We’ve recently relaunched Adzooma Marketplace, an excellent lead generation tool that’s designed to put the best digital marketing experts in touch with those looking for their services. With lots of handy features and updates to help users along the way, Marketplace is set to be a bustling hub of leads and information.

Our teams have been working hard to create, migrate and promote this new aspect of the business. We thought we’d show you not just how it can help, but how we went from the initial concept to the shiny new platform we have in front of us today.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Concept

Taking things from an idea to a finished product often is easier than you think – it’s just about having the right strategy in place to get you there.

The Marketplace was created because our customers were asking us for services we simply couldn’t accommodate in-house. But, that wasn’t to say we couldn’t help them. This insight led us to work harder to fulfil all that was being asked of us.

And so the Marketplace is designed to house everything you need to succeed in digital marketing: from SEO, branding, app design and more. By collating all the industry-leading services in one place, our customers know exactly where to turn.

From there, we did some research as to what was already on the market and thought about how we could get the great agencies we already work alongside involved. It seemed there was a mutual need for leads on their side too, particularly with the recent impact of COVID-19. This bolstered our resolve to move things from concept to reality as soon as we could.

Expansion

After our initial launch, we realised there was a big demand for additional ways to browse the Marketplace. We wanted to give people more ways to explore the great things on offer, including discovering things they might not even know existed.

Along the way, we improved the UX based on tests we ran and added some new features. For instance, our new personal portal allows each advertiser to amend their business information, logo, gallery images and contact details at any time. This gives users more control and allows them to keep things up to date. It also means our team doesn’t have to get involved and has more time to scope out new feature requests so that the Marketplace continues to get better.

Better still, listings can now go live the same day they’re put forward to our team making Marketplace one of the quickest and easiest ways to get your business out there.

Other new features include the addition of ratings and reviews to help businesses compare service providers and make the best decision for them based on real, authentic testimonials.

Speaking to Rebecca Morley, the Project Manager for the Marketplace project, she told us what she’s most excited about:

“My favourite feature of the portal is the lead data. An advertiser can see exactly how many times their business has appeared in search results, how many clicks it’s had as well as clicks out to their website – all in real-time. Plus, there is an inbox feature where potential customers can send enquiries as they browse.”

We’ve also expanded our advertising offerings: freelancers and software providers now have their own category to display their services. This gives users a wide array of options out there and helps to show why online directories are still very much needed in 2020.

Reach

Advertising a new product is always difficult, particularly when you have no data to lead you in the right direction. Luckily, because we have the Adzooma platform and an established customer base, we had a strong sense of just how valuable the Marketplace would be.

Once we were happy with the Marketplace, we moved our thoughts to marketing it. Speaking to Paid Social Manager, Matt Hogan, he discussed how we started the ball rolling:

“Firstly, we identified two main audience types that we thought would be best suited and set about coming up ways to promote it to them. This was split into those who would want to advertise on the Marketplace and those who would want to use the Marketplace.

Paid social tends to always bring in a good amount of traffic if you build your audiences from good data. So, as well as this, we looked at other ways to promote the product and decided to branch out into display campaigns on various targeted sites in our industry. These sites are some of the biggest in the marketing space so we can safely presume that our target audiences would visit them.”

Here is just one of the display campaigns we’re currently running on sites such as Search Engine Journal. We included a strong discounted offer to entice people to check it out and went for striking creatives to stand out against the landscape of the different sites.

Here is just one of the display campaigns we’re currently running on sites such as Search Engine Journal. We included a strong discounted offer to entice people to check it out and went for striking creatives to stand out against the landscape of the different sites.

Matt concluded:

“The results we’ve had so far have been promising, but as always, we’ll continue to tweak things and make changes as the data points us in the right direction.”

Supporting content

To support our paid campaigns, our Content Team have been busy producing tons of creative content. Full of key insights and handy hint, the Adzooma Blog now houses lots of supporting articles to help businesses and agencies on their advertising journey.

If you’d like to read more about why now is the best time to hire freelancers, what else is free about Adzooma or more about the Marketplace, be sure to explore the blog.

Using the best resources out there

On a final note, Marketplace is the number one platform that connects services, agencies and freelancers with high-quality leads looking for their expertise.

It’s important to outsource where it makes sense for your business. For example, migrating the Marketplace to eDirectory required the skill set of their Brazilian team – and we think they’ve done a fantastic job. The Marketplace makes it easy to find those who are ready to help.

Make sure you take a look for yourself, share your feedback and find your ideal service or new customers on there today.