Plans for the best job boards are rather hollow if the candidates aren’t there. It’s a catch-22. Candidates won’t have a reason to come if there aren’t any job ads. And advertisers might not have an interest in a job board without any traffic.
So how do you leap over that first admittedly large hurdle and bring advertisers and candidates together at your hub? It’s not as impossible as it might seem.
For advertisers, a job board’s bottom line is its performance. And at the core of performance is candidate access. That’s what Job Board Doctor stressed over everything else.
To draw in the advertisers that keep the pulse of your job board thumping, think bigger than selling ads to employers who need to fill a job. Think, instead, about building a thriving community with a framework for strong, reliable performance.
RELATED: Job Boards are Still Evolving and Yours Can Come Out on Top
What’s Your Angle?
Do you want to be all things to all people? It can be done, at least to an extent. But bear in mind that the some of the industry Goliaths have stopped performing as well as they once did.
White-Label job boards are picking up some of the slack. Some employers and candidates in niche industries or specific trades gravitate toward those with a narrower focus.
For example, you’ll find general job boards for health care professionals, some only for registered nurses, and some for hospitalist doctors. You might not have as much traffic the narrower you go. But the traffic might also become much more devoted. Consistent quality over hopeful quantity. You could stand out as a leader for the niche that you cater to.
Your angle is important because that drives your marketing and advertising strategy. If you want to attract advertisers and candidates from all points in all directions, you’ve got a big job ahead.
Who’s Advertising Right Now?
How do you know where to direct your marketing efforts and attract the right advertisers? Find out who’s posting job ads right now. You can learn a lot from an existing ad.
Where are those ads hosted? How do the ads look? How much traffic do those sites generate? Some job boards publicly show how many people have already applied for a job. Those are valuable clues into how you can do better. They’ll help you find out what’s already working, which lets you offer something better; something more.
Don’t forget about social media. If you operate a white-label job board, research will be easier. You can search relevant employers and target your marketing to those social pages.
Circling back to health care as an example, a basic Facebook search for “hospital” gives you an exhaustive list of professional pages, which is your target marketing audience. There are so many ways you can research your audience for free.
Have You Thought About a Job Board Solutions Partner?
The work involved with starting up or fine-tuning a job board can overwhelm even the most determined. So what if we told you that some of the best job boards reach their goals more quickly and with less work?
A job board partner has the resources that many publishers don’t. RealMatch is a good example of ample technology geared toward job board success and revenue.
Some providers offer different levels of service. And that lets you stay as involved (or not) as you like. At the top end of service, the majority of the usual ad selling and job board operation work could become automatic.
Your ad-selling efforts could be cut in half or more by relying on a provider to bring in job ads and candidates whose goals are on the same page. Interestingly, this approach usually costs much less than bearing the whole load of selling job ads and driving in traffic.
What’s Possible With a Partnership?
Every job board solutions provider has something a little different from the rest. The technology and strategies really matter. If you’re new to the job board world, get ready for some amazing possibilities.
Imagine if your job board could offer employer advertisers not just more job candidates and applicants, but better-qualified people. That’s a serious selling point, and candidate matching does it. Done in real time, it works even better. Changing information about the job candidate pool help refocus job ad reach on the fly. That helps advertisers get better results from their budget.
Programmatic advertising is one of the big buzzwords right now. It enables a narrow-focused ad buy based on real-time information, says State of Digital. Advertisers can plug in their requirements and their ad budget will automatically hit the most appropriate channels based on historical and current performance data.
That means less of your time is spent direct-selling ads, too. Predictive analytics guides the ad buy in the right direction. The more the job board provider’s technology is in operation, the more data is available to make better and better ad buys every cycle.
Little Things Matter, Too
Technology helps drive the best job boards in the right direction. But job site quality is vital. A site that’s valuable to advertisers and candidates breeds long-term loyalty.
Think about relevant content. That’s one way to keep people coming back. Content creation and curation let you provide meaningful information for the people who visit.
Going back to the health care example, what might matter to people in that industry? Industry news, continuing education and general health and wellness content can boost site traffic. Videos boost traffic, too. And when traffic is up, you could gain a stronger foothold with passive candidates.
Convenience also matters although that’s not entirely a little thing. Mobile optimization means people can view and use your job site on a smartphone or tablet without losing functionality. How often do you use a mobile device? Job candidates are no different. And when the candidates are happy, you’ll have more reasons for advertisers to place their business with you.
Without advertisers, a job board is just a shell that’s waiting for something to happen. But when you think about all of the ways to attract ads, remember that it’s candidate access you’re really selling. And for candidate access to be a viable selling point, job candidates need a reason to keep coming back. Otherwise, a job board is little more than a series of one-time transactions.
You need revenue, advertisers need employees, and it all funnels down to candidate access and performance. Merely building a job board won’t work anymore. Now, you need a comprehensive strategy to lift the site into prominence.
When you partner with a job board solutions provider, much of the burden is lifted off your department’s shoulders. That lets you focus on improving your site, building a community, building your brand and fine-tuning efforts for increasingly better performance. Advertisers go where the results are. The stronger your infrastructure, the more you have to offer.
If you’re ready to get your job board off the ground or take it to the next level and bring in more advertisers, you’ve come to the right place.