Input Please --Marketing/Advertising
Hey.
For those of you who targeted the "local" region with a given app/project, say a marketplace for Window Washing, or whatever. Did you find local businesses to subsidize/support your concept/idea?
What strategies did you use/promote?
thanks
My business is international, but in your case building your SEO first would do great to attract local entrepreneurs. If you're a local yourself word of mouth would also be beneficial in attracting your first customers.
I found a really unique way to work with local businesses when I was designing and building websites about 10 years ago. I would spin up a pre-made site and focus on building up the SEO and a bit of marketing to get people to search for local businesses in - let's say window washing. "Window washing in X town" would then show my result first. The customer would call/email the number on the site and get through to me, and I would then pick a local window washing company to forward the business too. Eventually I tried talking to one of these window washing businesses to say I had a high ranking local website that's bringing in a lot of customers and would they like to rent out the online space to get customers going directly to them. It didn't always work but a lot of companies were open to it since you're giving them a ton of new business. Then I was able to use that monthly revenue to expand from one site, to two, to five etc..
There were quite a few people at the time who trying this approach and it really worked.
Anyway, perhaps you can start listing companies from a local directory and focus on building up SEO and marketing in a similar way, sending business over to them, and then approaching them to ask would they like a paid spot on your listing (I don't know how you're going to monitize as you don't say, I assume you might charge to be listed or featured. Feel free to disregard if your strategy is something completely different).
Thanks for the reply.
My thought process is a little different.
In the US, there are a bunch of school systems, where a bunch of people in the primary/middle schools are performing at subpar levels. Kids are falling behind. And to be honest, I'm thinking that some of them are turning to the mess you see/hear about with kids shooting/car jacking/etc..
So, we're wondering if we put together a "process" that works outside the school system, could we reach a chunk of these kids. The idea being that by helping the parents/kids, we can get some of them up to standards, and see the possibility of success.
We wouldn't work with schools (to much legal entanglement), but we could have a "curriculum" of tasks/assignments/etc to get the user beyond where they need to be, to enable the kid to be able to be able to achieve/surpass what the system would require.
However, to do this will require local biz as advertisers. Our pitch to them will be:
Help advertise, help to allow us to create better kids, so you have fewer potential kids wanting to steal/drive by/shoot/etc.. We can't bend the curve for all, but if we bend it for X%, that might be useful.
At the same time, we hope to have some local biz actually create the "course" and sponsor the course.
There are multiple moving parts, and this may never get off the ground. But if it does, I haven't seen anything that's quite taking this approach..
But our fundamental thought, is that if a parent puts "time" into the kid, that's probably 50% of the issue..
So, as far as the local biz goes, once we build the initial funnels to pull in users.. if this works, we'll be going to localBiz with their own landingpage/webappto pitch for them to be part of this..
if these two pieces fall into place, this might have a shot..
thoughts/comments welcome..
ps. while there are lots of tutorial sites. Most of the users/kids in this situation don't have the ability to hope to get to a tutor.!!
That makes a lot more sense. So instead of what I suggested (setup, then approach) you should be going for the approach first. Put together a pitch deck about what the current problems are, what the project will achieve and who you are and your credentials. You can then share this with local businesses.
Have a look at some large companies in your area. Some have been known to have a local help fund, but you may have to be a registered charity to qualify.
Howdy!!!
Thanks for the input/thread.. helps to sometimes have another person to flesh out/discuss things with.
I'm leaning towards creating a "master" list of biz categories, ie those who actually service other businesses, and then talk with a few to see if they'd be interested in being able to advertise/pitch other local businesses. The catch, being they'd have to "introduce/refer" XX number of local biz to the system. in exchange, they could then connect/talk with/etc any of the other biz we would add to the site over a period of time..
But in order to do this, we're going to have to build up the "landingPage/marketing sites/functions, as well as some of the underlying "WebApps" that would drive part of the process.
So, I'm going to ask you, if we start putting some of this together, do you want to be part of the initial "group" to review/give feedback/input on this overall process!
-bruce
badouglas@gmail.com
Of course, I'll email you later today.