2009 11/11

Marketing for Local Projects – Advice Needed

For the past week or two I’ve been working on a project that will bring a state of the art online classifieds directory to our community. Yes, we have places online where you can list items, but they’re all so out dated and hard to navigate that people rarely list things on the sites, and even less people visit the sites to find what they’re looking for.

We have 2 popular classified papers in our region, plus the newspaper. All three charge from $2-$7 for a basic 10-20 word ad. The two classified papers come out weekly, on the same day.

To put it short, the local system for selling unwanted goods is lacking. I’ve created a handsome solution, but need your help deciding how to market it!

I have this sneaking suspicion the classified papers and newspaper won’t like me advertising there. After all, I’m going to completely out-do them.

What have your experiences been with marketing local projects? Is word-of-mouth marketing the way to go? Or should I be making and hanging fliers on every cork board in town or maybe advertising on a popular local radio station? How much traffic should I have before contacting local businesses about advertising on the site?

I haven’t told any locals about the site yet, so feel free to try it out and ‘place an ad.’ Let me know if you like the setup, if there are thing you’d change and most of all, if the process was easy to understand. I’ll be able to go in and delete whatever you post.

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Gordie

Hey Erica,

I love the colour scheme, but it will end up looking too much like a forum when you have more clasifieds. I agree with Annti. It will probably need three-four columns. Actually I really like this theme. You could try this structure. http://demo.directorypress.net/

EricaMueller

Gordie,

The link/theme you sent looks nice, but it's not as highly evolved at classi-press which is designed for classified sites; allows for setting of prices by category, allows uploading of photos, provides contact between buyer/seller, collects payments, etc.

As I mentioned to Antti, there's no option (yat) for changing to two-column, but there are categories which will narrow down the results for people who're shopping. Thanks to Wordpress, the categories without listings don't show up, so you guys probably couldn't see that option. :-)

Antti Kokkonen

Hi Erica! Way to go helping the local community and the name/domain is great! The classified site looks nice, but I'm not sure how it'll work when you get hundreds of classified in there (which I hope you do). Perhaps the classifieds could be in 2-4 columns instead of 1 column list? And when you do tell the locals and start getting users, I'd go and ask them for feedback too.

EricaMueller

Thanks for the feedback, Antti! The settup is actually classi-press, a Wordpress theme/tool built specifically for classified sites. There aren't currently any options for changing the columns.

However, once there is an ad in a category, the category will show across the top of the forum so people can find what they are looking for in much smaller groupings.

Good thinking on asking locals for feedback as well!

Patty Reiser

Desert Greetings Erica,
Kudos to you for taking the initiative on this project. I just submitted two different ads and I can say that the process was quick and very easy to understand. I have posted to Craigslist and eBay in the past and this was much simplier.
I wish you much success with this project.

EricaMueller

Thank you, Patty!

Our town is not very active on Craigslist as there's no official page/listing for our town and the closest cities in the directory are 2 hours away.

You're right, Craigslist isn't the most user-friendly site. Hubs and I have long wanted to create an alternative. :-) This is our trial/first one. If it goes over well, we'll branch out to other towns and cities!

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