Forum Moderators: buckworks
- a Member Page (with four images of your business, your name, your phone number, your address, your email address,and your web address in a popup window, which also features a two paragraph writeup of your business)
- A listing in one of the four catagories (Dining, Entertainment, Shopping and Services) with your phone number, your email address, your web address and your phone, and a picture of your business.)
- On the same page as the listing you get two or three options depending on what type of business you are.
(Restaurants get a Menu button in addition to the standard buttons)
Menu- Displays the Menu of the restaurant in a popup box, ready to be printed.
Interest- An interest button with coupons to the businesses.
Directions- A link to mapquest with the company information already filled out.
The problem is that people aren't buying into this idea. I admit we live in a pretty slow city as far as internet technology but my partner and I figured we were ready for something like this in our area.
Generally the people are telling us to get popular and then to come back to them.
-- My question is, what can we do to get these people to believe in the web, in our company and to subscribe with us. We've tried selling this and we have gotten good reaction from people, but entrepreneurs don't tend to believe in us.
Is there anythign we can do? All suggestions are good suggestions. We have two weeks to figure this out.
Thank you,
Scott
Ultimately, the Web is just a format, a medium, not the end goal. Don't try to convert people to the Web. If there's something in your offer for people, they will buy in your proposed services.
As the owner I know I am slanted in my opinion. I was wondering if the above service offered is not enough or too much for 6 month subscriptions starting at $250.00 and a year subscription starting at $500.00.
Honesty is definetly the best policy. Am I asking too much, or not giving enough? If not enough, what else can I do?
Thanks guys, love this website.
Six months should be something like 350. Therefore, I save if I buy one year. Again, I'm not talking about amounts here, just the marketing of the price.
Next, how about offering a free trial for say, one or two months or a money back offer for the first three months. If it doesn't work for your clients, then, there is limited risks.
So I would want to know what sort of traffic you have, how well it has converted for other businesses, how you were planning to market the site to my potential customers, and so on.
Without solid credible answers that I liked I would be one of those telling you to come back when you are popular.
To be honest if it was just a start up with little existing traffic, I would be looking for at least 3-6 months and up to a year of free listing to see what the potential was, especially if I was already an established business in the area.
Generally the people are telling us to get popular and then to come back to them.
I can see their point of view - until you're a popular resource and people are using you to find busineses - where's the value in the subscription?
To break the chicken and egg situation you need to convince them that your resource will be marketed, will get targetted traffic and will be "visible".
It's not the web that they need to believe in, it's your visibility.
We have two weeks to figure this out.
I get the impression this is a "local" resource, which should make it a lot easier. Can you do some local advertising? Get some local press coverage (radio/papers)? AdWords campaign, targetted to the City name etc.
TJ
[edited by: trillianjedi at 5:30 pm (utc) on Jan. 26, 2006]
1) Get the web site up and running 100% with basic listings for everyone you hope to include.
2) Do the standard SEO marketing before you push it locally so you are already in the search engines and ranking well for specific and clearly useful search terms.
3) Approach 10 or 20 (or more depending on your market area) of the best possible targets (customers you know it will benefit in a measurable way) and give them the world (every top feature you plan to offer) FREE for 3-6 months.
4) After the free trial period revisit the customer with detailed statistics about what your web site did for them. Ask what they think could be improved, how your project price points are (would what they recieved have been worth your price), etc.
5) If the customer was happy with the service and found it beneficial ask them if they would be willing to give you a brief endorsement statement to use in promotion of the service in exchange for having the listing FREE FOR THE LIFE OF THE BUSINESS. (You cannot afford not to do this. A quality endorsement from a well known local businessman or woman can prove invaluable.
After you have recieved and incorporated 5+ quality endorsements into your site and marketing plans, then can you start actively marketing and selling the service.
This process should take about 1 year realistically if you don't already have good traffic and good brand association.
You still have a LONG road ahead of you because pretty much all the yellow page providers AND major local portals (Google, Yahoo, etc) can offer the same services with better reach and probably better prices.
It sounds discouraging but that has been our experience and we have pulled through to become profitable on this venture (after 3 years).
Freq---
ps- You had better be (or have) a great salesperson. It will take door to door personal attention to beat the big guys.
Generally the people are telling us to get popular and then to come back to them.
A business owner has limited resources (money and time) to devlote to marketing. You have to convince the owner that spending $500 on your service is going to give him a better return for his investment than spending the same amount somewhere else. It's not so much Internet-phobia (although some businesses remain in the dark ages, despite the success of several online marketing models) as a general "show me the money" attitude.
Does your site have the traffic to "guarentee" that he will get over $500 in new business? Very doubtful if you just started. Also, if you just started, business owners are going to be very pessimistic that you'll even be around for a full year. You may find a very few businesses willing to help you out more out of charity, especially if you know the owners well.
A much more realistic approach would be to give the businesses a free trial for several months, then charge to continue if they like the service (your basic shareware approach). Build up the site with free listings, get indexed by search engines, market the site to death, then see how big you grow it in a year. With a year of solid growth and results, you'll be in a better position to try and ask for money.
This is based on having first-hand experience with very similar models in several different industries.
Why do I say this? Because a friend of mine started a very similar business 3 years ago and it worked very well for him. He was charging way way more than you are too. If I remember correctly, each subscription he charged was from $2000 CAD to $8000 CAD annually. He had 2 very good salesmen that got quite a few local restaurants, car dealerships, cellphone stores and bars to join. He started a magazine shortly after his website took off. Basically all his website does is give coupons of 10 to 15% off to restaurants and free oil changes at dealerships.
