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I have a site which is currently in Beta that I plan to start heavily marketing in January.

I wanted to get people's approaches on how they marketed their websites and their ROI (return on their investment). Did you notice lots of traffic initially that died down or did you experience continuous growth? Did you do all online marketing? Print ads? Door-to-door?

Any info would be useful.

Just some points of clarification about what JobMuncher is about...

  • The JobMuncher site does not follow the same model as Dice, Monster, CareerBuilder, and others. Those companies warehouse resumes and employers. It is a many-to-many relationship where many candidates can see many employers and vice-versa. JobMuncher is job hosting site for a single company to show their listings from their company website, which allows them to do direct hires. JobMuncher provides the ability to brand, customize, manage applicants (candidates), and other features through the JobMuncher website. So for JobMuncher, the relationship is many candidates to one company.
  • Down the road, JobMuncher may turn into Monster and others, but that is not the objective. It is a nitch product where small business owners want more control over their job listings and candidate processing. Typically, small business owners do not list jobs on their website (because they use companies like Monster), have static listings in the HTML, or just have a send resume link. JobMuncher takes these limitations and gives small business owners a viable option to do direct hires in an organized controlled environment without having the potential job candidate leave their site to go to a third party job warehousing site where they can possibly find a different job.
  • In regards to Market focus, we are following the 80-20% rule. The 20% are the power users out there that want complete control over all their job data, presentation, and need specific customizations. JobMuncher's focus is on the 80%, these are business owners that want a simple clean way to list jobs from their company website. JobMuncher would host the jobs, do some company branding, and allow job candidates to link back the main company site with ease. We tried to make this as seamless as possible.
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Sometimes I don't get why people downvote. What's wrong with that question? – John Sjölander Dec 15 '10 at 10:35
I don't see anything wrong either, must be because of "self-advertising" which shouldn't be flagged if the question is legit IMO. Anyhow, have you considered SEO as an alternative to heavy marketing? – Henry the Hengineer Dec 15 '10 at 13:01
Yes SEO is definitely part of the plan. I have several ideas to market the site online as well as in print. – John Dec 15 '10 at 13:08
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Please leave a comment if you downvote. It helps everyone learn. I've seen a string of downvotes with no comments on the site lately. Downvoting in this manner hurts the site. Please see our meta meta.answers.onstartups.com if you have questions about what is acceptable. If something is not currently addressed on the meta, please post a question. I'm guessing the question was downvoted because he posted a link to his site, but has no rep yet. Especially since the link is not necessary to answer the question. This can be seen as spam. But I do think the question is valid, and is useful. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Dec 15 '10 at 14:32
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@John: I suggest you edit your question, and delete the link to your site. Your question is generic (which is good), so adding a link to your site adds little value to the question. Some of our members may feel like you are trying to spam us, and will be less likely to answer your question. We are more likely to answer a question if we feel you are truly interested in the question. If you really are interested in getting good answers you should delete the link. Hope that helps. – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Dec 15 '10 at 14:45
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2 Answers

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SEO: Don't obsess too much over SEO. It's a good idea to make it part of your plan (you'd be silly not to), but don't totally neglect other aspects of marketing because of it. Search engines change their algorithms, and what works great now, may not work so great in a year. When you look at your analytics you should see a balanced "portfolio". If you consistently have 80% of your traffic coming from search engines, I would suggest focusing your efforts on other techniques.

For more on SEO, see What are your top 3 - 5 SEO tips? and How much do you worry about keywords when blogging?.

Did you notice lots of traffic initially that died down or did you experience continuous growth?

In terms of SEO, we have seen a steady increase in growth. We have been blogging a bit more lately, and the more we blog, the more traffic we get from search engines.

With social media, like Twitter for example, we tend to see a lot of traffic when we first share our blog posts, but then it dies down over a few days. We've only been at this for a few months, so my hope is that over time the social media marketing will turn into more of a continuos growth as more people get to know us.

Did you do all online marketing?

Yes, so far it's been all online marketing for us (other than the occasional local networking event). I find that offline marketing is a lot harder to measure. Lets say you place an ad in an industry magazine. How do you know which visitors are coming because of that ad? You can place a coupon code in the ad, but if the visitor doesn't purchase your product, or doesn't use the coupon code, you have no way to know (other than asking them).

EDIT:

Has any one used Google Ads? LinkedIn ads? FaceBook ads? Press releases? What kind of results have you seen if you used any of this?

I have not, but look around the site. There are various questions on those topics. Here are a few to get you started:

Which is better, Google adwords or Facebook ads?

What is considered a “good” click through ratio on Facebook Ads?

Smart ways to optimize ad revenues

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If you are moving at a steady pace in revenue, and you place an ad in a trade rag, if it worked, you should see an increase in revenue. Admittedly, if you place an add, and blog, and do three other things, it gets harder to translate why revenues went up... – alphadogg Dec 15 '10 at 16:50
Has any one used Google Ads? LinkedIn ads? FaceBook ads? Press releases? What kind of results have you seen if you used any of this? – John Dec 15 '10 at 20:23
up vote 2 down vote

There are a million ways to skin that cat, but the crux of it is to start from your targets and move backwards. This may seem obvious, but I don't understand why people still do it backwards. Said another way: You don't ask "should I use print?", you ask yourself "do my targets use print and will they respond if I am there?".

Second is branding. You are dealing with a saturated market. Job posting websites is like the Tetris of the web application world; everyone and their uncle has made one. Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice, etc are all established players with technological seniority and massive mindshare. But, that's not to say you can't displace an incumbent or work in a niche. How do you do it so that you pop into someone's head when they want to list/search for a job? To paraphrase Seth Godin: you have to have something remarkable about your offering. What is it? Are you selling that into your target market(s)?

Lastly, SEO in your saturated market is going to a costly proposition, unless you appeal to any (if they exist) underserved niches. Don't think for a second that the established players aren't all over their SEO, with deeper pockets.

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Really appreciate your feedback. I have considered and thought about what talked early on when the site was still an idea. This is why I am going after a nitch market and will attempt to grow from there. I really do believe the site has something unique to offer that companies would really consider using it. – John Dec 15 '10 at 20:05
BTW, a startup doesn't have to have a "unique offering" to be a viable startup, although it does make getting funding near impossible. Sometimes just offering less function at a lower price point can allow you to reach a market that doesn't want to pay for the kitchen sink they won't use. – alphadogg Dec 15 '10 at 20:51
Right. These are points that JobMuncher addresses. Thanks. – John Dec 16 '10 at 2:22

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