Your job board, like any other online service, is a business. And conventional wisdom suggests that effective marketing is absolutely vital for business success. But then, there have been many businesses that have enjoyed success without investing a lot in advertising and marketing. Even leading job boards often do not run long, expensive advertising campaigns. So that begs the question: does a job board business really need marketing to succeed?
And the answer to that is:
Yes, a job board business does need marketing
Well, if we lived in an ideal world where customers naturally flocked to the objectively best brands, there probably would be no such thing as marketing. However, the reality is that marketing is a requisite for any business, job board or not.
To attract a large number of job seekers, your job board must do something to get their attention. The need for marketing is especially greater if you’ve only just started your job board business. And your marketing must not only be targeted towards job seekers. You also need to reach out to employers and recruitment companies whose job postings you want to display on your job board. Thus, marketing becomes important to help you reach out to job seekers and employers.
But, marketing is not that important
Or to put it more precisely, marketing is not important enough to eat up a major chunk of your time or capital. At least you don’t need to invest in traditional marketing campaigns like businesses from most industries do. You don’t have to spend on extensive and expensive ad campaigns online. You don’t have to put up billboards in every town and city. You can simply use free or inexpensive tools like social media and content marketing to attract job seekers and employers to your job board.
However, you do need to reach out to job seekers in one way or another while starting out. Fortunately, there is a tool that can serve as the best marketer for your job board.
The best marketing is free — and automatic
You’ve probably heard the cliche, ‘let your product speak for itself’ many times before. We don’t know if it applies to every product and service. What we do know is that it can very likely apply to your job board. Here’s how: imagine you have a job board that does what it is supposed to, i.e.,
- giving job seekers a convenient and effective job search experience and
- giving employers a healthy supply of qualified and skilled workers.
As a result, more and more people will be employed with the best employers, thanks to your job board. What would happen when a job seeker asks these people how they found their jobs — and receives your job board’s name as the answer? Would they trust their friends and choose you? Or would they still follow the ads on TV and Newspapers posted by your competitors? The answer is obvious. They’re more likely to choose you. And how much did you spend on marketing? Nothing!
To succeed, build a job board that markets itself
A job board that can offer an excellent job search experience is a job board that needs little marketing. Such job boards are built around cutting-edge, premium job posting aggregator solutions. These solutions enable you to parse job postings from career sites across the web and post these on your job boards. A premium job posting aggregator also ensures that the job postings are:
- verified for validity and quality,
- categorized and made search-friendly, and
- formatted to be consistent with other postings on your site.
When your job board business uses such a tool, you’ll naturally attract a lot of job seekers. Since your job board will only have legitimate job postings, qualified job seekers will be more likely to find jobs successfully. And they will most likely offer referrals to other job seekers. Your job board can potentially build a reputation for being reliable, which you can further amplify through social media and content marketing. As you continue to attract more and more job seekers, you’ll also get the attention of employers — all without you having to do a lot of marketing!
