Job Board Traffic Acquisition

(January 31, 2006) - Traffic acquisition is one of two variables that really distinguish one job board from another. (Sales and sales execution is the other.) Current measures of size boil down to "How much traffic did they acquire?" Without traffic acquisition, a job board is simply a refinery waiting for the next oil tanker.

Not surprisingly, the technical component of a job board gets a great deal of attention. No matter how good the server and processing, however, garbage in means garbage out. No traffic, no output. This is not to say that high volume operations are the only answer. Rather, the core technology pales in comparison to the importance of a focused flow of traffic that is sufficient to meet the needs of the recruiters using the system. It's clearly more important to have the right traffic than it is to have the right processing.

Traffic acquisition is critical. Yet we cannot think of a single vendor in the market, who offers traffic acquisition planning or purchasing. While the elements of production and workforce planning that compose solid traffic plans are readily available, the market is still not mature enough to understand the requirements for flow. Imagine an oil industry with no method for keeping the supply of gasoline flowing.

As you would expect, traffic acquisition strategies vary widely.

Each of the successful players have learn the craft of traffic acquisition the hard way... a series of experiments, market changes, and mistakes. There is no easy-to-duplicate plan; traffic acquisition is a response to market conditions and can be solved in a variety of ways. A close look at traffic acquisition makes a couple of things clear:

• On a significant level, the job board business is a reseller's game. Purchasing the right traffic at the right price is the key to longevity.
• One way of judging a firm's effectiveness at traffic acquisition is to simply ask if you've ever heard of them. If you haven't, they are not all that good at advertising, yet. This should make you suspicious of their ability to acquire traffic.

John Sumser

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