by Jonathan Hedger |
Advertising can be an intimidating prospect for a business owner whose area of specialism is completely unrelated.
But it needn’t be scary.
At the end of the day, if you didn’t have a product or service that you thought your customers would love…why would you have built it?
All you need to do now is make sure your potential customers know about your product or service right?
Well almost.
There are still a couple of additional factors you need to consider.
Be really clear on who your target customer is
Firstly, are you absolutely clear on who your target customer is?
If not, it’s worth spending some time thinking about this.
Anything you can do to narrow your focus onto people more likely to buy from you will help your advertising succeed.
Again, it doesn’t need to be complicated. Here are a few pointers to get you started:
- Are your customers more likely to be male or female?
- What age range are they more likely to be?
- Where are they more likely to live in terms of countries and regions?
- Are they likely to have specific job titles?
- Are they likely to work for a certain type of business?
The list goes on, but even these basic ideas will get you ahead with your advertising.
Once you have this information, you need to think about your messaging.
Make sure that your messaging resonates with your target customer
Your advertising will fall flat if your product/service isn’t clearly described to potential customers.
It’s important to consider the problem that your product solves, and the emotions or discomfort that people feel when confronting this problem.
This is known as the problem>solution technique. You will need to show the problem your product solves in a few words.
Also, you should look back at any conversations you had with potential customers or prospects. Think about how they talked about the problem you are solving. These are the key points to communicate in your ads. Use their language.
Once you have thought about your target customer and messaging, have a look at your website and landing page and make sure that the words and images you are using match up with what you have researched.
It’s crucial that the look and feel of your advertising lines up with the look and feel of the web page you will send people to when they click on your advert.
Now you are ready to start testing your advertising. It’s good to think about your first advertising efforts as tests.
It doesn’t matter if your thinking around target customer types and messaging is not perfect. Online advertising platforms make it easy for you to test and refine this with minimal risk and financial exposure.
Here are 5 channels that we recommend as a starting point:
- Google Ads
Google Ads are the king of online advertising as they enable you to display your advert at the exact moment someone is searching for the solution that you offer.
Most of us are familiar with the basic search ads that we see when we do a Google search. But there is a lot more that Google can do, such as display adverts to people that have previously visited your website.
Unfortunately because most companies use Google, it can be relatively expensive versus other digital channels. But it’s also very quick and easy to get started.
2. SEO
SEO is not an advertising platform but rather a technique that you use in order to make sure that your website ranks naturally (organically) in Google.
We always advocate a strategy that includes SEO as a major channel because although it can be slow and hard to implement, you will reap the rewards later.
Unlike when using advertising platforms where you tend to pay for each website visitor, once you are able to generate it, SEO traffic is free.
3. Facebook Ads
Facebook was not typically considered a B2B marketing channel, however nowadays Facebook is arguably more powerful than Google in terms of its targeting capabilities.
Unlike Google where you would typically target people based on the words they are tapping into Google, with Facebook you can target people based on various criteria such as where they live, what their job title is, which groups they are members of etc.
This and the fact that you are also able to target people over Instagram makes Facebook an extremely powerful advertising platform.
4. Linkedin Ads
When thinking about B2B advertising, Microsoft owned LinkedIn is often one of the favoured options. With over 31 million users in the UK alone and the ability to target by geography, job title, employer and various other things, this is an immensely powerful advertising platform.
In our experience, LinkedIn is one of the more expensive digital advertising platforms. However if you are able to find the sweet spot, it can become a very profitable and lucrative source of new customers.
5. Twitter Ads
You may be surprised to see Twitter in this list but there are some clever targeting capabilities in the Twitter platform.
For example if you are aware of some competitors or influencers who have followers that match your target customer, you will be able to expose them to your advertising using Twitter Ads platform.
There’s more, but this feature alone gets Twitter our vote when thinking about the best platforms to test your advertising on.
If you’re wondering how much advertising on these platforms costs, it’s generally free to get setup and then you just need to commit some level of daily spend on each platform.
This can be anything from £5 per day but we recommend starting with a few platforms and creatives so you should be looking at an advertising spend of a few hundred pounds to get your initial tests underway and get a feel for what level of return you should be able to see back from your advertising.
If you need help with your B2B advertising strategy, please get in touch for a free consultation where we will offer you plenty of free advice. We have done this many times for various businesses and are happy to help!
by Jonathan Hedger |
The job aggregator landscape has change quite a lot over recent years. Independent job boards dominated the UK recruitment landscape with emerging aggregators coming in alongside and becoming a ‘single source of jobs’ from various job boards.
Very cleverly this enabled Indeed to build a brand presence amongst both jobseekers and recruiters, eventually establishing direct relationships with recruiters and becoming a serious competitor for job boards.
Indeed is no longer considered an aggregator as it pursues direct relationships with employers.
What is a job aggregator?
Job or job board aggregators are commonplace not just in the UK but globally. They are also known as job aggregators and job search engines.
Job board aggregators make life easier for jobseekers as they enable them to visit a single website to view jobs from multiple niche job boards…saving them from trawling their way around the web. So rather than visiting Totaljobs.com, Reed.co.uk and Monster.co.uk separately, the jobseeker can visit a single aggregator site and find all of the jobs that would be on each of these websites in one place.
Much in the same way as the insurance or travel industries do for their respective areas (take ‘Compare the Market’ and ‘Expedia’ as examples).
Naturally for the jobseeker there are inherent advantages in this. They only need to visit and log in to one website rather than a number of websites in order to repeat the same search.
However it can also lead to a clunky user experience whereby there are bounced from website to website being asked to register each time.
For example the aggregator may send them to monster.com where they have to register to apply, but monster.com then send them to the website of the employer to register again on their careers site.
Most aggregators now allow employers to post jobs directly to them. This is a strategy that Indeed has pursued aggressively, moving away from their traditional aggregator model towards that of a job listing website.
For businesses considering launching a new job board, aggregators can be a useful source of job inventory, enabling them to instantly publish a large volume of jobs on their website. In some cases the aggregators will pay the job board for every visitors or job application that they then send back.
So who are the top job board aggregators in the UK?
Top UK job aggregators 2021
- Jooble – 248,000 monthly UK visits
At the time of writing, Jooble claimed to have nearly 500,000 UK jobs from over 14,000 websites. Jooble are Ukrainian based and considered to be the world’s second most visited job site after Indeed.
2. Simply Hired– 190,000 monthly UK visits
Launched in 2003, California based Simply Hired was bought by Indeed parent company, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd in 2016. Simply Hired encourages employers to post their jobs directly on their website for free and then redirects them to Indeed who charge on a ‘per click’ basis for employers to receive more visibility and applications.
3. Adzuna – 108,000 monthly UK visits
London based Adzuna was founded by Doug Monro and Andrew Hunter in 2011 (formerly of Gumtree and Zoopla). Since their original launch in the UK they have now expanded internationally and now claim to have over 1,000,000 live jobs.
4. Jobted – 106,000 monthly UK visits
Jobted launched out of Lombardia, Italy in 2012 and now operates across 13 countries. Unlike many other job aggregators who encourage employers to post jobs directly with them, Jobted doesn’t have this option and generates revenue by sending jobseekers to job boards on a ‘cost per click’ basis.
5. JobisJob – 106,000 monthly UK visits
Jobisjob is part of a large Madrid based marketplace company called Adevinta who also own Infojobs and Milanuncios in Spain. Operating globally, Jobisjob is the 5th largest UK aggregator.
6. Ziprecruiter – 10,200 monthly UK visits
Based in California and founded in 2010, Ziprecruiter claim to have over 1,000,000 UK job listings. At the time of writing, Ziprecruiter were charging £99 for employers wishing to advertise a job directly with them.
7. Neuvoo– 9,400 monthly UK visits
Founded in 2011, Nuevoo offer free job posting to careers sites. Career sites then have the option to upgrade to sponsored jobs in order to increase their visibility.
8. Careerjet – 9,400 monthly UK visits
Careerjet are a London based jobs aggregator founded in 1999. At the time of writing they had just over 630,000 UK jobs listed. Posting a job on Careerjet costs £100.00 for 45 days.
9. Allthetopbananas– 6,400 monthly UK visits
Allthetopbananas are a UK based aggregator started in 2005. They now have global coverage and are a pure-play aggregator meaning that employers cannot post their vacancies directly to Allthetopbananas .
10. Jobs Bear – 1,900 monthly UK visits
Jobsbear are based in Israel and are focussed on the UK market. Since 2019 they have been invested in growing their footprint in the UK and currently rank number 10 in our 2021 lineup.
Visit data is taken from SEMrush UK organic data in July 2021.
I am a job board marketing expert with over 15 years experience. If you want to have a chat and explore your ideas with me, get in touch for a free consultation!
by Jonathan Hedger |
For anyone thinking about launching a generalist job board, it’s fair to say that you may have missed the boat on this. The landscape is dominated with mature players like Monster, Indeed and others (depending on which country you are in). These guys are already known and trusted by jobseekers and employers.
If however you are thinking about launching a niche job board, that is a very different thing, especially if you already have an audience. One of the biggest problems employers have is searching out the right quality of candidate and filtering out irrelevant applications. If you are a publisher with a decent sized niche audience, it’s possible that employers would be crying out to get their vacancies in front of your readers.
In fact I frequently encounter missed opportunities where I see a publisher with a strong brand and/or a significant niche following that is not offering job opportunities to its audience. There are a few reasons why this is worth talking about.
Why launching a job board is a good idea if you are a niche publisher:
- Jobs are a necessity for most people
Most of us need employment at some point in our lives. It used to be that once employed you could expect to spend your whole career with one employer. Nowadays it’s more common for employees to switch every 2 to 3 years or even have a portfolio career where they work for a number of employers at once. This means there is a constant rotating stream of candidates looking for work – leaving behind them a stream of vacancies. A never ending supply of job vacancies and jobseekers. Niche publishers are perfectly positioned to tap into this demand.
2. We are all part of a tribe
They come in a variety of shapes and sizes but the profession we choose and the people we hang out with mean we have an affinity with people of a similar profession or similar interests. In fact we will quite often enjoy reading the same kinds of books/magazines or visiting the same kind of websites. They give us a sense of affinity and trust. That same sense of affinity and trust mean a jobseeker would much rather apply for a job via their favourite publisher than trawl through an ocean of irrelevant jobs on one of the big generalist job boards.
3. Employers are jobseekers
In the world of recruitment marketing, we tend to think of jobseekers and employers (or recruiters) as 2 separate people. But employers change job too. And when they do they will be looking for the best job board to find the best jobs. Once they have found them they will then use them to recruit their own staff. What better place to hire than via a website which attracts an audience that matches the job you are hiring for?
Reasons publishers choose not to launch job boards
There are a variety of reasons that publishers choose not to launch job board, her are some of the main ones I have come across:
1. We are a publisher not a job board
It’s important to have a strategic vision, and yours may mean that you have decided to exclude potential peripheral revenue streams in favour of focussing on your core offering. This makes sense. But it’s worth noting that some of the most successful job board businesses started life as magazine publishers. They launched a job board offering and over time, the revenue from the jobs dwarfed the revenue from the main publishing business. Don’t underestimate the revenue potential that exists in recruitment.
2. We don’t know how to run a job board
Job boards are in fact a form of publishing so you are not a million miles away from home when considering launching a job board. Fortunately there are a number white label job board software platforms that mean you can get up and running with relative ease. You can either do this yourself or hire a job board marketing consultant to help you.
3. Where will we get the jobs from?
If you are worried about launching a job board with no jobs on it, I can understand why….it’s not a good look. Fortunately there are solutions around this and you can take live jobs from alternative providers such as job aggregators. In fact some of them will even pay you for each application you send to them.
If you want to have a chat and explore your ideas with me, get in touch for a free consultation!
by Jonathan Hedger |
Digital marketing is big business. Global ad revenues exceeded $100 billion in 2018, primarily on marketing to consumers.
So what about B2B? This is a sector which traditionally has been driven by word of mouth, personal sales, relationship building, networking, and events. Does digital marketing have a role to play for B2B and if so, what is it?
Being ‘corporate entities’, we sometimes forget that businesses are run by humans like you and I. They are emotional creatures with wants and needs, the same as consumers. The B2B marketer needs to consider that there are some differences between consumers and businesses. For example a business will have multiple decision makers and a slow buying cycle. But at the end of the day these are simply people with a problem that needs fixing.
It’s estimated that 87% of purchase decisions start with an online search. These buyers are likely to spend no less time online as anyone else. As such, the opportunity for digital marketing to influencing B2B purchase decisions is significant. In essence you can, and should be utilising online channels in order to connect with and draw-in your target customers.
Where to start with your B2B digital marketing strategy
It’s sometimes difficult to know where to begin with your B2B digital marketing strategy. At Amplify Digital we follow a structured process that looks like this:
- Website audit – are the right tools in place for tracking website visitors and progress?
- Customer Analysis – clarity on who our customers are or who we want them to be. What is their need and how do we fulfil it?
- Competitor analysis – who are they and where are they finding their customers? What are our relative strengths and weaknesses?
- Messaging – what do we say to our customers to persuade them we are the right people to help versus competition?
- Targeting/channels – analysis to identify where our target customers hang out and how to connect with them.
- KPI’s and Reporting – which numbers are we looking to influence, how will we know if we are succeeding?
The defining factor for digital B2B is the targeting (who you going after) and channels (where online you will connect with them).
Today’s digital marketing channels can offer a surprisingly impressive level of targeting accuracy for B2B businesses which is probably being under-utilised by many including your competitors.
Although each of these steps look simple and straightforward, taking the time to think and research deeply and carefully before moving into the next will pay dividends. We all too often see businesses who miss or don’t complete a step which severely impacts the effectiveness of the end result.
How much should you spend on your B2B marketing budget?
How much money you allocate to your B2B marketing budget will depend on a number of factors, but a common rule of thumb suggests between 8% and 15% of revenue. If you are looking to scale aggressively then it can be over 30%.
The most important thing is to set a clear budget allocation and understand the role and risk of every budget line. You should be prepared to flex and adjust as you figure out what works and what doesn’t.
For more on how to decide how much money to spend on marketing, check out out article here.
If you need help, give us a call and we’ll send you a free list of recommendations to get you started!
by Jonathan Hedger |
If you’re looking to launch a regular or niche job board, or migrate your existing job, you have two options when it comes to the platform:
Option 1: Build it yourself
Option 2: Buy an off the shelf solution
Going with an ‘off the shelf’ or ‘white label’ job board software solution is a popular option for good reason.
Firstly it’s extremely quick to setup.
Secondly you benefit from the latest job board tech packed into a ready built platform,
And thirdly it’s almost certainly going to be cheaper.
Even if in the long run you prefer to build your own software, a white label job board solution will enable you to get up and running quickly and relatively cheaply.
This is important as it will enable you to run a ‘proof of concept’ and validate your business by attracting, onboarding and matching both jobseekers and recruiters.
This only works of course if your job board only needs what is considered ‘standard functionality’. If there is something else that will differentiate your business, you may need to go down the custom build route.
Top 10 best white label job board software platforms 2021:
- Jobboard.io
Jobboard.io belongs to US company Ziprecruiter who handle a huge volume of jobs. The advantage of using a white label job board platform that belongs to Ziprecruiter is that you can use their job inventory to populate your job board if you don’t have your own jobs. Their basic plan starts at $249/month which will get you email alerts for up to 500 subscribers and enable you to backfill jobs from both Ziprecruiter and Indeed.
2. Tribepad
Tribepad is a UK based company with a portfolio of recruitment products one of which is their white label job board software. They integrate with Broadbean, Vacancy Poster and Kaonix to allow easy automated job posting. Prices start from £1,000/month.
3. Smartjobboard.com
Headquartered in the US, Smartjobboard is a plug and play white label job board similar to jobboard.io. They offer backfill jobs from Indeed and Ziprecruiter. They have a number of pre-built themes and a 14-day trial making it easy to get up and running quickly. Prices start from $170/month.
4. Madgex
Madgex is a UK based company which powers the job boards that belong to a number of familiar brands including The Times, The Guardian and Gumtree Jobs. We would class this as an ‘enterprise’ end solution. They don’t publish their prices, it won’t be as cheap as some of the other offerings, but may be a better choice if you are past the proof-of-concept stage and are looking for an enterprise grade white label job board platform.
5. Jobboardfire.com
Launched in 2018, Job Board Fire was designed to match the user experience and functionality of successful platforms like Shopify, making it very easy to quickly setup a fully functional job board. Their job boards have a distinctly different look and feel which you can see via the demo sites on their website. They do not currently publish pricing on their website but some sources state that basic plans start at $97.00 per month.
6. Jobiqo
Austrian based Jobiqo claims to be focussed on “building next generation job boards & career marketplaces to engage talent”. As well as standard job board functionality, they offer a built-in résumé (CV) creator, video applications, and the ability for jobseekers to automatically prefill their profile from LinkedIn or Facebook.
7. Matchwork.com
Danish company Matchwork offers both off-the-shelf and custom built job boards. Like Madgex, they have a number of publishing as well as pureplay job board clients across the UK and Europe. They are part of listed Danish media group North Media A/S, so have some strong backing.
8. Talenetic.com
Headed up by the former CEO of Jobsite.co.uk, Talenetic are a UK based operation and have some big clients under their belts. They do not publish their pricing, but their team is made up of an impressive array of industry professionals. They offer job board build and licensing of their core product with the option of customisations and ongoing support.
9. HiringOpps
Wisconsin based HiringOpps offer an impressive array of features including employer site scraping and claim to be the first job board platform to integrate a video interview platform. Pricing starts at $249 per month.
10. Job Board Mount
Part of Aspen Tech Labs, Job Board Mount is a feature rich off the shelf job board that requires an upfront investment of around £5,000 followed by ongoing fees of about £700 per month.
Have I missed someone? Want to have a chat about launching or migrating a job board? Get in touch. We have over 15 years experience launching and running job boards!
