Marketing for Association Job Boards

Association job boards have an amazing potential for driving significant non-dues revenue. Nearly all associations have some form of one, whether it’s a professional job board technology like that offered by Boxwood, or something more homegrown.

How many of those associations hit that potential?

Sure, the job board generates enough revenue to be worth keeping, but it never quite seems to take off.

This short presentation discusses some of the reasons, and offers several practical suggestions to strengthen a job board business unit. Yes, one of those recommendations is hiring Little Wolf to manage the marketing and promotion, but the principles for a strong marketing plan are there as well.

Marketing for Association Job Boards Script

Intro Slide

Thank you for taking the time to view this presentation. I promise to keep all short and to the point.

My name is James Heckman, I’m the president of a marketing consulting and business development firm called Little Wolf. Among other things, Little Wolf works with a variety of organizations and professional associations to develop significant non-dues revenue sources.

There are a lot of options here, of course. For this presentation we’ll keep the focus with online job boards. Many organizations have these in place already. Often, these were launched with high hopes and great intentions. Not many hit their potential.

We’ll talk about some of the reasons for that.  Contrary to popular belief – the slow growth of association job boards is not because employers find all the job candidates they need for free on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Those are certainly powerful tools, but they don’t replace job boards any more than websites and blogs replaced your entire sales force 10 years ago.

Table of Contents

Shortest slide of the presentation … Here’s what we’re going to cover.

Moving along …

The Potential for Non-Dues Revenue

While this varies a bit from one organization to another, in most cases an association is built on three elements:

  • Membership
  • Events
  • Publications

And as in most businesses, one of the primary goals is to ensure stability for the future. So if we were to look at those elements using the analogy of a stool – three legs makes a nice, stable structure.

However, we can still improve on that stability. In stool-making, you add cross-braces between the legs.

In the association world, we call that non-dues revenue.  These elements will never replace the three main elements, but they do provide some insurance against potential problems down the road.

So, many organizations start a variety of side businesses to generate additional streams of revenue:

  • Online directories
  • Webinars
  • And, of course, online job boards

The job board in particular is an attractive business not only because of its ability to drive significant non-dues revenue, but because it addresses one of the membership’s central concerns – career growth.

So … Where is that Revenue?

The Online Job Board starts with high hopes. Some simple back-of –the-envelope calculations point to an outstanding opportunity.

Look at how many members you have.

Look at how many different companies these members work for.

Estimate how often a member changes jobs. If we assume that the average employee stays at a job for two to three years, then it’s not too much of a leap to assume that ¼ to 1/3 of your membership is looking for a job at any one time. As they switch jobs, that means positions are open.

So … take the number of open jobs in your field, multiply it by $200, $300, $400 per job listing and …

Wow! This thing will be driving hundreds of thousands in revenue each year – maybe even millions.

Not many organizations get there. Some do – and there are specific reasons why some organizations run fantastically successful job boards.

A smaller organization or state or local Chapter can pretty easily see $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 per year. A larger national organization can bring in $100,000 to $200,000 – just on inertia alone.

That’s enough to be interesting, but it’s certainly nowhere near the potential we just calculated a few minutes ago.

So what happened?

Protecting the Core

Earlier, we discussed all the potential opportunities and programs available as business units at professional associations.

  • Membership
  • Events
  • Publications
  • Job Boards
  • Certification Programs
  • Online Directories
  • Logo Merchandise
  • Endorsed Partner programs

It’s all very exciting.

But how many marketing people do you have on your staff?

  • Two?
  • Five?
  • Ten?
  • Is it just you?

Despite the best of intentions, we can’t do everything. So … We prioritize.

The core offerings get consistent, top level attention.

Everything else … not so much.

So is there a way to give the job board consistent, top-level attention if you don’t have the staff resources to do it?

Funny you should ask …

Making Your Job Board Work

At Little Wolf, we’ve been working with professional associations for the past decade to help online job boards reach their potential – both as a driver of non-dues revenue and as a tangible service to members.

First off. There is no secret sauce here. There’s nothing in this mix that an experienced marketer couldn’t put together and implement to build a successful job board business. The issue limiting the growth of many existing job boards is not an intellectual one, it’s more of a labor shortage. Our job is to fill that gap.

So, a few principles:

First, marketing a job board is about a balanced equation. You need candidates to come in and apply for jobs. You need a supply of job listings for those candidates to review. Both are required, and both sides of the equation grow together, in balance.

The second principle is that you have no way of predicting when either the candidate or the employer is looking. That means that job board marketing requires consistent messaging to stay on the radar screen of candidates and employers.

The third principle is that the job board is a relationship business, not a transactional one.

You won’t drive business by offering a 20% off coupon code if the employer posts a job before the end of the month.

Have you ever asked your employers if they had a good experience? Did they get the candidates they needed? If the employer didn’t have a good experience, did you make it right?

This isn’t about transactional service: Making sure employers can log in. Making sure their cards are charged correctly.

This is about relationship service. It’s not an innovation – it just takes a consistent investment of time. That is a difficult investment to make when your team is focused on your core:  usually Membership, Events and Publications.

That’s what we do. You and your staff should focus on your organization’s core offerings. We’ll take care of the job board marketing and promotion.

Next Steps

Thank you for taking the time to review this presentation.

Feel free to reach out. We’d love to talk through some options for how we can help your organization.