local website idea ... lookin for advice
- Thread starter leadsupplier
- Start date
we have the same exact thing in our area ... two papers that get released but they are both just full of ads ..
similar, except i think that ur site has a lot more stuff than i would have on mine. i want mine to be one page, and just have a table
bar name:happy hour:drink speicials:food specials:entertainment
then just list all those specials for the entire week, im not trying to include every single thing goin on, i just want simplicity, one simple site that lists bar specials for ppl to reference every night they want to go out
i want to start like that, and see how it goes, then possibly expand into something more, but the main goal is to sell advertising to the bars. i just think its extremely useful b/c there have been so many times this summer when i would go to look for bar specials and u cant find it
The one site is populated with a small PHP script I wrote to scrape google for businesss listings. It's worked really well for ranking for lots of stuff. I'm just letting the sites age right now, and figure out what the hell to do with them.
Why are you having a difficult time figuring out what to do with them?
My sites are shit compared to yours and I'm making money...
I have AWESOME Google Rankings. I'm talking #1 and #2 WITH supplemental results for lots of keywords.
I'm confused how/what to sell to these bars and restaurants.
I'm confused how/what to sell to these bars and restaurants.
Therein lies the problem. 50 Uniques a day between the two of them. Highly, Highly targetted though.
well i dont know what the keywords are exactly, but i mean if ur in anyway driving business to local businesses then i would charge them a fee to advertise on ur site..
if ur keywords are like crab shacks in maryland, i would show them that competitors are already on ur site ... but if it was like joes crab shack .. i would call and ask them to strike a deal where u can give them x amount of new customers a day/week/month
if ur keywords are like crab shacks in maryland, i would show them that competitors are already on ur site ... but if it was like joes crab shack .. i would call and ask them to strike a deal where u can give them x amount of new customers a day/week/month
Coupons, mang. Everybody loves to save money and the local retailers see the proof when a new customer brings in one of your "internet only" coupons.
I put a opt in box top right sidebar promising coupons in return for a "newsletter" signup and then gave those leads away to local restaurants. After I emailed a couple of them 10+ leads one day, they were down with a prominent ad on the frontpage.
There's plenty of money in local sites, the real problem is all the time you'll spend educating your customers on the internet and why they need to utilize it.
I swing back and forth between being stoked on local and saying fuck it, just want to sit at my computer and push traffic to my shit.
If your site is not shit and you actually bring customers to your advertisers, you can pretty much charge whatever the hell you want to...
Ok that's a good start for your bar portal - you already got 100+ potential clients in the area. The real point is how can you get them to hand over some of their marketing budget to advertise on your site vs. any of the other mediums out there (i.e. print, other online gateways, etc..)
Ask any local business owner what they care about, almost everytime it's gonna be ROI. If I give you $100 a month, what am I going to get out of it? Most don't know a thing about online marketing, nor do they really care or have the time to worry about it. Hell, most don't even have a website yet or one that functions as an actual "selling site". More on that to come.
I'd say before you start contacting any potential clients, get your portal up and running. You need the proof to show them that advertising on your site will bring them the customers who are gonna spend their $$$. I'm a big fan of smaller, "niche" local portals within a large market. The bar/restaurant market would be one and as someone else stated there are bigger spenders such as attorney's, real estate, plumbers, other contractors, etc.. Once you get one up and running start targeting them all. Anyone who is still advertising in print (yellow pages, local newspaper) are the ones you will be targeting in the future. I can assure you they are paying much more for that print ad then they would be paying for ad on your online site.
Again, get it up and running first. Nice, clean and simple layout. Don't clutter it up too much. Structure correctly and do all the necessary on-page optimization for SEO purposes. Do your off-site SEO - GET IT RANKED. Down the road, paid search will also come into play. I see some here are using wordpress - I 100% use this platform now - personal sites, portals, everything - with the amount of customizations and plug-ins available and not having to worry about coding which is not my strong point, IMO, its a winner. Thesis theme with open-hooks is great, I surprise myself with some of the sites I can pump out of it.
Once you are getting targeted eyeballs at your site, this is what potential clients want to see. Set up a detailed "about us" or "advertisers" page with all your stats/analytics - the demographic who is visiting the site, what they are looking for, traffic/page views, etc.. Write about yourself/the site, what you can do for them to bring in new customers or retain existing ones, etc.. Once you have this all down, everything else sells itself.
I'll give you some examples of what to do with a local bar portal and with a little outside the box thinking can be applied to any other industry:
Again starting with a clean, simple website you can divide it up into categories: bars with food, sports bars, irish bars, bars with bands or live music, outdoor seating/patios, rooftop bars, bars on the waterfront, dive bars, martini/jazz/wine bars, bars that function as a nightclub, dancing, DJ, etc... Whatever exits and applies to your city.
Set up a large google map with each location listed on it. Provide directions, parking, taxi, public transportation info.
Set up a "daily specials" section above the fold and have it show up everyday of the week. Coupons aren't gonna work for a bar - BUT they will work with almost any other industry and are easily trackable. Bars can list their happy hour specials or any other discounts they got going on for that day.
Set up an events or upcoming promos section. Sports sections are one good idea. Which bars are showing which games and what promos they got going on? (I.E. - who's showing my lowly JETS team :crap:, or after last night, the lowly GIANTS). Who's open on Thanksgiving night, whats going on New Years Eve, etc...
There are a bunch of other ideas that you can put on your local portal,
but these are just off the top of my head. Take a look at what competitors are doing, take a look at what successful portals are doing in other cities. Put the time in now and build it up right, test test and test some more - see what works - you want your portal to be the place where everyone is looking for info.
I'd also say start a mailing list. Aweber or whatever list management tool you want - Get people to subscribe - above the fold signup box- offer the same things as above, "special" coupons, etc.. Supplement this with accounts on the big social media sites with your portal name - again above the fold to . Twitter updates, facebook page, even a myspace (yes they still get some traffic and eyeballs).
All of these tied in together are what's gonna sell clients on your site. You can't do all this in a print ad. Even so, a lot of local business owners are still hesitant or turned off with online. Some are just scared to test the waters and some have been burned by snake oil firms.
It may be hard to get paying clients at first if you aren't established. Offer up premium listings for free for a few months. If they are getting a decent ROI, they will continue on as a paying client. And with this comes the trust and opportunity to offer other various services such as a website, redoing a garbage website to make it into a "sales tool" for their business, mobile compatible sites and other various online marketing and promotional methods. Upsells and cross sells.
A lot of money (upfront and recurring) to be made in local. Just have to do your research, adapt to change well and the ability to show proof to a local business owner simply that whatever you are doing for them online will turn into a good ROI for them offline.
btw: For your cousin in staten island (my old stomping grounds) there are already a few players out there doing the whole local thing, but from my research, nothing notable yet. Plenty of opportunity (and this goes for any decent sized metropolitan area in the US). Tell him to do his research from the local paper, staten island advance, or their website: silive.com
Plenty of potential clients out there with big money who aren't seeing the return they want from print ads or the local online ads.
very good advice, i'll be saving this. although it is a lot of work, but splitting the bars into areas like that is a great idea, i'll just have to have some people work for me if i decide to do it.
as for my cousins site .. its pretty much just a coupon site, get local coupons from local businesses, thats it, not really a news site like silive
1500 uniques a month? How is that a problem?? lol
To a local business that is gold. Just send these local businesses proof of your stats and what keywords people are using to find your site. That is more than Yellowpages can do.
I know a local business that is paying $500 a month for a small, colored square ad in the print edition of yellowpages. He says he maybe gets a few calls a month from that ad.
Something a long these lines got me thinking about mail.
If you develop a list from your 'local bars & nightclubs' site it would behoove you to run some sort of marketing campaign featuring one of your listed bars. You could have them run some special that everyone who shows their email to the bouncer gets in for no cover or something like that. Everyone has iPhone/Palm/Blackberry/Android phones and can access their email. Have them pull the email up and that's their ticket in the door.
It would be a great way to demonstrate to the bar owner the power of marketing through your website.
Do it for nothing for a few times and get them hooked - then sit back while all the local bar owners bid up the price to be your exclusive Saturday evening drinkers alert email.
My dad used to advertise his business in every yellow page book in the area and when I started working for him when I got out of high school, I kept track of where the leads were coming from and you wouldn't believe how poorly the yellow pages performed. We didn't renew any but one of the books the next year (cheap local directory) and he didn't see one drop in business. This was when the web still sucked, but the yellow page salespeople were trying to upsell their web listings at the time for almost as much, or more, than print ads. It was ridiculous. The funny part is that their web listings don't always even rank that well for the money terms and when they do, the landing page is saturated with listings. They can't do SEO like a niche portal can.
If you can rank for good local niche terms, you can provide a lot of value for your advertisers and make a lot of money from them. My dad was paying 25k+/yr to advertise in the YP's. I think one of the keys to local is to convince the traditional business owners how important it is to track where their leads are coming from. Small, brick and mortar businesses are normally hell to run and the owners don't have time to think about this kind of shit. You have to emphasize the importance of it and show them how much targeted traffic their ad can reach.
Google is the new yellow pages, and there are a ton of businesses dropping their YP ads every single day. They need somewhere with a good ROI to put those ad dollars they'll be saving. Give it to them.