
Creative marketing strategies for new startups - Apane
Hey,<p>So my co-founder and I have launched venuevortex.com 2 months ago. We&#x27;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&#x27;ve tried: - Facebook Ad&#x27;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&#x27;ve cold-called and on-boarded 60+ top venues in Toronto and the metro areas and since we&#x27;ve initially launched in Ontario we&#x27;ve got some great venues throughout.<p>Any other creative ideas on how to market this product and get it to the general consumers&#x2F;mainstream?
======
brudgers
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.

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 _and_ can dictate that your service be used for bookings. Event
planners on the other hand are _paid_ 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.

Good luck.

~~~
Apane
Thanks - great feedback, I agree. I'll put it this way for clarity sake, in
essence venuevortex.com is a marketplace. The supply-side are the venues and
the demand side are people looking for event space for their birthday, baby
shower, bridal shower, wedding, corporate retreat, board meeting etc....

Rather than targeting event planning pros, we're seeking general consumers,
ultimately anyone that is looking for an event space. Think AirBNB for Event
Spaces.

I'm not quite sure if it's a product issue that's causing the dis-
traction/lack of use OR marketing? That's the real question/problem that we're
actively seeking a solution for! If you have any additional ideas on this it
would be greatly appreciated.

~~~
brudgers
"Anyone that is looking for an event space" isn't a market segment. The range
of professionalism from those looking to hold a baby shower to those holding
corporate retreats is as broad as it gets. There's really no common set of
features other than the event space.

On the other hand, event venues have common needs and will fall more neatly
into a B2B relationship with your company.

That said, it's hard to see an easy value proposition for a middle layer in
the transaction. What's to keep the person planning your event from
researching venues on your website and then just booking directly with the
venue?

AirBnB built itself as a marketplace purely by expanding the pool of overnight
accommodations. Not by building a marketplace to connect travellers with
hotels. It has been successful by creating a product market fit because it
defined a new market.

------
Gustomaximus
> What we've tried: - Facebook Ad's (sending the users directly to the site) -
> Google Adwords

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.

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.

------
tixocloud
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.

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.

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.

Also, have a chat with your users to understand why they haven't sent a venue
request yet.

------
gull
Have you talked to people in person?

Why did you build this?

~~~
Apane
I've spoken with several event planning pros in person, and quickly learned
that they're not our target. We built this because we wanted to making finding
the perfect venue for your event simple as possible, with software that is
easy to use and nice to look at. The users that we're targeting are non-event
planning pros - or average joes/janes who are looking for a venue for their
bridal shower, baby shower, wedding etc... and would like to consider and
reach out to several venues at once to find the right one for them. With
venuevortex.com we are accomplishing that. Albeit, because the market is so
broad it's difficult to work out a marketing strategy. Perhaps we can target
each segment e.g. people who are looking for venues for their bridal shower,
then wedding etc... but where do we find these people?

------
hanniabu
I might suggest concentrating on one city, or part of a city if it is huge and
concentrate efforts.

