RealMatch sponsored a webinar presented by The Job Doctor Jeff Dickey-Chasins titled “Using Brand to Generate Job Board Revenue,” and it gave a lot of valuable information on how job boards can create a brand that increases the value of their websites. While not every job board has the marketing pull of LinkedIn or Indeed.com, smaller job boards can still work to establish themselves as a great resource for candidates and companies.

In order to establish a brand, a job board must have a product that attracts customers. The webinar opens with an explanation of the RealMatch White Label product that offers a solid foundation to job boards that want to stand apart from the competition. RealMatch can help job boards to reach more candidates, develop optimized ads, and help companies to find the perfect matches for each job opening. These are the kinds of services a job board needs to establish a strong brand, and these are what RealMatch offers.

What Is A Brand?

A brand is defined in many ways, but there are two important aspects of a brand that every job board needs to keep in mind. A brand is the way you do business that separates you from the competition. When people see your brand, the immediate impact should be positive.

A good brand is based on a positive experience for the customer and not on what the company wants. In order to grow your brand, you need to constantly measure customer satisfaction and strive to improve on those things that customers say you do not do as well as the competition. When your brand is strong, it creates the feeling in every customer that no one in your industry does the job better than your company.

A brand is more than just a catchy slogan or a slick logo. A brand is a comprehensive presentation of your business that embeds itself in the minds of your target audience and enhances all of your marketing efforts. To create a strong brand, you have to be dedicated to the entire process and not just parts of it.

The Benefit Of A Strong Brand

A strong brand speaks on your behalf when customers are comparing you with the competition. With your good brand, you can attract loyal customers that can allow you to get as much as 30 percent more revenue over the competition. A good brand clarifies your company’s mission in the eyes of your target audience and enhances the overall effect of all of your marketing efforts.

Formulating A Brand

In the webinar, creating a brand is referred to as unpacking the brand. The concept is based on asking questions that will help to define your company to your customers in a way that encourages loyalty.

What does your company stand for?

When asking this question, you are determining the service you provide to your target audience. That means that you must identify the specific valuable service you offer, and you must have a strong understanding of your target audience.

What is non-negotiable about your service?

This question is critical because it establishes the values that your company stands for. A company needs to be prepared to establish and then stick to its values if it wants to create a strong brand.

Who don’t we serve?

When asking this question, you are trying to establish the boundaries of your brand. It is important to understand who is not part of your target audience so that you do not waste time appealing to that group and ignoring your core customers.

Projecting A Brand Personality

Your brand personality is the part of your brand that speaks directly to your customers. It is the human element of your brand that projects such characteristics as sincerity, sophistication, excitement, competence, and ruggedness. It is the traits of your company that your target audience will identify with and associate with your brand on a regular basis.

A good example of a strong brand personality is LinkedIn. Through its marketing and the services that it offers, LinkedIn makes its customers feel like they are part of an exclusive and professional network. Users are made to feel like insiders, while companies are made to feel connected to an endless resource of information.

LinkedIn has identified its target audiences and has developed a direct relationship with that audience through its brand. LinkedIn provides the tools people need to advance their careers, and it also offers offline events that only users can attend. This significantly enhances the feeling of being part of an exclusive network, and that helps to strengthen the LinkedIn brand.

Because of its strong brand building program over more than a decade, LinkedIn has established itself as a stable, reliable, and connected resource for its users. When people think of professional networks, they think of LinkedIn. That is how a strong brand is supposed to work.

Developing A Strong Brand Image For Your Job Board

The most important element is developing your job board brand is to focus on the valuable aspects of your job board that differentiate you from your competition. Your brand is a combination of what your company represents (the services you offer) and how the public sees your company (your name and logo). By promoting your brand, you are utilizing those elements to get your company to stand apart from the competition.

You use your brand image to target your ideal customer. This is the customer that finds value in what your job board has to offer and knows that they share the same ideals that your job board does because you have effectively communicated those ideals while developing your image. As your image becomes more effective, your customer base grows.

You improve your brand by creating word-of-mouth excitement among your target audience, and encouraging loyalty through your persistent desire to provide excellent services. You use analytics to learn more about your customers and become better at what you do, while avoiding adding too many new services that can dilute your product quality. You work with reputable partners to enhance your image, and you constantly strive to stay ahead of the competition.

The ultimate goal is to create value with your brand so that you can charge more for your services. As was mentioned earlier, a good brand can allow you to raise your prices by as much as 30 percent. When you do the math, it is easy to see why a good brand is so important to have.