Making a website is a good start to market your business, but it is just a start. So what is the next step someone after the concierge website is put up? I think the best way to answer this question is to look at a concept introduced in basic Marketing 101, that is a concept called Target Marketing. To best demonstrate Target Marketing, I'll share with you a story often said by Dan Kennedy, author of the classic direct marketing book called The Ultimate Marketing Plan. In the book, Kennedy talks about a client who owns a carpet cleaning business. This client was frustrated because all of the direct marketing pieces he sent out resulted in dismal response rates. So the first question that Kennedy asked him was who are you mailing to? The client said that he just sent out direct marketing pieces to everyone in the surrounding neighborhood of his business. Then, Kennedy asked him how he decided to mail to that demographic.
"I don't know, I just picked the areas closest to my office," said the client.
Kennedy then asked him if he had you ever drove around the areas closest to the office? The client said that he hadn't. So they drove around the neighborhoods surrounding the office. It was an area filled with mainly apartments and condos - probably about 75% of the neighborhood in his market were tenants who rented. Plus after the quick drive, they both noticed that outside exteriors of houses needed painting and lots of yards needed maintenance. How could a area filled with this kind of demographic, need carpet cleaning services when they could hardly maintain their exteriors? The client agreed. So he changed his direct marketing efforts to better looking neighborhoods. The results were amazing. His direct marketing responses increased from 1/4 of 1% response rate from his old market area to a 2.25% response rate after he changed his target market to a different neighborhood. All of it just by changing the target market.
Likewise, when a concierge business puts up a website. All she is doing is putting up her website up in a web of 100 million other websites, targeting nobody, and maybe wishing somebody finds her website on a search engine.
There are lots of ways to get more hits on your website and to go completely into that is beyond the scope of this article. But one great start is to target your market. Remember, before the web, people picked up the Yellow Pages to find a listing they were looking for. Well, nowadays, people search the web to find what they are looking for. So what you want to do is put your website in a position so if a customer in your area is looking for a personal assistant or concierge, you want your business to pop up in their search.
A lot of people look for concierge company through a directory. What is a directory? A directory is just like the Yellow Pages print edition of the past, except now it's on the web. There is no one standard directory that everybody uses for concierge. So the plan is to put your concierge business in all the likely directories people use. Many of the directories are free and some of them have a small feel. I would probably start by posting your website in the free directories, see how that goes and then think about expanding to some of the directories that charge a fee.
Here is list of some free directories:
Concierge Directory (www.conciergedirectory.org)
Merchant Circle (www.MerchantCircle.com)
Yellow Page (www.YellowPages.com)
HotFrog.com (www.HotFrog.com)
A quick google search, will enable you to find more. Good luck in marketing your business.
About the Author: Neil Hernandez is the General Manager of www. CrossTownConcierge.com, a personal assistant and concierge company based out of Winnetka, IL. He can be reached at HernandezNeil@gmail.com.
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