Hey,<p>So my co-founder and I have launched venuevortex.com 2 months ago. We're still in the early stages of marketing it and have already hit a brick wall. The elevator pitch is that we connect event planners with top quality venues and make it easy for them to communicate and book the venue online.<p>What we've tried: - Facebook Ad's (sending the users directly to the site) - Google Adwords. - Reaching out to planners on Meetup.com - Reaching out to PR firms (got a few write ups) - Writing blog posts and distributing them via Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, HN etc...<p>All of these things have gotten us a total of about 20 users. None of which have sent a venue a request yet.<p>We've cold-called and on-boarded 60+ top venues in Toronto and the metro areas and since we've initially launched in Ontario we've got some great venues throughout.<p>Any other creative ideas on how to market this product and get it to the general consumers/mainstream?
From the question, it's not clear who the customer is. It mentions 1. Event Planners, 2. Top Venues, and 3. "general consumers/mainstream". Each of these has different goals and needs and probably will buy a different product if they buy a product in this space at all. So my take is that this may be less a hurdle with regard to marking marketing and more of one around product.<p>Because of the way money flows in the industry, it may be better to focus on meeting the needs of venues because they will collect money directly from the transaction <i>and</i> can dictate that your service be used for bookings. Event planners on the other hand are <i>paid</i> outside the booking transaction that you're interested in and they have venue options that are unlikely to appear in your marketplace, e.g. churches, parks, etc.<p>Good luck.
> What we've tried: - Facebook Ad's (sending the users directly to the site) - Google Adwords<p>Did you have a professional run the Google Adwords? The most common small business advertising mistake I see companies doing Adwords themselves or use some dodgy brothers company and then announce to the world 'advertising doesn't work'. A GOOD marketer will create results distinctly better than someone simply confident in their ability to give things a go.<p>Also update the website. Its too generic. What are 'events'? People book conferences, birthdays, weddings. Name categories in a way that inspires/attracts the next click. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. This needs to be fixed before you spend big on advertising.
You're building a marketplace so you have 2 sides of needs you have to balance out. I feel your pain as I'm also trying to build a marketplace startup as well.<p>What I would do is reach out to people who you believe are your target customers (i.e. event planners) and interview them. Then get feedback for your site. You may notice that depending on the event, you could have different needs for different segments. If you do, narrow your segment till you find that the needs are all the same.<p>You may then have to curate all your venues so that it fits with your target segment. Not all venues may be suitable for all events.<p>Also, have a chat with your users to understand why they haven't sent a venue request yet.