In today’s competitive B2B landscape, connecting with buyers who fit a specific profile can be a challenging task for managers, owners, and founders of businesses. Establishing a strong online presence and expanding your network is crucial for generating leads and winning new customers. In this article, we will explore effective approaches to increase your company page followers and attract the right audience. We’ll also delve into the benefits of leveraging LinkedIn automation tools to scale your efforts while emphasising the importance of careful targeting and well-crafted messaging.
Define Your Target Audience: To successfully connect with buyers who align with your ideal customer profile, it is essential to clearly define your target audience. Understand their pain points, industry preferences, and demographics to tailor your messaging effectively. By narrowing your focus, you can create content that resonates with your ideal customers and attracts the right followers.
Optimise Your LinkedIn Company Page: Your company page is a powerful tool for showcasing your brand and attracting potential customers. Ensure that your page is fully optimised with compelling visuals, a clear description, and relevant keywords. Regularly update your page with engaging content that demonstrates your expertise, highlights your unique value proposition, and engages your target audience.
Publish Valuable Content: Share high-quality, valuable content on your LinkedIn company page to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Create a content strategy that includes a mix of informative articles, industry insights, case studies, and actionable tips. Consistency is key; aim to publish content regularly to keep your followers engaged and interested in what you have to offer.
Engage with Your Network: Building relationships with your existing connections is just as important as attracting new followers. Engage with your network by commenting on their posts, sharing their content, and participating in relevant discussions. This interaction not only strengthens your existing connections but also increases your visibility within their networks, potentially attracting new followers and customers.
Leverage LinkedIn Groups: LinkedIn groups provide an excellent opportunity to connect with like-minded professionals and your target audience. Join relevant groups in your industry and actively participate by sharing valuable insights, answering questions, and initiating discussions. This engagement helps establish your expertise and can drive followers to your company page.
Harness the Power of LinkedIn Automation Tools: LinkedIn automation tools offer a valuable solution for scaling manual and laborious processes. They allow you to identify your target customers using powerful search filters and automate connection requests and follow-up messages. By streamlining these tasks, you can save time and effort while reaching a larger audience. However, it is crucial to use these tools responsibly and with care.
Target Carefully with Well-Crafted Messaging: While automation tools can be beneficial, it is essential to target your audience carefully and spend time crafting personalised and well-crafted messaging. Generic or spammy messages can harm your reputation and deter potential customers. Tailor your messages to address the specific pain points and interests of your prospects, showcasing how your product or service can solve their challenges.
Conclusion: Connecting with buyers who fit a specific profile requires a strategic approach and an active presence on LinkedIn. By defining your target audience, optimising your company page, publishing valuable content, engaging with your network, and leveraging LinkedIn automation tools responsibly, you can increase your company page followers and attract new customers. Remember, the key lies in careful targeting and crafting personalised messaging that resonates with your audience. Invest the time and effort into building genuine connections, and the results will follow – more followers, increased engagement, and ultimately, a thriving customer base.
We have helped companies to consistently grow their targeted page followers significantly. Wondering how we do it and if it could work for you? Get in touch.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
The short answer is 11% of company revenue.
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.
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 2023:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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!
