Think Customers' Customers
Another day, another day on the road promoting Business-Scene.
I had a meeting yesterday with an associate who has moved away from consulting to run a couple of different businesses for himself. One serves the building trade but also serves a secondary market of DIY'ers and building maintenance companies.
I have given him a free business profile on our site and free classified adverts and a banner ad on the front page. But he was still very sceptical. He always challenges stuff as he enjoys the Devil's advocate bit but even so I was slightly dumbfounded that for virtually zero effort he was being offered free adverts and yet was less than interested. He did point out that his core market are very unlikely to access the internet regularly, if at all. He seemed to miss the secondary market potential (and these people do access the internet for business), but as he is an MBA I guess he knows what he is doing.
Thinking about this I can see that the focus needed to be on his core customers ('cause he doesn't have many as he only opened last month) and that I should have positioned the benefits for him in terms of benefits for his current target group of customers (who are few and far between as this is a brand new business). Mind you - if I had thought about it in those terms I wouldn't have approached him in the first place as there are lower-hanging fruit.
I like to help my friends. Guess this one didn't want it. Still, I am grateful for the learning opportunity.
posted by richard perry @ 1:13 pm
2 comments
2 Comments:
Well, you can lead a horse to water etc.
One of the problems with a new venture such as this is that very few people can see the benefits of something until it's right there in front of them. Business-Scene is undoubtedly a brilliant idea but until the site is well populated in each area the more cautious folk out there will remain just that.
Funnily enough I spoke to a Search Engine Optimisor the other day who was delighted to be on there. he said that for sixty quid is was worth joining for the Google points alone.
Keep on keeping on.
It's interesting that someone would try to attach a monetary value to an increase in the Google Pagerank that placement on this website might bring. Clearly, it's better to be listed on a site that allows you to place links to your own website than not, but I'd never be bold enough to estimate its value.
Let's think about the ways in which it might benefit ones own website to be listed on a site such as Business-Scene:
1. Increased visibility: It's likely that a site such as this will achieve (over time) very good Search Engine ranking because of its content-rich nature. This will increase the likelihood of your own content (and links) being seen, and therefore clicked;
2. This site is likely to have a strong membership who will use the site regularly and who will come across your content (and links);
3. As this sites Google Pagerank grows, due to the number of its members / networks / partners etc linking into it, so the pagerank of your own site will grow if you have links to your website on it;
4. If they're smart, the owners of this website are likely to use pay-per-click campaigns (check out http://dmjadwords.blogspot.com) to drive more traffic to their site (as they want lots of new members). This will deliver more traffic to the Business-Scene site, thereby increasing chances of your link being clicked!
Anyway, I'm off to write a paper on how to value links on websites such as this!!
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