foundation for your publication’s success.

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