Creative marketing strategies for new startups | Hacker News Reader

Creative marketing strategies for new startups

4 pointsApane10 comments

Hey,

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.

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...

All of these things have gotten us a total of about 20 users. None of which have sent a venue a request yet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

> 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.

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.

Have you talked to people in person?

Why did you build this?

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?

+1 to this, try talking to your potential users maybe?

I'm not a potential user but I clicked through to your Toronto listings and the pricing/other info on the page seems misleading and/or doesn't match what I'd expect to see when comparing venues. eg. Can I book this space for 2 people at the $35/pp price you list?? Obviously not.

edit: by the way, this seems like a potentially good idea. "AirBNB for venues" it's fairly obvious there is a market for this. But you probably need to do a better job of understanding that market.

The pricing is minimum price per person. In addition, I've spoken with and met folks who plan events often in the city and they love the product, albeit, the more higher end ones already have their networks and contacts at venues. So they suggested that I market this to the non-pro event planner that needs a venue for their bridal shower, baby shower, wedding, etc... Struggling with finding a marketing solution to target this group because it's particularly broad market segment.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com