Need help with a marketing challenge

What is the scope of the market? Nationally? Regionally?

Take care,

Mike W.

> I am hoping to seek some advices in a
> marketing challenge that I am trying to
> solve. I hope someone from this group will
> provide some great marketing tips to save a
> young little marketeer from losing her job.

> What I have on hand is a project to promote
> a fairly new and no-so-well-known Business
> Directory which is focused primarily on
> service-based businesses, such as Home
> services, Business services, Legal services,
> etc etc. We offer free listing to anyone who
> care to join. Our revenue comes from selling
> an online profile service (similar to a mini
> website) cost only $30/year (very cheap).
> Our market strategy is small biz and
> home-based biz. Our yearly marketing budget
> is 20K/year.

> Even with the free listing service, the sign
> up rate is still quite low. We just finished
> redesigning our site and everyone who had
> visited say the site is very professionally
> designed (honestly).

> Could anyone help to suggest some strategies
> to promote this free directory? What is the
> best way for us to drive traffic to our
> site?

> I am hestitated to post the url here, but if
> you are interested to visit us, please email
> me directly.

> Thank you very much for your kind attention
> and help.

> Anne

The site support listings on a national basis but our marketing effort is focusing on a specific non-hightech city (copared to SF).

Anne
> What is the scope of the market? Nationally?
> Regionally?

> Take care,

> Mike W.

> The site support listings on a national
> basis but our marketing effort is focusing
> on a specific non-hightech city (copared to
> SF).

> Anne

OK Anne,

Tell me this (and I'm asking from a marketing standpoint)...Why would I want to use this site as opposed to all the other options available to me including using the old-fashioned phone book?

Take care,

Mike Winicki

With this site, you get to rate a provider and view how other people rate that provider. On phone book, all you get is phone number and company name. With our site, a company can put up more information in a profile format to attract customers. Phone book is non-updatable while our site allows instant update of any information.

> OK Anne,

> Tell me this (and I'm asking from a
> marketing standpoint)...Why would I want to
> use this site as opposed to all the other
> options available to me including using the
> old-fashioned phone book?

> Take care,

> Mike Winicki

> With this site, you get to rate a provider
> and view how other people rate that
> provider. On phone book, all you get is
> phone number and company name. With our
> site, a company can put up more information
> in a profile format to attract customers.
> Phone book is non-updatable while our site
> allows instant update of any information.

I can see the need/use to be able to rate suppliers/services and to see how others rate them. This is just for a limited geographic region correct? I just want to make sure of that fact.

Mike -

> Tell me this (and I'm asking from a
> marketing standpoint)...Why would I want to
> use this site as opposed to all the other
> options available to me including using the
> old-fashioned phone book?

And to further expand on this timeless Kennedy classic, (as I'm sure *you* knew), ... "as opposed to all the other options including doing nothing."

IOW, if the user is happy with the current solution, why switch?

You've brought up an excellent point about USP. A lot of people forget about it.

Rick Smith, "The Net Guerrilla"




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