My buddy Michael Keleman (AKA "The Recruiting Animal") sent me this link from ClickZ. The article points to a prediction I made two days ago:
"Is there a chance that Jobster would shift to using the Recruiting.com brand, a notion that some bloggers have floated? “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” responded Recruiting.com's Jason Davis, adding, “Jobster spent a lot of time and effort developing that brand. I think it’s a powerful brand in the industry now.”
Powerful, yes. But that's not the issue. The issue is intrinsic value. According to Dane Carlson's popular blog valuator, Recruiting.com is worth $165,975. I think that's way too cheap, but nevermind. My point is that not many companies pay elephant dollars for content. They pay it for a community [See # 3], and/or they pay it for a destination. In Recruiting.com's case, the destination is worth much more than the community. Not because there's anything wrong with the community, but because there's so much potential with the URL.
It's the brand, sort of.
Jason Davis [an incredibly nice guy and a brilliant entrepreneur] is exactly right: Jobster is a very good brand. Amen. But a brand is only as good as the customers and prospects who know it. To the 99% of the world that has never heard of Jobster, the brand simply doesn't exist. But the word "recruiting" does, and that's why 420,000 times last month, people entered that word into a search field. They had a need. Trust me, nobody Googles the word "recruiting" for fun. There's pent up demand there.
Now we get to a critical point on Jobster's strategy: Who is Jobster's customer? Is it the candidate -- or the client? Are they selling a better way for candidates to find a job? Or are they selling clients a better way to find great candidates? My money is on the latter, because that's where the money is. In fact, that's what I do for a living -- and it's called "recruiting." And what's the best URL to have if your value proposition involves recruiting? Exactly.
Don't movie stars usually change their names?
Just because Jobster has always been called Jobster doesn't make Jobster the best name for the company. In the age of Google, the best name for any company is the URL of the need that it satisfies. Like LasVegasEscorts.com. Or MarketingHeadhunter.com. It's every CMO's dream come true: A hot prospect enters the need into Google and -- wham! -- there you are.
In light of that new reality, the intrinsic value of your company becomes the Lifetime Value of the prospects you can convert in a simple bake-off between your firm and the two others at the top of the organic rankings. In that sense, pay-per-click is really just a consolation prize for all the losers who can't win the Gold, Silver, or Bronze medals in the organic search competition.
Venture capitalists love that kinda junk.
Now, suppose you are Jobster's CMO. Do you want to brand a word that already exists -- or do you want to invent a word that stands for the need your company satisfies? Put another way: Would you rather own the URL "Sex.com" or would you rather try to brand a word that has "sex" in it, such as "Sexster?" Give me "Sex.com" any day because it costs virtually nothing to develop a top-of-mind brand position with your market -- especially if that's what they're already searching for.
The fact is, the easiest thing to brand is what's already in the customer's mind. It's already there. All you must do is credibly lay claim to it. And there's nothing that will more credibly allow a company to lay claim to a need that's already in the prospect's mind faster than buying the all-one-word dot-com domain of that need.
I know. I've been there. Which is why my prediction stands.
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