How to reach out to thousands of very small businesses?
I'm planning to help small businesses giving classes (there are 100k+ just in the U.S.) get more visibility online.
What has been your strategy/methodology/process to reach out to very small businesses? What worked and didn't work? Which tools would you recommend to manage this?
Use Facebook Ads and target Business Page Admins. You will be able to reach them at scale. There are 1.5M of them in the US alone btw 25 and 60 years old. You are also most likely reaching the decision maker.
Good luck!
I didn't know you can target "Business Page Admins". That's an awesome tip!
Are your businesses telling other businesses about you? Word of Mouth can be powerful. If they are not sharing, maybe niche down and focus on a specific space.
I agree that's the most powerful thing that could happen. It happened at least 2 times in the sample of 58 I already added on my platform (classalog.org), but it is more the exception than the rule.
How many are you in contact with right now?
It's the start: 58 in San Francisco. I iterated on the product based on their needs, and I am now ready to build density. My next milestone is 300 in San Francisco, before extending to other major cities.
How did you come into contact with these businesses, and why doesn't that scale?
A mix of cold calling, free job posting on Indeed.com, and word of mouth. By myself, I can continue this for now, especially regarding my intermediary milestone of 300 in one single city, but I don't see this process to scale further if it's just me running it.
I am curious if others have used different methodologies/hacks and tools that worked well for them. E.g. have some people used emails at scale? Any lesson learned here? What tools have they used to track answers and followups? Any recommended tools to automate this as much as possible?
Curious: how does Indeed help you get the word out to SMBs?
My platform helps you connect with individuals and businesses offering classes in a given location.
Lots of individuals running their own business are reaching out when I post on Indeed that we are looking for instructors. It's very much on the "S" part of SMBs for this category.
I see. That makes sense, thanks for sharing :)