marketing, affiliate-marketing, chicken-eggI have created an employment website which is totally different than my competitors for both job seekers and for companies. Now I want to start marketing, just don’t have a clear idea which one to target first. I mean Job seekers would be looking for posted jobs and companies would be looking for website traffic or registered users?
I’m thinking to target 80% job seekers and 20% companies? would it be a smart plan?
For more info I’m not charging companies to post a 5-10 jobs and its totally free for job-seekers.
A website that connects supply and demand is a marketplace and marketplaces are almost always driven by demand - that is, whoever is paying money or giving more concrete value. Any application that has a lot of purchasing demand will attract supply.
For example, Uber is the fastest growing marketplace in history and has more buyers wanting rides than drivers to serve them. That’s led to wage wars between Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, and other competitors aiming to secure the most and best supply.
In your case, most job sites charge companies since they have more money. Thus, while this may sound counter-intuitive, I think companies are your demand (buyers) and job seekers are your supply. That especially makes sense in this job environment where many industries have more people seeking work (supply) than employers seeking to hire them (buyers).
A best practice in building marketplaces is to start by seeding the app with an initial high-quality supply, then bring buyers to purchase them. It’s hard to get buyers excited about your app if there’s no supply.
For example, when Josh Kopelman started Half.com, he worked for months to form partnerships with bookstores so that Half had a million books available at launch. Half was acquired within 18 months for $350 million.
Given that buyers drive marketplaces, if you haven’t already, you should definitely talk with a lot of companies about what they want in job-seekers. “Get outside the building” to learn what your paying customer wants. That could save you a lot of time building the wrong thing.
Once that’s clear, you could focus on recruiting relevant, high-quality job seekers (supply). That’s trickier than a typical marketplace where businesses are the suppliers because in those cases, you can build supply through business directories. In your case, sources of job-seekers could include LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed, and other sites where people post their resumes. If you have a unique niche, you can certainly target job-seekers by that niche.
Determining the best marketing channels to acquire the right job-seekers will likely take time. Building two-sided marketplaces is extremely hard. Once at scale, they are extremely valuable. Expect to be in it for the long haul!
Simon Rothman at Greylock is an expert in building marketplaces and leads Greylock’s $100 million marketplace fund. I recommend reading some of his advice.
http://techcrunch.com/video/ask-a-vc-simon-rothman/517972386/
First Round Capital, which funded Uber and AirBnb, also has an article on building marketplaces through trust:
http://firstround.com/article/How-Modern-Marketplaces-Like-Uber-Airbnb-Build-Trust-to-Hit-Liquidity
Hope this helps and good luck!
It’s easier to target the end-users first: you can pull job offers from various sources on the web that relate to your niche, and republish them on your website, while offering some kind of value added service such as news related to your niche or something à la Stack Overflow.
Once you’ve enough traffic, you can go after job publishers directly.
Also, keep in mind that your main product is data on your users rather than mere traffic. HR departments are woefully inept at keeping track of what skills they have in-house. If you can supply them with an up to date dataset of CVs, you’ve something they’ll be drooling for.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.