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Watchdog
11-24-2008, 06:33 AM
Many folks here are small business owners and I'd like to say that we have been struggling with small business owners participation in a free or affordable service we offer at ShopPass LLC...so we're going to local advertising this month. My question is

What would be in a local ad that would make you want to at least take a look at what our service is at ShopPass?

Thye ad must be focused on the consumers? They are the beef of the traffic, yet we want it to appeal to the local businesses?

KristineS
11-24-2008, 10:40 AM
I think the first thing is why a business would want to advertise on ShopPass. What does it get them? How will it help them?

You have to show where the benefit and value is if you want people to participate. Just saying it's a free service isn't necessarily enough.

I also would recommend against putting out an ad that tries to attract businesses and consumers. They're very different target groups and your ad should have a different message depending on who you're trying to attract. Consumers and business owners will want and expect different benefits from the site. I'd say concentrate on one group or the other, but don't try to hook both with the same ad.

vangogh
11-24-2008, 11:11 AM
I agree with Kristine. The first thing I'd want to know is what's in it for me? How is your business going to help my business. Free or affordable doesn't really mean much by itself. They're are plenty of free things out there that have no value and so free or not I'll stay away.

I also agree that business owners and consumers are two different groups. They'll respond to different messages and be consuming your message in different places.

If you can get across to either group why your service helps them and why they should sign up you'll stand a far better chance of persuading them than if you talk about it from your perspective.

Just some observations when I look at the shoppass site. Seems to me it's essentially a directory of business sites. There are many other directories online. Why shoppass? How do you differentiate yourself from other directories? If I list my business what kind of traffic can I expect from that listing? What kind of traffic does shoppass get and how visible will my listing be within the site.

I notice that business in each category are listed alphabetically. What chance does my business that starts with a 'v' realistically have of being seen by someone visiting your site?

Watchdog
11-24-2008, 09:29 PM
Thanks Kristine and vangogh - I here you.

The benifits have been made known to businesses - seperate from the consumers. Many don't beleive in "free" but it is free, we do upsale services, but they still seem hesitant to participate - we do have many that participate but they won't go as far as "self-promotion" or become active in their listing description.

We're caught in the "which came first, the chicken or the egg" We need businesses to attract the consumer, and we need consumers to attract the businesses. I do understand to not to try to "directly" market to both with the same message, but I though that maybe there is one messge towards the consumers (you want the consumers right?) that will get "your the biz owners attention".

Watchdog
11-24-2008, 09:57 PM
Just some observations when I look at the shoppass site. Seems to me it's essentially a directory of business sites. There are many other directories online. Why shoppass? How do you differentiate yourself from other directories? If I list my business what kind of traffic can I expect from that listing? What kind of traffic does shoppass get and how visible will my listing be within the site.

I notice that business in each category are listed alphabetically. What chance does my business that starts with a 'v' realistically have of being seen by someone visiting your site?

The ShopPass experience goes beyond the directory...for instance, you as a biz owner can offer coupons..the consumers can save these coupons to their MyshopPass account, where they can also share them with a network of their own friends as well as the good and maybe the not so good about your business. Business owners are protected against "slanderous and derogatory" reviews (I'm a small biz owner too) No reviews on the directory go live until reviewed. The business owner can have their business removed from the listing at any time they don't see it's benificial for them. We're working to deleiver the businesses that want your business and not affraid to ask for it.

Most will search near their zipcode (radius) these are in order of nearest to you...not alpha or membership...

There is a good article in Entreprenuer Dec. issue, startups

And they have a little article on "the only way to control what people say about your company is to be part of the conversation"

We offer this for you on MyShopPass...invite friends and invite new customers - paid listings get "articles feature" this cannot be used for "sales or lit" but for an unmarketing approach of only articles that will help you in the long run. These are help articles such as Joe's Plumbing might write 10 ways to save on water? Carols Kitchen and Bath might write "Little items make big design differences" etc. All linking back to the listing.

So there is much more to the "directory" and we're working on adding more social features. Got a video streaming on YouTube - link this to your account - right on your listing and we are also adding Video uploads for paid memberships.

vangogh
11-25-2008, 12:56 AM
Ahh. Much more than I first thought was there. I can see how shoppass becomes a good place to connect business owners and consumers in the local market. Definitely a lot more useful than it first appears.

None of the above was obvious to me when I visited the site through your signature. I think part of that is because your second sig link took me to an internal page on the site instead of the home page. I was thinking I was looking at the home page of the site.

One thought might be to first build the site specifically in one city and make it the absolute go to site for business info about that city. Maybe you've already done that and are expanding throughout Wisconsin now and looking to add other states to the mix. The reason I think to focus on one city is I searched for things near me in Boulder and found no one currently listed. If I were to come across the site and found nothing after a search I probably wouldn't come back.

If instead you focused the site 100% on Milwaukee you could become the first site people look to in Milwaukee for information about the community and businesses in the community. Your advertising and marketing will be easier that way and you have a better chance of standing out for people in the city. Once you've become that site for Milwaukee you expand and make the site the go to site for Madison. Little by little you grow throughout the state and into the larger cities in neighboring states.

orion_joel
11-25-2008, 01:36 AM
Many sites what you have are also expanding on what they offer to potential site visitor's now as well. Even to some extent, leaving the business listing as a secondary thing to the local information they provide.

The other thing i must admit is that while reading this thread where you have actuall emphasized the second P in ShopPass, is the first time i realized it had 2 p's in the middle. When you actually visit the site it is ok because the two words are different colours. But what you might find is when it is showing up in searches or how it is typed in your signature here, if you don't look hard and just look quick it reads with only one P, and i had seen it in quite a number of your other threads before i realized when i saw it here.

Watchdog
11-25-2008, 07:03 AM
I read and it all makes perfect sence...I'm late but I will respond in further detail on what I'm thinking...

the one thing I had to do is make more clearly what MyShopPass is? And I think I might have done so with thew new header image...

critic please.

Also there will be a "badge" feature and more conecting features this nezt week or so that will allow better networking...

ShopPass will be there for the businesses as it is and too a way for them to connect with consumers...

Thanks for the feedback!

I really do enjoy this forum :)

vangogh
11-25-2008, 08:00 PM
I like the header image. I'm wondering if it would work better if consumer and business was flipped on one side so the arrows would flow business -> consumer -> business -> consumer. I do like it though.

Are you trying to promote myshoppass.com or shoppass.com more. Why have them on two different domains instead of going with my.shoppass.com as a subdomain.

lav
11-26-2008, 03:58 AM
I tried offering FREE business cards to my clients (businesses) once, believe it or not I couldnt give them away, they always expected a catch. The first thing that I noticed on your site is you are using the "registration is Free" line as what i interpreted as the first selling point. Instantly I think to myself "yeah I register for free and then you flood me with emails trying to sell me something else"

I didnt look very hard into your site, but the first page was a little confusing for me and I didnt really understand what it was that the site was doing. It wasnt until I clicked the small link at the top of the page "what is shoppass" that my pedal powered brain started to get the concept. I dont think most people would have looked so hard to find the info, so maybe some of that content needs to be on the first page.

I think you could almost ditch the register for free approach and market the more interesting things about shopass. For me I would be more attracted to the idea of being able to put in a good review about a business I have used. Or better still having my business reviewed. After all I am always wondering what people think of my business, its products and services. I dont think there would be many business owners who wouldnt want to know what consumers thought of their business how are we supposed to improve our business if no one will tell us what we are doing wrong or right.

I think you have a great concept I hope Ive given you some ideas as these are the things that are more important to me than free registration.

Steve B
11-26-2008, 06:11 AM
It may be just me - but everytime I read the name (or websiste) I'm reading "Shopp" and then the second word as "a$$". You might want to put a hyphen in between the words to prevent others from misreading it.

lav
11-26-2008, 05:01 PM
but everytime I read the name (or websiste) I'm reading "Shopp" and then the second word as "a$$". LOL its not just you Steve

Watchdog
11-26-2008, 11:05 PM
LOL its not just you Steve

Well, there really is no problem with it...if you can't read, what can I say :)

I do appreciate your input (for what it's worth) but hyphens don't do to well in branding the ShopPass name and logo if we did "highlight" a hyphen inbetween the two, it would be what many would type in and someone at Godaddy had already registered that domain name. We do however use capital S and P to seperate them most of the time.

Watchdog
11-26-2008, 11:27 PM
I like the header image. I'm wondering if it would work better if consumer and business was flipped on one side so the arrows would flow business -> consumer -> business -> consumer. I do like it though.

Are you trying to promote myshoppass.com or shoppass.com more. Why have them on two different domains instead of going with my.shoppass.com as a subdomain.

Leaning more toward the MyShopPass for the core site and service for the simple reason, we are stuck at "Which came first the chicken or the egg" Our first attempt was to find businesses to list on ShopPass and we'll help promote their business...it wasn't happening they wern't wanting to ask people for their business. They all wanted it for free, but only if we'd do the work for them "HELLO" And they wonder why the downtown here is almost deserted.

MyShopPass is for the good of the consumer - this is where our focus will be and we hope local businesses will join in. The site is first "Consumer to Consumer Networking" your direction above leaves out the "consumer to consumer networking"

The different domains are for a few good reasons.

Thanks for the feedback, it is appreciated.

Watchdog
11-26-2008, 11:31 PM
I tried offering FREE business cards to my clients (businesses) once, believe it or not I couldnt give them away, they always expected a catch. The first thing that I noticed on your site is you are using the "registration is Free" line as what i interpreted as the first selling point. Instantly I think to myself "yeah I register for free and then you flood me with emails trying to sell me something else"

I didnt look very hard into your site, but the first page was a little confusing for me and I didnt really understand what it was that the site was doing. It wasnt until I clicked the small link at the top of the page "what is shoppass" that my pedal powered brain started to get the concept. I dont think most people would have looked so hard to find the info, so maybe some of that content needs to be on the first page.

I think you could almost ditch the register for free approach and market the more interesting things about shopass. For me I would be more attracted to the idea of being able to put in a good review about a business I have used. Or better still having my business reviewed. After all I am always wondering what people think of my business, its products and services. I dont think there would be many business owners who wouldnt want to know what consumers thought of their business how are we supposed to improve our business if no one will tell us what we are doing wrong or right.

I think you have a great concept I hope Ive given you some ideas as these are the things that are more important to me than free registration.


Yes some great ideas! Thanks Much, I do know I never liked to promote "free" but folks wern't biting...

Watchdog
11-26-2008, 11:56 PM
I think the first thing is why a business would want to advertise on ShopPass. What does it get them? How will it help them?

You have to show where the benefit and value is if you want people to participate. Just saying it's a free service isn't necessarily enough.



In todays economy a business owner has to take on some personal responsibility and learn how to adjust and actually ask people for their business. In many ways today, business will never be the same as we once knew them to be. People are coming together in masses on social networking sites by the millions, our job was to build a list of businesses that actually want to ask you for your business...if the business would offer a small special that would allow us something to promote to the consumers - we'd give them all the help they needed to get it done, copywrite, graphics in coupon design. A few took advantage of this, but many are just not interested in helping them selves - these are the businesses that are always at the CC meetings whining that no ones helping them...

seolman
11-28-2008, 01:42 AM
Many folks here are small business owners and I'd like to say that we have been struggling with small business owners participation in a free or affordable service we offer at ShopPass LLC...so we're going to local advertising this month. My question is

What would be in a local ad that would make you want to at least take a look at what our service is at ShopPass?

The ad must be focused on the consumers. They are the beef of the traffic, yet we want it to appeal to the local businesses?

Hi Watchdog. I enjoyed reading through the thread. The owner always sells the business better than anyone else. The tough part is taking all that great sales and marketing juice and making it into a concentrate.

First: I realize you plan to push a message to consumers but let me attack this from a different angle.

If I was a business owner in the Milwaukee area I would want to read something similar to the following (please excuse my ignorance of the actual population numbers): "Put the power of over 500,000 Milwaukee area consumers behind your business!" I would want to know your site will bring me business. If your site has traffic, why wouldn't I want to offer incentives to your site visitors? So the idea to advertise to consumers is a good one but perhaps this could be used as leverage to drive the local businesses to offer coupons and specials to consumers.

Promotion Concept: "We're about to begin a ad campaign (blah blah) in return would you be willing to offer incentives to consumers who visit our site. We may mention this in our campaign"

When companies see you are willing to spend money to promote your site they might be willing to match some of your costs with incentives in consumer coupons. This draws more traffic to your site. The ad campaign may also work as an incentive for businesses to sign up (hey we're promoting to consumers, better get signed up).

The Consumer Ad Campaign then grows in scope as each business offers a discount. You also invite the consumers to become participants in the website community. Something like:

"Only You Know Your Neighborhood! Tell Us Where to Get the Best Service, the Best Deals and the Best Quality in Milwaukee!"

Just a couple simple thoughts. This is the kind of project that definitely needs a good round table session ;)

Watchdog
11-28-2008, 06:49 AM
Hi Watchdog. I enjoyed reading through the thread. The owner always sells the business better than anyone else. The tough part is taking all that great sales and marketing juice and making it into a concentrate.

First: I realize you plan to push a message to consumers but let me attack this from a different angle.

If I was a business owner in the Milwaukee area I would want to read something similar to the following (please excuse my ignorance of the actual population numbers): "Put the power of over 500,000 Milwaukee area consumers behind your business!" I would want to know your site will bring me business. If your site has traffic, why wouldn't I want to offer incentives to your site visitors? So the idea to advertise to consumers is a good one but perhaps this could be used as leverage to drive the local businesses to offer coupons and specials to consumers.

Promotion Concept: "We're about to begin a ad campaign (blah blah) in return would you be willing to offer incentives to consumers who visit our site. We may mention this in our campaign"

When companies see you are willing to spend money to promote your site they might be willing to match some of your costs with incentives in consumer coupons. This draws more traffic to your site. The ad campaign may also work as an incentive for businesses to sign up (hey we're promoting to consumers, better get signed up).

The Consumer Ad Campaign then grows in scope as each business offers a discount. You also invite the consumers to become participants in the website community. Something like:

"Only You Know Your Neighborhood! Tell Us Where to Get the Best Service, the Best Deals and the Best Quality in Milwaukee!"

Just a couple simple thoughts. This is the kind of project that definitely needs a good round table session ;)

Thanks for the insight, lots of great ideas that we'll go to work on. Ad should be running this next week (after the holidays might be better)

I like this?
"Only You Know Your Neighborhood! Tell Us Where to Get the Best Service, the Best Deals and the Best Quality in Milwaukee!"

Watchdog
11-28-2008, 06:53 AM
I like the header image. I'm wondering if it would work better if consumer and business was flipped on one side so the arrows would flow business -> consumer -> business -> consumer. I do like it though.

Are you trying to promote myshoppass.com or shoppass.com more. Why have them on two different domains instead of going with my.shoppass.com as a subdomain.

That idea was good but I think pictures say more then words, so we up'd a new simple image that we'll use to get the message across..

Thanks for your ideas and insight, it is one thing I was hoping to accopmlish here :)

vangogh
11-28-2008, 11:30 AM
I'm still not understanding why the two separate domains. You could equally promote both sides of the site on one domain. What will happen with two separate domains is it doubles the work you'll need to do to gain search traffic (assuming search is part of your marketing strategy)

Dave really nailed it when he talked about businesses wanting to see your traffic before wanting to sign up. There's a bit of a catch 22 in that you'll need consumers to attract businesses and businesses to attract consumers. That's where I was coming from in recommending a more local focus at first since you won't need to attract as many businesses or consumers in the local market to make this work.

Dave's idea about the promotion is a good one. Show businesses you're willing to spend money to promote the site in thus their business and ask for the discount for your members in return.

Until you hit a tipping point with numbers of consumers and businesses you'll probably need to come up with other things to offer each group to make it worthwhile to them to sign up.

seolman
11-28-2008, 02:02 PM
The term "tipping point" fit's perfect and the formula to buildup is KEY in this case. You are really working a balancing act between businesses and consumers. This is a classic case of "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours". In this case it's "I'll bring you customers, you offer them a reason to come".

Watchdog
11-28-2008, 06:39 PM
I'm still not understanding why the two separate domains. You could equally promote both sides of the site on one domain. What will happen with two separate domains is it doubles the work you'll need to do to gain search traffic (assuming search is part of your marketing strategy)



I'm ok with the two domain names - I'd like to enjoy the same search results as my sheet metal site does (The Sheet Metal Shop .Com (http://www.thesheetmetalshop.com)) and we'll get there in time. It's more important to me to brand the ShopPass as a household name....

The directory that we use for ShopPass is an great script, but there is much encription that we can't work around...we did some code work to allow the coupons to be saved to your MyShopPass account...as well as we're working on a way for the consumers to "click and save" businesses to their MyShopPass account. There is the "link to us" feature that consumers can choose from a number of buttons to paste thier account as well. For businesses, ShopPass is their best bet to customize their listing (even if it's just to have their url on the page)

We're working on a few other great features that will add value to the sites. I'm limited to programing 101 :) so we have something that works, that most of the bugs are out and we'll move on to promote it...When I can justify the money (takes people and businesses) then we can get a full time programmer in here to tweek it all together...

Thanks for your time here, it is appreciated.

I'd like to add, that we're putting together "niche ShopPass directories" such as
http://www.shoppass.com/plumbing/ that will too help our bottom line and search results. All the niche directories will have the same functions as coupons - link to us buttons reviews and buzz.

Watchdog
11-28-2008, 07:19 PM
The term "tipping point" fit's perfect and the formula to buildup is KEY in this case. You are really working a balancing act between businesses and consumers. This is a classic case of "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours". In this case it's "I'll bring you customers, you offer them a reason to come".

You both hit the nail right on the head and the thing here is to get it "sticky".

Paul Elliott
12-01-2008, 11:32 PM
You both hit the nail right on the head and the thing here is to get it "sticky".

You have to offer both businesses and consumers compelling reasons to return to your site. "What's in it for me?" is the question you must answer and answer repeatedly.

After anyone signs up, but them on a regular email reminding him or her of your site and the benefits, improvements, additions, new features, etc., so those who sign up will think to return.

Paul

Paul Elliott
12-01-2008, 11:58 PM
You both hit the nail right on the head and the thing here is to get it "sticky".

One way to get people to return to your site on a regular basis is to redesign it somewhat to offer local news and weather so it makes a nice home page.

Here is a link Pensacola Florida Portal (http://pensacolaportal.com/) of a service that offers a replicateable site for each franchised area. Notice it has a link to make it the person's homepage.

Paul

Watchdog
12-03-2008, 09:42 PM
One way to get people to return to your site on a regular basis is to redesign it somewhat to offer local news and weather so it makes a nice home page.

Here is a link Pensacola Florida Portal (http://pensacolaportal.com/) of a service that offers a replicateable site for each franchised area. Notice it has a link to make it the person's homepage.

Paul

ahha - never thought of it being used for the home page? I'll look ontop the adons that might be usefiul to those that might want it their homepage.

Thanks!

Paul Elliott
01-23-2009, 01:43 AM
ahha - never thought of it being used for the home page? I'll look ontop the adons that might be usefiul to those that might want it their homepage.

Thanks!

Watchdog, what have you implemented so far?

Paul