Question

Topic: Strategy

Price Comparison Site Promo Stratgy Amongmerchants

Posted by arshad on 4/11/2010 at 3:33 PM ET 400 Points
Dear Marketing experts,
I have recently launched my website www.ardkhaas.com. This is a price comparison website similar to shopzilla.com et al. However I am in need of a good launching strategy in order to convince the merchants to join my website and advertise their special offers for a subscription fee. This is because my target market is Saudi Arabia , which is not the same as that shopzilla because of the following reasons…
1. This concept is relatively new in Saudi . Although it is an advantage to be a leader, but at the same time it is hard to convince merchants to join and advertise their products.
2. No, I cannot use the pay per click model, because where will the user get directed when he clicks? 99.9% of merchants do not have their own website meaning I have to retain and entertain visitors on my own site. Currently I have disabled that “GO TO “feature on my site.
3. I cannot have ecommerce facility, because in the absence of cinemas, beaches etc…, shopping malls are the only favourite pass time and nobody would prefer to order products online. Even merchants prefer visitors to their store. At least for now this is the trend.
The only option left is the subscription model. But it is hard to convince merchants to subscribe to a relatively new, unpopular website.
I have tried to bundle my subscription in a package format by adding direct marketing services to it. I offer free sms and free emails in addition to website listing of products. This has still to gain ground.
Can anybody advise some strategy which will attract merchants to join my site through subscription.
Appreciate your help
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 4/11/2010 at 5:54 PM Accepted
    Did you prepare a business plan before you put this business together? If so, what was the assumption about how you would market the service to merchants? Is that assumption no longer appropriate? If not, then what changed, and is the whole business concept still viable?

    If you didn't have a business plan in place, then perhaps your question is premature. You need to first consider what important unmet need you are addressing and how your target audience is likely to respond to it. If you are not "scratching their itch" you'll be struggling with this forever ... or at least until you run out of time, energy and funding.

    It sounds to me like you may not have done enough of the right kind of research before you put this business together. Your question is really at the heart of the critical success factors for the business, not some afterthought or opportunity for incremental improvement.
  • Posted by arshad on 4/12/2010 at 1:25 AM Author
    Dear mgoodman,
    Yes , i had a business planning for this and i new all these challenges before i emabrked on it. Thats why i even made twists to the scripts in my code to accomodate what people like. Example , here people like to grab complete brochures of supermarket , stores thats why i made an ebook available on my site which gives them the exact feeling of browsing a brochure. ( visitors like this)

    The point is visitors like this...( i have done surveys , discussion and always recieve positive response)
    when i did my facebook ad , it increased the unique visitors to more than 300%. From visitors point of view , i am 100% sure that this will work.

    The merchants also like the idea, one of the reasons i have figured out is they dont want to deploy a person to extract the information and submit it to us. ( although uploading information is a 5 min job. I have even told them that i will do all of this on their behalf) but still they dont go for it.
    I have even offered them free trial for couple of months. (Try before you buy package ). they accept it , but the every month i have to do the rounds to persuade them to provide their data. If the site gains popularity then they will give it without asking. I have argued with them that "they fill their stores and then invite customers" , so how can the site gain popularity if they dont give thier products first. Its the chicken and egg scenario.

  • Posted by arshad on 4/12/2010 at 9:22 AM Author
    BTW , ardkhaas is two words in one. In arabic , ard = offers , khaas = special . For this geography , this is a very famous and popular word. In fact every market/store has these words splashed all over

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 4/12/2010 at 9:43 AM Accepted
    It sounds like the difficulty isn't in getting merchants enrolled, it's getting them to follow through. Why not create a merchants area of your website, that showcases a merchant each month (either video or photo/text) who provides a testimonials about working with you. Have them describe their reluctance to move forward and ultimately how much better your website was for their business.
  • Posted by arshad on 4/16/2010 at 2:19 AM Author
    I am thinking of a strategy to buy one gift item from the same merchant's who subscribe with me for more than 3 - 6 months in advance and give it a s a free gift to visitors through a draw. free gifts like blackberry , laptops etc would definitely attract traffic and will be a convincing point for the merchants to enroll.
    What 's your opinon

    Mohammed Arshad
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