How Do Job Boards Make Money?

by Jonathan Hedger | 0 comments

Job boards have become an essential tool for both job seekers and employers. But have you ever wondered how job boards make money? In this article, we’ll explore the various ways that job boards generate revenue and which businesses are most suited to launching job boards.

1. Job Postings

The most common way that job boards make money is by charging employers to post job listings. Employers pay a fee to post their job opening on the job board for a set period of time. The fee can vary depending on the duration of the listing, the level of visibility, and the industry.

For example, some job boards charge a premium fee for job postings in high-demand fields such as tech or finance. Job boards can also charge additional fees for features such as bolded listings or featured job postings.

2. CV Database Access

Another way that job boards make money is by offering employers access to their CV database. Job seekers upload their CV to the job board and employers can search the database for potential candidates. Employers pay a fee to access the CV database, and the fee can vary depending on the level of access and the size of the database.

3. Premium Job Posting Features

Job boards can offer premium job posting features that go beyond basic listings. For example, some job boards offer video job postings or the ability to create a custom landing page for job listings. These premium features can command a higher fee than basic job postings and can provide additional value to employers.

4. Company Profiles

Job boards can also offer company profiles, which provide an overview of the company and its culture. Employers pay a fee to create and manage their company profile on the job board. This can be an effective way for companies to showcase their brand and attract top talent.

5. Pay Per Application

An emerging monetisation strategy for job boards is pay per application. With this model, employers only pay a fee when a candidate applies for a job through the job board. This can be a more cost-effective option for employers and can incentivise them to use the job board more frequently.

Which Businesses are Suited to Launching Job Boards?

Job boards can be a lucrative business for a variety of businesses, but there are a few that are particularly well-suited to launching job boards. Publishers, membership organisations, and businesses with an existing community are all good candidates for launching a job board.

Publishers, such as newspapers or magazines, have an existing audience and can leverage their brand to attract job seekers and employers. Membership organisations, such as professional associations or trade organisations, can create job boards that are specific to their industry or niche. This can provide additional value to their members and increase engagement.

Businesses with an existing community, such as online forums or social networks, can create job boards that are tailored to their community’s needs. This can provide a new revenue stream for the business and increase engagement among their users.

Niche job boards can be particularly effective as they cater to a specific industry or type of job. Niche job boards can provide more targeted job listings and can attract a higher calibre of job seeker.

In conclusion, job boards make money through a variety of revenue streams, including job postings, CV database access, premium job posting features, and company profiles. Pay per application is an emerging monetisation strategy that is gaining popularity. Publishers, membership organisations, and businesses with an existing community are all well-suited to launching job boards, particularly if they focus on a niche industry or type of job. By providing a valuable service to job seekers and employers, job boards can generate revenue and provide a useful tool for job seekers and employers alike.

Need help? I am a Job Board Marketing Consultant with over 15 years of experience working with some of the worlds leading job board businesses. Get in touch for a free 20 minute consultation!

How much money should you spend on marketing?

by Jonathan Hedger | 0 comments

How much money should I be spending on marketing? This is a question business owners often only ask when puzzling over why their business isn’t growing.

Are you a sales or marketing led organisation?

For B2B organisations, sales teams are often the ‘go-to’ growth driver.

After all, it’s easy to measure the impact of a sales team and spending time on the phone and in meetings with prospects and customers feels tangible.

You know exactly how much each salesperson costs, and you can directly attribute revenue to each one of them.

When hiring new sales staff they will often bring their network and relationships with them making it easy for your business to rapidly open doors to new customers.

But how scalable is this approach? And what if your business model doesn’t support it? 

The impact of marketing on sales

As someone who has overseen marketing across a portfolio of brands, I have seen first hand the impact marketing can have on various sales team’s ability to succeed.

Take two hypothetical salespeople who each put a sales call in to the same customer. One salesperson represents a brand which has a high level of brand awareness within the sector. The other brand is new and unheard of.

Both individuals are selling exactly the same product in terms of features, price, quality etc. The only difference is that the customer has ‘heard’ of one of them. They may not recall where they have heard of them, but the brand name is familiar.

Empirical evidence suggests that the salesperson from the familiar sounding brand will have a much higher likelihood of having a positive conversation and ultimately closing a sale than the salesperson calling from a company that the customer has never heard of. So much so that brand awareness can also have a significant impact on a company’s ability to hire sales people.

If you’re an SME, you may be thinking: “this sounds expensive”. 

After all, how many startups and SMEs have budget for TV and radio? Well here’s the trick. You don’t need TV and radio. 

Is being ‘famous’ the key to sales and marketing success?

You don’t need to be ‘universally famous’. You only need to be ‘famous’ in your niche, and if you’re a B2B business, your niche should be relatively small. If it isn’t, you need to pick a segment to focus on.

Look for some initial evidence of success, demand or interest from a particular sector and start there.

Do you know who your customers are?

Your next step is to create an ‘ideal customer profile’ or ICP (also known as ‘avatar’ or ‘persona’) to help you develop a clear picture of who your target customer is. Write down the typical job title, geography, company size, sector as well as typical age, hobbies, interests etc of your ideal customer.

Once you have done this, you can start to develop a marketing plan that enables you to focus your targeting and advertising specifically on this type of customer. You need to start thinking about where they ‘hang out’ and how you can get your message in front of them.

By being narrow with your targeting you are maximising the impact of every marketing £ spent and over time you can develop targeted awareness amongst this audience. They will see your adverts, your white papers; and your articles on the websites and magazines they read. They may see you at industry events. In the mind of the customer you will start to become a ‘leading brand’, or ‘famous’.

Because your efforts are focussed you should also be able to attribute any subsequent increase in new business back to the campaign.

How much money should I spend on marketing?

So to the original question, how much should you be spending on marketing?

Data from the Gartner CMO spend survey shows that marketing budget allocations tend to trend at 11% of company revenue. 

The survey is based on Gartner’s 2020 CMO Spend Survey of 432 marketing executives in North America, the U.K., France and Germany at companies with $500 million to $20 billion or more annual revenue.

There’s no reason however why this should be different for companies with a much smaller turnover.

Marketing budgets by industry sector

As you might expect budgets behind mass consumer goods are very high as a percentage of revenue with 24% of revenue spent on marketing. At the other end of the scale you have energy, manufacturing and transportation. Being essential services that people can’t do without, not much marketing is required and budgets come in at 4-8% of revenue.

B2B type services like service consulting (12%) and tech software (15%) including B2B SAAS come in a little above the average of 11%.

How CMOs allocate marketing budget

The highest expense tends to be that classed as ‘direct expenses of marketing’. Typically this is advertising costs such as Google. Social media and employee costs come in not far behind. 

The common pitfalls relating to marketing budgets

The big mistake many CEOs and CFOs make is to consider marketing a luxury; a budget line that they can afford to reduce or eliminate altogether, especially when business is tough.

But it’s times like this that business leaders should be doubling down on their marketing spend and ensuring they have marketing leadership in place that has the ability to think creatively beyond traditional marketing channels and techniques. 

Quality, experienced marketing leadership will focus relentlessly on maximising your bang for your marketing buck and ensure spend is allocated into areas focused on relentlessly hunting down and funneling new customers into your business. Why would you turn the dials on this down when times are tough?

Should I reduce my marketing budget?

In times of economic hardship, many companies look to reduce spend. This makes sense if the demand for the types of products or services you offer reduces. But whether it does or it doesn’t, it’s an excellent time to gain market share. Many of your competitors will be reducing budgets giving you the opportunity to gain ground in a less crowded market. Every pound you spend on marketing will go that much further without your competitors around.

Not all companies are able to do this. But for those that have the resources, this contrarian approach can be too good an opportunity to miss. Of course wasting advertising budget on a disinterested audience doesn’t make sense. But in the digital sphere where you are only paying for ‘clicks’ from active/interested buyers – maintaining or increasing budgets when your competitors are reducing them is smart.

If you need help putting together a B2B marketing budget get in touch. We’ve done it hundreds of times for various types of businesses and it’s one of the key building blocks in launching a successful marketing strategy.