Looking for a sales & marketing partner

[MarkSC83]

Hi all,

I am the founder and developer of www.instructors-directory.co.uk

'Instructors Directory' aims to help bring students and instructors together. Unlike other instructor directory websites, instructors can register for free and create a quite detailed profile for potential students to view. The website also allows for current/pass students to submit reviews to give further details to anyone looking for a local instructor.

The website has been gaining more interest over the last couple of months and I am looking for someone who I can work with to really push this further.

I have more features I would like to include as well as improve on other certain aspects of the website. Ideally I want to be able to focus more of this and less on the social media marketing and sales.

The website currently has three streams of income, these include onsite advertising, newsletter advertising and premium account upgrades. I am looking for someone who can help with the promoting of the website and gaining clients for the advertising.
The premium account option will become more requested as I add a couple new features to the website.

Ideally I am looking for someone local to me, around London would be great, however for the right person anywhere in the UK would be acceptable. I am also looking for someone who is interested in joining me on a commission contract however I would be offering a 40% commission rate.

If anyone is interested in this position or has something which they could recommend to help me in my current situation I would be happy to hear from you either via response on here or by pm.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Claxton

 

[fuzzer]

I'd reg instructorsdirectory.co.uk and point that to your site too - may help protect your brand down the line

 

[DaveP]

I'd reg instructorsdirectory.co.uk and point that to your site too - may help protect your brand down the line

Forget just regging it, that's what he should be using if it's free to reg.

To the OP if I was you I'd reg it very very fast before a squatter spots your post!

 

[MarkSC83]

Thank you guys, I have now registered both the .co.uk and .com urls.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Sales and marketing is the hard part here - building the site is the easy part. So in reality you're asking for someone to do the majority of the skilled work, for a minority share of the profit. This is obviously going to preclude anyone who knows what they're doing from having any interest in working on this... which leaves you hiring someone who's going to try and learn on the job as they go.


The site is in desperate need of a makeover before you try and hire marketing people - the site design is horrible (sorry, but there is no other way to describe that). You can't realistically expect someone to work on sending traffic to your site for a percentage share when its going to convert so badly because you didn't hire a web designer in the first place...

 

[DaveP]

Sales and marketing is the hard part here - building the site is the easy part. So in reality you're asking for someone to do the majority of the skilled work, for a minority share of the profit. This is obviously going to preclude anyone who knows what they're doing from having any interest in working on this... which leaves you hiring someone who's going to try and learn on the job as they go.


The site is in desperate need of a makeover before you try and hire marketing people - the site design is horrible (sorry, but there is no other way to describe that). You can't realistically expect someone to work on sending traffic to your site for a percentage share when its going to convert so badly because you didn't hire a web designer in the first place...

Harsh but also very true. Although if you're generalising the development of any website as easy I have to disagree with you there. Relatively speaking some maybe easy but let me tell you not all are 'the easy part'.

To the OP you do need to rethink your design, and also why would you even choose to use the hyphenated version of the domain in the first place if the non-hyphenated was available? I would re-think the design and branding first and foremost.

 

[martin-s]

The whole concept is a bit multi-purpose for me. If you're going to make serious in-roads into selling, I think you'll need a laser-focused proposition to just a single market.

In fact, when interviewing any sales people I'd say that if they don't mention that, they're probably not the right choice for your start-up.

 

[Edwin]

If you really want to make a go of it - enough to entice a professional sales person into working with you (never FOR you - they're on pure commission) - then you'd probably do better to focus on the core market you've explicitly identified i.e. driving instructors.

Although our database offers instructors who specialise in a wide variety of disciplines, around three out of every four searches performed on our site are seeking a driving instructor for driving lessons and the driving theory test.

Lay down some cash to get a strong generic in that market, give the site a pro makeover, add a few hundred more listings, and you'll at least have the first makings of something that a sales person might give the time of day to.

On the other hand, that's already been done in great depth by established players, for example http://www.drivinginstructors.co.uk/

Contrast their over 5,000 listings to your 289, and you'll see the scale of the task ahead of you before you have something "fit for purpose".

 

[MarkSC83]

Thank you guys, I appreciate your honest feedback and realise that there are changes which need to be focused on. You have given me several things to consider.

 

[MarkSC83]

On the other hand, that's already been done in great depth by established players, for example http://www.drivinginstructors.co.uk/

Contrast their over 5,000 listings to your 289, and you'll see the scale of the task ahead of you before you have something "fit for purpose".

Hi Edwin, I just wanted to mention that I had a look at the website you mentioned above and it would appear these instructors have been added by the site admin rather than the schools adding themselves.

If I was to do this on my website I could easily have over 20000 instructors listed however I have chosen that instructors need to register themselves.

Not to mention their listings are very basic and contain very limited details.

 

[Murray]

Just had a look at the site

The site is in desperate need of a makeover before you try and hire marketing people - the site design is horrible (sorry, but there is no other way to describe that). You can't realistically expect someone to work on sending traffic to your site for a percentage share when its going to convert so badly because you didn't hire a web designer in the first place...

I have to agree with Monkey.

Also what is your site uniquely offering?

I can search "horse riding lessons" on google and it will show me a nice clear list of results in my area and I can go straight to their websites

What are you going to offer that I should come to your site and search instead of google? atm I can't see anything.