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My original plan was to have a free six-month trial subscription. However, I wanted to wait until traffic reached an acceptable level. Thanks to Google's sandbox/lag/whatever, that took longer than anticipated.
Anyway, I started calling shops to pay a couple of weeks ago. This is the breakdown on response: out of forty shops called, sixteen gave me their credit card numbers over the phone to renew; five shops asked that I mail them an invoice; five shop owners said "no"; two owners gave me hard luck stories, and I offered to extend their trial subscription until things got better; twelve shop owners have asked that I call them back when they have more time to talk.
So, I have right now a 52.5% paid renewal rate, which will likely increase once I get to talk with the owners who asked to be called back. This is much better than I expected.
The problem with having to constantly call shops back is that it's cutting into the time I have for calling new shops for trial subscriptions. Also, the delay in reaching the point where I was comfortable in asking for payment means that money is now much tighter.
My solution has been to offer my photography services to a studio in town on a freelance basis, with a guaranteed number of days per month of work. This will enable me to continue with the phone calls while bringing in money to pay the bills.
What I need to do now is figure out how to streamline the renewal process so that I can continue to add new stores to my site.
Christopher, I hope that your site is going well. And likewise for Andrew Thomas.
<snip>
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 4:59 pm (utc) on Mar. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] no solicitations please [/edit]
My problem is a bit different from yours in that my free listings were often created without the knowledge of the business that was listed. They have all been delighted to learn about it later, but the problem is that there was no explicit expiration communicated to them. I have to break it to them now, that their "free, introductory listing" is a temporary arrangement and they can get a better, permanent listing by purchasing.
I sometimes use the threat of removing them on a certain date. I have also tried taking features away from their listing, in order to give them more reason to purchase.
I've been gathering evidence to present to them to prove the effectiveness of their listing. I use that evidence when I contact them to convince them that they are justified in purchasing. I choose the ones with the most evidence to go after first. I count views of their listing, clicks to obtain their phone number, clicks to view their website, and keep a record of their email leads generated by their listing that I can show them later.
I took away all means of contact other than email for a while to force the creation of a record of inquiries. I later backed away from this and gave back the phone numbers. You must click to get a phone number and I record and count those clicks.
Success has been mixed and I am proceeding cautiously. Fortunately new orders from businesses that did not get a freebie have been generally good, so I'm making a living at this.
One thing that I run into quite a bit is businesses that say that they will purchase and then don't. I contact them, try to find out what the holdup on payment is and am always told that they've been busy and will take care of it. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. I've got ones that I've been after for a year that finally do order.
One thing that I've done that's been a great success is a weekly mailout of news headlines. I send this to all of my listing holders, as well as people who opt in to the list. This reminds them each week that I exist. The email also contains a coded link to my info for advertisers page, so when they click on the link, I know who they are and can follow up later to see if they have any questions.
As before, please don't ask for my site's url.
Your collections problem sounds familiar. I'm still awaiting payment from a couple of shops from last month, even though the invoice says Due Upon Reciept.
If I get a shop that says they don't want to pay, I ask if they mind if I keep their page on my site until I find a competitor in their area. I also tell them if one of their competitors has renewed.
How are you counting the clicks? Several of my subscribers have asked for that feature, although I'm leery about adding it at this point, since some shops probably aren't getting as many as they would feel justifies the $10 a month I charge.
The income from the site last month was about 1/2 of what I need. If I can hang on to the paying subscribers I have now and continue to add new ones, the site should be providing a decent income by next year.
Some of the trial subscribers have unrealistic expectations for their page on the site. I asked one shop owner how many new customers per year he thought it would take to make $10 a month worth it.
When he said 300 to 500, I started to laugh, which confused him. I explained that there's a shop here in my city that spent $30,000 in radio advertising last year to bring in 600 new customers. If I could bring in that many new customers, I'd be charging $15,000 a year or more.
The phone calling is the hardest part, both in terms of time and emotionally. There are good days like today, and then there's days when I feel like giving up.
Please keep us posted as to your progress.
I haven't started a proper telesales campaign, as it's not cheap, and will most likely get an outside agency to deal with any outbound stuff. That way they can deal with all the 'No's' and insults, as sales really can eat into my time, with about 8 minutes per call on average. May get an affiliate scheme started - I'll see.
Generally, most prospects don't mind the odd sales call, but it really depends on how unthreatening you be. A No is a NO at the end of the day, and can be risky if you push it, as I learnt from bitter experience. I actually had one guy tell me on the phone that my site was like a piece of **** lol. I then looked at his site and thought "he can talk".
Hell is other people.
You know I was told once to always listen to a saleman - they might have something that's useful.
Just a thought.... But I think the manner in how it's done is the key to success, or at least finding out what the customer wants or doesn't want.
Teenagers running businesses on the web - it's quite scary actually.
I like your idea of asking to keep them around until a competitor shows up. That's got to make them want to stay, and after the competitor arrives, then they will want to stay even more.
You asked how I count clicks. I do that by counting page views. Every time someone clicks they are sent to another one of my pages, and I log the display of that new page in my mysql database. I have used redirect pages for counting purposes at various times, but stopped doing that. Since my site's been up for 2 1/2 years now, I've had plenty of time to develop php and mysql software to manage it and track things.
I tell people when I'm selling the listing that I will give them a way to check their stats for their listing, including page views, phone number clicks, text of every email lead, etc. I don't actually give them the link to their stats page unless they remember to ask for it after I complete their listing. Most people check it for a little while and end up losing the link.
I like your unrealistic expectations comment. I'm sure many of my clients have wild hopes as they sign up. I never bring up the subject of results. I always leave that to the customer to do. If they complain later that the results are not what they expected, then I say that I'm sorry to hear that, and say no more.
The only time people tell me how good their results are is when they want to upgrade to more advertising and that's very unusual. Most will stick with what they start out with, so I've found it's very important to get them to buy the options at the outset and not hope for future upgrades. I think that people hold back on telling you how good their ad is working for them because then you might raise their rates.
Raising rates has been another challenge. I've been very slow to do that. I charged my early customers very little, probably way too little. They have agreed to pay more when asked. I depend on new customers to pay my higher current rates.
I would view the pageviews as interest, then raise prices based on views. That's one way of doing it.
Another is to get proper stats built in for clients, then you can get back to em and say "we provided you with #*$! amount of traffic this month, what do you think of our service?" kind of thing. "And we can do even better with our other service/s as it does this and that etc........."
This not only gives you a good excuse to contact the clients, it shows that the service works, er providing the clickthrough rate is high enough.
Clients want to get results - but also some just want a freebie, either way - you win! The more content you have, the more valuable your site, PageRank increases, gets spidered more, more links etc - thus providing more and more content to be clicked on which leads right back to your site.
I wouldn't charge for a basic entry, until you have a database of at least 10,000 sites plus extra related content. The more content, the more valuable you are.
Your idea of contacting businesses that get good page view counts is something that I've been doing. They are always appreciative, but that's not the same as deciding to pay me for advertising. That extra leap to getting paid is not an easy one. There must be a threat that they will lose their ad if they don't buy. That's difficult because it can offend people. I'm not saying I won't do that, because I have done it, but it doesn't always work, and it risks ending a relationship that might have worked out profitably at some time in the future.
Regarding contacting clients regularly, I couldn't agree more that doing so is very important. My weekly news headline mailout is a great tool for doing that. The downside is that I spend an hour or more every morning (7 days a week) gathering news headlines to display on my site. All in all it's time well spent.
I had stopped giving away freebies over a year ago. I decided to give out a bunch more just a week or two ago to a group of businesses. I wanted good search engine coverage for their service and felt that my efforts to get them signed up as paying customers were going nowhere. My site has seen an excellent boost in search engine results for what they do now, and I'm pleased about that. My content is much more useful and valuable now, and I have attracted another important segment of the public, who are interested in the subject of my expanded coverage.
I will give out freebies again when the situation warrants it, but don't have any plans to announce the possibility of getting a free listing. I have my directory's specialization in my region covered very well and have top search engine rankings for a large number of related keywords. I don't see how giving away many more freebies at this point will help, and it will certainly cut into my sales.
(I know that every time I mention that I have good SE rankings people want to know the URL of my site, so please don't ask)
I did some research and discovered an odd thing. The traffic that this listing is getting is not the result of people search in my directory for a business like them. Their traffic is the result of the large number of people sent by search engines to their listing, which is happening because the listing contains so many frequently searched for keywords. I'm surprised that they company doesn't see more business and am trying hard to figure out why that is the case.
I encourage businesses to add lists of products and services that offer to their listing, so that search engines will find those terms and send them people. It's happening, but the odd thing is that they are getting very little business. I can confirm this because very few people are clicking to get that business's phone number, clicking to visit their website, or using my email contact form to ask them for information.
It makes it look as if the quality of my leads, at least for that company, is not good.
I wonder if I should make this post a new topic, since it's broader than the scope of this thread. Your thoughts?
But I never asked to see it.... and don't need to!
PPC will eventually die out, adsense won't be around for ever and technology and ideas will kill off the 'for adsense' and uk non niche directories.
2 have bitten the dust so to speak, and I anticipate many more will perish for lack of a good business idea, funding, technology and bad service.
Design of directory
Competitors that might be unknown to you
Your niche being too overcrowded
Lack of planning
Lack of operating capital
Your promotion isn't targeted or not working
User and customer opinions
Businesses needs and wants that you cannot supply
Your actual advertising reach/lack of partnerships
It could be any of the above, and you really need to find out why some categories aren't getting clickthroughs. It could just be that user are searching for stuff that you're database doesn't carry.
Could be lack of internal site promotion? Or some users just hate because their expectations of your site go way beyond your funding levels, technological capabilities or experience. Who knows for certain!
You could provide a feedback form on your site and newsletter and try to obtain the reasons why.
Have you sent out a press release to all media yet?
Your personal stats won't give you a good indication of accuracy until you get the traffic numbers flowing properly. Cos if you can't tell the reasons why things aren't happening - it's going to cause you major problems later on.
Get things perfect before you even think about promoting anything, and I think people may be expecting more from you, especially being a non-major player in an already saturated directory market.
I have many other listings where click throughs are plentiful, so I don't think it's an issue with my directory. I think that these people are looking for something but not finding it in that listing. I'm going to be discussing this with the owner of the business next week to see if he has any ideas.
I think contacting the client and discussing the problems with your directory, is a BIG mistake.
Do you want the client/s to think you can't handle what they are paying you for. That's the last thing they or I would want to here.
But this tactic might work for you. So I wish you luck.
If I contact a store owner on my site, and he says that he hasn't seen any customers from it, I tell him that it's impossible to know with certainty whether he's getting customers from the site. Most people don't tell retail store owners how they found the store.
I then look at the store's page on my site, and tell the owner that he could be providing much more information that would enable people to find him on the site, and make suggestions. It seems to work in most cases.
You're right about the problem of being underfunded. Initially I thought I could get X number of stores on my site within the first year, and start getting a decent income from the site.
Everything always takes longer than expected, though, so I'm now forced to shoot freelance part-time for a photography studio in order to keep food on the table while I grow the site.
Er, expecting the client to tell a publisher what his client stats are will be seen an unprepared to run a ad service. I guarantee this will not be taken as personalised service, more like lack of.
Surfin may as well hold a large sign up saying "I'm a directory that cannot provide stats for your campaign"
You have to get stats in place and assume the client doesn't have them. Attention to detail and questions have never been more important to customers on the web, and I can't believe you would inform one of your clients of your inability to serve them with simple stats. And I don't mean stats that tell you where traffic is coming from - God no, I mean the individual clickthrough ones that tell you how many clicks each client has under their category,
I don't mean traffic to his site from others, I mean traffic to his site from yours only.
>>I then look at the store's page on my site, and tell the owner that he could be providing much more information that would enable people to find him on the site, and make suggestions. It seems to work in most cases.<<
So instead of providing simple stats system, you expect the clients to create content, so they can be found via a SE. Any directory that survives by the Search engines ranking structure, I wouldn't deal with as a client. So the next thing I know is my advertiser loses the ranking and that means the chances of my company not being found has risen.
What kind of a service is that!
Sorry, I thought that's why clients buy ad services, so we drive traffic to them. Well, clients are just not going to go to such lengths, I imagine they will be off to google where they get their own members statistics section. They are not concerned with our problems - they just want results. Isn't that why we charge....
You have to realise is that these are busy people and don't have the time to invent a load of content, to make life easier for you or I - they have their own businesses to worry about. And they won't waste time with services that can't even deliver stats.
"I've been gathering evidence to present to them to prove the effectiveness of their listing. I use that evidence when I contact them to convince them that they are justified in purchasing. I choose the ones with the most evidence to go after first. I count views of their listing, clicks to obtain their phone number, clicks to view their website, and keep a record of their email leads generated by their listing that I can show them later."
The stats are updated in real time and available whenever the client chooses to view them on their own personal stats page. Does your directory offer something like that?
As for your idea that it's bad to work together with the client in order to fine-tune his advertising to produce better results, well if I were the client, I would certainly appreciate the extra attention. It also conveys a message to the client that nobody knows his business and his clients better than he does.
Some of the trial subscribers have unrealistic expectations for their page on the site. I asked one shop owner how many new customers per year he thought it would take to make $10 a month worth it.When he said 300 to 500, I started to laugh, which confused him. I explained that there's a shop here in my city that spent $30,000 in radio advertising last year to bring in 600 new customers. If I could bring in that many new customers, I'd be charging $15,000 a year or more.
Hmmmm.....
My most recent top 50 trial sites in the last 30 days ranged from 2379 to 157 clicks this month, out of 600+ new sites, 18,000 sites total.
My paid listings are $50/month, and some get thousands of clicks per month, they are also displayed above the fold ahead of non-paying listings as I never delete anyone. If you want the traffic you pay to be on top.
Guess it depends on your marketing and how localized your directory is, sounds like you're more city specific sorts of directories.
Sorry my last post was an answer to a hypothetical question dickbaker wrote about.
Bit of confusion there - my fault. You mentioned:
"I think that these people are looking for something but not finding it in that listing. I'm going to be discussing this with the owner of the business next week to see if he has any ideas."
and I thought you meant how you run your directory listings. So I thought you would ring the customer and get their opinion on what to do about the lack of clicks to their ad.
I thought your original post was to do with concerns
about the category clickthrough - some not getting clicked on? Then you said you would discuss with the client, so I'm thinking the client may read something else into that. Perhaps wondering why you're asking them for advice on your directory.
Could sound like you don't know what you're doing - to the client. Not what you want really.
I think maybe what you meant to suggest to clients was 'how to make improvements to the listings'
is that right?
"I can confirm this because very few people are clicking to get that business's phone number, clicking to visit their website, or using my email contact form to ask them for information."
Although the way you talk about your site's success, it's a wonder why you come on here for advice, and without the url it's impossible to advise further, but maybe others will have the time to help you out.
The solutions I gave in an earlier post are quite possible reasons why you have clickthrough problems and it probably boils down to one of 2 areas:
Website design is not good enough in some way
Your site just isn't popular yet
--------------------
You will say otherwise ofcourse, but the problem we have is that you don't want to prove this to anyone, you don't want others viewing your site for whatever reason. This is strange behaviour. How can others answer your problemss properly and if your site is so successful, people must be able to access it to add companies, buy services and search companies.
So if you make it available to users, it must be live on the web, and if it's live then others would have seen it anyway. I wouldn't worry too much about people wanting to steal your ideas, as I said before it's all been done a thousand times over - years ago
And you fail to understand that you and others are just competing in a 'taken' and overwealming market.
I don't particularly want to see the site, as I know what directories look like, just explaining that you make it difficult for me to advise.
My point about surfin2u calling the client was that calling to offer advice on how to improve the content in their listing, and thus give customers more incentive to buy, is providing additional service.
When I call a shop to renew, I explain that I've added more search features since they signed on for the free trial. Visitors can search by state for widgets, bananas, apples, oranges, etc. I then explain that, if they sell any of these, they should list them on their page so they can be found for those items. I then offer to re-write the page slightly to include those items.
We'll see how things go. Too many things to juggle right now.
I think contacting the client and discussing the problems with your directory, is a BIG mistake.Do you want the client/s to think you can't handle what they are paying you for. That's the last thing they or I would want to here.
Working honestly with clients to help make them more successful is not a mistake, it's the proven path to long-term success. Most clients really appreciate a business partner who's honest about problems and works with them to resolve them. This tends to lead to tremendous loyalty.
In a sea of insincerity, people really appreciate someone who's straightforward.
I made some changes to his listing to make the link to his website more prominent, and added a message indicating that visitors should go to the website for information about specific products. The result was about a 5-fold increase in traffic from his listing to his website. I'm monitoring this to see if it lasts or is just a blip.
I believe that clients appreciate service from someone, who is willing to take the time to learn their requirements and take steps to do a better job of meeting them. There are still a couple of months left before his last payment is exhausted and now I think there's a chance that he'll renew and stick with my service.
I'm in the process of redesigning all of my listings based on the lesson that I've learned from this client. I think that he's probably pretty typical. I see a chance here to improve my service and my clients' perceptions of its value to them.
I've decided not to go the telesales route, it's just to costly timewise and moneywise, I'll shall be using email. Of course if a client wants to chat on the phone, I won't refuse. It just seems many prefer not to be bugged on the phone, I know I dislike it.
I place my phone number, phone rings and I expect it to be an enquiry - but thurns out to be a salesman from other company, it's very annoying indeed and takes 2 minutes to get rid of them, as I don't want to appear rude, as they could turn out to be potential clients in the future.
Does this sound familiar at all? lol
