A little off Topic - Marketing your business directory

A little off topic I know and I'll probably be reprimanded but how do you all envisage marketing your site locally/globally when the theme is in a good working order - as I expect it will be shortly?

I don't have any list to work from so whatever I do it will be from scratch. So has anyone any suggestions (preferably legal) on how to get the directory name out there other than PPC, PPA etc to get paying customers through the door so to speak.

My idea is to do some heavy work and insert free adverts for local business's using my own photography - needless to say I'll also be promoting those extra photographic services as extra as part of the paid listing!! It'll at least make the site look good to start it off!

I'll also add in every category I can think of - anyone already have a category list they might like to share with us all?

What about making a featured listing of a web site creation business (your own of course) - what better advert than the directory itself as a web site?

Any other ideas to share as this is a closed forum for like minded people? Hopefully these ideas will stay within our community!

 

Dear Rogerb,

I have a slightly diffent opinion here.

Instead of having a very general directory, why don't you have more niche directories ?

As I have seen the beauty of this theme is its simplicity & light weight, make it more niche specific , user experience centred & more direct.

For example [ I have not understood what you want to sell] , Let me share My idea :-

I have targetted a niche like - local offline groups in my city, they do not know how to do this internet-stuff , but certainly know the use of that to catch business leads. I am making directories - area/sub area specific for those people- like painting contractors , dieticians, architects , legal practitioners etc.

Then if successful, shall extend this.

Marketing :- Through personal contacts. Shall discuss idea and offer presentation to all & explain them the use of that.

Hope this helps

 

Thanks for that soumitra, my idea at the moment is to target small/medium local towns (in easy travelling distance) to begin with and list all the business's that I can find or photograph and then try to contact them asking them to view their free listing. Then sell a listing to them on the web site along with extras such as decent photographs of their business, people and products perhaps with the copyright. Also extras such as web design to maximise revenue from the new business contact.

I'm unsure how to do it but perhaps in the town selected be more selective with a sub-domain for a niche or use the niche as categories. So many options but which approach would bring best results? How do I handle sub domains?

 

Has anyone else some ideas to share or has got their web site up and running?

 

My town has 1600 people with about 500,000 visitors a year. There are alot of directories.

Free Listing -- for 30 day buy/sell. If listed as "30-Day" shows up first in categories, if listed as Zero Free Listing -- shows up last as group.

For small fee, I am setting up separate directories that helps market my ad directory
1) 40 year old local mountain theatre productions/awards
2) Annual costume nordic skiing competition
3) Museum -- events, speakers and category listing by family for a scrapbook of residents

 

My directory site isn't ready yet but I have been working on it long enough that the SEO stuff is starting to work already. I started off using the WP Local Places theme. Worked on that for almost 3 months. Had so many problems with it and lousy support so I bit the bullet and bought the GeoCraft theme, wiped everything out, and started again from scratch.

I am starting to move up in the search engines already. For Bing and Yahoo I'm on page 1. For Google I'm the #1 position on Page 3 (moved up from Page 6) and steadily moving up. There are only 2 real competitors for my directory site. One is the city itself and they haven't updated their site in over a year. The other one is popular but not really a directory site. More of a community site with a partial business directory listing. That site hasn't done any SEO work at all from what I can tell.

There are a few things I do to get traffic flowing to the site...

1. First, submit site to the major search engines. I install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin first so the sitemap is ready for the spiders.
2. Prepare for social networking backlinks. Create a Facebook page, Twitter account, and Google + business page.
3. Apply for Google Authorship with email address from my site directory domain. This puts an image next to all posts that show up in Google searches which gets a lot more attention.
4. Post 2 to 3 articles (blog posts if you will) on directory site.
5. Contact local Chamber of Commerce about getting a digital list of local business owners with all contact info, including email addresses. Sometimes they charge for this but I tell them I'm doing this directory site to help stimulate the local economy and support local businesses.

That's the initial preparation. When I feel my site is ready (right now it is not because of a few problems with the GeoCraft theme) I move to the next series of actions...

1. Write up a Press Release for my directory site. I use WebFire to help with that and to submit it to multiple press release sites, among other things. WebFire has over 20 tools that get my sites traffic pretty fast. I know that sounds like an advertisement but it's a fact. I've been using WebFire for a long time and have come to rely on it.
2. Submit my press release and copies of my 3 articles to multiple document sharing sites. Search engines love document sharing sites.
3. Post links to my articles on my FB page, Google + page, and Twitter account. This gives me great backlinks within hours.
4. Send a mass email to all the local business owners I have email addresses for inviting them to get a free listing.

Once I have enough businesses listed I plan on doing a contest or drawing. To enter, people must Like my FB Page, then rate and review one business. For every business they rate and review they get another entry in the drawing.

 

Great solid plan colossalmktg, huge emphasis on the Google +, its a biggie, and agree about not going into the heavy stuff until the bugs are fixed in the theme, I am personally glad I held on and waited until they were fixed which they seem to be now for my needs anyway, the last thing you want is a live site that either doesn't function properly or looks amateur, it would be the kiss of death. Thanks for the post

 

I really like your plan colossalmktg, so does that mean that you initially submit the site with no listings? I need to have a rethink in order to get my site(s) up and indexed if nothing else!

Most directory sites that I find as competition here in the UK are national sites with automated content drawn in from elsewhere and are anything but local which will be one of my attractions for my extra services - I hope! The quality of many are appalling and the navigation is not for the faint hearted - I doubt if they get many subscribers!