Setting up and running vacancy platforms
Introduction
Onlinemarketingvacatures.com, storemanagers.nl, and onlinemarketingstagiair.nl are new vacancy platforms focused on specific types of roles. The project was part of my time at Leaped and was done in a flexible and changing team. We’ve created these platforms from business case to working websites and beyond
| Project duration | Type | Role | Deliverables |
|---|---|---|---|
|
1.6.2022 – 31.1.2023 |
Work project |
Designer & marketer |
Working vacancy websites |
|
7 months |
|
|
|
Market research
I joined the project when a large part of the market research was mostly finished. In order to establish the viability of the platform, a DESTEP, a competitive, cost analyses and more were made. All of this helped us decide on our branding, which web builder to use and our strategies.
Designing the brands
Based on the research we designed both brands. I was mostly responsible for the storemanagers.nl brand. It took several iterations to get to both logo’s. Using these logo’s we created brand guides, which also went through multiple iterations. These brand guides contained color choice, tone of voice, typography, elements, and mock-ups.
I specifically made the logo, chose the colors (together with the other team members), made brand elements and mock-ups.
Building the websites
After finishing the brand guide, we went to work on the website. We created a list of features we would like to see on the website, such as filtering, blogs, working job alerts, and more. I also made a customer journey for both companies looking for employees and employees looking for companies to work at. At this point, we chose a CMS system, Exenzo. Exenzo gave us a good foundation to build the websites with.
Making the website was fairly easy, a lot of the systems were already pre-built, we just had to adjust some things to our own liking. There were several features missing, such as linking the search function to Google Analytics and the ability to disable blogs. I had an important role in communicating with Exenzo about getting these features implemented and fixing several bugs.
When building the website we made sure it was mobile friendly, had strong content and was generally user-friendly (we even tested it with some people). In several cases, we had to use custom HTML/CSS to make things work. Building the website was one of the parts I enjoyed the most.
Recently, we did decide to move on to a new CMS: WordPress. This was necessary because Exenzo isn’t being updated anymore. I made several contributions to the website, like implementing a new features vacancies system and fixing bugs.
Marketing the platforms
To do marketing for the platforms we made several strategies, for website content, social media, and SEO. I was responsible for creating a marketing roadmap to visualize all the important channels and connections, and for creating KPI’s per channel.
Besides creating strategies, it was also important to get the measurement tools set up. I was mostly responsible for this. I had to set up GA4, GTM, GSC, Hotjar, and Looker Studio. In GTM, I created several tags and triggers to measure behavior on the websites (scrolling, posting a job, applying, etc.).
When it comes to execution, I created several blog posts, made social media posts (and helped create the templates for them), analyzed and optimized the websites for SEO, and keeping the sites up to date.
We also regularly had a presentation about our progress, problems, and further steps. This was important for responsibility.
Learnings
- The power of paid ads, especially when getting started. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a budget to spend on ads. This led to a slower than possible growth.
- The importance of having a clear funnel and knowing which channel has what role in this funnel. In retrospect, we didn’t have enough going on at the bottom of the funnel for the b2b side. We did manage to get some real sales, but we could have gotten more if we had more activities there.