WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU?

The following work documents some of the strategy and analysis work I performed in an IT recruitment company. Much of this work was performed at home reading books and forums to learn the latest techniques. The work on market supply, market demand and Google Adwords is applicable to any market.

If you want to be effective in competing in electronic markets (on-line) it is useful to use analysis or an analyst like myself to help set a long term strategic direction. If you are interested in the search engine optimization I performed on the site, you may like to visit the Website optimisation section on this site .

 

HISTORY: Adaps was a Top 5 Melbourne IT Recruitment company. For 18 months I took on the role of Marketing Manager to redevelop the company’s brand and increase business.

MISSION: The company had existed in its current format for ten years and the image was now jaded and mostly unknown in the market (low PR, low web presence). Some of the major tasks I undertook were to re-brand the company and completely redevelop the website and upgrade the event management program.

ACTION: When I took on the role the website had a 1990’s feel with block black background and no optimization for search engines. This meant that even when someone searched for the term “Adaps”, they were unlikely to find the site. This is because the site was not even submitted to the major search engines, nor did it have any major links. I regularly met with the MD to understand the image that he wanted to communicate about the company.  

The approach I took on the website optimization I performed are included in that section. Suffice to say that optimising a website to reach page one on Google and Yahoo requires a great deal of strategy, analysis and copy writing. However this was achieved within several months of beginning the project.

RESULTS

  • As part of an integrated marketing plan I also used Google Analytics to analyse the performance of the site. I also analysed and regularly modified the Adaps Google Adwords campaign to increase its efficiency.
  • I created reports for the state of the IT industry regarding Supply and Demand of IT Roles (see sections below). This required analyzing Seek statistics and Google keyword demand data – these reports are currently still available on Adaps site.
  • I analysed the efficiencies of the Seek ads in regard to number of views and number of application for each role under each IT subcategory. This assisted Adaps in understanding the typical demand for their roles.
  • The Adwords weekly traffic distribution was very similar to the Google Organic Search visitor distribution - see graph below. Knowing the search profile of your visitors is vital to planning effective campaigns.

  Adword weekly distribution demand pattern

CONCLUSIONS

Much of the analysis I performed was on free public information. While this can keep your costs down, you still need to know how to use this information to your advantage.  

IT job demand Analysis

Introduction: One of the most important input values of strategic planning for a company or tactical planning (short term) is the reliable up-to-date information about the market place they operate in. The following graph is taken from a report based on Seek.com information. It shows the average Daily demand for one of the major IT Disciplines, for the Inner Melbourne region.

Analyst Programmer Demand

The analysis showed that for most disciplines there was a steady NETT decrease in demand during the period shown. However, it is noted that from Google Adwords Demand analysis that there was an overall increase in ABSOLUTE Demand (searchers looking for IT job related keywords) on the internet.

This suggested that both supply and demand of IT jobs was increasing in Melbourne towards the end of 2007, just that SUPPLY was outstripping Demand. That is, when the national IT employment figures were very high, IT Professionals were still looking to ‘trade up’ roles or move laterally, but there is an even greater demand from clients searching for candidates.

IT job SUPPLY analysis

In  2007 the highest supply (clients seeking employee) roles were Analyst Programmer (AP), Business Analyst (BA), Project Manager (PM), Network & Systems (Net SYS), By contrast, the Management discipline had one of the highest number of ad views, and one of the lowest number of jobs. This means that ads placed in the Management discipline were likely to be read by many potential candidates, and the ads were likely to last a long time on the first page of Seek before being pushed to old pages.

The supply analysis meant that I was able to gauge the health of the market as well as how often ads would roll of the first few pages for each type of discipline. This meant higher efficiencies in advertising so that the company could maximize the number of candidates they received for any particular role by timing the best job ad ‘refresh’ frequency.  

 IT jobs supply

CONCLUSION: By understanding real time supply and demand characteristics of the market your company is in, as well as the long term trend, long term strategies can by realistically made. 

Analysis of Adwords

Anyone who has performed a Google Adwords campaign understands the value in getting the bid prices right. By getting the Google ‘ad quality’ high and understanding the dynamics of a particular keyword market, you can place bids for the right amount to achieve your maximum number of hits at the lowest cost, for the given budget.

Strategy comes into play when you choose which keyword market you are going to play in, and if you run your campaign full time or on different days. The following graph shows the volatility of the market for the keyword ‘IT recruitment’, caused either by Google or competitors changing their ad campaigns. This volatility shows how important it is to monitor and adjust keyword campaigns (types of ads run, bid prices, days of advertising, total budgets) to achieve your goals.

Adwords bid price v Ad position