Someone suggested that site owners help each other with running and marketing their job board sites so I thought I would post some ideas here to help others who purchased sites and to help those who may have questions or doubts about this service.
A common question in this thread is:
Why would a business pay to advertise on my site when they can advertise on the more well known sites, or why advertise if we are pulling from other sites and they could just post there and show up in our feed?
One thing to think about is your market and target clients. You are running a "local" job board and targeting "local" businesses. You aren't targeting multinationals or chains that have large recruiting efforts. You are targeting local businesses with pressing needs to hire quickly and locally. Think retail stores, bars and restaurants, roofing companies and other businesses that have high turnover and want to reach the local market quickly.
The major recruiting sites are expensive.
Indeed is free to post but the "free listings" are buried in the search results unless you buy a promotional package. Indeed promotion uses a daily budget (similar to PPC) to increase the visibility of your ad. Once the daily budget is reached, your ad disappears. They suggest a minimum of $10 per day. That is $300 a month to promote your ad on Indeed.
Monster charges $375 for 1 ad for 30 days. You get a discount for more ads. $250 for 10. So that is $2500 to post 10 ads for 30 days.
Ziprecruiter charges $249/mo (no single post option) to post 1 ad per month.
Glassdoor charges $199/mo for a standard ad. $249/mo for a premium ad.
Snag (Snagajob) charges $89/mo for 1 ad. It goes down the more you order so 10 ads would be $65/ea or $650/mo.
As you can see, it can be quite expensive to post job ads on the major sites. The fees are paying to support the national infrastructure of these big sites so they are necessarily high. In addition, the business's ads are on huge sites targeting a national audience. They are filtered by city but it's not the same as a "local" job board to find quick applicants from the local job pool.
Most small businesses that you should be targeting do not have a hiring budget of $1,000 per month.
Marketing your site:
You want to target local businesses that do not have large budgets to afford the national job sites. Your marketing pitch to these businesses is lower cost and local focus to reach local job hunters.
"Why pay a national website $1,000 per month when you can target the local job seekers you need for $79".
You have two target markets: Job Seekers and Local Businesses. You want job seekers to come to your site to search for jobs and you want local businesses to post ads on your site as opposed to the big brands like Indeed.
Craigslist
You should be looking through the postings on Craigslist and posting ads for your website there as well. Look through the local Craigslist job listings and you will see exactly the kinds of businesses you want to be targeting for your site. Local retail and services, restaurants and bars, roofing, construction, landscapers, spas and beauty salons. The kinds of businesses that have high turnover and are always hiring but who don't want to pay $1,000 to run a "recruiting campaign". They just want to post ads for employees and hire people who are already available in their city or local area.
Post ads for job seekers:
"Looking for a Job? Visit CityJobBoard.com. Where local jobs are found". You want the job seekers on Craigslist to check out your job board.
Post ads for businesses:
"Hiring local? Post your job on CityJobBoard.com. Target local job seekers at a fraction of the cost. Where your job seekers live".
Flyers
Another great way to find traffic and businesses is flyers. You can be anywhere in the world and hire local companies to distribute flyers for you. There are guerrilla marketing agencies that will put your flyers under car windshields, on bulletin boards and telephone poles for cheap. Make flyers/posters targeting job seekers and post them in local grocery stores, university campuses, coffee shops, etc. 1,000 color flyers on premium stock is $60-100 from vista print. You can get 1,000 flyers distributed for about $50.
The idea is not just to get traffic and find businesses but also to get your brand known locally as a place to find and post jobs.
Every Door Direct Mail
The U.S. Post Office offers a very affordable "Every Door Direct Mail" service. You pick a geographical area and the Post Office will deliver your flyer/card to every address in that area for about 18 cents. For $180 you can have 1,000 flyers promoting your business hand delivered with the mail to a geographic area you choose. You select the area based on Zip Code and/or postal route.
Find an area of the city with a lot of bars/restaurants/retail and blast all the local businesses with your promotional flyers. Every city has a number of areas with concentrated retail that can be targeted like this.
Use a local printer or Vista Print to print the flyers and deliver them to the local post office. You can do this from anywhere in the world.
Google "Every Door Direct Mail".
Think Locally
Don't think of yourself as an Internet Marketer targeting a distant location. Think of yourself as a local business engaging in the local economy like any other business in that city. Instead of using Vista Print online, find a local printer and use them. You'll be surprised that it is often not much more expensive. Learn about the city to get to know the neighborhoods where you want to target local businesses (with Every Door Direct). Find out about job fairs and other recruiting events. Hire a local firm to paper those events with flyers. If they can't promote inside the event itself they can paper the parking lot.
Create a Blog
Creating a bog to your site can add content and keyword traffic to your site. Articles like "Resume writing tips", "How to find a job", "Job searching in <Your City>", and articles on job training or specific careers or trades. You can have ads on the blog and direct traffic to your job site. There are also a lot of CPA offers that pay for leads to jobs, education and vocational training for other streams of revenue.
SEO
@patadeperro provides a PBN guide and other marketing ideas with your site. Here at BHW there are a lot of SEO services and PBN guides. You want to target your root domain (and blog if you have one) to build the authority in Google. Your goal is to have new job listings indexed quickly because Google views your site as relevant and important. You also want to get your site and job listings to appear in the Google Jobs block at the top of the search results. These sites are built to conform to Google's requirements for job listings which is a little different than their regular SEO rankings. In many markets you will see Google does not always prefer the "big" sites.
Keep building the authority of your site and make it one of Google's preferred sources for jobs in your area. Having your site and job listings appear in Google and be syndicated to other job sites is another marketing feature you can use to sell your service to local businesses.
Google My Business
As a local business, try and get ranked in Google or GMB for keywords related to your business. I'm not an expert on that but I've thought of things like using a UPS Store box to get a local (or regional) mailing address or using some of the techniques and services here on BHW to get a GMB listing for my Job Marketing and Recruiting Service Company. Anything that helps your business look local and get credibility and authority in the area you are targeting.
These are some of the ideas I have been brainstorming and will be using to promote my site. I hope it helps generate ideas for other people who have a job site or shows tire-kickers with questions the potential for building a business around these kinds of sites.
Maybe other people who have purchased a site can share more ideas or results of their own marketing efforts.
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