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I want to develop a name for myself with small business. By that I don't mean the corner deli. This is because I live in a smallish city (1.5M) and this is a big potential market (upgrading weak sites).
Getting through to these people is like talking to a brick wall. Geez. They mostly have terrible sites, some done by so-called web designers who otherwise sell used cars on the side! Many small bus site owners are put off the web because their sites didn't do anything. So they blame the web.
I need to devise an email that jars their indifference but yet doesn't offend or sound arrogant. Quite a challenge.
Any ideas from you bright sparks?
an email that jars their indifference but yet doesn't offend or sound arrogant.
The bad news is, however carefully you craft your email, you are probably going to do one or the other to 95% of recipients. And even if you carefully choose your recipients, unless the email is VERY personalised and goes into far too much detail about their website's faults for an initial email... they will interpret it as spam anyway, and likely get even more annoyed than with the usual spam because you are local.
I would suggest that there is no substitute for 'beating the feet' in a market that size.
If there is anything like that locally to you, it's a great soft sell opportunity for anyone willing to put something together. Offer to give free seminars for your local chamber of commerce or Lions or business club. You get to raise your profile, show your skills, make some points about 'common mistakes', show the potential of the web, etc.
If you craft your presentation well enough, people will recognise their sites' faults in your examples and you will get approaches out of it.
Beat the feet is great advice. Meet people and talk to them about their market, their concerns, their lives and their business. Then take an active role and care. If you don't care about their success you're in the wrong business. If you do care, they'll come to realize it. If you can put their concerns first you'll end up with all the business you can handle.
If you just want to be famous, well, see how many times you can toss a Frisbee to yourself, Guinness is always looking for new records...
Like DigitalGhost mentioned, "care".
Donate your services to a local charity or good will organization. Take time to better the local business community and you will end up bettering your own business image.
- Chad
Make it useful and informative. Build traffic to it and positioning.
Once you start getting traffic, start offering business people free listings for 3 months (or 6 or 12) in exchange for prominent positioning in their subcategories.
Continue to improve your content over the course of a few months, and start to require that free 3 month listings give a recip link.
After your free time period expires, offer the listed businesses a 50% or 25% discount off of a paid listing.
Make deals for "in trade" ads. Make deals with restaurants for pay per performance - give them a free advert if they agree to have a printable web coupon for 2x1 drinks, free entree or whatever. If you feel like they are trustworthy, try to get meal credit or $$ per coupon.
I have a tourist guide and have worked out a deal with a restaurant that ended up paying me about $100 one month in busy season (annual ad fee is $150 BTW) - but they were delighted because 100 couples came into their restaurant and spent several thousand $$$. The coupon usually is worded with stuff like "on your first visit" and "not valid with other offers".
If you can make a site that brings people real business via the internet (maybe for the first time) they are going to say to themselve "hey... maybe this in-tree-net thingamabobber ain't so bad after all..." and ask you to help them get their sites fixed, or get better placement in your directory.
A few hundred businesses multiplied by $150 per year, plus top 5 premium position fees, plus low scale banner ads (local biz only), plus Google Adsense, Amazon Associates, etc can actually give you a living.
After that web opt and design is just gravy.
My original portal *only* had my own regional design clients who got listed for free in the guide for a year.
Want a hotel in $destination - geez there's only two of them (*cough*listed in the directory, that is *cough*).
Want a driver from the airport. Go figure... only three of them.
I have never beat on a door for my ads. They all come to me, or at least send me an email.
ROI is an easy way to erode designer loyalty. One advertiser held out for a year. But since my guide is giving her 70 - 80% of her traffic she finally asked me to give her a quote when she renewed her ad this time.
If you can get traffic. You will get advertisers. Don't just go for "dentists in $destination" - I aim for Architects to Zoos.
I believe DG said it best - "fuzzy pays".
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I just wanted to explain about the coupon - its all about tangible vs intangible. A real world business (like a restaurant) that perhaps doesn't have its own domain (carlsribshack.com) can't really tell if someone is saw their site online or not. The ad has intangible value.
However, a coupon (free cheese sticks or whatever) brings the benefit of tangible results. Suddenly the proprietor Carl has half a drawer full of coupons - hey he owes you 3 lunches now - but that's great. One of those coupon fellers turns out to be a member of a bowling team, and now every thursday night, he and his 4 pals drop $100 bucks at the rib shack.
Tangible benefit from the online advert.
