

Ask HN: How would you start an online marketplace? - kaltsturm

I love HN for its great community. Therefore I want to ask about your experiences how to start a online marketplace. The development is done, so we want to start with the marketing channel. We like to pitch craftsmen in one single city. How would you do this? What channel would you use? In my opinion it is difficult to use adwords or fb because the owner of those small business don&#x27;t use it. So we are still thinking about which primary channel we shall use. In my opinion direct mailing via postal service is the only way. What do you think? Thank you.
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eamonncarey
Go and visit them. If you look at any of the bigger marketplaces or on demand
apps in the market at the moment, most of them started by getting a few people
signed up on the demand side. They did that by physically going out and
talking to them, demoing the product, explaining why it works, what the
benefits are and frequently physically taking them through the signup process.
If you do a bit of relationship building with your supply side providers,
you'll be amazed at the results. Assuming your idea is good, has demand and is
easy to use, those service providers you talk to will be some of your biggest
advocates. They'll talk to their colleagues and friends in the industry and
hopefully tell your story on your behalf. You effectively want to create
advocates on the supply side. Also, that personal relationship will allow you
to get invaluable feedback that you frequently wouldn't have thought of.

I've just invested in a marketplace in the Middle East. Our product is almost
ready for beta. We've been out talking to the people who will be our service
providers for the last month (and we probably won't launch for another month),
showing them screenshots, talking to them about what they need and what would
help them and generally gauging interesting and getting numbers signed up.
We've had some amazing feedback and have introduced a few small features into
the apps on the basis of the most common pieces of feedback.

Go out and talk to people. Hit the bricks. I guarantee you the results will be
immeasurably better than direct mail, adwords or anything else in the early
stages.

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kaltsturm
Good points, thank you. You are right, it is good to go and visit our clients
in order to better understand and fulfill their needs. Is it appropriate to
call those companies to introduce ourself?

